Wikipedia talk:Notability (Railway lines and stations)/Archive 1

Archive 1

The original talk page from User:Mangoe/Wikipedia is not a timetable

Agree but...

Mangoe and SilkTork, you are to be commended. This essay sums up exactly what I've been thinking about the wild proliferation of tram stop and minor station articles quite nicely. One thing to add to the criteria for inclusion should be:

• One or more of the structures at the station is a listed building.

For US structures, any structure on the National Register of Historic Places (such as the California Southern Railroad's station and office building in National City, California) would qualify. Similar historic significance lists exist for other countries as well, which could be an easy indicator of notability (such as the signal box at Frankfurt (Main) Hauptbahnhof).

Otherwise, I fully agree with the content of the essay so far. Slambo (Speak) 18:45, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for thinking of listed building. I've added that to the list. Mangoe 19:09, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Cool, now it enumerates a comprehensive set of specific tests for my own "culturally or historically significant" check when I create articles. Oh, and one other note, we should let the other rail-related WikiProjects (NYC Subway, streetcars, trains in Japan, UK railways, Washington Metro, Thomas (fictional stations too) and especially stations) know about this discussion too. Slambo (Speak) 19:26, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I've added references to all of the above except for Thomas-- they seem to have pretty well decided not to do station articles. Mangoe 20:08, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Jordanhill railway station

Under this proposed notability criteria, it sounds like Jordanhill railway station would be deleted? I would hope not. Rather, as a good article, railway/subway station articles should strive for (and exceed) what's been done the Jordanhill railway station article. A Wikipedia article can give the history of the station, when was it built (costs?), renovations, etc., what railway/subway lines serve the station, notable places in the area/neighborhood, etc. --Aude (talk contribs) 20:15, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I was wondering when someone would bring that up. Essentially the station is notable because of the Wikipedia article about it. However, an argument could be made that it is also notable because of criteria number 3, specifically the accident that occurred there in 1980. Slambo (Speak) 20:27, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

It's a nice article - I enjoyed reading it. But what happens - any well written article on any subject that manages to accumulate enough trivia should stay? I feel the main points of the article should be merged into the Jordanhill article. Content such as this: "Jordanhill being an area of artisans and miners until the close of the 19th century.[6] The railway station arrived just as much of the local industry was declining, giving residents, who previously had to walk to Hillhead or Partick to find transport into Glasgow, proper access to the city centre.[7]" fits nicely into a general article on Jordanhill. SilkTork 10:26, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Oyama Station

I don't understand a word of Japanese, but Japanese Wikipedia has a fair amount to say about Oyama Station. (ja:小山駅) At some point, maybe someone will translate more from jawiki to enwiki and expand the stub. --Aude (talk contribs) 20:22, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Piping the text through Babelfish (which does leave a bit to be desired), I don't see much more than "this train stops here" and "the catenary is of this type" statements. Slambo (Speak) 20:31, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

My Japanese isn't the greatest, and it could take me over an hour to translate it (read it) word for word. But a cursory examination indicates that the majority of the content is, as you say, describing where one can get on and off, which lines it serves, which exits there are - nothing of any real significance in an academic sense. I'd say useful only to those researching a tourist trip or something like that. Not that I'm criticizing this article in particular, or its author, but I agree with you, Mangoe, that the majority of train station articles are meaningless. LordAmeth 22:50, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

The Route 128 station article is quite long too, but there's nothing substantial in it. It would barely qualify under the "subway stop" notability policy, but even then I think it should be cut back considerably. Mangoe 20:49, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Route 128 station was "completely rebuilt and opened in 2000". Surely, there is much more to say about this project. How much did it cost? any controversy surrounding the project (as can occur with big, expensive projects)? When was the station originally built? When did it first get MBTA service? When did Amtrak service begin there? Have there been any accidents or incidents at the station? On the Washington Metro, I think at most of the stations there has been some derailment - like mentioned in Jordanhill railway station, or fatal accident (someone fallen on the tracks, a maintenance worker, suicide?) at some point. Subway/rail stations are also often catalyst for transit-oriented development and other projects. [1] I think there is enough verifiable information available to expand Route 128 (MBTA station), and bring it up to or exceed the quality of the Jordanhill article. --Aude (talk contribs) 21:17, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

You speak of potential notability; I think we should prefer actual notability. A lot of the things you list as potential notabilities to me are better listed as attributes of the line as a whole, or are best presented in a list/table on an article on the line rather than on each station, especially opening/closing dates. Construction controversies are also far more likely to hew to the line as a whole. Likewise (sad to say) accidents are not all notable, else we should list every traffic accident in the world. Mangoe 23:00, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

"Potential notabilities" apply to all stub articles. I just did some quick search about Route 128 (MBTA station) and found notable controversy about new construction and renovation projects at the station. These are specific to the station and not the line. And, there are sufficient verifiable, reliable sources such as newspapers that discuss the station, so it's not destined to remain a stub. --Aude (talk contribs) 00:05, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think so. Everything is potentially worth an encyclopedia article someday, but that doesn't in the least imply that such an article should be started now. Mangoe 16:08, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Keeping stations

I know it says that only notable stations should be added basically, but many of the "minor" stations are just at the beginning of their cycle and may eventually become very notable. This is sort of like the Balleymoney railway station incident. What i am basically saying is that maybe minor stations should be kept for chance of expansion and notability. btw see link. Simply south 20:28, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

It's the kind of situation that we're seeing now that led WikiProject Music to develop the accepted Wikipedia:Notability (music) guideline; a great many of the station articles we've got now have the same notability as a garage band down the street that played in the local school talent show. Ballymoney's notability hasn't been shown since the article was created in March. Slambo (Speak) 20:38, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd also like to add that the minor stations also help to link the major stations. Simply south 20:42, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the Balleymoney case is a good enough justification. After all I personally might become notable too.

The impression I get is that a lot of the information about these stations is entered because it's sort of easy to take a timetable and make a bunch of articles about it. The thing is that as a source of information the timetable is (a) probably accessible on the internet already, and (b) a better source of information. I don't see the point of carrying it all over here; we're actually degrading the information by putting it here. Mangoe 20:42, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Hey, a lot of information in articles are not taken from timetables. The services section is just a minor part. You know where i'm going. Simply south 21:14, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

No, actually I don't. Mangoe 23:45, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

You say, "there is a consensus that subway stations are notable", "The primary issue seems to be with passenger train stops, which seem to fall into a grey area between subway stations (generally notable) and bus stops (not notable)".

The definiton of "subway station" is grey area too, many New York City Subway stations and DC Metro stations are not even "underground". Passenger train stations say on the Yamanote Line of Tokyo serve 3.5 million passengers per day compared to 4.8 million passengers per day serving 468 stations of the New York City Subway. Yamanote is a regular railway with "regular" passenger stations, why is it ok for subways stations to have pages, but not ok for passenger rail stations of a non subway network to be listed? My opinion is have all railway-tram-subway-elevated-masstransit whatever done with pages if possible here on wikipedia. One argument is that someone can find better more reliable information and its not a replacement for the worldwideweb (that could be said for virtualy all articles on wikipeida), well its easy if the information is provided in English, but a lot of the time when it comes to foreign trains and sources it is certainly much much harder, such as wikitrains project in Japan, when English information is much much harder if not impossible at times to come by unless one knew how to read Japanese. I think its important that have that type of information here on Wikipedia. Limitedexpresstrain 23:55, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

If there are 5,000 rail/metro stations on Wikipedia, then nearly 10% of them are on the New York City Subway, because every current NYCS station has a Wikipedia article, as well as several of the abandoned/defunct ones. A lot of those subway station articles, frankly, would be non-notable if they remained in their current form. But who's to say they will? Lots of worthwhile articles start out as stubs. I do agree that Wikipedia shouldn't be used as a pure timetable. Marc Shepherd 00:08, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

A quick check shows that the NYC subway station articles do not tend to reference either train station or railway station. London underground stations also do not seem to link to it either; neither do Moscow metro, nor the Paris metro. If these systems were added, they would account for about a fifth of the resulting total.

The issue here isn't stubbiness anyway. A lot of these articles are reasonably long, but a lot of the content seems to be borrowed from their parent line or is beneath trivial. And I have to say again that the possibility of becoming notable isn't a good reason for inclusion. Mangoe 02:56, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

You're right; those articles usually link to metro station, subway station, or no kind of station at all. And I do not dispute that, as presently constituted, many of them present information that the average reader would consider trivial. And many of them largely duplicate information that could be (but isn't always) presented once for the line as a whole. Marc Shepherd 03:10, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

One of the major points of your argument was that trains can stop anywhere at any time. In the case of New York City Subways, it is impossible to stop to unload passengers at all but a few spots on the route. Although I agree that Wikipedia is not a timetable, I think that there is a strong difference between painstakingly creating articles for individual train stations and posting the schedules of those stations on Wikipedia. Obviously, schedules can change at any time, but a train station (or at least a subway station) has a far greater degree of permanance. I would be alarmed to see all of the NYCS articles deleted. Alphachimp ^talk 06:47, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I think railway stations should have their own wiki to avoid cluttering Wikipedia (like Pokémon stuff); however, I should like to note that the Japanese railway stations buildings tend to be of the most notable buildings in their immediate area; due to the lack of street names, they're significant landmarks for meetings. However, the idea that they're used as meeting places may not be nearly enough significance for individual stations. -William McDuff 12:58, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Something simple

How about a reason for keeping minor stations is that you want to find a location of a place and are also curious as to what line that station is on? Simply south 21:16, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Searching? You don't need an article on the Garrett Park station to find up that it is on the MARC Brunswick line. Mangoe 22:41, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

But you might need something to indicate say that Olfield Park station is in Bath. Actually, i'm wondering now. I was against this earler but in order to save minor stations if this goes ahead, couldn't they be merged into town articles. That would answer to location part and it could also show the frequency etc related to that area. (What does MARC mean? I'm not from the US). Simply south 11:02, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

If the focus is on ease of use for the reader, this seems like a backwards approach. For one thing, it clutters up the line article with details which are not important to the line, but to the station. (For examples, a bit of trivia at Nakanosakae_Station#Name_Origin or a list of previous station names at Mamurogawa_Station#History).

By the same token, towns and cities have many train stations, and again, you have to choose to clutter up an article with details about each station, split them out into independent articles. Neier 11:30, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Relying on searching through line articles to find info on a station also breaks down any time that there is more than one station with the same name. When giving each station an article, the infrastructure of wikipedia (disambiguation, etc) is well suited for finding the correct station. Say I'm searching for Fukushima Station. I know it's in northern Japan somewhere, but when I search for it, I may see it come up in these two line articles Ōu Main Line and Hanshin Main Line. For long lines which span a large area, it may not be easy to see which one is which just by looking at the line info – and, for two non-notable train stations in the same area with the same name (see Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_for_Japan-related_articles/misc4#Subway_Station_Names and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains in Japan/Style for two nightmarish discussions about article naming conventions, including stations with the same name in the same city that are miles apart!), it would be downright impossible without an article about the station itself. Neier 11:31, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, for two non-notable stations I could see leaving each mention on its on line page, and then use a disambig page to distinguish between the two, referring to the corresponding line articles. And for single station renames, a footnote probably would do as well. Systematic renamings ought to be dealt with under the appropriate level of the system (the line, or the whole service). Mangoe 14:09, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean? Simply south 14:12, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I was meaning the backward approach as a last resort, i suppose. Anyway, i am in favour of keeping all station articles, including minor ones. Simply south 12:22, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Agreed criteria for notability

It would be inappropriate for us railway enthusiasts to argue that we are different to other subject areas on Wiki and we should be allowed to keep non-notable articles. Painful though it is, we need to keep our own house in order, and decide among ourselves what we feel are the criteria for notability. It is noted and understood that some editors wish to have articles on every train stop, even when such stops are clearly non-notable. However, it is Wikipedia policy that articles should be notable. What we are doing here is looking at criteria for notability that the majority of us agree with. Wiki is expanding and developing all the time. And, for railway stations and stops, the period of development has arrived in which we need to draw up some policies. SilkTork 10:43, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Unlike regular encyclopedias, Wikipedia is a wiki, meaning that wikilinks (to each other) are important. If an entire train line can be shown to be notable, we can systematically create its train station articles following an agreed upon format, and interlink them together. Those trains stations should then be considered notable as well. The "agreed upon format" may (obviously) vary according to the different country wikiprojects (such as "Wikiproject Trains in Japan").--Endroit 15:46, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

An article on the history of the Welsh people would be notable. But that doesn't mean that we can then go write an article on every single Welsh person. A Jaguar E-type car is notable, but the nuts and bolts that go to make up the car is not notable - nor are the individual E-types. Just because a railweay line is notable it doesn't follow that the railway stations, stops, signal boxes and sidings that make up the line are notable in themselves. SilkTork 23:10, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Totally bad analogies, SilkTork. Try linking Welsh people in one long line. That's impossible. Do the nuts and bolts have names? Seems like you are purposely picking non-notable stuff which can't possibly be connected in one line. A better analogy would be List of popes or Heisman Trophy.--Endroit 16:02, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Subway Stations

I have to say that while the subway jargon level is a little high for me (for instance, "fare control area" is used but never wikied, and frankly I'd prefer "turnstyles" or some more precise description), as subway articles go I tend to prefer the NYC examples. I particularly like the use of the right-hand infobox summary.

But maybe NYC isn't the model for everyone. It's a very old system, very complex, very historic. Looking at the WMATA website, they have this very nice interactive map, and virtually everything that you could ever want to know about the stations, in terms of services, you can find out from that map. Whoever created the various Baltimore transit maps made no station articles at all, except for Penn Station, which is a historic building.

At this point I probably wouldn't propose deletion of any existing subway station article. I am suggesting, though, that it might be a good idea to reconsider how some of them are written, and that a lot of new ones ought never get written. Looking at the DC articles, they mostly contain information that can be gotten directly from the WMATA website, or are tourist guides to surrounding attractions. The Chicago 'L' station articles, as yet mostly unwritten, are tending in the same direction.

That's where the precedent arguments hit home with me. If the Chicago articles all get written-- and frankly, it doesn't seem to me that there's overwhelming reason to write them, but then, I'm not from Chcago-- it seems to me that they ought to follow the NYC model. I think the DC Metro station articles are mostly unnecessary-- and I am from the DC area. Mangoe 12:33, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Countering Systemic Bias

Trains and train stations are more notable in some cultures than in others. Eradicating all trains in the English Wikipedia seems to be a slippery slope towards WP:BIAS, as trains in England and Japan are important to a significant number of people (see WP:IMP#Importance criteria). An added complexity for Japan (but, not England) is that the source articles already exist for each station in the Japanese wikipedia. In many cases, the stub articles in English are quick transwiki copies of the Japanese article; in order to give someone the opportunity to improve the article (the barrier to entry of improving an article is much lower than creating a new article – especially when second or third languages are involved). I don't think that any argument to remove the minor train stations from the Japanese wikipedia would be well-received...

But, that is not to say that only Japanese trains are important. As I said above, England (and other countries) have a much larger reliance on their train systems than the US. I agree with the "not a timetable" premise; but, there is more to articles about stations than just a timetable. I would probably delete a timetable from any article on my watchlist, because of the arguments put forth on this page. But, using the timetables as a strawman for the eradication of most train station articles strikes me as a very bad idea. Neier 13:32, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Here here. Simply south 13:36, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I definitely agree with Neier, although I would point out that systemic bias can also arise in the other direction (someone from Japan or the UK might look at a railroad station and shrug, wondering what the big deal is, while in the United States, so (relatively) few railroad stations have survived that the temptation exists to declare them all notable. I any event, I see no problem with current standards for railroad stations, although I would like to have a guideline heavily discouraging bot creation of parking-spots-and-succession-box stubs, as happened with SEPTA stations recently (such articles are hardly easier to expand than a blank page.) I would like to re-emphasize that a not-a-timetable guideline should not be used as an excuse to slash and burn many good articles, especially those beyond stub status already. --CComMack 14:25, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Um, actually I don't think there's any systemic bias in this, because the principle that I think should apply is ever more relevant the more the train system is relied upon. It boils down to this: if I were looking at the rail system as a user, which source should I pick: an encyclopedia, or the train system itself? And I say, "the train system, because I would expect them to have the most accurate and up-to-date information." I fact, I would tend to think that in a place where every village and town has a train station, those stations would therefore be less notable as a rule, because it can be taken for granted that they are there.

Let me try it from a different angle: if there is little or nothing we can say about stations that the official website cannot say as well or better, then why should we copy it? I sense this in a lot of station articles, because they do often seem to strain to add information beyond what the timetable and accompanying maps already provide. My supposition is that most of these articles are not written for railway passengers, but for and by rail fans. And as such, they tend to evince the kind of stamp-coolecting ethos that is commonplace among fans (and I'm one too). But insofar as this is supposed to be an encyclopedia, I just don't think that the way these articles are constructed, in many or perhaps most cases, contributes to understanding.

And I seem to have to keep reiterating this: This isn't necessarily a call for deleting most station articles. It's obvious that a lot of people feel threatened by that prospect. It's more that I feel we have fallen into a default style of writing about train service that is cluttered and unenlightening, and which is pushing people to include a lot of, well, not trivia exactly, but material which is of questionable worth.

What particularly surprises me about the discussion here is the allergy towards presenting a lot of this information in tables about rail lines. Particularly with respect to passenger rail, this seems to me to be a superior solution in most cases. It seems to me that a lot of the station articles strive to acheive non-stubbiness by repeating information about the line or the corresponding place; to me they rather too often seem padded. Mangoe 14:48, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

"which source should I pick: an encyclopedia, or the train system itself?" Its great if a user can find information in english, not so true with many of the foreign train related projects. Limitedexpresstrain 18:47, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I think a step forward would be to articulate what good coverage of a rail system and its stations should be, instead of stating what it is not. I haven't seen anyone dispute your core premise — that Wikipedia is not a timetable. The issue, however, is clearly a lot more nuanced than that.

At the same time, while Wikipedia is not a timetable, it is not a paper encyclopedia either. It does not have the space limitations of a paper encyclopedia. It is therefore possible to offer "encyclopedic" articles on arcane subjects that a paper encyclopedia would never touch, so long as they are verifiable, and presented from a NPOV.

Everyone should read Jimbo Wales's famous "no" vote on the "Fame and importance" proposal, which was not approved. As noted at Wikipedia:Notability, "there is no official policy on notability." Many editors believe that verifiability, NPOV, and no original research are sufficient. Marc Shepherd 15:07, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

My problem is that the information that is being used to pad out these articles isn't arcana. It's mostly information about line structure and the surrounding area. The problem isn't fame and importance; it's that there's not much to say, and therefore people are organizing the information so as to present the appearance of there being more content.

There are already suggestions as to how material might be presented in the proposed policy. It would be nice if people would address them, and would update the article while they are at it. There are notability criteria for other subjects; they are guidelines (as this obviously would be), but nobody should pretend that notability is irrelevant. My impression of the discussion thus far is that the reaction against deletion is dominating the discussion to the point where nobody is willing to consider the possibility that subsuming information about stations into other articles might be a better presentation. I don't view this entirely as a deletionist versus inclusionist discussion, because I'm not arguing that stations shouldn't be mentioned at all. But it seems to me that the information could be presented a lot more succinctly and in a better context, in many and perhaps most cases, by presenting it in the context of an article on the line or the service rather than splitting each stop out. Mangoe 15:46, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

"Wikipedia vs. official train system website"... I now find when I'm travelling somewhere unfamiliar, Wikipedia is a good place, first stop on the internet to find background information about a place, to find out what the official train system is, and an external link is usually there if I want specific timetable details. That's one use for this articles to the reader. At another level, it would be interesting to read about the history of the station, when it was built, controversies, design/architecture of the station, and something about the area around the station. These are details that can be found by going through newspaper archive databases, as well as print sources. Of course, the vast majority of rail station articles are merely stubs at this point and don't have that level of detail yet. But, I think we should set some standard of quality to strive for, with emphasis away from basic trivial details such as the cost of parking. --Aude (talk contribs) 15:21, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

The proposed policy already implies that if there is something to be said about the station building, then writing a separate article may be justified. But again, this can often be subsumed into an article about the place. For example, there's no separate article about the station at Point of Rocks, Maryland, because there's not much more to say than is already included in the article about the town.

Most articles on stations will remain stubs forever, because there's nothing more to say. But the pressure to expand the articles remain, and that's how they get padded. As an extreme example, everything that could possibly be said about "Garrett Park (station)" could be put in three sentences:

Garrett Park is a station stop on the MARC train "Brunswick Line" in Garrett Park, Maryland. It lies between the Kensington, Maryland and Rockville, Maryland stations. Service began in 19xx.

But put in the form of many of the station articles (complete with a picture of a train at the platforms) and it would look more impressive, especially after people noted when service was available, and what the parking was like, and other such miscellany. And we mustn't forget the infoboxes. So instead of three sentences (or better still, a single line in a table or list) we get this exercise in redundancy; after all, every item except the date service began would already appear in the article on the line (or in this case, the section on the line). Mangoe 16:01, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

There was a full-fledged rail station at Garrett Park from 1895-1960, which was served by the B&O Railroad. The railroad station has major historical significance to Garrett Park, Maryland, which is on on the National Register of Historic Places. I think many of the other MARC stations are also on the register. [2] [3] However, at this point in Wikipedia history, articles like Montgomery County, Maryland are still full of stubby sections, as are many of the town articles. Given time to work on them, these articles will move towards good and featured status. As such, Wikipedia has potential to be a good source for local history information. Railroad and subway stations are integral to the history of a place, with major impact on how it develops (e.g. streetcar suburbs, transit-oriented development, ...). I think such arguments can be made for most railroad/subway stations, as local landmarks that have enough verifiable, interesting things to say about to merit articles. --Aude (talk contribs) 16:41, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

• While I understand Neier's commment that England has a reliance on the train system, that is not to say every station in England is notable. On the 18th of June this year I attended a special ceremony to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Medway Valley Line. We travelled on a special train which was later named "The Medway Valley Line". However, most of the stations on the line were not deemed notable enough for the train to stop. We simply travelled from Strood to Maidstone, where we were treated to a slap up meal and given a free ticket for the rest of the day. Fond as I am of the line, this stop: New Hythe railway station, is simply a halt in the middle of a large paper mill. It's only significance is that the train sometimes stops there. It doesn't matter which country we are talking about - if a stop is notable, lets have an article; if a stop is trivial let's not have an article. SilkTork 23:30, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

• Just a late quick note to say inspect this page http://www.kentrail.co.uk/New%20Hythe.htm on the station Pickle 15:45, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• Marc Shepherd's comment on verifiability and no original research is relevant. If there is no reliable source out there (and the train company's own timetable is not a reliable source) then most of the trivial railway stops article are in fact not verifiable by a reliable authority (that the station exists is not counted as verifiable), and therefore count as original research. By that criteria over half the station stops on Wiki are eligible for deletion. SilkTork 23:38, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

• Regarding reliance or that many people might use a train station: The same can be said for any road intersection or grocery store. We could, but do not and ought not, give all sorts of information about their construction cost and renovations, the disposition of signage or where we find the peanut butter, or how many thousands of people cross the intersection or buy groceries there every day. No. This is an encyclopedia, and there are already articles for the roads themselves, and for the supermarket company or chain in general, just as there are already articles for the rail lines or the whole subway system. —Centrx→talk • 03:23, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

• It seems I didn't do a good job at communicating my main concern, probably as a result of trying not to come across as too biased towards the Japanese stations. At any rate, I suspect that I have "created" more new station articles in the past couple of months than most anyone else. But, I do not see these as new articles. I consider them to be translated articles. As one goal of Wikipedia is to have source articles from one language translated to others -- whether the article starts in German and is translated to Esperanto, or from Japanese to English, etc. I also believe the facts about the stations as very easy to prove, since there are various Japanese books that list every station in the country (with pictures), etc.
• So, my point in all of this is whether the notability card trumps the translation card. Are we forbidden from translating an article from Japanese to English because of a controversial guideline such as notability?
• Extending my point further is that just as the Japanese community has (internally) decided which stations are worthy of articles in Japan, it should be the local community in each country (English-speaking, or otherwise) that makes the decision for their own stations. The English community as a whole seems hardly fit to determine what stations in England (a small subset of the English-speaking world) are notable, or the rules on which to base such a decision. If anything, the wiki projects devoted to the railways of various countries would be a better place to hash out those types of standards.
• Finally (whew), above all that, I'm still puzzled about the main reason for wanting to delete these articles. Deleting timetables, I understand. And, I agree that notability is important in some cases -- in the case of vanity pages for people and corporations, it is obvious that Wikipedia has to adopt restraints to prevent it from turning into a hyper version of MySpace. But, train stations don't seek out publicity; there are a finite number of them; and their existence is easily verifiable in the first-person, and oft-times by any number of sources (both related to the rail company, and otherwise). Excuse the ranting... Neier 08:30, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

• I won't excuse the ranting, I'll applaud it! Good natured debate is the whole point of this exercise. Through exchange of views we get an idea of how to proceed. Anyway. That something exists is not a reason for an article by itself. The point of this essay is to look at the possibility of putting these trivial stations into an article on the train line. We are not saying that the "information" should be deleted, only that we are looking at how the information should be handled. I have just added a new section [4] which I hope clarifies this point. SilkTork 09:44, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

• Wikipedias of different languages are essentially independent; article standards and practices on one do not necessarily apply to the others. Also note that the problem is not so much including the information at all, but making separate articles for each one when they belong in one article, and also about including ever-changing and unencyclopedic information like rate fares. When merged with main articles, whether this minor stuff is notable is then dependent on what belongs in the whole article. Each article must be independently important enough for an encyclopedia, and then within each article there is a hierarchy of how much space less important things take up or whether they should be included at all. The United States article may not mention Dunkin' Donuts because it is not important enough for the United States article, but Dunkin' Donuts is important enough to have its own article, containing, say, individual employee information which is itself not important enough for its own article. Also, aside from the (ir)relevance of Japenese Wikipedia standards to the English Wikipedia, people being close to something does not indicate its notability. There are many things in individual towns that are important to town residents, but do not warrant their own articles, if even a mention in the town article, when no one else in the world cares about it. It is instead the distance from a thing that might indicate it is more generally important. —Centrx→talk • 10:36, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

• Re: the addition of info to line and/or city articles, I just wrote about that in another section.
• I haven't seen many (any?) arguments to keeping rate fares and timetables; so I am not sure why that point is continuously brought up. If that is the main thesis for this page (and based on the name, maybe that is an accurate statement), then it is more suited for a Manual of Style entry, and not a notability criteria.
• I agree, that Each article must be independently important enough for an encyclopedia. And, for translated articles, they obviously ARE important enough for an encyclopedia. Just because the source encyclopedia was not English should be no reason to discount the subjects' importance. That is why I linked to WP:BIAS in the section heading. I wish the similar argument could be made for English stations, so I would come across as less pushy of Japanese. Neier 11:45, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Why are they obviously important? Inclusion in the Japanese Wikipedia does not necessarily entail that it ought to be included in the English Wikipedia. The different language Wikipedias sometimes have different article standards. —Centrx→talk • 03:54, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Train stations are a part of train lines (which are sequential lists). And train lines must be treated the same as any other sequential lists in Wikipedia, such as Heisman Trophy or List of popes. If the list is notable, so are the individual articles in them, even if they are stubs. Don't create any double-standard just for trains! (i.e.: Don't single out train stations). If you do, I'll request RfM.--Endroit 16:08, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Garrett Park, Maryland

Let's confront the notability of Garrett Park head on. Googling does produce references to the "Garrett Park Historic District" and to several small pages on town history. And I emphasize "small"; none of them is longer than the current Garrett Park, Maryland article. Image searches (once you get past all the elementary school refrigerator front artwork) produce lots of pictures of the azaleas in town (suburban DC on the Maryland side is an azalea paradise) and a number of pictures of the same building, which houses the town offices. The station might be slightly remarkable if it survived (though it's one of a number of essentially standardized stations designed by E. Francis Baldwin and could be summarized in the town article with a sentence and a picture.

Presumably the station would have been included in the historic district, had it survived. But in the end, there still would have been little to say about it; there's not that much one can say even about the stations in Laurel, Maryland and Point of Rocks, Maryland, and both of them are individually registered. Well, except that they are cool buildings to look at. Mangoe 17:52, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

To begin with, last Saturday, an article about Garrett Park and the railroad was in the Washington Post. An important source on Garrett Park is the 105-page report on this historic district that accompanies the registry listing. [5] It includes information about the railroad station, as well as other historic buildings in the town. There is also a bibliography in the report, which leads to offline, print sources. More references to print sources can be found though searching databases [6] [7] [8] [9] [10], and on websites [11]. So, please keep in mind that not all sources are not online and can be found using google. I think Wikipedia benefits alot from referencing print sources. Wikipedia is just not at the stages where that level of referencing for local history topics is done much. At some point, I'd like to see us get there. Stubs are just a beginning... --Aude (talk contribs) 18:47, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

PS, there are reports that accompany the listing of the Laurel and Point of Rocks Railroad Stations, each with bibliographic references for more information. --Aude (talk contribs) 18:47, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

The thing is, I don't think in this case that "stubs" are just the beginning. Again, clearly there's room for expansion of the Garrett Park article. But there's not much room for much expansion if the article is going to do much more than repeat, exhaustively, the information in the filings. I don't have access to the one listing, but I've looked at similar filings for other properties (in fact in some cases to glean info for Wikipedia articles). 105 pages of filing is not 105 pages densely packed with information; if it's like the others I've looked at, a very large part of it is going to be devoted to unusable (for our purposes) photography and boilerplate forms. And other platform-only stations on the MARC lines do not have the benefit of being located next to historic districts.

I'm going to update the Garrett Park article; surely it should mention some of this other material. But somewhere along the line it seems to me that we ought to concede that there are plenty of subjects about which not much needs to be written in Wikipedia, even if there are hundreds of pages of material available to work from. Mangoe 19:27, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Is disk space a problem requiring censorship due to volume?

If yes then some culling of articles is needed with a template of items to be included.

If no then if someone can be bothered to write the article let it stand. To someone searching for history or other information about a street, village or town then even one seemingly trivial bit of information can be relevant. One must not forget that it is always the first bit of information gained, however small, when researching which is the key that opens the door to lots more.

I am now fairly knowledgable about England's earliest railways to the extent I have become a published author and also a Wikipedian on this specific subject. It was one sentence I didn't believe in a badly written printed history book that started me on my quest for knowledge and to verify the statement made. These so called trivial articles may well be the first lead in someone else's study quest.

--Johnrnew 18:04, 12 July 2006 (UTC).

Another function of station articles is to help build the web, through use of the next/previous station links. --Aude (talk contribs) 18:49, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

This is the aspect I object to most strongly. This isn't really sequential information; it's geographic information, and is best depicted in a map or maybe a list. Even in the subway articles (where I think this is maybe more meaningful anyway) there is a tendency to elevate this into a big cluttery mess. On the the train articles it obscures relationships, not elucidates them. You could represent a train line entirely in hypertext, but it's a bad idea to do so. Mangoe 19:34, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know, Wikipedia is not trying to discourage the creation of new articles because of a disk space problem. What Wikipedia does want is the creation of high-quality encyclopedia articles. Mangoe is fearful that we are encouraging the creation of a large number of rail station articles that present no useful information in an eycyclopedia context — articles that are there primarily because of a rail-buff's desire for completeness, not because they actually say anything that a general reader would find useful. I see that danger, as well. But as I stated upthread, I think the distinction between notable and non-notable stations needs to be broader than the statement that "Wikipedia is not a timetable." Marc Shepherd 21:38, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

The sequential list issue

Popes and Heisman Trophy winners are the wrong model for station stops as sequences. Why don't we go to the most obvious analogue: highway exits?

Many interstate highway articles (e.g., Interstate 95) don't even list exits; others list exits (e.g. Interstate 68) but don't say anything about those exits except road/town names. Sure, you could construct a huge set of articles on I-95 exits, and some of them are definitely notable (e.g. Springfield Interchange). The fact remains that the number of named interchange articles is small.

I expect someone to say, "well, sure, but that doesn't mean that more could be said about them in the future." OK then: why can't we just wait for that future? Mangoe 17:01, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

The future is here already. There are no articles on idividual freeway exits. On the other hand there are articles on individual train stations and Heisman trophy winners already. It's just a matter of applying the right standards which apply to both.--Endroit 17:05, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

No, the future isn't here yet. Some groups have created lots of station articles, and some have not. The discussion here is a bit strange because (it seems to me) that some people are particularly interested in protecting their investment in having created these articles, but also because to justify the existing articles arguments are being proffered to imply that articles should be created for every station stop that happens now or even that ever did happen. I don't think anyone is really serious about this implication, because in practice a lot of these articles didn't get created.

I'm losing hope for any attempts to clean up existing station articles (with one exception which I'll address in a moment). I wish there weren't so much resistance to efforts to clean up articles even if they aren't deleted. I personally like the look of the NYC subway articles and wish that the other systems had followed their model, because it is less cluttered and better organized.

I will propose, however, that all articles on Amtrak station stops be deleted. These are entirely timetable information. Note that I do not mean to delete articles that are about the station buildings at which Amtrak trains stop. But the station stop articles, from what I can tell, do nothing more than duplicate information from the articles about various Amtrak services. We aren't ganing anything from the clutter. Mangoe 19:29, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

There are separate articles for a stop and the station that they stop at? Even I would agree that that is strange. At the very least the stops should be merged to the station (except for timetable info, which should be deleted). Can you point to an example or two? Neier 00:20, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

These three were cited in the original discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains that led to the proposal:

• Tyrone (Amtrak station)
• Coatesville (Amtrak station)
• Greensburg (Amtrak station)

At the time it was suggested that these articles could simply be subsumed into the Pennsylvanian (Amtrak) article. Mangoe 02:56, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

This depite the fact that, at least in the case of Coatesville, most trais that stop there are part of the Keystone Service, and it was a SEPTA station during the era when the R5 went to Parkesburg. The argument for listification breaks down when you consider that multiple services run on these and many other lines, and which ones run change over time, and sometimes the physical lines themselves are subject to mutation (the annexation of the Culver line into the IND, for example). The more I hear, the more I'm dubious of the need to delete and listify station articles. --CComMack 07:19, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Having earlier today read an excellent, and definitive, published magazine article on the former West London Railway & West London Extension Railway I looked up the Wikipedia references. If you do you will see exactly why the issue here has been raised but there is a dichotomy. The Wikipedia item is a general one covering the line as it is today not an in depth history article. If the aim is for Wikipedia to be a resource for generalists as Marc Shepherd suggests then as such surely it does need the included station references Mangoe is suggesting banning. I concur that in this item most of the content on the modern railway is undoubtedly covered elsewhere, for example on the websites of the relevant train operating companies serving the route. However despite that, the author of the piece has not added any bibliography references which, although I am only a newbie to Wikipedia editing, I thought was contrary to the guidelines on citing sources when creating new pages. For the general reader looking up the West London Line as the former WLR & WLER is known today the format of the existing Wiki item I suggest is what they will want. The specialist magazine article would be too meaty for most readers if it could be copied over verbatim, but it is the magazine version level of detailed, definitive, information which I require as a railway historian. If I, or anyone else change edits the existing feature then the risk is it becomes too heavy for generalists so you get the dichotomy mentioned above. I have now added the magazine article as a resource reference.

updated--Johnrnew 21:34, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

It seems as though I need to start over again, because people are getting the wrong idea to a great extent. I'm not at all saying that station stops ought not to be mentioned at all. What I am saying is that it is more appropriate to document them in line/service/town articles except in cases where the station building is sufficiently notable to justify its own article even if there weren't an article about the line/service/town where it resides. I think there is also reason to exclude certain types of information about station stops, but that doesn't seem to be a controversial point. Mangoe 21:40, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps this principle could be adopted: create a station article if by doing so information can be given which is not readily available elsewhere. Sometimes the train operators themselves provide little or no information - and wikipedia could provide a service by filling in the gaps. Timetable information should not be included in general, it's too volatile, but information about car parking, interchange with bus lines or airports, station facilities, historical information, architecture - why not?

Basically, I should certainly be able to do the following. I want to go to Skunksville in the American mid west. Does it have a station? If so which train operator runs trains there (with a link)? How do I get from the station into the downtown area? Can I park my car there?

Of course this could be included in the Skunksville town article. But what if there is an article on the Skunksville and Illinois Railroad with a list of stations? Should this link point at the town or to a station article which is linked to the town?

Exile 13:56, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Point the link at a station article, and if the information is included in the town article, make a redirect. Then if the station is notable enough and a new article is made, there is no need to change links. --NE2 16:04, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I would expand building to building or other nearby transit-related infrastructure - a station stop can not even have a building but still be notable as a transfer point (Manhattan Transfer) or junction. --NE2 16:08, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Second Try

I've written a rather different version which can be viewed at User:Mangoe/Railroad line and station articles. Please discuss and above all, make changes! Mangoe 21:36, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Station as Transportation Hub?

There are alot of stations that might not fit in any of the currently the proposed Stations guidelines, but are transportation centers. Here, not only trains come and go, but it could be a local/county/municipal hub of mass transit bus lines, Park and rides, shuttle stops for places like airports and hotels (see FlyAway Bus as an example), ferries and even a business district centered around the station. I recently created the stub Fullerton (Amtrak station). While I'm sure it passes mustard as notable since there are two listed historical landmarks there, I wonder if there wasn't listed buildings, would this station be considered nn even though it's a transport hub? There are some obvious hubs, like Penn Station, but some not like Tacoma Dome Station[12](no article yet). Adapting a "hub" as criteria seems like a good idea. --Marriedtofilm 04:54, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Where to merge?

If this is adopted - I'm not sure if I'd support it - I'd favor merging to the location rather than the line. Thus categories like Category:Stations along New York Central Railroad lines and Category:Metro-North Railroad stations continue to list all stations, just with the article about the location listed. It also makes succession boxes possible. --NE2 15:58, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Union stations

I propose another criterion: if the station (or an earlier one on the same spot) ever served as a union station it's notable enough for its own article. This would not include a station along a jointly-owned line, but would include any other station served by multiple companies. --NE2 16:02, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreement

I agree with the fundamental point of this essay. Some form of notability criterion is needed to exclude patently non-notable train stations. Walton ^{Vivat Regina!} 17:38, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't know why you're so bothered. Have articles on lines and stations. You make the ones on lines perfect and just don't worry about the stations ones. This is something I do not understand about contributors here. Why even care that someone writes about something you don't want to write about? Grace Note 11:26, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

There are various reasons that wikipedia has notability guidelines, that in principle should apply universally. One major reason I see to excluding non-notable stuff is to maintain the respectability of the site as an encyclopedia. I'm not a rail enthusiast, but neither am I hostile to those that are. I just don't see the point of having pages that say nothing other than "this station exists at this location", whether it's a railway station or anything else, and in many cases there's no prospect (barring new events) of the pages developing further. SamBC 22:41, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Disagree

Articles on individual stations can always be expanded with properly sourced local history material. Subway stations and railway stations are in neighborhoods, and the relationship is generally discussed in newspaper sources, especially at the time of construction. It's just a matter of doing the work, often requiring the bugaboo of printed sources. The merely director-type articles should simply be considered stubs.

As a special case, in NYC at least the relationship of stops to individual subway lines frequently changes--the stations are much more permanent than the routes--just see the article on any of the routes.

There is also a practical reason--if some only are notable, every last one of them suggested as non-notable will surely be defended at AfD. We have enough problems with overload there. Thus, removing them will cause the diversion of work to process that could be much better spent in improving these and other articles. DGG (talk) 14:33, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Railway lines and stations talkpage

Notes

Just to note, light rail is not the equivalent of a bus stop (for example see Docklands Light Railway). Also, light rail in most cases does not even apply to subway althoigh it does to rapid transit. Also, i find the Glasgow Subway interesting. Did you know that it is the third oldest underground\subway system in the world? Despite this it has not expanded beyond its single line. It sounds like you are in favour of urban over rural in terms of stations. Should i continue? Simply south 22:15, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

You are not reading what I wrote carefully. It is the Baltimore Light Rail where the stations are like bus stops; that's just a fact. Obviously other systems will be different; the MBTA Green Line is light rail, but otherwise is just another line in a conventional subway system, for the most part.

And yes: I would suggest deleting all of the Glasgow Subway station articles. They mostly lack content separate from that of the main article. A quick peek at four of them revealed one which could be retained as a railway station article, and other with a detail which could have been handled just as well with a note in the main system article.

As far as rural versus urban: obviously small towns have less to write about than large cities, on the average. I don't see this as some egalitarian enterprise in which each placename on the map ought to be represented by equal disk usage.

I suspect you will continue, but mostly what I'm seeing is a list of quibbles and suppositions rather than systematic address of the point. It's obvious that you feel your work on a whole bunch of station articles is threatened, but when I look at one (Tonypandy railway station for instance) I see that although there are many references to it, they are with but one exception (it appears) products of its inclusion in a large template box which lists all the stations. Well, this could just as well be replaced by a category, but then I go to the article on the Rhondda Line, and see all the stops listed twice: once as places, and once as stations. The whole thing could be reduced, with a great deal of additional clarity, to a map (which is missing) and a table of stations referring to the places. I don't think that this has anything to do with Wales being different from Maryland, but it does seem to me that it has quite a bit to do with the British railfans having gotten a lot further along in entering these sorts of articles than the Americans have, and thus have more to lose in a cleanup effort. Mangoe 23:23, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Some of the articles have only just been created. They may eventually turn out like the London Underground articles. Btw, the Rhondda Line is a commuter line on the national system. Simply south 10:08, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

- but it also has its history, and the title Rhondda Line is not part of that until modern railway PR got their hands on it! There is no mention of the fact it originally was part of the Taff Vale Railway system, when it certainly wasn't a "commuter line on the national system" but was originally conceived as freight only, although passengers were carried from the beginning (see article). This is part of what I have been bemoaning since I came into Wikipedia: the fact that the names of services (ie the trains) on routes (ie the geographical railway) gets priority, even if individual parts of the route followed have completely different beginnings. Peter Shearan 13:04, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Maybe they will, but I'll bet that they won't. What you're more or less admitting here is that you don't have the information at hand to expand them. And I suppose that a corrolary point is that I think that even if they ought to be there, they are cluttered with far too much apparatus. The article on Tonypandy railway station is an example: the entire content of the article is contained in a single sentence and in a pred/succ box that could have been simply another sentence. Mangoe 22:14, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

That is, i can't expand them enough yet. Yes they do deserve to be there. Anyway, if i am basing notablity on google (i don't normally do that), i have checked and each subway station\underground station does have even yp to over 1000 hits. Is that notable enough?

and surely that is because there are many people who wish to travel from their nearest subway station\underground station, and not because they are anxious to know what its architecture/history is? Peter Shearan 13:04, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Also, i am wondering whether this is a good idea. I rely on other users and IPs to expand the articles are they are likely to know the Glasgow articles better than i do. Give them time. Simply south 11:56, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

All I'm seeing so far is nothing more or less than an argument for removing articles which, over time, do not move beyond stubiness. This is not something confined to railways. I'd whole heartedly support the idea we should engage in a project to rationalise the existing station articles, look dispassionately at what's left, remove those that can't or don't move beyond stubs, and then - as the proposal suggests - make more use of line pages and tables.

But none of that is justification for a policy, and the current proposal doesn't work for a number of reasons. It betrays an American bias (see references to ADA and trains stopping anywhere) and takes a one-size fits all approach. Given the divergent set ups of different national and regional networks, and the existance of various WikiProjects, surely the manner in which articles are constructed is better left to individual national or system WikiProjects where they exist, and to WP Trains where they do not.

I can't see any reason at all for including rules on how articles should be linked together (which is unrelated to the issue of their notability). If we are going to do this, let's have a third pass, with a stripped down, generalised proposal for station article notability only.

Mtpt 18:02, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, it is more than that; it supplies some ideas about rail station and line articles ought to be written, and how they should relate to articles about the places they serve.

And I disagree about the accusation of American bias. Indeed, I believe that authors of foreign station article systems are invoking this supposed bias in order to avoid evaluating their articles against the proposed standards. I'm all for trying to express standards that can be applied with some objectivity across all systems, and I believe that such standards can be devised. But nobody seems to have any interest in that; they seem to be mostly interested in exempting their pet system (or for that matter, their own work) from having to be seriously reworked if not deleted. I've asked over and over for others to come in and edit the two essays I've written. One person made substantive changes to the first essay, and nobody has seen fit to update this one. I don't think it's because I've managed to accurately represent the consensus; I think it's because most commentators prefer not having guidelines or standards.

This all started with my observation that these station articles consistently have very little information about the stations themselves. My supposition, based on the discussion thus far, is that the Wiki medium has tempted railfans in to creating a lot of trivial articles which actually work against understanding. As it stands, it seems to me that genreal readers would be better served if most of these articles went away. If people could come along and write an article about stations which could stand on their own, then all of my qualms would go away (though I still think the relationships between articles need work). But if that were to happen, then the notability standards would be met and the issue would be moot. Mangoe 18:55, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd start with the observation that a consensus against having a policy is itself a consensus. The eventual question would be "Should we have this as policy?", and people are entitled to say no without being obliged to offer an alternative. You characterise it [the avoidance of a policy] as most commentators prefering not having guidelines or standards. This may well be the case, but there are existing standards of notability that apply to station articles as to anything else.

You complain above that people are not engaging with you in producing a policy. I would counter that you have yet to make the case for a policy. What you have suggested can largely be boiled down into the statement "The fact that a train stops here, does not make here notable". From the comments so far, a fair number of people seem to disagree.

As for the American bias: it just won't wash to say people (principally, as you appear to acknowledge, people opposing the proposal) are reading this in. Every example in the proposal is American. In fact, aside from a reference to UK listed buildings (which if I'm reading the history right was actually a reference to a US system someone misread as a reference to the UK system causing it to be expanded) and a frivolous reference to the "...first station in Poland...", this proposal is one based on American stations which you wish to apply globally.

The problem with this is summed up by part of your explaination of why "Station stops and station buildings are not the same thing": "Railroad passenger service occupies a bit of a middle ground. Trains, unlike subways, can stop almost anywhere; before ADA requirements, no facilities of any kind were required for a station stop. However, it was commonly the case that station buildings were provided." I don't know when this was last true of UK railways. I'm not certain it ever was. But I do know that the fact that all UK stations have platforms and the vast majority have buildings has nothing to do with the DDA.

There are some sensible ideas in this proposal, such as including station details into place articles where there is little station information. There are some frankly quite odd ideas, such as not linking stations together (linking is, for example, the status quo on UK stations) which I can't see being adopted. But overall, no convincing justification has been advanced for having the policy at all.Mtpt 20:06, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

There is no consensus. I am not the only person largely in agreement with my positions, and I note that the other main proponent is British. What is happening is that since there was no previous consensus (as evidenced by the varieties of treatment in different systems) those who object to the negative recommendations are pleased to keep things in a state of "no consensus" because the outcome is then "continue to do as you please".

While the proposal itself may only mention American examples, the discussion is littered with discussion of foreign cases. I've cited specific American examples where there are station facilities and no station articles.

We keep brushing up against the claim that non-American systems largely have buildings, and by implication, that the Americans don't. I haven't taken so many Amtrak trains that I can be sure of that, but in any case it doesn't seem as though anyone thinks that very many of these station buildings is remarkable enough to write anything about them. (And that observation is already in the article.) It seems, therefore, that what is happening is that either people are converting a lot of listy material about train lines (especially timetables) into these networks of articles, or that they are dumping this material in from fan sites that have already performed that conversion.

And that leads me to the issue of the linkages. I made arguments about this in the essay, and it seems to me that people are largely not bothering to address them because they are more concerned about article deletion. To repeat the argument: Railways are not networks of stations; they are networks of lines. Lines are not chains of stations; they maintain their connectivity as stations open and close. Therefore the representation of lines as chains of hyperlinked articles about stations is the wrong way to model them in an encyclopedia.

Finally, I'm getting a bit tired of reading "there are some good suggestions". Since nobody seems to have the nerve/gall/will to take the essay and edit everything out but the "good suggestions", it feels to me like a rhetorical formula to cut some of the sting out of "your proposal stinks". It wouldn't hurt to at least get a consensus on the "good suggestions". The most important (in my opinion) good suggestion— making sure that the place articles talk about the stations— would represent a lot of work to get all these articles caught up. But I feel it is crucial to transforming this from the plaything of a bunch of railfans into something that is generally useful. Mangoe 21:55, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

If you're tired of reading it, produce a proposed policy in those area. People are telling you they don't support this one, but do support certain ideas in it (most of which are not about notability). As I said above, you're the one saying this policy is necessary, and it's your responsibility to convince everyone else!

And frankly, if you now see lots of non-American examples in the discussion which support your case (having read the discussion, I think most have been quoted against it!) then why aren't you editing your proposal to include them?

As for linkages, that is a seperate issue. I strongly disagree with what you're suggesting, and I harbour the suspicion that it owes more to the fact the US articles are not so liked than to any real reason not to do so. If the article should not exist at all (i.e. there is nothing to put in it) then it shouldn't be being linked. But if it does exist, there's no reason why it shouldn't be linked to the relevant line(s), train company(s), and to the neighbouring station(s).

I don't see any consensus - other than perhaps against this proposal. Mtpt 06:45, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

The linkages are not a separate issue. I find them unilluminating and obscure; the information they supposedly convey I find I can only obtain from the line articles. I don't know British geography to any level of detail; I can mostly place the biggest cities in about the right places, and that's pretty much it. So I need a lot of geographical assistance to understand these articles, and it's not being supplied in these linkages. They are a very laborious way to assemble information that I can get in a second from an ordered list-- or better still, a map.

The basic problem is very simple: I've gone out and found these cataloguing efforts, and looking at the articles, I can't make any sense out of the networks they are supposed to be representing. Not only that, but the networks are almost entirely cut off from the rest of Wikipedia. So far I have not found a single rail station article in Japan or Britain which is linked to by the place article, except for the major stations in London. And that is the most basic requirement: if there is an article about the station in Anytown, then the article on Anytown needs to link to it. It's especially important in the Japanese system, where the station names and the town names don't appear to correspond much of the time and where there are multiple towns with the same name. As it is, I can't make any sense of the Japanese rail network at all from the Japanese articles, and I can't make much more sense out of the British articles. My impression is that there are a lot of stations which are mostly like one another (or at least not so different as to elicit comment) which are more or less randomly linked together. The station articles give me no reason to read them in terms of the stations themselves, and the linkages give me no sense of geography. So I have to conclude that either the people who are writing these are so familiar with the geography that they fill in the map in their mind, or that they don't care about the geography particularly. At any rate, the articles are opaque to an outsider. I don't think it's just because I'm an American that I can't follow them. Mangoe 12:18, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

The more we go around this, the less this sounds like a policy about notability, and the more it becomes a set of guidelines for the content of station articles and the linkages they should make and have.

Well, that was the point of shifting from the one form to the other. I personally wouldn't take notability out of the picture, but even though it seems clear that by lack of consensus all stations will be notable enough to get articles, the way these articles are written is not informative. Mangoe 18:46, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

The basis of your criticism looks pretty limited. Take the criticism above about a lack of geographic information. If you haven't found a single UK place article which links to the most relevant stations, I think you must have been looking exclusively at railway halts in the Scottish Highlands. That notwithstanding, I've already said above I agree that making more use of place articles (and that would extend to properly linking station articles to them) is a good idea, and all you actually seem to be saying is that the article on X place should link to Y station, and vice versa. Most UK station articles already start with a statement to the effect of "Y station is a railway station in X, on W line.", and we would simply a guideline that a linkage should be placed in the article on X.

You are incorrect. In fact, I don't think I've looked at a single Highland station so far. I've looked at articles you personally have touched at some point, found the corresponding place article, and found that there is no link back to the station. I've also found this in Welsh and Japanese cases. Articles that reference railway station tend to reference each other, and they are referenced by railway line articles, but so far as I have checked they are not usually referenced from outside these subnetworks of articles. If the only guideline we can agree on is that the place-to-station reference should be created, then that's something. Mangoe 18:46, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

"Avoiding things Mangoe finds unilluminating and obscure" is not a practical basis for a wikipedia policy, and at the moment I'm seeing no more connection than that between your original assertion that station articles are not prima facie notable, and your comments on what linkages should be made. By all means, break this into a series of guidelines on specific issues or areas, and lets talk about those. As it stands, this proposal doesn't work, is based on flawed logic and information, and no case has been made for the necessity of having it at all. Mtpt 17:55, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I think it's an excellent basis for a policy. After all, I'm a railfan, and I'm a pretty smart guy (with degrees and such to prove it). My interests in the world are pretty catholic. So I think that making articles that are illuminating to me and not obscure to me is a not only a low standard to meet, but a reasonable minimal standard. Your attitude that you don't have to concede anything to me as a reader is the antithesis of how a reference work for a general audience should be written.

The article is already broken up into a series of guidelines, with section headers even. You can talk about them right now. Mangoe 18:46, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Between subways and light-rail commuter systems

I still think that this page is too US-centric. I'm going to go off on a small tangent here; but only because I think it may be important. (Uh oh)

There is still a large gray area between subways and the light-rail commuter systems such as you've mentioned in this page. Although I grew up in the US, we didn't have any commuter rail systems in my neck of the woods; but, it seems that most of the ones are like a spoke & wheel system (like a bus system)? That is, they all bring everyone in from the outlying areas, into a central area. There is no connection between the outlying station on one spoke and on another, for example. Looking at the map at SEPTA Regional Rail, that seems to be a fair assumption. And, perhaps you're working on the premise that rail systems are either like that, or they are classified as subways. (as an aside, is itbecause of the perceived complexity and interconnectedness of the subway system (versus the spoke/wheel type) that they have been given the notable tag already in wikipedia??)

In Japan (and presumably England and other places; but, I'll defer to someone more familiar with the situations there), even the non-subway systems are interconnected and complex like a web. For an example, see Ōu Main Line, with 100 stations stretching across 300 miles (most of which are around 100 years old). Nearly 1/4 of those stations have transfers where more than one line in the web intersect. I listed that one because the table makes it easy to see the transfers; and it's also where I intend so spend time over the next few weeks in translating the existing Japanese articles into the English wikipedia.

I also understand the difference between a station stop and a station now. I had been puzzling over that on your other talk page (the idea of a station stop without a station); and when you wrote before that a train could stop anywhere, I was a little confused. Maybe now my comment about the finite nature of train stations makes more sense, too.  :-)

So anyway, I think I now understand what it is that you're trying to eliminate. The notability standards are a good start; but I hope there is a better way to divide up the rail transportation systems besides A) Subway; B) Everything else. I'll make my detailed change suggestions in a second section below, so they don't get mixed up in this miniature diatribe. Neier 05:45, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree a little it might be US-Centric, "Note that these apply only to railroad stations and station stops, not to subway stations. " Why is it only applied to railroad stations and not subway stations/mass transit stations? Places like Japan regular railroad stations handle more passengers perday than the vast majority of US Mass transit/subway stations. Limitedexpresstrain 19:41, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

As the discussion progresses, I'm inclined to eliminate the qualification about subways, since I'm seeing more examples where the articles written about subway stations fail to meet these criticisms.

As far as Japanese traffic levels are concerned, that's a one-line observation in the main article on Japanese passenger service. It doesn't make any given station remarkable. Mangoe 22:20, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Its a fact that traffic on trains in Japan serve far more passengers than in the United States. But that is beside the point, the point I was trying to make was why should subway/mass transit stations be excluded when there are "railroad stations" in Japan do serve more passengers than your average "subway" (I prefer Mass transit terminology) station in the United States. Another item, at least when it comes to trains in Japan. If we were just to list stations on on a line page, how is one supposed to find out that a station is on a particular line page? redirect to the line page? There are many cases (in Japan at least) where train stations share the same name, but are operated by different train companies and serve their individual train company's station in a given train station complex, I guess one would have to disambaguate. But then you have stations with the same name, in the same city but in different parts of the city. If one wanted to find info on XYZ station, but didn't know what line or company, you need the info on surrounding area so you'll know in particular what train station one is talking about and served by what line or company. Limitedexpresstrain 23:18, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

How would they find it? By looking the place article, of course, at least if this article is well-written enough. For example, if I'm interested in Titipu, I'd type in "Titipu", and look in the contents of that article for for "Transportation", and it might say, "Titipu has rail stations on the Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum lines." In fact, if it is served by rail, it certainly ought to mention that adequately. I don't know-- maybe it might make sense to put some of the other apparatus there too. It seems to me that in most cases mentioning it there obviates any other article, and since it ought to go there above all else, in most cases there's no point to a separate article. Mangoe 01:11, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

So, we include information about the station on the line page; we include information about the station on the town page; but the only place we don't include information about the station is on the station page, because there are too many station articles? Neier 14:59, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if "Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum lines" was a tounge and cheek joke about Asia, but I didnt' find it funny, forgive me If I read too much into it.

"Railroad passenger service occupies a bit of a middle ground. Trains, unlike subways, can stop almost anywhere; before ADA requirements, no facilities of any kind were required for a station stop. However, it was commonly the case that station buildings were provided" possibly under US rail system view that is, but it is not always the case for foreign rail systems. Many train operators (at least in Japan) operate in extent as a mass transit system/subway systems, but are not categorized as mass transit systems. Frankly I dont think anything I can do will change your mind (+vice versa), I think wikipedia should have these station articles. We can agree to disagree. Limitedexpresstrain 05:31, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

No Asian insult. The references come from a classic Gilbert & Sullivan Musical called The Mikado and they are The three little maids from school. Sorry not time this morning to add the links but if I did should I link Mikado to the wheel arrangement as well as the play! --Johnrnew 08:29, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

"a little US-centric" it certainly is - and how! The fact that stations stops are accepted as a norm is completely foreign (no pun intended) as far as UK railways are concerned. There used to be such things as "halts" (unstaffed stations) in the not-too-distant past, and in some cases there was a necessity to inform the train staff if one wished to alight there, and there were even examples of passenger-operated stop signals if one wished to board a train - but to stop anywhere ... never! (and I bet someone finds an example!) Peter Shearan 13:13, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Um, no. What you describe is in US parlance a flag stop. Just to get the terminology straight:

• Station stop: Where the trains stop to pick up and discharge passengers
• Railway station: The buildings and other structures used to support station stops

As for Nanki-poo, Yum-Yum and Titipu: yes, they are names from The Mikado, as said above. There comes a point where the brain runs out of example names. For once an certain anglo-centrism failed me. The names mean nothing; they are just examples.

What's lacking in this discussion of Japanese rail is any explanation of how the difference between Japan and the USA translates into a difference in article construction. It seems to me that the model I presented is actually better for Japan than most, at least based on the articles I've seen so far. The way that it is being said that Japan is different is tending to tilt me more in the direction of not entering station articles, because it seems as though the stations themselves are like highway intersections: all subtly different, but very few remarkable. Mangoe 14:12, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Besides turning place or line articles into a total mess, dominated by information about stations which is best kept to station pages, I can think of several differences. First of all, the station:municipality ratio in Japan is 4:1 (4200 stations (sourced from a review of an encyclopedia on Amazon), and 1000 towns (sourced from a Japanese encyclopedia (2006) I have in my room)). Compared with the interstate interchange:City (not town?) ratio in the US (1:2) (14,231 : 30,000), mentioning that a city has an interstate exit would be appropriate. Mentioning that a town has (average) four railroad stations, and then proceeding to describe them, taking 3 times the amount of space devoted to the rest of the town (because just like stations, a lot of towns are not that interesting) is misdirected. Duplicating 100 stations worth of info on a line page is also inappropriate.

I've covered the fact that DAB pages are needed for many many stations. DABing to the middle of a 100-station list would seem to frustrate the reader more than enlighten them. Making the wrong selection, and having to search through two or more lists to find the station you were interested in is even more frustrating.

Also, in my experiences, outside of large cities, the line name that runs through a station is not always well known within the area's population; be it native speakers, or non-native speakers. I once got in a cab with a Japanese "guide" from Tokyo once, and she asked the taxi driver to take us to the "Nanboku Line". While it is appropriately named, nobody in Sendai calls our subway by that. I told the driver the station we wanted to go to, and all was well. In rural areas, there is "The JR line", which is whatever line happens to run through their town. If pressed, you might be able to get the official name from someone, but, I would be willing to bet that a random sampling of "What line runs through XYZ station" would be met with "JR Line" as an answer. My guess (and, it's just that) is that you would get equally blank stares in the US if you asked someone where "XYZ Station" is, or "The ABC Red Line"; so, that doesn't matter a whole lot.

All subtly different, but very few remarkable is a good description of the different types of salamanders in Urodela, or any other number of articles. To you and me, a salamander is a salamander. But, because there is differences, there are entries. Not a paper encylopedia.

Finally, as some people view Wikipedia as a multilingual tool, keeping in sync with the more authoritative source (the native language resources) needs an article to be pointed to from the source, or else create a convoluted redirect that would be prone to getting bot-fixed all the time. That is what I've been trying to get at all along – The Japanese wikipedia, with entries for all stations, reflects the subculture as a whole (there are multiple books available which give descriptions of all 4200 stations; etc). Some books are devoted to just the buildings. Some books describe the nearby facilities by every station. Other books are devoted to the box lunches served at stations (I am not making that part up; but, I also have kept myself from translating those portions of the source articles so far, because I have better things to do with my time; and, the fact that they change, just like timetables). Some books are published in series (the stations of the XYZ line). Should stations be mentioned on a line page – you betcha. But, just like a state page should not be cluttered with scads of information about towns which (other than their census information) have no meaningful content, the lines should not be burdened with details about each station – no matter how sparse the details about each particular station may be. Neier 16:19, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Proposed changes

Notability criteria

Is Listed building necessary? Besides being limited to the United Kingdom, it looks like the properties which determine whether a building is listed or not is already taken into account in other items in your list.

Sorry, I didn't realize this was a UK term: we have the same concept of "listing" in the USA. I've updated the item to reflect the main USA list. Mangoe 13:52, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Personally I would like the Listed Building fact left in as it is a fact about the station itself and the sort of fact generally harder to find out about than the rail service information. Same I am sure applies to the US and overseas equivalents. However if there is an article already there about the building, as a building, then a simple link to that would suffice.

I would also suggest adding that the station being a point of transfer for two or more lines is enough to qualify it for notability.

I'm inclined to disagree on this one, as it is something that can be reduced to a short phrase in a table, and is (in my opinon) best presented there. If the transfer is particularly complex or is reflected in some unusual feature, that of course would be different. Mangoe 13:58, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I support Mangoe on this one as just too many junctions, of very limited significance, to regard them all as notable. Would you include a detailed reference to every logging spur or closed colliery branch junction? Perhaps in a full history book on a line but not a Wikipedia overview article.

So, again, instead of listing details about a station on ONE station page, we list it on two, three, or four line pages; as well as the city's page? This seems the opposite of making things simpler for the readers... Neier 16:22, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I also think that the criteria needs to include these (from WP:IMP) An article is "important" enough to be included in Wikipedia if any one of the following is true:

1. There is evidence that a reasonable number of people are, were or might be simultaneously interested in the subject (eg. it is at least well-known in a community).

2. It is an expansion (longer than a stub) upon an established subject.

3. Discussion on the article's talk page establishes its importance.

The issue at present isn't whether information should be presented at all, which is how these criteria approach the issue. In fact, I think these are in general a poor set of criteria (which is probably why WP:IMP has largely been replaced by WP:NOT). The second in particular figures in the current discussion as (from my angle) an "avoid this" approach. It has been amply proven that one can expand any article on a station stop by repeating information from the parent line article on it, especially if maps and infoboxes and lists and pred/succ boxes are used. The question at hand is this: is it really better than leaving the station as an entry on a table? My contention here is that it is actually worse, because it creates a lot of clutter and obscures relationships. Mangoe 14:11, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

this gets more and more interesting! I am wholeheartedly in favour (favor!) of railway geographical route articles, which include details within it of the stations on the route (with appropriate additional info if there is any), and also mentions the names of the services (again, if there are any) which actually traverse that route. The talk earlier about the Rhondda Line is a case in point - it is simply a PR means of delineating that service, and leaves little room for any historical background, so it gives none. I've commented above on that Peter Shearan 13:19, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Other guidelines

A table of stations is a good idea for a line article, even when all stations are individually listed in their own articles. It presents some information (like transfers, etc) in an easy to see fashion. (Ōu Main Line for one example).

I oppose the use of maps on station articles (unless it is an area map around the station). Line maps belong with the line article. I also disagree with not hyperlinking stations together.

I am still afraid that Take advantage of place articles may turn a place article into not much more than a listing of stations when there are very many stations in a defined area. (This is an argument against the grouping of stations into a common article–line, or location–but, if there is little or nothing to say about the stop (ie, no building; not a recognized landmark; not important in the community; etc), then, I suppose it may still work out)

I mildly disagree with the Omit the tourist information section; especially in the case where an attraction has its own article. WP:BTW. Other information, like government offices, etc may not be large enough to justify its own entry, but the fact that they are listed would make it less impossible to find in a search as well. Then again, that's not tourist info, so maybe it's ok anyway. Neier 06:51, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I've made some changes to reflect some of these concerns:

• If a station was built to serve an attraction, this should be mentioned in discussing the station.
• I've tried to clarify how place articles can be used with an example.

I'm not really getting into the "list of stations" issue on places because I'm failing to think of an example that's illuminating. In London or Baltimore, for example, the stations could all have their own articles because there's much that could be written about them beyond the fact that trains stop there. (In the case of London, this has been done.) Looking at Silver Spring, Maryland (which could use a little clean-up) it mentions train and Metro service; A couple of sentences could be added to the article about the train station, but I don't know that there's a need for a separate article.

If there were (and of the various stations on the line, this is the one which could support it), the hyperlink issue would then pop up. Which stations should it link to? Well, there used to be a station in Takoma Park, Maryland, so it should link to that one, except that it doesn't exist and there's next to nothing available to write an article from. Going the other direction, the train almost certainly stopped at Forest Glen, but again there's no station there now. OK, heading west.... Well, there's Kensington, but there's not much to say about the station. And so forth. The issue then becomes that the links cry out to editors to write articles, and those articles must have links, and so forth.

There's something to be said for building the web when it's a web, which is why I specifically mentioned subway networks. But when it's just a sequential list, and the primary references are back and forth along the list, then hypertext is the wrong medium. Rail lines are not chains; links are the wrong representation. Mangoe 15:05, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Citing sources - see WP:CITE

I mentioned this in another thread regarding this topic. I add the comment for several reasons:-

1) Many articles I have noted when using the railways area in Wikipedia have not cited sources.

2) If you cite the source, and it is on line, there is not need to expand the article. Example for UK, and I am sure most other countries, there is no need to add a map as a link to a mapping source like Multimap is free and of much more value as the link can be zoomed in and out and the station placed into the local context. Example Weymouth Station

3) As many wikipedia items are general articles specialists wanting the detail can go away and find that detail in the source documents.

--Johnrnew 09:13, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Not necessarily for (2) and (3). For example, there is a good deal of map and other info for all Japanese stations online, and in books; but, unless you can read Japanese, it is basically useless. (Maybe the pictures would be nice). And, for the stations in (1) that I've created in the English wikipedia, they are all sourced from the Japanese wikipedia (and, included the link on the left side in the languages section) Neier 14:43, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Analogue to Highway?

For highway articles, the analogue to the train line is the route, and the analogue to the station stop is the exit or interchange: I wonder if this is strictly true? One needs to look at the raison d'etre for a railway/road and a highway, I would have thought. Each are primarily there to provide intercommunication between communities of whatever size, and have historically been so. The talk of Interstate Highways (or, in UK parlance, Motorways) is of long-distance routes which avoid many of the intervening settlements because of their relatively minor importance. The real analogue is with the pre-Highways - the ancient highways - or even Ancient trackways if further back in time! They set out to give the means of transport between settlements, and railways/roads have historically done the same thing. To take a UK example: the A25 road. Although it now has some by-passes, it still carries out its original intent, joining Maidstone in Kent with Guildford in Surrey. To do so it passes/passed through some twenty settlements of a reasonable size, and numerous others. On the other hand, its namesake, the M25 motorway, where it is parallel to the A25 (and that is only to the south of London), has only a handful of junctions ("intersections"). Railways in the UK did much the same thing. Unlike the original US railroads which often had no settlements to serve until their arrival, UK rail routes connected with those already existing - although there are a few examples where settlements grew up because the railway provided employment (Crewe is a good example).

My point is that it isn't the "intersections" which are equivalent of the railway station, but the settlements along each route. The intersections only exist because there are settlements worth connecting nearby. That is why I agree that each geographical rail route is worthy of an article, and each such article can then describe its stations/services/etc, without the need for separate articles for every station Peter Shearan 14:37, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Um, no. The settlements along each route are the same thing ("analogue" seems silly). The interchanges and stations are analogous as being the interface between the places and the transport system. Mangoe 02:35, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Japan, again

I've been looking through some of the line articles and noticing a curious thing: the place articles tend to have only the most minimal mention of rail service, and never link to the station articles. This indeed seems to be an issue with all these "network of rail station" article entry projects. All these arguments about using the information seem to stumble over this point. The place articles should mention the stations, and should link to the articles if they exist.

Perhaps the chaos that is Japanese place naming requires a different approach. I have to say, though, that what I'm seeing now is not helping my understanding. Mangoe 04:04, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Buses

Actually, from the titles of your discussions and policies, how do anything related to buses (with the exception of guided buses) even relate to railways? Simply south 12:20, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Chucked it all and started over

I've deleted all the explanatory material in the article and reduced it to a set of guidelines. I've omitted notability and station-to-station linkages since it's clear that there will never be a consensus to do anything about the mass of articles already entered. Mangoe 19:02, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Redrafted. The preliminary material was a hang over from a notability proposal, and not relevant to a set of guidelines on content. I've also added a statement to the effect that these are not criteria for notability or deletion. If there is an acknowledgement that there is not consensus about the existing articles, we should not be creating policy on them by the back door. There is nothing to stop editors applying the guidelines retrospectively.

I've particularly added reference to diagrams - there is a reason why diagrams, not maps, are used for transport systems - and to using redirects and tables, which seem far more useful in avoiding stubby articles than any number of maps or amount of decent copyediting. Mtpt 22:16, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

It seems pretty good to me. Mangoe 02:06, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

If I may comment - yes it seems to hit all the right spots Peter Shearan 12:33, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I mostly agree; but I still think that if information about a station is going to be duplicated in both a location and a line article, then it makes more sense to just link both the location and the line to a separate article even if it is small or insignificant.

I also agree that place articles (in Japan) can do a much better job about linking back to the stations that they contain. I don't think that anyone has focused on that, although there are a few exceptions. Perhaps one reason that there is no links like that is that when the location articles were created, very few station (or even line) articles existed. We also had to deal with a naming convention, since many station names are duplicated througout the country; so I am not surprised that nobody took that info from the Japanese wiki. Since long lists of stations has the possibility of overwhelming some of the smaller towns (which even though are small, are spread out, and have many stations) I'll see if we can decide on a consensus for how to go about including the links at the Japan project (not just rail, but whole Japan) page. Neier 13:49, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not quite following the point about the linkages. I think what we're trying to say is something like this:

• Lines link to places and/or stations, and to connecting lines
• Stations link to lines and places (and maybe to adjacent stations)
• Places link to lines and stations (if latter exists as article)

The chief point from my perspective is that the place articles have largely gotten left out of this, so that there is no direct path from (say) an article on a town to the part of the rail system that serves it.

Going into public service announcement mode, I think we have to take responsibility for making sure that the place articles and the station articles link to each other, maybe to the point of creating stub place articles. I understand the issues with Japanese place names and realize that something will to be worked out with the Japan project. But the descrepancies between station names and place names make the linkages especially important. Mangoe 15:38, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Are we getting anywhere?

I have been following the flow of these notes, very occasionally putting in a comment. I cannot believe that there is likely to be any concensus between the two of you; it seems a great pity that no-one else has entered the fray, since it is quite apparent that neither of you are about to give in! As I have said before, the present UK station articles leave much to be desired, since they all seem to be "off the peg" and include little beyond what can (and probably has been) gleaned from timetables. There is the added complication that scant regard is given to historical factors in any one line or station, and the fact is that, insofar as an encyclopaedia goes, they are precious more than that. So there I agree that Wikipedia is not a timetable. Since we can agree that neither towns nor stations - nor lines come to that - in the main offer much in the way of interest, I cannot follow the argument that they would become cluttered up. I am also somewhat bemused by the fact that the arguments so far appear to veer between USA and Japan. The geographical similarities/dissimilarities between either of them and the UK perhaps don't allow too much comparison, I would have thought. The historical background to UK railways plays a huge part in the development of its railways, and that is reflected in the system today. Of course one could say the same about the railways of Argentina, or anywhere else; but reading what is being said (and perhaps (between the lines (no pun intended!)) I remain unconvinced of the US/Japan modes being a way forward, or even dominating a possible conclusion. You may care to see Wikipedia:WikiProject UK Railways which seems to have ground to a halt recently because of the sheer size of the intended work? Peter Shearan 10:42, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Haven't we reached a consensus on the guidelines? I know there are some unanswered comments above, but they seem to be irrelevant given the revision to the attached article. Mtpt 11:26, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

"Station stop"

Me again! I have been puzzling over the term "station stop" ever since I first saw it mentioned here. Yesterday I saw a re-run of the film "Music Man" which begins on a train. The conductor (guard in UK parlance) announced each "station stop", and it was then that I realised it is NOT a term in use on UK railways: the word ".. stop" is never used. "The next station is .." is what we would expect to hear; or "the 10.58 to Manchester will call at all stations between X and X". To our ears it seems like tautology - if the trains stops there, then why use the additional word?

There we go again - "two nations divided by a single language"!! Peter Shearan 06:22, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

You clearly do not travels on the same trains as me. GNER guards invariably use the parlance "station stop". Or so my memory tells me. I know that I;ve frequently been annoyed by the phrase whilst travelling on UK trains. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:14, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

obviously the same line that calls them "train stations" ... oh dear, my age again!!! Peter Shearan (talk) 06:58, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Australian Station Selection

Hello - I wanted to comment on these guidelines in relation to Australia. My personal opinion is that Wikipedia may not be a timetable, and so shouldn't include stuff like whether a station has toilets, phones, etc., but there's not really a limit to what WP can include, so I think it's quite ok for each station in a major city to have a separate article. For country routes, I've found that a section in the town's article on the railway line usually suffices, but where there is enough information about the station itself, it should have its own article. I don't think we should just be restricting articles because we can. WP is large and therefore can accommodate a lot of information - so why not? (JROBBO 05:40, 2 August 2006 (UTC))

Well, because a lot of it isn't really information-- at least, not information for general readers. I would tend to expect that the major stations in a city would get their own articles, because there's more to say about them. But a station on the edge of town that's just a platform or two and maybe a ticket kiosk doesn't seem to be to have much point as a separate article. Of course if there's enough information about that station, but if it's just repeating text from the line or the town article.

I don't follow what this has to do with Australia.... Mangoe 13:03, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Agreed Mangoe. Some 300 Sydney suburban rail stations have articles, most of which are stubs, and will probably stay as stubs (as you said, how much can you write about a platform and ticket kiosk?). Details of these stations would be better within the article on the line or the subrub - why make someone click on a link just to read a couple of sentences?--Mako 21:52, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I disagree - I'm all for inclusion of WP articles - when WP has so much scope, I don't see the point of just cutting out articles for the sake of it. The project for CityRail is going to take a long time, yes, but there is information out there for each and every station. (JROBBO 04:08, 3 August 2006 (UTC))

Well, here's the thing. Here I am, an American, and I look at the article on Beecroft railway station, Sydney. This is the entire text that's not in an infobox:

Beecroft is a CityRail railway station on Sydney's Main Northern railway line. It serves the suburb of Beecroft, a residential area. Beecroft has an island platform in the middle of a reverse curve, and is located on a steep 2.5% gradient. The station has steps from street to the platform, and thus has no Easy Access for wheelchairs.

And then there's an infobox with a great deal of very detailed information, and a pred/succ box for the line, and I think the second sentence above is the only information that isn't duplicated in one of those. But then I go to the CityRail website, and they have this nice page where you can look up all of that information by station name (and not only that, but you can for instance find the names of all the stations which have toilets, which strikes me as a little pointless). This is precisely the kind of transcription which I, as a reader, find pointless. I can get the information from the system website faster, and I would assume that it is more up-to-date, because I can only assume that someone has at some point laboriously copied all that info, station by station, into Wikipedia. And when I start looking at the stations on the Blue Mountains railway line, New South Wales, I see the usual pattern: the station articles don't link to the place for the most part, and the place articles don't link to the station.

What's proposed here is only guidelines, and nobody is going to be able to use them to successfully support attempts to get your articles deleted. But if this is being done for any reason other than the entertainment of the editors, more work needs to be done. And I look at the cluttered mess which is the article on Arncliffe railway station, Sydney (which doesn't display properly on my machine because of all the infoboxes and images), and down at the bottom of the infobox there's even a link to the CityRail listing of the same information! The article at least has the virtue of having the proper place/station links, but when all is said and done, there's not much more information on the station page than there is on the place page.

I really don't see what the point is of talking about scope. When I look at the various flag stops out on the intercity lines, I really don't see how there is anything more that could possibly be said about them than is already in the articles. If they are stubs, they are likely to remain so. Mangoe 11:42, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

That's not true (your last point) - most of the intercity articles have a history relating to the establishment of the railway in the town. This stuff just takes time. This is what I object to - people asking for things to be "banned" on WP because they want high-quality articles. If you want high-quality to be written by people who don't do this as a full-time job and have access to every resource in the world, you have to expect that articles will take time, and so they should be left for people to develop. By the way, I'm fixing the East Hills lines articles (like Arncliffe) - a user uploaded some photos and I haven't had a chance to fix them all. (JROBBO 13:00, 16 August 2006 (UTC))

Most of them don't have enough such history to write an article about; most of these articles will never be improved. The thing is, people are finding time to spend a great deal of effort to put these highly formatted articles in; lack of time is not the issue here, or the articles wouldn't be written. What appears to be lacking is the information to write better articles. And speaking as a person who looks for that sort of information, the simple fact is that it usually isn't there. Even specialist books about specific lines have lists of stations, and that's all. So what is happening is that, since quality isn't to be had, authors substitute a show of structure.

To be really blunt, the current situation on these articles bespeaks a fannish culture in which towns are only important as the places where stations are located. Mangoe 13:18, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Places of local interest

I've created this page to discuss all places of local interest, including railway stations. This discussion of railway line and station articles had some good ideas that I've borrowed for this. If you're interested in commenting on or editing this proposal, please feel free to do so. Thanks, JYolkowski // talk 15:02, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Stations: inherent differences between types

I have been editing commuter rail articles and I find the lists of stops with links somewhat disturbing. I've ridden most of the lines whose pages I edit. To my U.S.-based point-of-view, there is nothing more to write about many of the stops listed. When a stopping-point has an interesting station building, that's notable. When a stopping-point for (local, commuter, subway) service is (or was) a stopping-point for longer-distance service, that's notable. I completely agree with the discussion here on your talk page that linking to places makes sense. We can then go edit the place articles to point back at the station articles, when appropriate, or at least make sure there is mention of rail service in the article. I like the format in SEPTA and LIRR articles which offers a table of stations, divided into different municipal levels. This allows us to link to a place name served by trains without necessarily linking every possible stop of a train. Some commuter rail lines have dozens of trains per day over a line with one or two stops at a particular station. Unless there is compelling reason to give each station a linked article, I don't see reason for their existence. Many of the stops in Chicagoland are currently redlinks, for instance. They should be unlinked unless, IMO some minimal notability standard can be met. The stations on intercity lines (and I understand that the distinction between commuter, regional, and intercity can be blurred in parts of the country and parts of the world) are often more significant, particularly when they serve as transfer points. They would rise to notable rather easily.

WP:NOT mentions things like Wikipedia is not a how-to guide. I interpret that to mean that mere descriptions of stations, particularly those available on the rail service's own website, are not articles of an encyclopedic nature. MKoltnow 17:00, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Merge Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/Manual of style

Propose merge Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/Manual of style into Wikipedia:Notability (Railway lines and stations) to create one unified railway notability essay. SilkTork *SilkyTalk 23:40, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose Not everyone agrees with things on this essay and the TWP guidelines are more general, just rail orientated. Also this is specific. Simply south 00:31, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I am concerned that the author of the Trains manual of style is posting it on users talk page as though it were a notability guideline (example User talk:Svedman), even though it is not, and has "advice" that runs against Wiki policy. If the decision is not to merge then the manual would need to be rewritten to make it clear that it is not a notability guideline, and to remove any advice that runs counter to WP:N and WP:ORG. SilkTork *SilkyTalk 12:09, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm more concerned that other editors have not commented before now. Before I moved the page to its current location and started using as such, I sought consensus in January 2006 within WikiProject Trains. Seeing no objections, I performed the move in October 2006 and made my actions known to WikiProject Trains on November 7, 2006. The project welcome message you note in your comment was created on December 29, 2006, based on what I had seen for other project welcome messages (such as those for WP Korea, WP Biography and WP Military history). I've taken a look at the change that you made to the page, and I agree with the updates, I just haven't decided on my opinions in the merge yet (although I'm leaning toward a merge, there are a few other issues that I need to think about before I can state my opinion). Slambo (Speak) 12:57, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Ahhh... I should have read the style manual before posting my opinion. As I wrote below, the style manual should not be used as a notability, verifiability, or any other purpose. The second half of the current page is what a style page should be. The first half is something that can be merged to the user-page essay. Neier 13:38, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose. I thought the essay was already rejected once. Neier 08:22, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Which one - Notability (Railway lines and stations) or WikiProject Trains/Manual of style? SilkTork *SilkyTalk 12:09, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

The railway stations one i thought as well. Simply south 12:11, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

The one which was on a user page until earlier today, without any edits for the better part of a year. The style manual should have nothing to do with anything but style. Neier 12:38, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose Strongly Oppose. I'm already having enough problems with overzealous editors rejecting and redirecting TV Episode articles on the basis of presumed lack of notability. I don't need this crap to louse up TWP. The only good part I can see is the merging of active stations that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and perhaps some(the keyword there being "some") railroad museum articles. ----DanTD 15:56, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I've made some amendments to the notability section of the Manual of Style. I'd be quite happy to move just that section over to the stations' essay - or even to leave things as they are. The stations' essay is not a notability guideline, and I wasn't aware that it had been proposed as one. The earlier "Wikipedia is not a timetable", from which the impetus for the current Stations' essay came, was marked by Mangoe as "This is not yet policy; it is a discussion document for dealing with articles about train stations and station stops." The "yet" was I suppose wishful thinking on Mangoe's part. Mangoe later on, when discussion had dried up, put an official "rejected" tag on the essay - though that was inappropriate as it was always just a user's essay and there had been no deliberate and overt attempt to make it a notability guideline - it had always been, as far as I was aware, a discussion document. Though we both hoped that we could get some common agreement on how to deal with the proliferation of minor stations and halts being slapped on Wiki at that time. This current essay had a separate start and a separate life, though I thought it appropriate to bring over the earlier discussion as it directly related to the genesis of the current essay and the ideas contained therein. Ooops - gotta go, the match is about to start! SilkTork *SilkyTalk 18:53, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Listen, I hope I didn't come off as being uncivli, but I just don't like the idea of having to deal with the threat of every station article being deleted simply because it isn't about Penn Station. I don't care if it's my hometown station, or some U-Bahn station in Berlin that I've never heard of. We shouldn't lose any of them. ----DanTD 11:58, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

No, that's fine. It's important that you give your views - there's nothing uncivil about that. What we can't do in this Project, however, is to have a notability guideline that is in opposition to the main Wiki notability guideline. The approach we might be better advised to take is to look at the best methods of presenting the sort of information you, I and the Project regard as being of value - ways that don't conflict with Wiki policy. Part of the suggestion that Mangoe and I were putting forward was not that stations were deleted, but that stations such as Tonoshō Station were dealt with more in this manner: Kintetsu Kyoto Line. If you note, all the important information contained in Tonoshō Station is also contained in Kintetsu Kyoto Line. A redirect would take people to the right place. SilkTork *SilkyTalk 15:11, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

There is no support for a complete merge, so I'll be taking the tags down tomorrow. However, what are people's feelings regarding the notability section in the Trains/Manual of style? Should that section remain, or be merged here as suggested above? SilkTork *SilkyTalk 15:46, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I've done a test inclusion of the material to see how it sits. SilkTork *SilkyTalk 15:53, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Notability of Railway Stations - ridiculous bias

The notability section of the essay says:

"A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject."

It may be considered that if enough attributable information exists about a station or railway line to write a full and comprehensive article about it, it may make sense for the subject to have its own article.

As to the first of these, I assert that all, or 99% of UK railway stations meet this criteria. There are many hundreds of books on the UK railway system; if we consider one obscure station - Ben Rhydding railway station - there is good coverage of it and its history in two publications listed in the article: 1. The Railways of Wharfedale, Peter E. Baughan (1969) David & Charles (Publishers) Ltd, and 2. Railways Through Airedale & Wharfedale, Martin Bairstow (2004) ISBN 1-871944-28-7. I can think offhand of at least another couple of books which review the history of the wharfedale line. Much the same histories and contemporary accounts cover every other line and every station on the line. I hazard a guess that the same pertains around the world. I hope we do not ever get to the point where we have to start putting each of the station articles so far created through an AfD process merely to test the assertion of notability.

As to the second of these - and specifically the to write a full and comprehensive article about it. Since when were stations singled out for special treatment, such that they cannot first be added as stubs with insufficient referencing, and grown to fuller articles as, err, the vast majority of articles on all wikipedai subject matter. It is completely objectionable and, for me, shows an incredible anti-station bias, to suggest that stations must meet a threshold which is not established for any other article. Such is that bias, for me, that it brings this whole essay into disrepute. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:26, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Real encyclopedias...

Such as the Norwegian general purpose paper encyclopedia Store Norske Leksikon have individual articles about some small railway stations such as Hallingskeid and Haugastøl. Neither of those stations are particularily remarkable, (they receive service from about four trains per day), apart from that they lie fairly isolated without a large permanent settlement. Something which we should think about before saying that railway stations are "unencyclopedic". Sjakkalle (Check!) 13:41, 23 November 2007 (UTC)