Talk:Ohio State Route 844

Northern terminus

The northern terminus per sld is at the road before the gates, I thinks it is A Road, southbound and C Road, northbound on 844. So no part is maintained by the Air Force. The entire is limited access to the north terminus. Also check the traffic counts I think the the numbers given are the station number and not the aadt. Detcin (talk) 02:06, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Yep, my bad. I got the traffic count wrong.—CycloneIsaac–E-Mail 02:29, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Think I got some of it wrong, good eye, Detcin.—CycloneIsaac–E-Mail 02:59, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Local (news) or official designation?

So, do we use Ohio 844 (used in the news), or OH 844 (used by ODOT)? There has been a mini edit war over this, so I'm starting a discussion here.—CycloneIsaac–E-Mail 17:08, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

I would say OH and Ohio are interchangeable, but we really should be using SR. –Fredddie™ 17:47, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Although there is this tendency to revere what news sources use, in this case, I would go with the official designations. I come across news articles almost weekly that screw up highway designations: they change state highways into US Highways or the reverse, upgrade all freeways to Interstates, or inconsistently abbreviate the designations. For Wisconsin, other than Interstates, the media there calls them all "Highway X", regardless of type, yet we've standardized on using the correct designation types. Another matter to consider: if the article isn't going to use the "OH 844" abbreviation, and since {{jct}} only uses one abbreviation scheme so we pretty much follow it for consistency, then the article doesn't even need to mention the alternate abbreviation in the lead, period. Imzadi 1979 → 19:29, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Officially, it's State Route 844, so per WP:USSH and WP:USRD/STDS, we should be using SR, full stop. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:51, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

My local media routinely change US Highways to Ohio routes as well as commit a whole host of non-road-related misidentifications. In addition, they are replete with factual, grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors and often use two different proper names within the same article for any given person, place or thing. "Journalism", IMHO, is largely treated as an outmoded concept, with many articles being nothing more than press releases from the subjects of the articles, with a few pronouns changed here and there.

Regardless of my personal disdain toward most media, their use of "Ohio X" in place of "State Route X" (as observed by me in Columbus and Dayton, Ohio media), when properly applied to State Routes, is not erroneous, but a deliberate choice, apparently governed by their own standardized manuals of style. I daresay that the above example of Wisconsin "Highway X" could be a local media MOS choice as well.

As such, Treatment of alternative names, part of WP policy, states that "significant alternative names for the topic should be mentioned in the article, usually in the first sentence or paragraph" and that such an alternative name should be a redirect or disambiguation to the article. Certainly, one can easily envision a reader trying to come to WP from a news article or other source outside WP and having a difficult navigation should the significant alternative not be addressed within WP. Per this policy, I intend to restore "Ohio X" as an alternative name, wherever I find a reliable source for it. --Chaswmsday (talk) 16:03, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

And others have disagreed saying that in the case of the news media, as you concede, they get these things wrong. Sorry, I support the reversion back to the status quo ante as it relates to your edit. Imzadi 1979 → 20:23, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

No, I said that although the media get many things wrong, this usage is not wrong. Including a significantly used, reliably sourced alternate name in the lede conforms with a recommended aspect of policy, and it, IMO, makes WP that much more user-friendly. --Chaswmsday (talk) 20:33, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

You have not demonstrated "significant use". As Dave points out below, news media usages are quite problematic. What you are proposing will take changing WP:USSH, and that naming convention was imposed by ArbCom years ago to settle a long-running dispute that predates my tenure as an active editor. That NC contains the names of highways to be used in article titles, but it is also followed for article text. You can't hold a discussion on a single talk page, cite a single news citation and say you're going to override an ArbCom-imposed naming convention. You need to take this change to WT:USSH and advertise it on WT:USRD for this sort of amendment. Until that time, it's still you trying unilaterally impose a change over the objections of four other editors. Imzadi 1979 → 20:42, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Although the general wikipedia policy is to use common names, this practice fails epically with roads. For example in the universe of Southern California roads are almost exclusively referred to as "the", as in "the 405", "the 5". Given that there are literally thousands of highways that could be referred to as "the 5", can you imagine the problem in trying to have The 5 be the wikipedia title for what is actually Interstate 5 (California)? I agree, despite the usual wikipedia convention, for roads we should stick to the official title (which would be set by the Ohio Dept. of Transportation, not any news source).Dave (talk) 16:58, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

I would have to add that referring to "Ohio 844" in the article is inappropriate, as that is not the official name of the road, and people can call it OH 844, Route 844, the 844, Highway 844, etc. --Rschen7754 22:00, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I believe we should refer to it as SR 844 as that is the official designation used by ODOT. News sources may vary but for roads I say we use official DOT sources. Dough4872 02:52, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

It seems we're missing the point here. I'm neither advocating changing the article title nor using "Ohio 844" throughout the prose. "State Route X" and "SR X" are both used by ODOT, so those usages are most appropriate throughout.
But when the area's newspaper of record and its most-watched TV news both consistently style state routes as "Ohio X", it would seem that WP policy pretty much compels us to mention these alternative names.
If, as pop culture and WP itself suggest, colloquial Southern California usage is characterized by "the 5", we probably should include supporting prose in Interstate 5 in California.
We're not editing solely for our own amusement, where it might be acceptable to enforce rigid, arcane rules; we should be editing such that non-WP geeks can easily make their way into WP from outside sites or references. Agreed? --Chaswmsday (talk) 17:34, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

No, definitely not. Newspapers make mistakes all the time, and in my research I've seen newspapers call routes a whole bunch of things. --Rschen7754 20:11, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, of course newspapers make mistakes. This usage, however, is not a mistake, but a style choice. The same RS used the "Ohio X" format way back in 1994 in the cite showing the route number change from 444A to 844, and has consistently used this format for years. Had they called it "U.S. 844" or "I-844", those would be mistakes. Were they to call it "State Route 844", that would be a "mistake", in that they would have violated their own MOS.

And just as we shouldn't slavishly parrot media usages, we shouldn't slavishly parrot officialdom either. In one cite included in this article, the state legislature (and you can't get any more official than that...) talks about "state route number four hundred forty-four A...commencing at interstate route number six hundred seventy-five...extending through Wright state university to Wright-Patterson air force base".

I continue to contend that including a single reference to a significant alternate name, as mandated by the Wikipedia:Article titles policy, doesn't mess with the article name or the heart of the prose and thus doesn't violate the WP:USSH guideline, which itself calls for "using common sense", part of the Ignore all rules policy. Even if it did violate USSH, a policy would trump a guideline anyway. --Chaswmsday (talk) 21:38, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, no. The media in a single area of a state, but not the whole state, doesn't work for me. You'd end up with five or six sets of alternate usages from the news media in some states, producing a mass of inconsistency. Give our readers some credit for intelligence for figuring out that what your local paper calls "Ohio 844" is "State Route 844" once they get to the article even if we don't spell it out explicitly. Imzadi 1979 → 21:48, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, SR/Ohio 844 is only in one part of the state. And it's not a matter of intelligence. I can highlight a news source in my browser, right click, then directly find the related WP article. But I guess our job here is to make things more difficult for an average reader for the sake of the WP principle of "Obeying all rules". --Chaswmsday (talk) 22:03, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

It's also a matter of consistency in a corpus of articles. This article isn't an isolated affair and it should be formatted with that in mind. The change you propose to this article would impact how things are done in hundreds of other articles on state routes in Ohio. As just one example, I have a typed checklist of items to check on the 200 Michigan state highway articles in a couple of weeks. This will ensure that each is done consistently, which is an issue for a group of articles that were taken through GAN over a 5-year period. Practices have changed, templates have appeared or been updated with new features, and over the years, the articles haven't all had a good once-over. In the end, Michigan's highway articles will be a consistent and polished product, yet you're proposing we intentionally introduce an inconsistency for one part of the state. Sorry, my opinion is still no. Imzadi 1979 → 23:18, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I sympathize with your points about consistency. However, for grins the other day, I checked the first of the 50 states not to call their routes "SR" just to see if there were a standard abbreviation. ODOT, as we've discussed, uses "SR", although I wasn't sure if that use was sanctioned or was just extrapolated from "State Route" without discussion. Anyway: Arkansas. With no apparent use that I can find at AHTD, the Arkansas task force calls for the use of alternate naming conventions "AR X" and "Ark. X" in the lead. This convention isn't handled consistently across Arkansas highway pages, nor could I find any discussion about the use of these names within WT:USRD. There is nothing to indicate if these naming conventions are used by anyone, let alone used Arkansas-wide.

By contrast, WT:USRD/OH is silent on such matters. So I'm going by overarching naming convention policy, only where RS citations can be found. Contrast Interstate 110 and State Route 110 (California), which includes the "inconsistent" alternate name "Harbor Freeway". How is that fundamentally different? It's just another local usage. --Chaswmsday (talk) 21:25, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Uh, no, "Harbor Freeway" is an official name [1]. It's clear that there is no consensus for you to push this point of view in this article. --Rschen7754 21:42, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

OK, but I'm not pushing a "point of view". I'm trying to follow a (useful) mandate expressed in the WP POLICY WP:TITLE. --Chaswmsday (talk) 22:37, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Uh, it's not a mandate: "Wikipedia prefers", "does not necessarily use", "Editors should also consider"... etc. --Rschen7754 22:43, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

All the quotes you cite refer to the article title itself (and its repetition throughout the prose), which I am not proposing to change. --Chaswmsday (talk) 23:08, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Ok, a semantic point: WP:TITLE refers to the article title in general. It has one paragraph about alternate titles for a subject, but it points to MOS:LEADALT to flesh out this concept for the prose of an article. Now, the MOS is not policy, it is just a guideline. The MOS page then gives some guidelines on how to handle alternate names, but it also does not mandate their inclusion. In fact, it specifically says: "The following are examples of names that may be included parenthetically, although inclusion should reflect consensus." Ergo, your statement about "trying to follow a (useful) mandate expressed in the WP POLICY" is not valid. There has not been consensus here to make the change you desire as required by the appropriate guideline. Imzadi 1979 → 02:02, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

WP:TITLE only points to MOS:LEADALT in the context of when to have a separate name section in an article. As well, in the quote you cite, LEADALT appears to be referring to archaic and foreign-language names. And since when can a guideline overrule a policy anyway? And in the case of "Harbor Freeway", if the state of California were to one day officially rename that route as the "Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger Freeway", in addition to mentioning that, you would advocate immediately striking "Harbor Freeway" from the article - just because it's not "official"?? --Chaswmsday (talk) 16:44, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

"And since... just because it's not "official"" - what sort of relevance does that have here? THat's a straw man argument. --Rschen7754 17:45, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure how it's a "straw man", since use of the "official" name has been a theme throughout this thread, by you and others.

I'm just trying to follow standard WP practice on the mere mention of alternate names. --Chaswmsday (talk) 18:45, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

To be honest, it seems that you're obsessing over 2 words in 1 relatively non-notable article. There is much more to edit on Wikipedia than that. --Rschen7754 18:50, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

No, Wikipedia:TITLE#Treatment_of_alternative_names says "significant alternative names for the topic should be mentioned in the article, usually in the first sentence or paragraph." ("should" isn't a mandate like you think it is; if that text mandated alternate names, it would say "must" or "shall".) The text continues on to discuss dealing with multiple alternates before pointing people for additional guidance at MOS:LEADALT. Guidelines supplement policies, especially where the policy defers to a guideline. It's like the hierarchy where Congress passes a law that sets out X, Y, and Z goals/principles, and allows the EPA to enact A, B, and C regulations to enact specifics. WP:TITLE is dealing with how to handle the title, and in the case of mulitple possibilities, it says to consult the MOS on how to include them should consensus warrant that inclusion.

You mentioned the Harbor Freeway with a hypothetical renaming. I think the example there you need to consult is the Arroyo Seco Parkway, which had been renamed to the Pasadena Freeway before it was renamed back. Both names get listed. Another case is that of M-92 in Michigan, which was replaced by M-52, and both designations appear in the lead, both in boldface.

In any case, I think we've discussed this long enough, and we should move on now. Imzadi 1979 → 22:07, 8 December 2013 (UTC)