Category talk:Ohio state highways

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My plan is to organize and create pages for all Ohio state highways. I'm a bit new to Wikipedia so any pointers would be appreciated.

So far, my thoughts are to create sections for description, terminii, cities and counties travelled, history, trivia and perhaps some other things.

I have no idea if there are other Wikipedians following this area, but if you are and have any suggestions, let's hear them!

I will post more as I do more

Look at existing articles for highways in other states. Find ones you like and use them as a model. You can follow the category tree to find many such articles Category:State highways. older≠wiser 04:11, Feb 13, 2005 (UTC)

I did some of what you suggest in the articles for Route 8 and Route 59, although I didn't think about doing the counties. The thing I had to keep in mind when I worked on them was to not just rip off John Simpson's pages. --Beirne 04:31, Feb 13, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone for their feedback. I've looked at some of the other state highway pages and thought some more about this. I have to say that I'm amazed that there are other people out there that think about things like this :-)

First of all, the other state highway pages didn't do much for me. Most of them weren't very detailed, though there were a couple that were good (some of the CA ones come to mind). I also looked at the OH 8 and OH 59 pages and I thought those were really good - lots of good information.

Now, I realize I might be obsessive-compulsive :-) but I'd like to see a standard template for all of the OH state highway pages. What I mean is that for each of the pages, there is a standard set of categories - history, intersections, counties, description, terminii, etc. Does anyone else see any value in this?

Secondly, I see what you're saying about John Simpson's pages. I agree that we should try not to just take information from his page. Though on the other hand, most of the stuff is just factual information. If OH 32 goes through a certain list of counties, then it does, whether that's on someone else's page or not, if that makes sense.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for their feedback.

Go ahead and standardize. You might want to try writing to John Simpson to let him know about Wikipedia and what you'd like to do. He may well be supportive. At the very least you should include a link to his pages, which would be publicity for him. So long as you do not essentially duplicate the content of his site and do not blatantly rip off every little detail and exact phrasing (especially for the interesting tidbit narratives which require more creative work than simple factual details), he might welcome it. In fact, you might even come across errors in his site and suggest improvements, so it could be a positive relationship. older≠wiser 01:51, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with what Bkonrad said about using John Simpson's page. If his pages are used as sources they should of course be cited, and his information is very useful. I just tried to avoid just making an article out of his pages. I also wonder if he might not mind having his pages put into Wikipedia. He hasn't updated them in a few years and he may have gone on to other things. And finally, I think a standard set of categories is a good idea. I'm not sure how you get people to use them, but if people who know about them use them a lot word should spread. You might want to put together a sample page.--Beirne 02:22, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

Okay. Again, thanks to both of you for your feedback. I will endeavor to standardize all of the Ohio State Highway pages. As you may have already seen, I fleshed out the List of Ohio State Highways page. I agree with what you said about templates, but I'm not sure quite the best way to make that. Would it be appropriate to create an article under Ohio State Highways called Ohio State Highways Template, or something like that? Or is there a special Wikipedia way to have a full template for a page? Another option would be to use this page to set out a set of standards / guidelines. I don't want to be *excessively* anal about it, but I do think that if there is a common look and feel to the pages that they just look better and more professional. As for John Simpson's pages, I think as part of the guidelines we should include links to his corresponding page (and other pages like the Ohio State Ends page) when appropriate. Maybe as we start getting some more of these done we can contact John and see what he says. Definitely we should avoid ripping off the things that aren't simple facts. Look at Ohio State Highway 32 for an example of what I'm doing.

I tried to figure out how to do a template as well but didn't find a good Wikipedia way. There are Wiki templates, but they seem to be for small things like stub markers. Outlining the sections here may be your best bet. I looked at the Route 32 page. It looks good, but I'm not sure if everyone would be ambitious enough to list all of the highway intersections and their locations, and I'm not sure the information is useful in Wikipedia. I wouldn't remove it from a document I was working with, but I don't think I'd make the effort to compile the list myself. --Beirne 17:07, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback, especially about the relevance of the intersection list in the Wikipedia. I can't really say one way or the other. My reason for including it is that not only does it give good launching-off points to other articles, it also chronicles the major towns / cities that the route travels (since in nearly all cases if a route goes through a major city it's going to cross another numbered route). I was looking at some of the other relevant pages (John Simpsons, the state ends one, etc.) and trying to see what facts they had and trying to incorporate them without just taking them (from what I've seen, my list of OH 32 Intersections is more complete than Simpson's). I just used Google Maps to compile it - it wasn't that difficult. As for most people not taking the time to do that, that's probably true. My plan is to do at least most of the major ones myself, and the smaller ones would naturally not take as long. And if someone wanted to submit an article without including them, then that's something someone else could pick up if/when they desired, etc. In any case, I will see if I can drum up a template page.Regoarrarr 19:44, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Signs 2 Decertified Routes 3 Revert 4 Template idea 5 State maintenance vs. numbering

[edit] Signs

I began making up a few highway signs similar to how they are shown for U.S. Highways. I added a blank sign to the Ohio highways listing page for others to use as a base. I found the easiest way to make them is to cut and paste numbers from the U.S. route signs into the blank Ohio sign template. Enjoy! hopefully :)

[edit] Decertified Routes

Is it appropriate to list decertified routes eg. Ohio State Highway 526? I worry that without proper linkage these articles will be orphaned. --UltraSkuzzi 20:42, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Revert

I am reverting the pages that have a Wiki cleanup tag that insists the article should be "moved." I can't find any citation or documentation that it should be renamed because it "fails". I also cannot think how "Ohio State Highway 7" is not descriptive or approperiate enough for a page that discusses "Ohio State Highway 7". Seicer (talk) 11:32, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template idea

I had an idea today that seemed good to me, but others may think otherwise: what if we would put a small (say 25 pixel) picture of the highway sign in the "bold" area of the first sentence, such as "Ohio State Highway [sign with number here] is..."? If I'm not clear (or even if I am), you can see an example on the page for Ohio State Highway 638.

[edit] State maintenance vs. numbering

    "U.S. and Interstate highways are classified
    as state routes in Ohio; therefore, there are no
    state routes which duplicate an existing U.S. or
    Interstate highway in Ohio."

These two are coincidental; except for rare instances (example), all Interstate and U.S.-numbered highways are on the respective state systems, but some states do duplicate numbering between I-/US- and state-numbered routes. I am going to separate the above into two sentences. Mapsax 20:36, 9 October 2006 (UTC)