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References? I started this by cutting down and restating the "History of Franklin County" account and then checking it against the the explorepa.com accounts, while adding details from them. After doing this it's clear that I could have done the process in reverse - i.e. cutting down and restating the explorepa.com accounts and adding details from the "History of Franklin County." The 2 non-linked books are from explorepa and I haven't used them directly.
My question is - should I put explicit inline references in each paragraph to the 2 sources. It would be pretty boring (to read as well as to do), but once others start adding material it might be necessary. Opinions? Thanks Smallbones 09:41, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
From the diffs it looks like you deleted and added back every section - but that's just the way the software works sometime. I think you also added three lines (ok as far as I can tell), deleted 3,000 k of text (from where?) and took all the images from the text and put them in a gallery. I don't really like galleries, rather I think it is better to integrate images into the article where the subject is referred to (or nearby). If there is something about the picture placement that bothered you, please let me know, but I'll likely move the photos back into the text, once I figure out everything you did. Now if I can find the missing 3,000 k, I can properly evaluate the changes.
All the best.
Smallbones( smalltalk) 22:48, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
OK, I think I understand now what you are trying to do. It might be called "rationalizing text and image use across articles." So, for example, if you found that the article on Downtown Pittsburgh was larger or had more images than the article on Pittsburgh, you'd want to remove text or images from the Downtown Pittsburgh article because Pittsburgh is obviously more important. And according to your importance scale, CVRR should rate few or no images (note that 2 of your examples have no images).
I have to disagree with this philosophy; it's certainly not the way these things are usually handled on Wikipedia. For example, if somebody thought that it's a problem that the Downtown Pittsburgh article was larger than the Pittsburgh article, the usual solution would be to improve the Pittsburgh article, not remove material from Downtown Pittsburgh. Comparisons of importance or notability across articles is seldom, if ever, done. Each article stands on it own. I've looked for guidance in the usual places on how many pictures are too many - and really couldn't find anything except a brief "Images should not overwhelm the article", which doesn't apply here. The images certainly don't overwhelm this article. More directly the Manual of Style WP:IMAGE RELEVANCE states:
"Images must be relevant to the article that they appear in and be significantly and directly related to the article's topic. Because the Wikipedia project is in a position to offer multimedia learning to its audience, images are an important part of any article's presentation. Effort should therefore be made to improve quality and choice of images or captions in articles rather than favoring their removal, especially on pages which have few visuals."
I'll copy this to the CVRR talk page, and revert to the previous layout of the pix. If you'd like I can ask the opinion a 2 editors who are very familiar with Pennsylvania history articles, or you can ask for an RfC if you'd like. Smallbones( smalltalk) 17:38, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Edits I made to the History section did that. The History section, in format and readable content should mirror that of the Ulster and Delaware Railroad page. I think we need opinions from administrators who can be more objective. Oanabay04 ( talk) 12:46, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Oanabay04, I am an administrator and I resent your impugning my objectivity. Be that as it may, Choess is both an administrator and very knowledgable on railroads and their history and may be another person to ask their opinion on your edits. Wikipedia works on consensus and right now the consensus is against your edits, by 3:1.
Here is a detailed list of what you removed from the article:
Lead:
Early history:
Growth:
South Penn Branch Line:
Demise:
Headers and references
You do not appear to understand the TWP MOS. There is nothing in it that says the article is limited to these sections, only that articles should include them. There is also nothing that says the article cannot have subsections within the History (or other sections) and the MOS for Wikipedia encourages such headers and sub-headers. I find they increase readability and can serve as a framework for expansion of the article.
As for the TWP MOS you quote, almost all of it ("The depth of coverage of the subject by the source must be considered. If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources should be cited to establish notability. Trivial or incidental coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not sufficient to establish notability.) is about Notability (whether or not the topic should have an article here). Only the last two sentences apply to this article (Once notability is established, primary sources may be used to add content. Ultimately, and most importantly, all content must be attributable.) but you removed reliable sources used as refs.
Finally it is useful to look at model articles and the WikiProject Train's Quality Scale. The articles you list as models are either stubs (Philadelphia and Erie Railroad or Unadilla Valley Railway) or C class (New York, Ontario and Western Railway), and so not as developed as this B class article. I looked at two FA railroad articles: Cincinnati, Lebanon and Northern Railway which follows the MOS (but does not seem as important as you would expect a FA to be) and Metropolitan Railway which does not follow the train MOS. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 23:50, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
I don't want to be overly harsh, because I think the notion of improving articles through careful cutting is under-recognized. It is possible for railroad articles to get distorted because someone made extensive and injudicious use of, say, a contemporary primary source, and grossly padded out one aspect of the railroad's history with trivia while neglecting the rest of the article. However, a better way to deal with excessive information in one part of the article is, more often, to help fill out the rest of it. Looking at the material removed in this series of edits, I think the cutting may have been a bit excessive.
Ultimately, I think trying to select the "right" article size and level of detail by article-to-article comparisons is a poor idea. In my experience, articles on the most important and broad-ranging topics are the hardest to build up in Wikipedia, because of the sheer volume of facts and sources that have to be kept in play. But the fact that it's quite difficult to build a highly-rated and comprehensive article on the PRR or the UP shouldn't impel us to cover short lines in a cursory way. Rather than trying to build up or cut down a railroad article based on comparison to some other railroad article perceived to be of equal importance, we should strive to make each railroad article discuss its history, geography, infrastructure, rolling stock, and so on in a way that gives each of these topics proper weight relative to one another. Choess ( talk) 03:23, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
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![]() | A fact from Cumberland Valley Railroad appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the
Did you know column on 3 June 2007. The text of the entry was as follows:
| ![]() |
![]() | This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
References? I started this by cutting down and restating the "History of Franklin County" account and then checking it against the the explorepa.com accounts, while adding details from them. After doing this it's clear that I could have done the process in reverse - i.e. cutting down and restating the explorepa.com accounts and adding details from the "History of Franklin County." The 2 non-linked books are from explorepa and I haven't used them directly.
My question is - should I put explicit inline references in each paragraph to the 2 sources. It would be pretty boring (to read as well as to do), but once others start adding material it might be necessary. Opinions? Thanks Smallbones 09:41, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
From the diffs it looks like you deleted and added back every section - but that's just the way the software works sometime. I think you also added three lines (ok as far as I can tell), deleted 3,000 k of text (from where?) and took all the images from the text and put them in a gallery. I don't really like galleries, rather I think it is better to integrate images into the article where the subject is referred to (or nearby). If there is something about the picture placement that bothered you, please let me know, but I'll likely move the photos back into the text, once I figure out everything you did. Now if I can find the missing 3,000 k, I can properly evaluate the changes.
All the best.
Smallbones( smalltalk) 22:48, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
OK, I think I understand now what you are trying to do. It might be called "rationalizing text and image use across articles." So, for example, if you found that the article on Downtown Pittsburgh was larger or had more images than the article on Pittsburgh, you'd want to remove text or images from the Downtown Pittsburgh article because Pittsburgh is obviously more important. And according to your importance scale, CVRR should rate few or no images (note that 2 of your examples have no images).
I have to disagree with this philosophy; it's certainly not the way these things are usually handled on Wikipedia. For example, if somebody thought that it's a problem that the Downtown Pittsburgh article was larger than the Pittsburgh article, the usual solution would be to improve the Pittsburgh article, not remove material from Downtown Pittsburgh. Comparisons of importance or notability across articles is seldom, if ever, done. Each article stands on it own. I've looked for guidance in the usual places on how many pictures are too many - and really couldn't find anything except a brief "Images should not overwhelm the article", which doesn't apply here. The images certainly don't overwhelm this article. More directly the Manual of Style WP:IMAGE RELEVANCE states:
"Images must be relevant to the article that they appear in and be significantly and directly related to the article's topic. Because the Wikipedia project is in a position to offer multimedia learning to its audience, images are an important part of any article's presentation. Effort should therefore be made to improve quality and choice of images or captions in articles rather than favoring their removal, especially on pages which have few visuals."
I'll copy this to the CVRR talk page, and revert to the previous layout of the pix. If you'd like I can ask the opinion a 2 editors who are very familiar with Pennsylvania history articles, or you can ask for an RfC if you'd like. Smallbones( smalltalk) 17:38, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Edits I made to the History section did that. The History section, in format and readable content should mirror that of the Ulster and Delaware Railroad page. I think we need opinions from administrators who can be more objective. Oanabay04 ( talk) 12:46, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Oanabay04, I am an administrator and I resent your impugning my objectivity. Be that as it may, Choess is both an administrator and very knowledgable on railroads and their history and may be another person to ask their opinion on your edits. Wikipedia works on consensus and right now the consensus is against your edits, by 3:1.
Here is a detailed list of what you removed from the article:
Lead:
Early history:
Growth:
South Penn Branch Line:
Demise:
Headers and references
You do not appear to understand the TWP MOS. There is nothing in it that says the article is limited to these sections, only that articles should include them. There is also nothing that says the article cannot have subsections within the History (or other sections) and the MOS for Wikipedia encourages such headers and sub-headers. I find they increase readability and can serve as a framework for expansion of the article.
As for the TWP MOS you quote, almost all of it ("The depth of coverage of the subject by the source must be considered. If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources should be cited to establish notability. Trivial or incidental coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not sufficient to establish notability.) is about Notability (whether or not the topic should have an article here). Only the last two sentences apply to this article (Once notability is established, primary sources may be used to add content. Ultimately, and most importantly, all content must be attributable.) but you removed reliable sources used as refs.
Finally it is useful to look at model articles and the WikiProject Train's Quality Scale. The articles you list as models are either stubs (Philadelphia and Erie Railroad or Unadilla Valley Railway) or C class (New York, Ontario and Western Railway), and so not as developed as this B class article. I looked at two FA railroad articles: Cincinnati, Lebanon and Northern Railway which follows the MOS (but does not seem as important as you would expect a FA to be) and Metropolitan Railway which does not follow the train MOS. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 23:50, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
I don't want to be overly harsh, because I think the notion of improving articles through careful cutting is under-recognized. It is possible for railroad articles to get distorted because someone made extensive and injudicious use of, say, a contemporary primary source, and grossly padded out one aspect of the railroad's history with trivia while neglecting the rest of the article. However, a better way to deal with excessive information in one part of the article is, more often, to help fill out the rest of it. Looking at the material removed in this series of edits, I think the cutting may have been a bit excessive.
Ultimately, I think trying to select the "right" article size and level of detail by article-to-article comparisons is a poor idea. In my experience, articles on the most important and broad-ranging topics are the hardest to build up in Wikipedia, because of the sheer volume of facts and sources that have to be kept in play. But the fact that it's quite difficult to build a highly-rated and comprehensive article on the PRR or the UP shouldn't impel us to cover short lines in a cursory way. Rather than trying to build up or cut down a railroad article based on comparison to some other railroad article perceived to be of equal importance, we should strive to make each railroad article discuss its history, geography, infrastructure, rolling stock, and so on in a way that gives each of these topics proper weight relative to one another. Choess ( talk) 03:23, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
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Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 09:07, 22 September 2017 (UTC)