Talk:Washington, D.C./National Mall

Star nomination

The Mall is regularly put in the top five of lists of the world's most visited attractions, so it's desirable that we cover this one well. It's an odd district article, since it's basically a city park, and thus an exception to our usual rules about what does not get an article, so I'm not as confident as usual that this will pass the star nomination process, although I do feel it should.

I perused the other travel guides to see how they handled their Mall chapters, and I found that basically all of them are very similar to ours in terms of breadth and depth, with the one exception of the Rough Guide [1], which devotes something like 2–3 pages per museum/memorial! So they are describing the individual exhibits in detail, including temporary exhibits, and providing maps of the bigger museums. This is something that we could do, but I don't know if we should (it struck me as overkill): keeping exhibit information and maps up to date would be very work-intensive, so this route might leave us with perennially out of date information; we'd also be duplicating the free maps and exhibit information brochures right at the entrance to all the museums. For these reasons, we've decided against attraction maps for museums in the past.

So in sum, I'm nominating this article largely because I'm curious whether others think we are currently handling the Mall article properly—if we are, I think it's a star. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 06:26, 13 October 2009 (EDT)

• Support. It is very good. I have never been there, and I hate cities, but after reading the guide I am quite keen. There are a few issues with grammar, like "Not content to reside only on the document itself, their signatures have been reproduced here, etched in large granite blocks." but otherwise I like it. I have no idea of whether it is complete, as my ignorance of the place is almost total. It does seem to be a destination in its own right and there is certainly enough content for a stand-alone article. As a district it is somewhat unusual in that you cant sleep there or buy much, or by the look of things, drink at all. Nevertheless I can't see offhand how better to handle the article so I will support it as an exception. (WT-en) Pbsouthwood 08:58, 13 October 2009 (EDT)
  • The grammar of that sentence looks fine to me. (WT-en) LtPowers 09:05, 13 October 2009 (EDT)

What is it that is not content? The signatures? Not a big issue though. (WT-en) Pbsouthwood 10:22, 13 October 2009 (EDT)

Yes. Anthropomorphizing their signatures is an odd thing to do, but with all the writing in the D.C. guide, I need the occasional eccentric turn of phrase to keep from going to sleep ;) --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 10:31, 13 October 2009 (EDT)

• Support. "Can you sleep there?" is a rule of thumb only; it is merely a means to an end. The "end", in this case, is distinguishing an attraction from a destination. While the National Mall may sit on the wide border between these two categories, I see no reason it shouldn't get its own travel guide. (That goes for just about any such location; if we can write a decent travel guide on it, we should.) (WT-en) LtPowers 14:53, 13 October 2009 (EDT)
  • Oh, just a note, though -- I assume you realize that the Supreme Court's location wasn't really considered as part of the original plan, right? There's one bit in there that implies otherwise, so I just wanted to make double-sure. (WT-en) LtPowers 14:55, 13 October 2009 (EDT)
• Support. Any article which mentions Stephen Colbert is good in my book. ;) It's really well-written and seems pretty thorough. And I'm not bothered at all by the fact that you can't sleep there - I think there's too much to see here to realistically pack it all into an adjacent district article. On a similiar note, I wonder how making this a star will impact our feelings on articles like Central Park? (WT-en) PerryPlanet ^Talk 17:38, 13 October 2009 (EDT)
• Support. An extremely well written article which makes me wish I had made an effort to spend time at the National Mall during several past visits to Washington. Some nice quirky touches Peter, superb map and top class imagery.--(WT-en) Burmesedays 10:41, 19 October 2009 (EDT)

Alternative banner for this article?

Banner currently used in this article

Suggested new alternative banner

I created a new alternative banner for this article (I initially created it first and foremost so that it would be used at the top of the parallel article in the Hebrew edition of Wikivoyage, yet I later decided to also suggest that the English Wikivoyage community would consider using it here as well). So, which banner do you prefer having at the top of this article? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 05:52, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

The new banner is an extremely common and iconic image of DC, but the current banner is a better composition, so I'd vote to keep it. But perhaps the source of the new banner could be used in the article, which lacks an image of the obelisk and reflecting pool. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:09, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Current Syced (talk) 07:53, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

• MLK memorial.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 14:37, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Replaced at Wikidata with a de minimis photo. ARR8 (talk | contribs) 16:57, 5 May 2019 (UTC)