User talk:Viator/archive1405

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Scottish Roads Authorities

Hi Kevin,

Just a heads up - if you want to change all the Scottish "Highway Authority" pages to "Roads Authority" pages (which I agree is probably a good idea - though surely the RA bit needs to be capitalised), then there's a whole load of stuff that needs to be gone through with each one. We need to rejig every page that points to the old "Highway Authority" page so that it points to the new "Roads Authority" page, or all the complex interlinking that happens on here breaks. To give you an example, I've just had to go through all the service area gallery pages as a chunk of them were using the form "XYZ Services" whilst the pages themselves are standardised on "XYZ services". Steven (talk) 18:22, 2 February 2014 (GMT)

Yes, I would (ultimately) want to change all the Scottish X (Highway Authority) pages to X (roads authority) pages – and also yes, I realize that this needs to be done in a thoroughgoing way. That's why the Angus case is just a try-out: I don't believe any long-term harm can have been done for now, though, (can it?) so long as the re-direct remains in place, which it does.
I realize that I could have "sandboxed" the experiment, but the reality is that, in the absence of article talk pages (which still exist, by the way: it's just that someone has taken it upon her/himself to censor access to them), "being bold" is as good a way as any (perhaps the best way) of gaining the attention of those who actually USE and take an active interest in the Wiki. Your response demonstrates this! (Wiki-content-and-structure related discussions in the Sabre Forums tend to get too diffuse much too quickly.)
On the point of capitalization, the legislation establishing the roads authorities calls them ..."roads authorities" (uncapitalized). This is because while the Roads (Scotland) Act makes Angus Council, for example, a roads authority, it does not create an "Angus Roads Authority". No such body exists eo nomine (under that name). It's simply that Angus Council is the roads authority responsible for non trunk roads in the Angus Council area. In a namespace of the type Angus (roads authority), Angus is short for Angus Council and (roads authority) indicates that the article is dealing with it as a roads authority (not historico-geographically, politically, economically, etc. etc.) --Viator (talk) 00:47, 3 February 2014 (GMT)
No, definately no long term harm! As long as whatever we end up using is consistent, then it will all work fine. As for the capitalisation, I preferred the capital form as we have "(County)" and "(Highway Authority)" as disambiguators (there's got to be a better word!), though I think that somewhere we do have "(town)" or "(city)". Consistency will make life easier, but I don't have a strong preference either way - perhaps in the early days we should have gone with the lower case "(county)" etc! Steven (talk) 08:38, 3 February 2014 (GMT)
The "(town)" and "(City)" disambiguations (IIRC, they had inconsistent capitalisations) are obsolete, however lots of stuff still links to Dublin (City). Dublin is particularly bad as Dublin has tons of links and it's tedium to replace them. The redirect helps, leaving just the gallery and category to sort out (I believe I've done that for all of them) - which for an authority is not that many, if any. Ideally, a bot would do a big find-and-replace, but... Si404 (talk) 18:42, 3 February 2014 (GMT)

Places in Wales template

Hi Kevin,

By definition, non-Primary destinations such as Barry or Pontypool can't possibly be "major destinations" or "major cities/towns/places/villages/hamlets/whatever" in road network terms because if they were, then they would be Primary Destinations!! It doesn't matter how large they are as far as we're concerned. Steven (talk) 11:01, 5 February 2014 (GMT)

Maybe not. But the stated definition of the template is that it contains "links to every Place located in the specified region which is sufficiently important within the roads network to have a page on the SABRE Wiki". So the likes of Barry and Pontypool have to go somewhere! But you are right in that the logic of the heading "Other primary destinations" implies that the "Major destinations" are themselves primary destinations. So I have moved Barry, Caerphilly, and Pontypool to "Other places". -- Viator (talk) 11:22, 5 February 2014 (GMT)

N941

Isn't an N Road - R941 (Kells) are the droids you were looking for. Si404 (talk) 20:14, 17 March 2014 (GMT)

Yes, you're quite right, Si – thanks for pointing out my brainstorm! I'm a bit dubious about the "R941 (Port Laoise)", by the way. I'm curious to know: are there any written sources? (Happy St Patrick's Day) -- Viator (talk) 20:26, 17 March 2014 (GMT)

Port Laoise version was on OSM as R941 for four years, then a year ago the ref was changed to "was expected to become R941 but didn't happen in 2012 SI". It was our original version of the road and is probably worthy of a defunct page with 'disputed number' page (Kells version can stay R941). Si404 (talk) 22:19, 17 March 2014 (GMT)

Si, I've been perhaps over-bold in deleting all reference to the "Port Laoise R941" -- but I don't believe it ever existed, having, like you, never come across any other reference to such a route outside the (now resiled from) OSM claim. Further, I think it's stretching things a bit too far to define as "defunct" a route which, as far as can be established, never existed in the first place! -- Viator (talk) 16:07, 18 March 2014 (GMT)
That depends - we have pages for mapping errors, with a note to that effect so that no-one tries to re-add them and so that people can say "ah, right, it's a mistake then". They do need to be added to the "disputed number" category - see A65(M), A36(M) and B4454 for examples. Steven (talk) 16:33, 18 March 2014 (GMT)
Hi, Steven. I'm perfectly OK with pages that deal with mapping errors. I do think, however, that there's an important distinction to be made between "disputed" and "wrong"! (As you know, I've a particular aversion to Wiki misstatements of the type "[Route A] is now part of {Routes B, C, D...]" when it just ISN'T!) In this case, I think that the dependency test fails. -- Viator (talk) 17:12, 18 March 2014 (GMT)

Category order

Hi Kevin, while I'm happy for my way of sorting categories at the bottom to be changed to alphabetical, it does seem a little pointless when that is the only change - like this one [1] Si404 (talk) 10:53, 3 May 2014 (BST)

Hi, Si. I agree, if that were my sole reason for visiting the page! However, the real reason I was there is that I'm doing a survey at the moment of X to Y place relationships, and while checking such things I nearly always do a spot of housekeeping on a "while I'm here basis" -- even if it's only to shift a comma. :) --Viator (talk) 11:05, 3 May 2014 (BST)
PS. I forgot to say: thanks for your understanding as to my alphabetization of the categories. I don't do to annoy -- but simply because it makes visual checking (especially when there are a lot of cats) a lot easier and quicker, compared to having to work out or remember what the "hierarchy" was (even if it was one I devised myself I usually forget it later!). --Viator (talk) 11:12, 3 May 2014 (BST)
Whilst we're talking about this sort of thing, I notice you're changing the delimiter between "primary roads" to a comma rather than a bullet. I understand why you're doing it, but to me it looks very odd to have one list different to all the others stylistically - I put bulleted lists everywhere. Steven (talk) 12:48, 3 May 2014 (BST)
Well, I've done that today on only one page, Steven, as far as I recall. And the reason was because using a comma separator (in road number lists) is the style employed in the overwhelming majority of cases -- to such an extent that to me it's bulleted lists of road numbers lists that look odd!.
Just taking a quick look back at a random sample of 30 of the placename pages I've checked this morning, only three have bulleted road number lists; the other 27 use commas. It's a matter a taste, of course, whether they look neater with commas or with bullets -- but I've always assumed that the reason behind bullets in placename lists was because, unlike road numbers, they are not solid text (i.e. many consist of two or more words), and bulleting makes the list easier for the eye to "deconstruct"; that isn't a problem with road number lists so that the extra bit of spacing isn't really needed.
Anyway, the main thing I wanted to say is that I've not been going through looking for bullets to delete! Rather -- as I saw it -- just bringing a few exceptional instances into line with the default style. -- Viator (talk) 13:26, 3 May 2014 (BST)
In which case, of course, the question changes to be - which one should be the default? You already know what I think - what do you and Simon (and anyone else who wants to comment) think? Steven (talk) 14:42, 3 May 2014 (BST)
I'll initiate a forum discussion on this (probably tomorrow). Meantime, one thing I have noticed – after spending some time today looking more closely at the entries in those subsections of the places infobox that deal with destinations (prompted by Simon's post yesterday) – is the fairly high degree of asymmetry we have at the moment of the type
  • article about place A gives place B as a next primary destination
  • article about place B does not mention place A at all
This asymmetry applies to places listed as next primary destinations (A is shown as one of the next destinations from B, but B is not listed as a next destination from A) and other nearby primary destinations (C is shown as being near to D, but D is not listed among the places lying close to C). It happens only infrequently with the primary destinations on the Axxx subsection, and as far as I can tell from experimentation it can be cured by making sure both articles have the same rel1(etc.) parameter (place pairs still need testing to make sure that they do, however). -- Viator (talk) 16:18, 3 May 2014 (BST)


Usually they should be symmetrical - but there are the occasional times where PDs aren't actually signed symmetrically, often due to the local authority's signage policies, so A and B should appear in each other's infoboxes. This is a completely manual process though - and remember that sometimes "Other PDs" need to be used for those occasions where a PD is signed from another via a non-primary route.
As for "Primary Destinations on the Axxx" sections, these are built up by articles being both in the "Primary Destinations" category, and in the "Axxx" category and so is an automatic process. There are two ways of forcing the correct behaviour. The recommended way is by using the "RL" template within the route list section, which puts the PD in the road category. Failing that, you can simply put the place into the road category. Hope that helps! Steven (talk) 17:10, 3 May 2014 (BST)

Primary Destinations infobox

Hi Kevin,

I notice that you've just created a page called Sandbox:Primary destinations infobox. Can I point you at the new version of the PD infobox at Template:Primary Destination sandbox, which is pretty much ready to go live? The only reason the new PD infobox hasn't gone live yet (apart from on Wolverhampton) is so that I can mess with the underlying full Infobox template without worrying about the Job Queue and I am concerned that if you start work on a completely separate item that it will get horribly confusing. Steven (talk) 15:08, 5 May 2014 (BST)

Hi, Steven. The sole purpose of my creating the Sandbox:Primary destinations infobox page is to allow me to use it to illustrate the question, discussed above, of commas v. bullets in a Forum post (as promised on Saturday) -- which I'm currently close to finishing. Be assured: it is NOT a proposal in itself and certainly not a presager of anything I propose implementing imminently! (Look out for my Forum post within the next few minutes). -- Viator (talk) 15:18, 5 May 2014 (BST)
Phew! That's ok then! You've probably noticed, but I've put a copy of the new PD infobox at the bottom for comparison. Steven (talk) 15:20, 5 May 2014 (BST)

Highway Authorities

Hi Kevin, Is there any chance you could add Template:Highway Authority (yes, I know it's not the right term) to all the Irish County Council pages you've just created please? We also could do with adding an Infobox "cat=" item for them all, which I've made a start on! I've had a go at Clare County Council as a starter. Steven (talk) 12:26, 9 May 2014 (BST)

Will do (simultaneously "tailoring" the roads list for each authority -- gives a better page fit and eliminates duplication). See the most recent update to Clare County Council.
By the way, Clare (on its own) is An Chlár (not "Chláir" -- which is half of the genitive form of that name). In any case, I think it is better to use the real name of the authority, which is "Clare County Council" (not "Clare" -- although it's fair enough to use that abbreviated form, in context, as we do, in the subsections of the infobox). Also by putting the full name in English and Irish in the infobox, I can now take it out of the intro text -- which I think gives a neater result (and is in line with what we do in place-name boxes).
I expect you will have worked out that I am slowly but steadily working my way through all the RoI road authority / county articles. The main aim is to eliminate the somewhat messy current situation in which we have created, for example Dublin, Dublin (City), Dublin (County), Dublin City, Dublin City (Highway Authority) ...and, of course, Dublin (disambiguation). My current project is to rationalize all such articles into one of just three types:
A: Place (i.e. destination point)
B: (Traditional) county
C: City Council, County Council, or City and County Council [*]
For example:
A Galway / Gaillimh, which is a place (destination) in
B County Galway / Contae na Gaillimhe, which is an area administered by
C Galway City Council / Comhairle Cathrach na Gaillimhe and
C Galway County Council / Comhairle Contae na Gaillimhe
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Limerick / Luimneach
B County Limerick / Contae Luimnigh
C Limerick City and County Council / Comhairle Cathrach agus Contae Luimnigh [*]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Sligo / Sligeach
B County Sligo / Contae Shligigh
C Sligo County Council / Comhairle Contae Shligigh
[*] "City and County Council" is a new term which will come in with this year's local government reform. Like the term "City and County Council" in Wales, however, which is really no different in its powers from a "County Council", the form of words is really just a sop to sentiment (in the Irish context, where formerly separate city and county administrations are to be combined).
The changes, which will reduce the number of road authorities (other than the NRA) from 34 to 31 are not really all that earth-shattering in the roads context: they amount to the combining of North Tipperary and South Tipperary County Councils (as Tipperary County Council), Limerick City Council and Limerick County Council (as Limerick City and County Council), and Waterford City Council and Waterford County Council (as Waterford City and County Council).
I've continued using the existing 34 local road authority names for the time being -- not least, because I started before the text of the Local Government Reform Act 2014 was available, but also because it simplifies the checking of all the existing articles. I plan to do a comprehensive tidy-up (examining and sorting out all re-directs, eliminating redundant ones) once I've worked my way through every authority. I know that that means that there are loose ends lying around at the moment. But I feel that it is better to do it in that order so as not to overlook important stuff. -- Viator (talk) 18:44, 9 May 2014 (BST)
Yeah, I just kinda guessed at the Irish language form - with it not being a language I have any knowledge of beyond phonetic pronunciation! And, of course, we need to do all this stuff for Northern Ireland too, as they have a massive rejig of their local authorities going on.
I do have one question regarding places in Ireland - some terminal and intermediate places use the "Primary Destination" infobox, and hence the green colouring; and some seem to use "Place" (with no "type = primary" tag), and hence appear with a white colouring in their infobox. Is there a pattern to this that I'm missing? And what would be the preferred type? Would it be better to split those places that are Terminal Destinations (in green) from those that are just Intermediate Destinations (in white), but that then leaves us with places that are neither which would look like IDs. Would that be a problem? Whilst I'm fiddling with the new Infobox (with only Highway Authority being "live"), I'd rather get things right now if we can, as right now it would be fairly simple to change the PD infobox to automatically categorise Irish TDs in "Terminal Destinations in RoI" rather than "Primary Destinations in RoI" as present. Steven (talk) 07:57, 10 May 2014 (BST)
I've only given passing attention to places as yet -- although I've called them category A (above) they are actually last on my list, since not only are there are a lot of them but, as you will have seen, they are a bit of a ragbag of styles at the moment (not me, guv: they were set up before I started on Ireland). Looking at a representative sample, I'd say that someone originally had the idea that only destinations on national primary roads should have Primary Destination infoboxes (although, as you know, that's to mix up British and Irish terminology). I'd say that everywhere on national roads should use the PD infobox, because all such places are signed in white-on-green, whether the road is national primary or national secondary.
A present oddity that I hope you'll be able to sort out is that in most cases the Irish PD and Place infoboxes use the parameter "welsh" -- which I realize looks a bit of a nonsense, but it was done to prevent the Irish-language forms appearing in the Scottish colouring, which they did earlier when "gaelic" was used. I would guess that that arose become some (outside Ireland) call Irish "Gaelic" (in Ireland, "Gaelic" normally applies to Gaelic games rather than to the national language!). So we need three parameters: "welsh", "gaelic" (i.e. Scottish Gaelic), and "irish". That's already the case in at least one infobox (I've forgotten which), but I don't know how to make it general.
One other detail is that Dublin Airport and Knock Airport (should really be Ireland West Airport Knock) have Airport infoboxes. I wonder, is that necessary (since we're dealing with them simply as detinations, not as airports as such)? -- Viator (talk) 09:33, 10 May 2014 (BST)
The original idea of the PD infoboxes was to show, well, PDs rather than any place signed upon them, which may or may not be a Primary Destination, if you get the difference. Willenhall (Staffordshire), for example, is signed along the primary A454 (hence in white-on-green), but it's not a PD in its own right. There's an official list of Primary Destinations, much like (AIUI) the Irish Government publish a list of Terminal and Intermediate Destinations. Now my understanding of the difference between the two is simply that Terminal Destinations are those at the end of National Primary and National Secondary Routes, whilst Intermediate Destinations are those important places in the middle of a National Secondary Route, though there does seem to be a strange category of Terminal Destinations on National Primary Routes that are in the middle of the route, which they seem to call "Intermediate Terminal Destinations" which I don't quite get - so effectively the combined list of TDs and IDs along both National Primary and National Secondary (given both are signed white-on-green) works kind of like the UK's Primary Destination list. Is that right?
I can certainly at this stage set up "type = terminal" and "type = intermediate", both of which set up white-on-green, and they can then automatically sort themselves out into "Terminal Destinations in Ireland" and "Intermediate Destinations in Ireland" categories if that would be helpful, but I'm also aware that places can be in both lists or one list only - hence why I'm unsure. It would be very nice if there was a combined term of some form - "National Destinations" or something!!
Whilst we're on the subject, I notice that despite they fact they're not in the official list anywhere, it seems that places like Ballymena, Antrim and Larne are also considered to be TDs or IDs, according to the map in the Irish Directional Information Signs Manual!
As for the use of "welsh = ", all the new versions of the Infoboxes that I've been working on will all understand "irish = " and "gaelic = " as well as "welsh = ", so feel free to use that everywhere, even if it doesn't show up yet. It will.
The Airports - standard practice when dealing with UK Airports is that if they are Primary Destinations in their own right, then they use the "Primary Destinations" infobox with a manual addition of the Airport category; otherwise they use the "Airport" one. One of major differences between the two (and indeed all the other ones based around the "Infobox" template) is in the automatic categorisation of articles that use them (though there are other changes too, such as standard colours, pages and headings that appear in the "related" lists, and support for various different tags). Now, looking through the Irish Directional Information Signs Manual, I think that Knock Airport, Shannon Airport, Cork Airport and Dublin Airport are all Terminal (or "Intermediate Terminal") Destinations, so I would give them whatever infobox we end up giving the TDs. As for the name of Knock Airport, I'd keep it as "Knock Airport", as that's what it says on the signage ; similar to "East Midlands Airport", which is technically "Nottingham Derby Leicester London Birmingham Glasgow East Midlands Airport", or something like that anyway! Steven (talk) 10:52, 10 May 2014 (BST)
I'm going to bullet some points
Si404 (talk) 12:03, 10 May 2014 (BST)
You could just use the "Place" template instead of "Airport", and it would all work with the following caveats:
  • You'd need to put the Airports category in manually
  • The airports would start showing up on "Places in...." which historically has been restricted to towns.
Most of the Infobox templates are incredibly similar (as they all call the master Infobox template), but they generally differ in automatic categorisation, which I find really useful as I don't have to remember where on earth to put things!
Seeing as this is getting rather in-depth, we really ought to take it to the forums... Steven (talk) 12:32, 10 May 2014 (BST)

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