Talk:United States National Trails System

map

We need to import the map for this at: http://www.nps.gov/ncrc/programs/nts/maps.html US federal agency, so is public domain. Nicole Sharp (talk) 01:56, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

PartOfTopic

The PartOfTopic template doesn't seem to be working. What am I doing wrong? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 19:26, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

US historic trails

Moved from User talk:Mx. Granger

How useful is it to have a stub itinerary with absolutely zero info for travellers, as opposed to a page with all US historic trails in it, albeit under construction (this was proposed by Ground Zero)? If you're going to say no, then don't brush off with an edit summary like this (which was a completely valid reason for me to redirect). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 13:35, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

We already have an article that lists US National Historic Trails: United States National Trails System. I would suggest expanding that article rather than creating a new redundant one. It is surely confusing to readers to have two separate articles listing US National Historic Trails.

As for the itineraries – I think each of these trails merits its own itinerary article, and we would serve our readers much better by improving the existing itineraries with detailed information rather than merging them all together. —Granger (talk · contribs) 13:39, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

That would be ideal, but unless someone is willing to work on them, they will sit around, not providing very much useful information to travellers, but giving new readers the impression that WV is not a useful site. I have proposed merging them because it is more useful to travellers to consolidate small amounts on information into larger articles where it can be more easily scanned. If at a later date someone can expand the information, then it will be easy to break them out into separate articles. Ground Zero (talk) 14:33, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Ideally people starting a guide would work on it until it is at least usable or close to usable. That is what our one-year rule presumes, and it additionally presumes that for sufficiently famous trails somebody else will finish that work if the original author does not. Unfortunately that does not work.

With a small number of outlines, it is not a big problem: people understand that on a wiki you will occasionally stumble upon extremely weak articles. However, if you click a few links and all are weak, then you might want to go elsewhere for information. Redirecting isn't really a solution, as you will still have the bluelinks. Thus, if a stub is created and not deleted, you have to unlink the trails, which makes it less probable that someone (hopefully with real knowledge) creates the article. Which means weak outlines should not be created and might need to be deleted.

I think Trail of Tears National Historic Trail has enough information that it is more use as a page than as a redirect. The solution in this case would be to make some of the historic trails reach guide or nearly guide status. Now the trails bluelinked from the page are divided about equally among stub, outline, usable and guide. With the stubs deleted I think that is a sufficient proportion usable that it does not scare readers away. Perhaps the stubs could be moved to a subpage of their talk, for attribution of merged content and as a start for any new work on them. Any work on the itineraries should aim at getting one more up to usable or guide status, not at creating more outlines.

–LPfi (talk) 15:38, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

I'd say having half the itineraries usable would suffice, except that they aren't evenly distributed, and therefore, if the stubs are made into outlines and kept, at least one of them should be brought up to usable. –LPfi (talk) 15:47, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

For the stubs I nominated for merging, I had contacted the creator to ask if they were planning to expand the articles. They said it should be done by someone else who knows more about the subject, so, no, the creator was not interested in working them up to usable status. In part, I nominated these articles to be merged to discourage more stub creation.

The one-year rule applies to deletion of articles. I did not propose them at VfD because there is some content worth keeping, and these are reasonable topics for search and for linking. Redirecting readers to the US NHT article that will have at least a bit of information is a better solution that deletion, I think. Ground Zero (talk) 16:09, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

I agree that it's better not to create articles unless you have some useful information to put in them. But I'm concerned that if we merge all of these itineraries into one article, it suggests that that's how we intend to present the information about the routes, and, I think, discourages the creation of useful articles about them. For articles that have no substantive information at all, I don't mind deletion (though for official trails like these that would be contrary to the spirit of "don't delete real places").

Does anyone want to defend keeping United States Historic Trails as a separate article from United States National Trails System? If not, let's merge it. —Granger (talk · contribs) 16:14, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't agree that "merg[ing] all of these itineraries into one article... suggests that that's how we intend to present the information about the routes". We have guide articles like Oregon Trail and usable articles like Lewis and Clark Trail and Santa Fe Trail. I do not think anyone would suggest merging them.

No, I don't see the point in keeping United States Historic Trails separate from United States National Trails System Ground Zero. And I am working on Trail of Tears National Historic Trail to get it to a usable level. Ground Zero (talk) 16:41, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Each individual national trail has plenty of source material to be notable, and to get its own Wikivoyage article over time. Starting an article for an individual trail is a good way to link it to other Wikivoyage and Wikimedia objects, such as the corresponding Wikipedia article. The United States Historic Trails page seems superfluous. /Yvwv (talk) 16:48, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

I've been working for the past few months to improve, merge, or delete very short articles. I expect that the people who created these articles — many of them as far back as 2008 — also believed that "somebody else" would come along and turn their stubs into useful articles. History has proven them wrong. If the individual trails do have enough source material usable, please show that by adding that material. If you aren't able to show that, then maybe you should leave creating new historical trail articles to people who are more familiar with the subject matter. Ground Zero (talk) 17:07, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Well, the original idea was to merge it all into one, and United States National Trails System was in a similar state to most of these stub articles. Per what GZ mentioned above, "the creator was not interested in working them up to usable status", so technically there was good reason for me to do it. But consensus here seems to go against having two separate articles, so hence my self revert. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 21:52, 10 October 2021 (UTC)