Wikipedia:Featured and good topic candidates/Brill Tramway/archive1

Brill Tramway[edit]

Brill Tramway

8 articles

Infrastructure of the Brill Tramway

Quainton Road railway station

Waddesdon Road railway station

Westcott railway station

Wotton (Metropolitan Railway) railway station

Wood Siding railway station

Brill railway station

Nominating for Featured Topic. Seven of the eight articles are FAs, and the remaining one is a GA; this set covers every article we have on the topic or are ever likely to have. (The locomotives primarily used by the line were one-off designs, which are never going to warrant their own articles.) – iridescent 17:13, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Why does "Church Siding" not have an article when all the others do? Nergaal (talk) 19:58, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Church Siding was a very short-lived station (1871–94), which consisted solely of a piled-earth "platform" with no buildings or facilities of any kind. It was officially a station because it met the formal criteria of appearing in a published timetable; however, it was listed mainly because it was where wagons would be attached/detached to/from the trains for haulage down the siding by rope. The short paragraph at Infrastructure of the Brill Tramway#Church Siding literally says everything that has ever been written on it; since it would have to be included in the infrastructure article anyway, I see no point in creating a cut-and-paste permastub which will just be a content fork. – iridescent 20:10, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Also, there is no connecting template; see criteria 1.c. Nergaal (talk) 20:02, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

All of these are already in {{Metropolitan line navbox}}, which would need to be on all of these in any case. I see no point at all in making a second connecting template which will virtually duplicate the first. This does already meed 1(c); in that {{Metropolitan line navbox}} serves as a connecting template and they share a common category. – iridescent 20:10, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I did not notice it, but that reveals the problem that the way the template is now is not very useful from the point of view of wp:FT?. I am not sure how {{Brill Tramway RDT}} would not do a better job at it anyways (i.e. replace the big navbox in the stations with the "infobox" one); it clearly aids to the understanding of the subject more than an overly-complicated one. Nergaal (talk) 22:07, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think these route templates belong on station articles. I deleted a Northern line one from a bunch of stations on that line recently because they functionally duplicate the succession boxes, cause slower downloads and mess up page formatting.--DavidCane (talk) 00:01, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support A long labour on Iridescent's part comes to a deserved end.--DavidCane (talk) 23:06, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Meets all the criteria, though reading through eight articles on trains in a row was a little mindbending! Courcelles 23:40, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I agree that an earthen bank where trains occasionally stop doesn't need its own article, and I created a book for the topic. Though the topic formally meets the criterion that requires articles to be linked with a navbox, I do think it's a good idea to link the articles more clearly—not sure how though. Ucucha 00:12, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There's no obvious way to do it (although I could rearrange the Metropolitan Line navbox somewhat to group them together). I'm vehemently opposed to including the route diagram templates because of the precedent it sets; the Brill Tramway was one of London Transport's shortest lines and the RDT is just about at a manageable size, but as we get into towns it would mean station articles having to include monstrosities like {{District Line}}, which are not only longer than most of the articles but slow pageload time down horrendously. The RDT duplicates information already given in the succession boxes, so there's no gain from adding them. – iridescent 00:25, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My own view on RDTs is that those covering a whole line primarily belong on the article which covers the whole line; and RDTs on station articles should ideally cover the surrounding area, but not go too far. Area RDTs are good for junction stations, to show the layout of the various routes; as such, Quainton Road, with three routes at one end and one at the other, is a suitable candidate. Such station-area RDT would show the junction station, plus, for each physical (not operator's) route, one or two (possibly three) stations past the point of divergence, in order to establish context. This RDT may then be placed on each station article to which it links.
Example 1 (bad): Stevenage railway station. This has three separate RDTs, one for each operator; one of these shows the whole line from Kings Cross to Inverness, whilst another is by default uncollapsed so dominates part of the article.
Example 2 (good): Oxford railway station. This does not have RDTs for the different services (FGW with four routes; Cross Country with two and Chiltern with one); instead there is a single one, {{Oxford area RDT}}, which ignores operators and considers only relative positions of main features. This RDT is displayed in collapsed state, and when expanded is not overly large.
So, Brill Tramway and Infrastructure of the Brill Tramway could have {{Brill Tramway RDT}}, which covers the line itself, and Quainton Road railway station can have something like this, which may also be placed on Waddesdon Road railway station because that specific station is linked from that RDT. However, Westcott railway station, Wotton (Metropolitan Railway) railway station, Wood Siding railway station and Brill railway station don't need RDTs. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:36, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

While that is all quite reasonable, surely there are other ways to link the articles in this topic than using those big RDTs. (But note that I am supporting; this is just a suggestion for possible further improvement.) Ucucha 20:01, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I much prefer the combination of station-either-side succession boxes on the intermediate stations, and "true" maps (such as the one at the top of Brill Tramway). To me, they're far more informative—I understand RDT design, and even I have difficulty following them. There is literally no information in {{Brill Tramway RDT}} that isn't more clearly illustrated in File:Brill tramway system diagram.png – iridescent 20:05, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think Ucucha misunderstands me. I'm not arguing for big RDTs in all eight articles - I'm suggesting two small RDTs. One will have coverage area restricted to the tramway itself, excluding the rest of the Met (the existing {{Brill Tramway RDT}} fits that bill), which would be placed on the two main articles; the other would be a new RDT restricted to the environs of Quainton Road, to be placed on just two of the station articles. Four station articles will have no RDT at all, the existing succ boxes being perfectly adequate for a linear situation. The two RDTs don't need to be expanded by default, either: |collapse=<includeonly>yes</includeonly><noinclude>no</noinclude> can be put in the {{Railway line header}} of the RDT template.
Whilst there is indeed no information in {{Brill Tramway RDT}} that isn't also in File:Brill tramway system diagram.png, the RDT has the advantage that it is clickable. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:36, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support I realized that Wikipedia:Featured topics/Ring Line (Oslo) is quite similar to this one so unless there is some way to make the linking template less hidden, this topic is fine the way it is. One small note: try to order the articles in a more natural fashion, not just alphabetically. Nergaal (talk) 01:21, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Open to suggestions; do you think it works better with "Infrastructure" first, then the stations alphebetically, or should the stations be in order of succession (which might look odd to someone who doesn't know why they're in that order)? – iridescent 01:28, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Generally the order is not alphabetical: for example the Solar System has Sun, Mercury, venus, etc. So succession seems more natural, and infrastructure would be either the first or the last. Nergaal (talk) 01:34, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've put them in succession order; it's probably the most obvious. – iridescent 01:38, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support excellent series, well done. Bencherlite ^Talk 05:50, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Closed with a consensus to promote.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:42, 5 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]