Talk:Death Valley National Park

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This is our first national park article, and it's going to shape how we do the rest of them. So, let's get this right.

I don't think that there needs to be two "regional" articles about the north and south of Death Valley. I really don't. -- (WT-en) Evan 21:18, 9 Nov 2003 (PST)

Agreed, but since Death Valley is the largest National Park outside of Alaska at 3.4 million acres it gonna need some kinda breakdown or it will quickly get outta hand. This might not be the case for most other National Parks. Most of the pavement accessed areas reside south of the Hwy 190 and in general offer a different experience than the northern area of the park which tends to be more rugged. Maybe it needs a backcountry article and off the beaten path article. On second thought maybe its time to look at some NPS sites and check out their general template as a starting point. It is a true pleasure to be working on Death Valley as the first National Park! (WT-en) Ron 21:59, 9 Nov 2003 (PST)

Hi! Saw your request for template help. Have you thought about using the small city template? I used that for islands like Ko Samet and big parks like Grand Canyon and Angkor Wat. Remember, you can leave out anything that doesnt make sense and add your own bold subheads for subsections that need more attention (like Dehydration under STAY SAFE). Lemme know if you have any specific questions/concerns. Great content btw! (WT-en) Majnoona

I more or less agree with Maj. The Project:Small city article template could be used as a base for a "park article". You don't have to follow it rigorously, though. If you think other headings make more sense, then go right ahead. In time, we could even develop a true "park template" if this would be sufficiently different from the others. One observation, though: try to use verbs for your headings, as is generally done in Wikivoyage articles ("get in" instead of "getting there", etc...) Otherwise, keep up the good work! Cheers. (WT-en) DhDh 13:23, 11 Nov 2003 (PST)

Thanks for all the input. Ill work on DV again tonight. Along with the SoCal hell. I have started some work on a Project:Park template based on the DV stuff i did. I will tweak it accordingly (WT-en) Ron 13:35, 11 Nov 2003 (PST)

Hi Ron. I just had a quick look -- it looks far better already. Maybe a few remarks:

I'd write "Understand" instead of "Introduction"
Perhaps "Pay" would be better than "Fees/Permits", but I'm not too sure about it. Maybe there's another verb that describes it better.
There could be a separate section called "Obey" for rules and regulations.
Under "Sleep" I'd write "Lodge" and "Camp" instead of "Lodging" and "Camping". And I wouldn't make a separate heading for "Backcountry camping" -- I'd put it separately under "Camp".

I hope you find my remarks valuable -- Maybe you can ask Evan's opinion too on some of this. Cheers. (WT-en) DhDh 13:58, 12 Nov 2003 (PST)

Ok, the changes sound good and I made them, except for the new section on Obey. Maybe this can be part of the Pay section and i included it as Pay/Obey. I think that permits can fall under rules and regulations and we might as well get the official junk all out of the way in one section...well thats how i see it at least. Thanks for you input/advice. I would really like to see this develop into a template for Park in general, as asking new users to modify a small city template may begin to generate a lot of variance in style/layout and i do believe that standardization can help to eliminate most of this. (WT-en) Ron 14:30, 12 Nov 2003 (PST)

"Some of the roads in can occasionally be snowed in at the passes may require chains in the winter." This doesn't parse, and I'm not sure whether the chains are on the tires or across the roads. -(WT-en) phma 18:46, 6 Mar 2004 (EST)

A couple of the paragraphs in my last change seem to have been altered in the diffs for no apparent reason. I blame KDE's kate editor. It is so fired. I'll use something else from here on out. Also, I eliminated the use of "Route 190" etc in favor of the SR and US prefixes (e.g. US 395 and SR 190). "Route" sounds nicer though. Also, do visitors from other countries recognize the SR (State Route) designation? Or is the CA (e.g. CA 190) designation better? I think SR. Hmm, should that be US395 or US 395? Argh.: (WT-en) Colin 21:02, 8 Mar 2004 (EST)

OK, so, your attention brought my attention back to this article. I made some modifications to the headers, tried to move things around a bit... Don't know if it worked at all or even if it was a good idea. But I did it. --(WT-en) Evan 22:26, 8 Mar 2004 (EST)

Since I'm new around here, and don't yet have a feel for how the headers should flow (still studying up on the templates), the odds of me reorganizing the headers are exactly zero. So it was definitely a good idea! -- (WT-en) Colin 00:13, 9 Mar 2004 (EST)

Temperature

"ground temperatures are usually up to 50 percent higher." 50% higher than 120°F is 209.9°C (when a temperature is multiplied by anything it must always be in Kelvin or Rankine). This is obviously wrong; please correct. -(WT-en) phma 19:05, 26 Sep 2004 (EDT)

Well, I think it's pretty obvious that they mean 50% higher F. And I think it's flat out wrong even in F. At the very least, it's a really strange way of saying anything. -- (WT-en) Colin 20:56, 26 Sep 2004 (EDT)

They could have meant "degrees" and come out with "percent" by mistake - whatever. Does anyone know what the temperature really is? -(WT-en) phma 03:06, 27 Sep 2004 (EDT)

I think the author is referring to the temperature of the actual ground that is baked by the sun. It is a little confusing to use percentages for temperatures, so this should probably be changed to degrees or just thrown out altogether. -(WT-en) nick 22:04, 27 Sep 2004 (EDT)

I don't know where you went to school, but where I went 50% of 120 is 60, and 60+120=180 - not 209.9! You are easily confused if you cannot follow the logic in that statement.

Article name

The name of this article is inconsistent with other national park articles ("Death Valley" vs. "Death Valley National Park"), and it's also a bit ambiguous - Death Valley National Park encompasses much more than just the valley itself. That said, would there be any objection to moving the article to "Death Valley National Park"? I realize that the "most common" name rule says that we use just "Death Valley", but in the case of state parks and national parks, provided a redirect exists for the "most common" name it seems to be in the interest of the traveler to use a naming convention that lets the reader know that the article is about the park, and not just the geologic feature the park is named after (examples: "Everglades" vs. "Everglades National Park", "Canyonlands" vs. "Canyonlands National Park", etc). -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 15:03, 9 June 2007 (EDT)

Personally I prefer the shorter (and yes, usually more common) versions of the names, but as long as we're naming the rest of them X National Park, let's be consistent. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 15:29, 9 June 2007 (EDT)

Done. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 18:04, 9 June 2007 (EDT)

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