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"On British motorways the central reservation is never broken" - does anyone know how this fits in with contraflow systems? (when traffic is diverted to the opposing carriageway, thus necessitating the central reservation be crossed) 128.232.250.254 16:52, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Why no mention of Cable Barriers? 142.167.245.192 05:50, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
The result of the proposal was no consensus. JPG-GR ( talk) 20:44, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
The preferred term in British English is "central reserve" (see BS 6100: Glossary of building and civil engineering terms), and this is the term almost exclusively used in the Highways Agency's Design Manual for Roads and Bridges. However, "central reservation" is still frequently used, even in certain official publications such as the DfT's Traffic Signs Manual.
I oppose the move, because I think it is commonly known as "central reservation" in the UK. 128.232.1.193 ( talk) 15:04, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
As someone from outside the english language area, I never before heard the term Central reservation. Reservation (to a non-native-speaker) almost inevitably leads to associations like military or indian reservations. In the context of this article I always came across the terms median strip (mostly) or median barrier or just median (sometimes) -- Gamgee ( talk) 11:22, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
Title says it all. The history of Median shows that information for roads was added on August 28, 2003, [1], whereas this page was created as a redirect to it over a year later on October 4, 2004. [2] - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 07:40, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
The result of the proposal was moved. -- BDD ( talk) 00:49, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
Central reservation → Median strip – The first title used to describe the road dividing structure was " median", not "central reservation". Out of all the names used, the most commonly used term for this structure is "median strip", which is used in North American, New Zealand, and Australian English, while "central reservation" is only used in British English. Per WP:COMMONNAME, the article title should be located at median strip, not central reservation. (Also, search engine hits are not reliable since "reservation" commonly refers to hotel/restaurant/location reservations, or Indian reservations in AmE). - M0rphzone ( talk) 03:19, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
I was bold, and changed the couple remaining instances of 'central reservation' back to 'median'. The article changed from one to the other via a move, and I'm betting that these just weren't changed. Just making it consistent. Got a little too bored looking through infrastrucutre articles lately! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.65.196.20 ( talk) 10:27, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
I reverted NikNak's edit, I don't agree with changing the terminology halfway through the article, just because the topic is discussing implmentation in varied countries. If a paragraph discussed the medians in France, would we be calling them the French term? For better or worse, this article is written in one version of English, it should be consistent throughout. 143.65.196.20 ( talk)Whatever IP this happens to be — Preceding undated comment added 21:03, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Result: No consensus (follow WP:ENGVAR).
There were five "no" votes and three "yes" votes (one of which stated "yes/don't care", so I think it is only right to give it less weight). A key "no" argument was that WP:ENGVAR does not apply here, because it is only concerned with spellings, not national differences in terminology. This view appears mistaken. WP:ARTCON, a subsection of ENGVAR, states: "within a given article the conventions of one particular variety [of English] should be followed consistently". Two "no" voters appear to be under a misapprehension in this regard, and so that should be taken into account in weighing their votes.
ENGVAR is a guideline, rather than a policy, so it is possible to vote it down with regard to a particular article. However, taking into account the foregoing, I think the argument is too finely balanced to say that this is what has happened in the current discussion. What we have are two perspectives which both have merit, and a voting differential which is not large enough to declare a winner. In the absence of a consensus, we should default to the status quo position, which is also supported by the guideline, and use American terminology throughout (except where explaining the existence of other terminology).
Consensus can change though, so there is no reason for editors who care enough not to continue further discussion and perhaps try to get more eyes on a future RfC. I'm sorry that this one couldn't be decisive.
As an aside, it is common for articles that have an ENGVAR issue like this one to include appropriate alternative names in the first sentence of the article, and I think this one should mention that "central reservation" is used in British English right from the start.
Should the same word be used throughout the article, irrespective of which country it is discussing? 143.65.196.20 ( talk) 16:38, 25 May 2014 (UTC) IP I don't know offhand
A median strip can happen to be a parkway (an increasingly obscure term in NA English) if it's big enough, but I've never personally heard of parkway used as a *synonym* for media strip; the first few ungated dictionaries I saw don't support this; and the American English source given in the article is gated so I don't know whether it's in context. Any objections to its removal? Rolf H Nelson ( talk) 01:41, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
For foreign En-WP visitors it would be helpful to have geographic coordinates available, especially for the example "I-85 in central North Carolina". -- 79.216.222.242 ( talk) 18:23, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
I've encountered people using the term "meridian", which I think is just a misinformed interpretation of the term "median". Do others encounter this misspelling? Is it worth mentioning in the article? -- RealGrouchy ( talk) 17:12, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
Why does the caption for File:Ireland Road Lanes.svg refer to "Typical left-hand motorway road layout .." etc? Surely that's a generic layout plan with no indication of direction of traffic flow? And why are those linked countries used exactly? Martinevans123 ( talk) 22:59, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
The section Width mentions several examples of which the widest given is the Trans-Canada Highway at 5km between lanes. However to the side is a picture captioned "The world’s widest (50 metres width) median strip in Inagi, Tokyo". Ingai is not even mentioned in the width section, nor does it qualify as the world's widest unless we have reason to reject the examples that are given so why is this there? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.155.243.84 ( talk) 12:17, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Median strip article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
"On British motorways the central reservation is never broken" - does anyone know how this fits in with contraflow systems? (when traffic is diverted to the opposing carriageway, thus necessitating the central reservation be crossed) 128.232.250.254 16:52, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Why no mention of Cable Barriers? 142.167.245.192 05:50, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
The result of the proposal was no consensus. JPG-GR ( talk) 20:44, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
The preferred term in British English is "central reserve" (see BS 6100: Glossary of building and civil engineering terms), and this is the term almost exclusively used in the Highways Agency's Design Manual for Roads and Bridges. However, "central reservation" is still frequently used, even in certain official publications such as the DfT's Traffic Signs Manual.
I oppose the move, because I think it is commonly known as "central reservation" in the UK. 128.232.1.193 ( talk) 15:04, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
As someone from outside the english language area, I never before heard the term Central reservation. Reservation (to a non-native-speaker) almost inevitably leads to associations like military or indian reservations. In the context of this article I always came across the terms median strip (mostly) or median barrier or just median (sometimes) -- Gamgee ( talk) 11:22, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
Title says it all. The history of Median shows that information for roads was added on August 28, 2003, [1], whereas this page was created as a redirect to it over a year later on October 4, 2004. [2] - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 07:40, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
The result of the proposal was moved. -- BDD ( talk) 00:49, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
Central reservation → Median strip – The first title used to describe the road dividing structure was " median", not "central reservation". Out of all the names used, the most commonly used term for this structure is "median strip", which is used in North American, New Zealand, and Australian English, while "central reservation" is only used in British English. Per WP:COMMONNAME, the article title should be located at median strip, not central reservation. (Also, search engine hits are not reliable since "reservation" commonly refers to hotel/restaurant/location reservations, or Indian reservations in AmE). - M0rphzone ( talk) 03:19, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
I was bold, and changed the couple remaining instances of 'central reservation' back to 'median'. The article changed from one to the other via a move, and I'm betting that these just weren't changed. Just making it consistent. Got a little too bored looking through infrastrucutre articles lately! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.65.196.20 ( talk) 10:27, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
I reverted NikNak's edit, I don't agree with changing the terminology halfway through the article, just because the topic is discussing implmentation in varied countries. If a paragraph discussed the medians in France, would we be calling them the French term? For better or worse, this article is written in one version of English, it should be consistent throughout. 143.65.196.20 ( talk)Whatever IP this happens to be — Preceding undated comment added 21:03, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Result: No consensus (follow WP:ENGVAR).
There were five "no" votes and three "yes" votes (one of which stated "yes/don't care", so I think it is only right to give it less weight). A key "no" argument was that WP:ENGVAR does not apply here, because it is only concerned with spellings, not national differences in terminology. This view appears mistaken. WP:ARTCON, a subsection of ENGVAR, states: "within a given article the conventions of one particular variety [of English] should be followed consistently". Two "no" voters appear to be under a misapprehension in this regard, and so that should be taken into account in weighing their votes.
ENGVAR is a guideline, rather than a policy, so it is possible to vote it down with regard to a particular article. However, taking into account the foregoing, I think the argument is too finely balanced to say that this is what has happened in the current discussion. What we have are two perspectives which both have merit, and a voting differential which is not large enough to declare a winner. In the absence of a consensus, we should default to the status quo position, which is also supported by the guideline, and use American terminology throughout (except where explaining the existence of other terminology).
Consensus can change though, so there is no reason for editors who care enough not to continue further discussion and perhaps try to get more eyes on a future RfC. I'm sorry that this one couldn't be decisive.
As an aside, it is common for articles that have an ENGVAR issue like this one to include appropriate alternative names in the first sentence of the article, and I think this one should mention that "central reservation" is used in British English right from the start.
Should the same word be used throughout the article, irrespective of which country it is discussing? 143.65.196.20 ( talk) 16:38, 25 May 2014 (UTC) IP I don't know offhand
A median strip can happen to be a parkway (an increasingly obscure term in NA English) if it's big enough, but I've never personally heard of parkway used as a *synonym* for media strip; the first few ungated dictionaries I saw don't support this; and the American English source given in the article is gated so I don't know whether it's in context. Any objections to its removal? Rolf H Nelson ( talk) 01:41, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
For foreign En-WP visitors it would be helpful to have geographic coordinates available, especially for the example "I-85 in central North Carolina". -- 79.216.222.242 ( talk) 18:23, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
I've encountered people using the term "meridian", which I think is just a misinformed interpretation of the term "median". Do others encounter this misspelling? Is it worth mentioning in the article? -- RealGrouchy ( talk) 17:12, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
Why does the caption for File:Ireland Road Lanes.svg refer to "Typical left-hand motorway road layout .." etc? Surely that's a generic layout plan with no indication of direction of traffic flow? And why are those linked countries used exactly? Martinevans123 ( talk) 22:59, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
The section Width mentions several examples of which the widest given is the Trans-Canada Highway at 5km between lanes. However to the side is a picture captioned "The world’s widest (50 metres width) median strip in Inagi, Tokyo". Ingai is not even mentioned in the width section, nor does it qualify as the world's widest unless we have reason to reject the examples that are given so why is this there? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.155.243.84 ( talk) 12:17, 24 April 2016 (UTC)