Talk:Ohio state parks

Deletion nomination

Archiving discussion from Project:Votes for deletion page:

Ohio Lodges and State Parks

This doesn't seem like a destination or particularly useful travel topic to me. (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:58, 11 June 2007 (EDT)

• (from:reasons for deletion) they don't fit in with our goals for making a free, complete, up-to-date and reliable travel guide. I am not quite sure how this misses the goal?? > Ohio has thousands of acres of State Parks with camping, bridle paths and so on. There are also at least 4 major State Lodges/Resorts with hotels attached, golf course, lakes and forests, hostels. They accomodate families or business meetings. I would think this information would be beneficial to any visitor to Ohio looking for adventure, lodging or reading a travel guide. Let the voting begin. (WT-en) 2old 12:35, 11 June 2007 (EDT)

• Keep. They are destinations since You Can Sleep There (TM). The information might well be useful to some travellers. I'm not sure they need their own article, perhaps just a paragraph in the Ohio article like the description of Dak Bungalows in India#Sleep. People who know the region can discuss that; I have no clear opinion. (WT-en) Pashley 20:35, 11 June 2007 (EDT)
• Redirect to Ohio after copying in the information. It's good information to have, but an article collating it doesn't fit smoothly into our geographical hierarchy. Another possibility would be to redo this as an itinerary. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 09:40, 12 June 2007 (EDT)
• Keep. Travel topics aren't supposed to fit into the geographical hierarchy, nor are they supposed to be "destinations." An itinerary would be odd, because I don't think anyone would want to "tour" all of Ohio's lodges in one trip. I can see no reason to delete, and a simple link from the Ohio page condenses information nicely. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 13:46, 13 June 2007 (EDT)
• Merge and redirect. I think this is exactly the kind of information that we want in the regular destination guides, either under "sleep" for smaller parks, or as their own articles. --(WT-en) Evan 14:13, 13 June 2007 (EDT)

This information certainly should be in the destination guides, but don't we often duplicate content from destination guides in travel topics, as a way to group similar information? That's certainly what we have done with Waterfalls, for example. And if I were to, say, create a travel topic "Jazz clubs in Chicago," that would certainly duplicate listings information from the Chicago district articles, but wouldn't it still be a valid travel topic? --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 16:03, 13 June 2007 (EDT)

Travel topics like Waterfalls and Scuba diving serve people who think "gee, I like waterfalls/scuba diving, where should I go?": they have pointers to places that have 'em, and then detailed information is in those places. For example, Scuba diving has a one-liner that says Bunaken is great, and dive resorts, sites and conditions are described in detail in Bunaken.

So I think that "State parks in Ohio" would be borderline acceptable as a list of pointers, but "Lodges in state parks in Ohio" just hides the information, because a) anything listed there is not visible elsewhere, and b) as an non-Ohioan I'd have absolutely no idea how to get to (say) Maumee Bay or Salt Fork, because there's no "Get in" to guide me. (WT-en) Jpatokal 23:14, 13 June 2007 (EDT)

• Split or merge – I think an article for Ohio State Parks could be okay, we've got several ones for countries like African National Parks and Indian national parks. Of course we could also just leave them in Ohio's district articles and list a few of the most famous ones on the main Ohio page under "Other destinations", which is a little more in line with what I think we've been doing. But I don't think it hurts to have one for Ohio like this either. The lodges however, I think should be moved to and only listed in the relevant articles for the places they're in or near. We wouldn't create Hotels in California, would we? I think it's unnecessary to expect people to look for lodges in a separate article. If for some reason there's a consensus to keep both in a travel topic form, then I definitely think they should be split into separate articles, it's feels a little weird to lump them together like this. And either way, I also think it's more important to have them listed in the appropriate district articles, which at a glance they don't seem to be – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 01:34, 14 June 2007 (EDT)

• • OK folks. So far I have been the only contributor to this page. What you do not seem to understand is that the Lodge or State Park it is located in, is the destination. They are located in very rural ares, near very small towns, with no where to sleep, they also are big enough to overlap "districts/counties", in many cases. Placing the State Parks in “sleep���, would ignor all of the amenities that would get you there. I have to discount any opinion that (WT-en) Jpatokal may have, as he marked the page for deletion when only four items had been added. He is correct that there is no description of how to get in. I have not gotten that far. I as a contributor/traveler really have no interest in geographical hierarchy. I am trying to find information of somewhere I would like to visit easily. You have a very good site started here, if you continue to adress problems like this, in this manner, it is going to take (WT-en) Jpatokal a long time to fill up all of the pages. When the deletion notice went up, it gave 14 days for completion. It would have been a better idea to mention what the problem was, rather than butchering a “travel topic” that lacks defintion. A Travel Topic of California’s Lodges and State Parks, seems like something I would read, however I would not add hotels to that. I thought this to be the type of information you needed. There certainly is nothing in it for me, so I will move on to something else while you folks figure it out during the remainder of this 14 day period. Clearly by the votes and comments so far, you have not figured it out either. (WT-en) 2old 11:08, 14 June 2007 (EDT)

• Keep Looks like a good travel topic to me. We have others like this, not for states, but why not. We can use the related tag to direct people to it. I think we should give it a chance. I am sure there are a lot of travelers would be interested in the collection of information. I know for sure that travelers looking for state parks and lodges would not think it would be great to plow through all the hierarchy to find them. If we don't have it, I would go to the states travel site. I might suggest that they be grouped in the article by region and that might be helpful to the traveler looking for these in the area they are visiting. This is for sure the type of information that is needed in Wikivoyage and I don't think anyone wants to delete it. It is just a matter of where we are going to put the information. I suggest, leave it where it is. -- (WT-en) Tom Holland (xltel) 20:36, 14 June 2007 (EDT)
• Keep - see comment below. As long as they meet the general criteria for independent articles according to the What is an article policy, I quite like the idea of having somewhat eccentric topics. And, hey, this is something that Wikivoyage can/should real excel in, because unlike printed guides we have unlimited space. However, having said that, the info included in such articles should be a supplement to the regular city/region articles, not a substitute. (WT-en) WindHorse 00:18, 15 June 2007 (EDT)

• Keep. I agree that this information would fit better into our current hierarchy if it was added to individual guides, but I'd rather see us encourage an enthusiastic contributor who is adding useful information instead of saying "that doesn't fit so let's get rid of it". Let's let the article grow and revisit this discussion in the future when we either a) have a very useful article that can also be mined to help populate other articles or b) have an incomplete article that still contains a bunch of useful information that can be merged into other articles. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 01:21, 15 June 2007 (EDT)

I'm still not convinced that this makes sense as it's own article. I'm all for eccentric travel topics and all, but I don't think this even fits under that. In fact I don't think this is a travel topic at all. This is an attempt to reorganize information on places to see and sleep in a really odd way, or at least in a way that isn't consistent with how the rest of Wikivoyage is being organized. If this was stuff that didn't fit within our usual style of structuring articles then fine, but I can't see why it's exceptional in any way. We've managed to make guides to the other 49 states without grouping see and sleep listings like this, so why is Ohio any different? Again, I wouldn't be against a separate article that lists and has pointers to the state parks (like Ohio State Parks), but leaving this one as is would be setting a precedent that, to me anyway, leads to chaos in the way we organize things. Can anyone give even one example of a lodge that doesn't fit nicely into a region article or the "get out" section of a city/town article? Deer Creek, for instance, is only 30 minutes outside of Columbus, and can be (and is) listed in Columbus#Go next. Any of the lodges that are within a state park should just be listed in the article for that state park. If lodges are really something to behold in Ohio then a paragraph about it on Ohio#Sleep would make sense, leaving the actual listings in the relevant articles as we always do. I don't want to discourage an enthusiastic contributor at all, but as we do with many others, we should be guiding them towards placing their enthusiastic info into the appropriate places, as we do all the time. So after more thought, my vote is to create Ohio State Parks and merge the lodges into the appropriate articles – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 01:44, 15 June 2007 (EDT)

Yeah, Cacahuate makes some good points. I assumed that Ohio Lodges are a something special that people might specifically seek out as places to stay, such as, perhaps, mansion houses in the UK, palaces in India or log cabins in Yukon (sorry for the stereo types!). If not, then they should be merged into the appropriate city or regional article and perhaps 2old could offer his expertise in doing that. Ohio State Parks should, however, be an independent travel topic article. In short, keep if the lodges are something unique that might be specifically sought out (perhaps under the simpler title of 'Ohio Lodges'). Merge if they are not, but Keep Ohio State Parks. (WT-en) WindHorse 02:07, 15 June 2007 (EDT)

• Delete the page, however, move the content. Specifically, I'd move the content to the regional guides under the "Other Destination" header. Redirecting the page doesn't make a whole lot of sense, because there's no way we can redirect the page to multiple guides. As best as I can recall, I've only visited two state parks – Stone Lick and Little Miami Bike Trail. Ohio has 74 state parks and one guide is not the place to list all 74 state parks and describe activities and lodging that's available at each and every park. I'd also suggest creating a few articles for the parks that deserve an article, otherwise they deserve an honorable mention in the nearest destination's guide. -- (WT-en) Sapphire • (Talk) • 23:52, 15 June 2007 (EDT)

• Keep as Ohio State Parks. Once there is enough info on a given park to justify a separate article, do that. At some point this process may reduce this article to an overview/index article, but for now it is better to have info here than to create many two-line park articles. Link to this, and maybe to the most important parks, from Ohio and to park articles from nearby cities as well as from here. An overview of lodges here is fine, but put info on specific lodges under the relevant park, either in a separate article or a section of this one. (WT-en) Pashley 22:43, 17 June 2007 (EDT)

I think an "Ohio State Parks" guide is useless. It doesn't help the traveler. Any such article would not be helpful because it would not be easy for the traveler to easily determine in which region of Ohio the park is in – that's why it's best to delete the article, and move information to Ohio's regional and county guides under the "Other Destination" header. That way, when a traveler is stuck in some shithole village he/she can look up the guide to the county and see that Ohio State Park X is in the same county. -- (WT-en) Sapphire • (Talk) • 22:56, 17 June 2007 (EDT)

The only way I see the article to be useful is if it's just an overview with pointers... I think it's much more important for the info to be in the actual guides... the appropriate region article or the "get out" section of the nearest likely town. Something similar to African National Parks or Indian National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries, which are basically just an organized list... and a one liner about the park could be added. I suppose this could be helpful to someone wanting to figure out what's available national park-wise in Ohio, but beyond that, the actual info should be in the same places that we always put this stuff. – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 23:15, 17 June 2007 (EDT)

I basically agree with Cacahuate, but have to disagree with Andrew—it would at least be useful to (WT-en) this traveler. I know on my fairly recent month-and-a-half long beard-growing travels throughout Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and Colorado one of the first questions that came up in my mind was, "which State parks warrant visits?" To some extent we can cover this sort of question in the state "Other destinations" section, but in practice travel guides just point you toward the big national attractions. I think that this article should restrict itself to brief overviews of linked destinations (they should have their main entries solely within the hierarchy, so that we don't have to maintain double entries), but I definitely like having travel topics sort out, well, travel topics so that an interested traveler can figure out what is important within that topic without having to navigate the entire regional hierarchy just looking for, say, park information. A good example of how this sort of an article is this one little park in Connecticut, Devil's Hopyard State Park, that has a beautiful waterfall. A waterfall fan like myself would waste a lot of time trying to find this by trying to wade through the hierarchy, and it is probably too small and unimportant to list under "Other destinations" for the state page, but an entry on a "state parks" travel topic could point me there with, "'''[[Some obscure region#Other destinations|Devil's Hopyard State Park]]''' — a nice little park with one of CT's prettiest waterfalls."

On another note, I think we are probably only having this discussion because we haven't come close to consensus on understanding what our travel topics actually are. Right now, the only "consensus" is that they constitute some sort of "leftover article" category. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 23:31, 17 June 2007 (EDT)

• • Wow. Sorry for being such a brain drain. My main reasons for participation are 1. I enjoy it. 2. I own a business and employ five other computer users. When I am doing this, they all think I am busy and leave me alone. Works great. Back to the issue. I have viewed a number of State pages. It is apparent you are lacking a plan for State Parks, Lodges and Museums. If you choose to leave this information on a page like the one I have created (and maybe wish I had not). I agree with those who think that it should be A. Lodges and then B. State Parks and that information should be on the closest hmmm destination. I would also suggest that areas like Washington DC with a lot of Museums, have the museums condensed to a page like this. Make sure you are clear how you want this because I am looking to do the same thing on California and really do not want to stir things up again. I have dropped any idea of doing "Ohio Covered Bridges". To those comparing these to Palaces, No, not quite a Palace. Think, 150-200 room very nice hotel, with bar, pool, meeting rooms located in the middle of a forest, most likely near a beach or lake. And last, some of this thought is determined by the scale on the map you are looking at. I look at the surrounding area of where I am going in detail, very closely before leaving, so I look at the detail. (WT-en) 2old 10:05, 18 June 2007 (EDT)

I'm in favor of keeping the list of parks as pointers. Ideally, they should be listed as other destinations on the main article. However, as there are often too many, opening up a separate 'travel topic' for pointers acts as a kind of overflow. As Peter said, many people specifically seek out national parks when they are new to a region and having them listed in this way saves having to search through the hierarchy. I think that we are moving towards a consensus of deleting State Lodges and merging the content. Anyway, 2old, I'm glad that Wikivoyage has provided you with a means to fool your colleagues that you are busy - I like it. Hopefully, they won't stumble across your contributor page! (WT-en) WindHorse 10:39, 18 June 2007 (EDT)

Delete This doesn't seem like a destination or particularly useful travel topic to me. User:(WT-en) XxX 11:58, 02 July 2007 (EDT)

Delete I agree with that this is not an interesting travel topic -> get ride of it!!! —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) Rachel52 (talk • contribs)

• Bump. This has been under discussion for a lot longer than we usually give our VFDs, but I sure don't see much consensus. My inclination is to keep it for the time being; it seems to have morphed into a travel topic, in which form it (just barely) meets the criteria for keeping. Whether it's an "interesting" travel topic or not, IMO, isn't under consideration, since interest is in the eye of the beholder; what counts is whether it fits as a travel topic. Anybody want to make one last dissent before I archive the incredibly long debate? -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 22:17, 14 July 2007 (EDT)

What we need is consensus to keep, which we don't have... so under the "guilty until proven innocent" policy, this would qualify for deletion. Ryan voted to keep based on not scaring off an enthusiastic contributor... and Tom voted to keep it as is, while Sapphire voted to delete it altogether. As above, I vote for extracting the lodges from the page and making sure they're in their appropriate homes (the city/region article that they're in/near), and then moving the article to Ohio State Parks. WindHorse, Pashley, Peter and Jani seem to agree with me on that... we just need someone to take action – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 02:53, 15 July 2007 (EDT)

Ok, I went ahead and did all of the work based on what I think the general consensus is... but haven't touched the lodges & state parks article. All of the intro info has been copied into Ohio's Other dest and Sleep sections, and I created Ohio State Parks and copied the list into there. I copied the lodges to Talk:Ohio with a request that someone familiar with Ohio put them in the appropriate city/district articles. – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 03:42, 15 July 2007 (EDT)

Hmmm. Well, I think this is a good resolution, and with hindsight, this is the way I would have done it. I will complete the text once I find my list again, somehow it's missing and I bet (WT-en) Jpatokal took it. Just kidding. I may have to obtain a new one. The article was never intended to be all that interesting, but informative to the traveler (what the site is for). It's a big old world and there is a lot to enter. So back to work!!! (By the way, some of these parks are located in rural areas, in destinations that have not been created yet. But the intent was to also place them there once the appropriate spot was available.)(WT-en) 2old 11:14, 16 July 2007 (EDT)

Yay, I'm glad we came to a peaceful resolution  :) – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 11:30, 16 July 2007 (EDT)

I think you are correct that Jpatokal took the list and, what's worse, he's probably hidden it on one of those lodges. Ha Ha. Good luck reconstructing the article. (WT-en) WindHorse 11:37, 16 July 2007 (EDT)

okeedohkee. All lodges have been relocated - All info has been gleaned from Ohio Lodges and State Parks. May it rest in peace. The new page Ohio State Parks is under renovation to comply with the Ohio division by the site map. (can not complete this until I know which county.) I have found my list. On the new page I will be adding the County it is located in, as part of the address. Dunno how anyone would find it without that. (WT-en) 2old 12:34, 18 July 2007 (EDT)

Guide status

I have upgraded to guide status per WV:Travel topic status. I may have missed some important information that was omitted, or other missing criteria according to that page, but to me it looks good enough to be a guide article. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:43, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Downgrade to usable?

While this is certainly a good article, unfortunately, I don't agree that a long list should be a guide article. I should be clear, that I don't have an issue with the redlinks here – they can eventually be developed. My primary concern is that there is no generalized information about what you can do as a whole in the state parks in Ohio. As an example, looking at Finnish national parks, it contains a lot of redlinks, but in my opinion, it is much more useful than this article, because it tells what a traveler can do in Finnish national parks, information about eating and drinking, sleep information and general etiquette in national parks albeit it only being usable which I have been using as inspiration in developing Tasmanian national parks. However, on the other hand, this article doesn't seem to have any of it, and only lists what facilities there are in each park. I don't deny to all the contributors of this article that you've done a good job, but it needs more work to become a guide article IMO. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 00:42, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

It is also worth noting that the article has just been slushed for ftt by Yvwv. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 00:51, 5 March 2022 (UTC)