Talk:Pipe Spring National Monument

Not a destination (?)

I question whether this is a destination. You can't sleep there, and there's not enough to do at it to justify a stand-alone on other grounds. Information on similarly minor national monuments is incorporated into city and region articles; so should this one be, unless I'm missing something. Please discuss; VFD nomination coming unless somebody sees something that I don't. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 15:04, 23 November 2006 (EST)

On second thought, this is just redirected to the region -- no reason to make a fuss. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 13:40, 24 November 2006 (EST)

I am not sure why we can't leave this as an article and develop it. It seems to have some good information and a lot more could be added. But, if it is going to be a redirect the information should be moved to the redirected article. -- (WT-en) Tom Holland (xltel) 16:05, 24 November 2006 (EST)

Well, the thing is, Pipe Spring is a wide-spot-in-the-road national monument, not a stay-three-days-and-explore national monument (e.g. Bandelier National Monument, where one can easily spend five or six days backpacking -- spending six hours at Pipe Spring would strain the average attention span). The convention that seems to have developed regarding national monuments is that "major" ones get articles, "minor" ones get mentioned in other articles. There's plenty of room for discussion as to where the boundary between major and minor lies, but only a real zealot would call this one major. As for the "content" part, there was less to the original article than meets the eye; it's reasonable to transfer the contact info, however, and that has been done.

The tendency of the National Park Service to proclaim incredibly disparate things all to be "national monuments" is bound to create debate as to whether a particular monument is a "destination," not to mention confusion among people not used to wandering the national monuments. With this one, however, there really is not much justification for calling it a destination. Suggest a followup discussion on Talk:United States National Parks regarding the major/minor break point if you're so inclined; the number of western national parks and monuments that I'm familiar with runs to many dozens, if not hundreds, and I'd be happy to participate. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 17:06, 24 November 2006 (EST)

I favor keeping it as a destination, simply because Pipe Spring in a very remote location geographically and there is no nearby city to append its listing to (Fredonia, which has no entry, and Colorado City are the only towns nearby). Also, I think that wikivoyage can only benefit from having more information. Pipe Spring is indeed not a "destination" park but I spent a few hours there and I believe there is camping nearby. Granted, my visit was a few years ago and my recollections getting dim -- so perhaps linking to the National Park Service's official Pipe Spring site is the best bet for now. If there is interest we could colaborate on a page. (WT-en) SONORAMA 09:57, 25 November 2006 (EST)

In my opinion the "correct" solution (as in, the one consistent with the way other places like this are handled) is to go ahead and create a Fredonia (Arizona) page, and then make Pipe Spring one of the items there, under "Do" or "Get out". The step that I took, of redirecting to North (Arizona), is an interim measure until the Fredonia page is created. I may have some time today to look into that. But if it's not a "destination park," I don't think it should be treated as a destination. As for camping, if there's camping in the park -- contrary to what the web site implies -- then that changes things as regards it being a destination, according to the de-facto standard that's emerging. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 11:31, 25 November 2006 (EST)

Another attempt at a Pipe Spring article

I have made another attempt at an article for Pipe Spring. Almost all of the current content came from the NPS site, which is acceptable. I believe visitors can add and modify it to make it even better. Most are aware that I believe small locations can have their own article and this one falls in to that catagory. That said, I don't have any quest here and if there is a concensus to not have this article I will support that. It is just that I believe that smaller locations should be able to have their own article. I am realistic also, crossroads do not count and should be deleted. My def of a crossroad is there is nothing there but a maybe a store and no town or local population. Does anyone have comment on the usefulness of this article? Should we keep it or redirect? -- (WT-en) Tom Holland (xltel) 11:06, 2 December 2006 (EST)

Tom, your article looks great. Thanks for taking the effort. (WT-en) SONORAMA 01:44, 3 December 2006 (EST)