Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Canada Roads/Ontario/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2

Notes

Any discussions, regarding the project (about future timelines, project's progress, or anyone having difficulties regarding this project, please leave a message here. Some member would reply to you as soon as possible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by The Canadian Roadgeek (talk • contribs) 18:19, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

If the discussion matter is an urgent one, please feel free to leave a message at User talk:Smcafirst or User:Smcafirst/WP:GHR Message Centre. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by The Canadian Roadgeek (talk • contribs) 03:15, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Images

This is a great idea about having the county road symbols....just two things wrong with them: the road digits are slightly too thick (bolded)...and YORK should be on top, while REGION should be on the bottom. The Legendary RaccoonFox • Talk • Stalk 01:12, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of Regional Road shields, I have made shields for every single active Regional Road in Niagara at this time. There is probably close to 100 of them. Does Wikipedia have a batch upload feature, as I can't see myself being able to upload each and every one individually.
Also, I apologize for taking such a looooooong time to contact you guys, but yeah, I would love to joint he project.
Take Care all,
Snickerdo 19:55, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Whoa, Nelly!

Do we really need this depth of coverage on roads in your region? How about one article that covers the various major highways in the region? If there is enough material on a particular highway to have a separate article, then that's fine. You can put a line in individual town articles saying what highways pass through them, with a link or links to them. And then you are done. If you have all these categories, people are going to start thinking that we need articles on local streets and such, and that way lies madness. My advice: ditch all the "Roads in..." categories, and just have a "List of highways in the Golden Horseshoe" article, if there is some justification for having that instead of a "List of highways in Ontario". --Brianyoumans 22:26, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 15:53, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Overcategorization

I have made some nominations at WP:CfD to merge the Roads in City Categories into the Roads in Region Categories. It doesn't make sense to categorize a road by all of the cities it passes through. It would make more sense to list the cities in the article and to list the roads in the article about the city. If as you work through the project you find that you have more than 200 roads in a region category, then it may be time to start sorting the ones that are contained within cities in that region into subcategories. You are not yet close to that point, with it unlikely that you have 200 roads in the entire Category:Ontario roads structure. You can find the discussions at:

I have decided that I am not going to propose any further merges until we see the results of these four. ~ BigrTex 18:35, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Template:Roads in Markham merger to Template:York Regional Roads

I believe that the Roads in Markham template should merge into the York Regional Roads template because Markham, Ontario is in York Region and there are many overlaps with the two. Otherwise, remove the redundant links in the Markham template. Please do the same with the other municipalities. Johnny Au 00:10, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Some of the roads in Markham are not Regional Roads, so the merged template should be renamed {{Roads in York Region}}. –Pomte 00:21, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
I strongly disagree. What is the point of doing so? It will just cluster up all the templates, making it VERY hard to read.  Smcafirst | Chit-Chat | SIGN  posted at 01:04, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
There are only 2 templates for merging that I see, with 2 redundant rows, making it harder to understand at articles like York Regional Road 1, I think. Here is how a merge would look:
–Pomte 05:37, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
But when we start to make articles on roads in Vaughan, or on any other roads in York Region, such as Newmarket, Aurora, and Richmond Hill. The template will be TERRIBLY clustered up.  Smcafirst | Chit-Chat | SIGN  posted at 20:24, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Yorkregionseal.PNG

Image:Yorkregionseal.PNG is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot 11:56, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

County Road shields

Hello. I have several highway and county road shields listed at List_of_roads_in_Essex_County,_Ontario, and i was wondering if you could help me out in eventually creating SVG-eqvivalent images of them. I was hoping to have them all just like Image:York Regional Road 49.svg in shape (instead of having the small zig-zags that mine do. Thanks for taking the time to read my message! :) RingtailedFox • Talk • Stalk 21:07, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Template:Ontario King's Highways

The template has been put into a deletion discussion see: Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:Ontario_King.27s_HighwaysJForget 18:38, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Template:Roads in Ontario Cities

Another template for deletion by the same user arguing that templates inside templates are not good. See: the discussion--JForget 19:09, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Issues to consider

I've updated the suggested sample article page, which had issues regarding style, duplicate info, and extraneous trivia. It appears that many of the articles generated by this project are nothing more than a list of things along the road in question, and contains little encyclopedic information. If we're to have articles about roads on WP, we should at least ensure they meet minimum quality standards.

It also appears that this project as a whole would be better off if integrated within the scope of WikiProject Canada Roads, instead of as a side-project. Currently, this project has a few sub-pages, most of them ignored for at least a year, indicating that there's little activity regarding them (for example, Wikipedia:WikiProject Golden Horseshoe Roads/Outreach Department). Moreover, most (but not all) of the discussion on this page have been ignored. I'm not certain how many active participants there are here, but in my opinion, this project would benefit by being folded into WikiProject Canada Roads, providing more editors for copyediting and other tasks, and ensuring common standards for all Canadian roads. Mindmatrix 22:30, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

It's been two months, and there's been no reply to my queries. Is this project active? Mindmatrix 23:02, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
I also believe that this project is barely active with us being among the most active. Even The Canadian Roadgeek (formerly known as Smcafirst), who is a major contributor, last went on Wikipedia more than a week ago. Johnny Au (talk) 23:04, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
I'd note that this particular project has previously been criticized for being excessively bureaucratic in its structure and for maintaining non-encyclopedic content standards (including the creation of articles on non-notable residential cul-de-sacs, the refusal to even discuss questions like why the portions of Yonge Street or Kennedy Road that lay within York Region would need separate articles from the portions that lay within Toronto, the arbitrary hijacking of existing navbox templates to serve its own purposes instead of the purposes they were originally created for in the first place, etc.) We've even seen at least one editor actually quit the larger Canada Roads Project in part because of the practices of this particular subproject. Quite a bit of TCR's past work has gotten undone, revised and/or challenged because of its lack of adherence to actual Wikipedia policies and guidelines, and while I don't know this for sure, I suspect they've been cutting back their involvement due to being discouraged and upset by that.
I'd agree, however, that we don't really need a separate subproject for roads in one particular geographic subregion of a province — this should be integrated into the Canada Roads project. If the main project feels that subgroups would be helpful, then roll this into an Ontario-wide roads subproject instead, but certainly nothing smaller or more specialized than that. This region's road articles just don't have any needs so unique, so distinct from the needs of road articles in Ottawa, Sudbury, Thunder Bay or even Calgary, that they would require the attention of a separate project all to themselves. And even if for some reason we did keep this subproject in place, its standards and practices would definitely need to be revised for consistency with those of the larger project and with Wikipedia policies around notability and sources. Bearcat (talk) 23:23, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
No wonder why is this WikiProject is not busy. I agree that this should merge with the Ontario Roads WikiProject. Why are Markham's streets so well represented, despite having a population one-tenths of Toronto's? It may be because the project coordinator, The Canadian Roadgeek, is from Markham. As a result, other regions' streets are quite underrepresented. For example, Mt. Pleasant Road, Lansdowne Avenue, and O'Connor Drive are more notable than Bur Oak Avenue, which is a mere residential street, while the aforementioned three are major thoroughfares. Even Vaughan Road, which is also another mere residential street, is more notable than Bur Oak Avenue, since Vaughan Road is created in the 1840s and 1850s, while Bur Oak Avenue did not exist in the late 1990s. If Bur Oak Avenue can have an article, why not Marlee Avenue, Glencairn Avenue, or Rogers Road, all of which are mere local collector routes that have very little notability? Fred Varley Drive is just as notable as Homewood Avenue or Palmerston Boulevard, both in Old Toronto, for historic reasons. As a result, I shall propose the deletion of Bur Oak Avenue, Rodick Road (Markham, Ontario), and John Street, Markham, since they do not qualify for WP:50k; there should be no more than six articles about individual streets in Markham. As stated in the open letter from USRD, quality is more important than quantity, justifying the deletion of three articles regarding Markham streets. Johnny Au (talk) 02:00, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
There isn't currently an Ontario Roads subproject; that was merely a suggestion for how the Canada project could be subdivided if people feel that some kind of subgrouping would be useful. And while I wholly agree that the roads you've identified aren't notable and should probably be deleted, I would note that 50k is a user essay, not a binding policy. So while the Markham roads definitely need a review for notability (Castlemore Avenue (Markham, Ontario) should almost certainly go into the trash compactor as well), we're not inherently required to whittle them down to just six. Bearcat (talk) 16:46, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Another one for this project's file of wikisins: self-rating articles as A-class? When they're not even close to meeting A-class requirements? Bearcat (talk) 15:30, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 05:32, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Problem with article qualities page

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Golden_Horseshoe_Roads/Articles'_Qualities seems to be messed up strangely... I tried editting it to fix this, but it has a mind of its own. All the links go to the list of "x" articles for the whole encyclopedia, and not just for this project. The links you see in "edit" are all proper. When you submit this however, the resulting links aren't the same as typed in, they're still to "x" quality articles for the whole encyclopedia.

Very confusing to explain, hopefully someone can see what I mean. - Floydian α ß 19:00, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:22, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Can we delete this group?

I haven't seen an active participant here since July, when I wandered in. While I'm certain a lot of work went into this project, it's a confusing mess. Members have a probation period before they are allowed in? Phases that are 3 and 1/2 years behind schedule?

If I get no response in a week, I'll nominate it. Lets try to consolidate into WP:CRWP so that we can develop some standards and bring our articles up to something encyclopedic. I've managed to get Roadscholar.on.ca (John Shragge) accepted as a reliable source, and am trying to get thekingshighway.com (Caameron Bevers) to be considered the same. With these two website we should be able to have at least several footnotes for every King's Highway article. Length, routing, formation date, etc. can all be referenced from there. I am rewriting Highway 401 completely, removing all the junk and then nominating it for featured article status (hopefully). Finally, I have designed {{Infobox Ontario road}}, which should be applied to every provincial highway, every county road article, and every street in Toronto (I've gone ahead and added it to Yonge Street to start). - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 17:07, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

The fact that this should be rolled into WP:CRWP was discussed about two years ago, as you can see further back on the discussion page — and this group was already more or less dead by the time that happened. So no, don't wait. Just go forward with merging it. As for the infobox, Wikipedia has really tried to get away from having multiple separate infoboxes to serve exactly the same purpose in different jurisdictions — so unless there's a really compelling reason why Ontario somehow needs something that the generic road infobox can't provide, we should be just using the generic infobox rather than making our own special one. Bearcat (talk) 23:04, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Every province with numbered routes but Ontario use the normal infobox road. Can't we just keep one infobox. No damn US / Canada semantics. I started the Canada project now almost 4 years back. There are changes being made, and I do support canning this embarrassment. Honestly, the infobox for Ontario is a blue & white eyesore. I do believe the infobox needs to be canned in favor of what the other 12 provinces do. As a bonus, the other 12 provinces are getting upgraded for usability :) - Can we just keep Ontario like the other 12?Mitch32(We the people in order to form a more perfect union.) 7:00 pm, Today (UTC−5)
There is, mostly the fact that unlike subjects such as rivers, or mountains, or whatever, roads can differ hugely in standards, levels, and many other factors from jurisdiction to juridiction, the county road system doesn't work with infobox road and because WP:USRD has taken it upon themselves to lock it and become the consensus-makers for it. So far I've had unanimous support for it from the editors that work on Ontario pages. Infobox road also just looks plain ugly. European roads have their own infoboxes for each country (and Ontario is comparable in size to half of Europe), so nothing makes infobox road THE standard, besides the overwhelming majority of road editors being from the US, where it is used. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 00:01, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Infobox road is in upgrades as we speak for the other 12 provinces. The stuck up attitudes that most Ontario editors have given over the last 4 years has not been helpful. We are working infobox road to be worldwide-working. I refuse conversion for the other 12 provinces and Ontario should not be exempted.Mitch32(We the people in order to form a more perfect union.) 00:07, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
The ways in which roads really, truly differ from one jurisdiction to another aren't things that are actually reflected in the infobox anyway — and if we do have a need that the standard infobox isn't covering right now, we can ask to have it added as a feature. And oh, the infobox doesn't work with county roads? Coulda fooled me. Twice, even. Bearcat (talk) 00:19, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
You would be correct see: Tecumseh Road (Windsor, Ontario) - Essex CR 2 infobox. Highway 114 (Ontario) - Works with 3 shields.Mitch32(We the people in order to form a more perfect union.) 00:22, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Niether does the American ownership attitude. Until the rest of the world is forced to use Infobox road, I don't see what makes Ontario unique. See Kawartha Lakes Road 8 for a county road with a working browse system (that doesn't ONLY link to "Ontario Provincial Highways" no matter what browse_type is set to), visible CORRECT shields (as opposed to outlines with a number), and a complete infobox as opposed to a partial one. See Highway 407 (Ontario) for 3 shields.
I think the choice should come down to the editors of the articles in question, because, afterall, I see 200 piles of unsourced speculative garbage, not 200 articles on Ontario roads... And I don't see anybody besides myself working to improve that. I raised the issue of the infobox a while ago (over a month) and nobody responded. I then raised it with three editors of Toronto and Ontario roads, who all liked the new infobox. Infobox road WORKS on county road pages, but it doesn't work with the county road system (for example, see Kawartha Lakes Road 8 for a more complete infobox), hence the infobox being totally incomplete. Infobox road breaks WP:COLOR, whereas Infobox Ontario road does not. Infobox road has many options hard set, whereas Infobox Ontario road has every setting customizable (though not necessarily advertised as such), for those odd men out. Infobox road doesn't differentiate a city street from a massive freeway, whereas Infobox Ontario road does. And yes, a blue (or green or yellow or gray) and clean white "mess" as opposed to a white and gray and pink and cyan mess that looks like a kindergarten class got into the pastels. Upgrade infobox road, and covert all the German autobahns and Italian autostrada into Infobox road users, then we'll see. Until then, I'll take the cleaner design (especially in terms of coding) with a few colours over the boring mess. Until simple additions like this aren't contested, I will be converting all the pages (and adding to the many that do not). - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 02:32, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

{{Infobox road}} has some proposed changes on its talk page. The new version being worked on removes the pastels almost completely. The change you wanted can be implemented another way, and always could have been implemented differently. Namely the size issue could have been hard-coded by road type. The proposal you wanted though would have placed the size as a parameter. That parameter could have been misused in several ways. The first is inconsistent usage. The second is to make certain shields way too large, implying a larger importance than necessary. The second way is a problem if the size used is larger than necessary to overcome technical and graphical design limitations. In short, there are things in the works to make the Ontario-specific infobox redundant. Imzadi1979 (talk) 04:34, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure I see how the ability or inability to resize the highway shield in the infobox impacts on its usefulness to Ontario roads. How exactly do you suppose that Ontario roads need that proposed feature so much more than roads in other places, such that it would constitute an "American ownership" issue that compromises our ability to use it in Ontario? How is it an Ontario-specific issue that makes the generic infobox so much less useful to us that we need our own special infobox instead? Bearcat (talk) 01:44, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
If you can't read the number, the use of the shields would violate the manual of style (which the generic infobox currently does as well with its pastel colours). Nothing needs to be. The shield issue is because of both the King's Highway shields, as well as that the county shields become unreadable at 20x20 when using the proper MUTCD font and proportions as on the real signs. Why do we need to prevent size changes to the shields? Are we that lazy that we can't revert the minimal vandalism that comes with it? Consensus here at this point is to use the Ontario infobox. It's cleaner, works better with our roads, and uses far less code to produce the same results. The browse routes section works with our system (and can be customized much further than the generic template.
In short, it's a superior template. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 05:16, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
No, it's a different template. There's no "American ownership" of the template, per se. It was developed by USRD, which is an older, and in a sense, more mature project. It was originally developed to amalgamate the infoboxes for the various state projects, and provide an infobox for use on highway articles on Wikipedia globally. Like I said above, there have been plans being batted around to remove the pastels (which are in the default infobox creation template, btw) and clean it up. I wasn't trying to say that Ontario couldn't revert the minimal vandalism that would potentially result from parameters in the template. USRD has over 10,000–12,000 articles with more being created each week. Add to that the total of all of CRWP, INR, etc. and you have a lot of transclusions of the template in the encyclopedia. Changes come slowly because one change to the template will send all of those articles through the job queue for recompilling. (WP:HRT) Some changes are undesirable because while Canada could police all of their articles, the US has seen editors misuse parameters in some of the lesser watched corners of the project.
Now, as for the size of the shields, it has been held that the important quality to be imparted by the shield is not the number in the shield, it's the shape. The number should ALWAYS be present in the form of a wikilink or plain text next to it (MOSFLAG). The shields should be set up with |alt=|link= attributes because they are purely decorative. In fact, at a FAC for a New York article, all of the shields except the one at the top of the infobox were completely removed to satisfy reviewers' concerns about potential MOS violations with no loss of legibility to the article. The shields were restored at a later date when consensus proved they didn't violate the MOS. At a future date, consensus could change again, stripping the shields from articles except at the top of infoboxes. The argument that the SHAPE of the shield, with the number inside the shield as a secondary characteristic, in systems where different classifications (Interstate, US, state, county or primary, secondary, tertiary, county, etc) coexist won the arguments to keep the shield graphics. You should realize that in the US, we've argued with editors who have changed the templates to call versions of the Interstate shield with the state name above the number. These changes have been reverted because at 20-pixel widths, that information is not discernible. The key information imparted was the shape/color of the Interstate shield. Yes, ideally the number should be legible as displayed, but in purely junction list contexts, it won't matter if CR H-58 or CR H-58 is displayed. (The difference is that the first calls up the Alger County, MI H-58 shield and the second calls up the Luce County, MI version. The article link is still the same either way, and the key shape and numerical information is still given. In this case, the number is shown twice between the shield and the link, but in other cases, it might be only shown by way of the link, and the information is still imparted. the MOS doesn't actually require the number in the shield to be legible. (Check MOSFLAG for that one.) Imzadi1979 (talk) 06:53, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
Well yes, we don't need to show the number, and the shape is the reason we're allowed to have them, but that doesn't mean they can't be 2 or 3 pixels larger to make the number legible. The Ontario shield is also very tall and not wide, so it looks terrible with {{jct}} and {{infobox road}}. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 08:14, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
The number should be legible at 20px in width regardless of the proportional height. Having said that, there's been no request made to my knowledge to hard code exceptions to the sizes used by route type. The only requests made were to allow exceptions to be entered on case-by-case basis in each article. In other words, you wanted another parameter that would be globally added allowing the size to be overridden in articles. Never did you consider that the template could be changed to add a switch that looked at the state/province and type and used a different size in specific cases. That would allow your "extra few pixels" for specific shield types, but would not have a parameter out there that could be abused by unscrupulous editors on either side of any border to override any defaults to inappropriate sizes. Imzadi1979 (talk) 08:38, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
And thats impossible to accurately convey with the county road shields due to their shape (but they are fine at 21 or 22px). It works with the bolded png images, but those aren't proportional. Since when did we sacrifice accuracy just for the sake of using the same templates? Yes, I would rather have a customizable template that is prone to occasional abuse by ignorant editors, but that will be so unbelievably minor here that it's not even worth discussing. There are only two things in the infobox with custom size parameters: 1) The icon at the top. For King's Highways, the template overrides what the user does regardless. 2) The browse route section, though only when using the automatic parameters instead of the override (where I often use {{jct}} or {{jcon}} to produce the results. Yes the template could include switches and what not, but it's too complicated to figure out where that is. The sizes should be set in the /shield subtemplate for each jurisdiction, not in /1/2/shield or whatever corner of that maze it's in.
I will never doubt that the US roads project is far more developed than any other. This doesn't make everything done by that group a requirement. Like I said above, give me time and I will have a fresh face of quality on Ontario roads. Right now this group is at rock bottom, so a few experiments won't hurt. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 16:15, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
You're missing my key point here. To be blunt, you blew into town making demands. When you were given reasons why some of your demands were bad, you took it as a US vs. Canada insult. It's not. Rather than ask for alternatives and working with us to make changes, you forked to new templates. This attitude isn't helping your cause. I've thought about doing work in Ontario articles in the future, because the Michigan articles are almost all at C-Class. The remaining 10 articles at Start-Class (no Stubs) contain 5 articles related to the Great Lakes Circle Tours, of which the Superior, Huron and Erie circle tours cross into Canada.
Now, there are people who know the infobox and jct subtemplates well enough to make whatever changes are needed. When I needed support in jct for the older cutout shields in Michigan, I could set that up myself. When I needed help supporting cutouts with "banner plates" (business plates, alternate plates) all I needed was a simple request and it was fixed. It works along the lines of flies, vinegar and honey.
As I said, there is a revamp of the infobox code. As a gesture of good faith, I will ask to get specific size variances supported it the subtemplates. The new infobox already supports the other 9 provinces and 50 US states plus the US territories. What specifics would need to be changed? Imzadi1979 (talk) 16:56, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
Get either of the other two Ontario editors active with me to agree with you.
I use |Hwy=18x24px |#default=21px for jcon, and that should be applied to the ON subtemplates
I will agree on the condition that if changes are needed to support the system, they must be made, otherwise a simpler method will be used. This infobox support everything without issue, and with a sleeker appearance (even if a few people are blinded by anything but black and white), and there is no pressing need to use infobox road (except the desires of the editors that have become accustomed to it). Not to mention the simplicity of the code being contained almost entirely within one template.

Rewrite of Highway 401

I've been rewriting Provincial Highway 401 from the ground up to featured article standards over the past month and a hief. It's nearing completion (though there is still a fair amount of work to be done), and I wanted to see if there was any input before I overwrite the old article? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 03:23, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Coverage map

Please note that File:WP-GHR Coverage.png is flawed and needs to be revised. The unincorporated districts of Northern Ontario have secondary highways rather than county roads — so "county road" coverage will obviously be nonexistent, whereas all of the districts would be coloured either pink (some coverage) or blue (strong coverage) if you were looking for the things that actually exist.

The Rainy River, Kenora, Thunder Bay, Algoma, Timiskaming, Sudbury, Nipissing, Cochrane and Parry Sound districts thus need to be revised in one of two ways:

  1. Using the same colour scheme as the southern divisions, re-evaluate the coverage of secondary highways rather than county roads.
  2. Set them apart using a different colour that isn't currently on the map at all.

And also, please do keep in mind that county roads are not a level at which all roads are automatically notable enough for independent articles; in many cases the list is the most complete coverage that we actually require. Bearcat (talk) 01:53, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm aware of the map. I'm actually remaking it in svg (I don't like these png Ontario maps that are floating around). I'd like it to show the coverage in terms of article quality, but it'd just be a big red Ontario.
I am aware of the county roads thing, hence why I put a big schpiel in about figuring out if a road merits an article. However, if you can properly source a history and route description, you've got a case for an article. Chances are it meets the criteria for coverage by multiple reliable third-party publications by that point. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 16:05, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

All photo's by Averill Hecht can be uploaded to commons

I have contacted Averill Hecht, whose photos appear (or appeared, as it would seem many of our road sites have gone down in the past month) on several websites, including almost every photo at http://www.vintagekingshighways.com, as well as many at almost every site except thekingshighway.ca

The following it the reply I received followed by the message I sent. 

Dear Justin,

Feel free to use any of my pictures with credits to me.

Good luck with your article!

Averill

----- Original Message ----- From: "Justin O." <xxx@gmail.com>
To: <x@x.net>
Sent: Saturday, March 13, 2010 2:06 PM
Subject: Photos

    Hi Averill
    My name is Justin and I am a writer of articles at Wikipedia. One of
    the articles I am rewriting is Highway 401, of which you have taken
    many spectacular photo's of (including some of historic value for
    which no substitute exists). I was told by Mike from
    vintagekingshighways to contact you regarding any of the photos. I
    wish to use some on Wikipedia, with full credit to you of course:

    The photo would be licenced under the Creative Commons
    Attribution&Share Alike 3.0 licence. This means that other could use
    and modify the photo for whatever purpose they need to, but would have
    to credit you for the original, and would have to share their
    modification under the same licence (which means that your photos can
    never be sold for a profit). Any other requests would also be doable.

    It would be an unsurmountable help to have permission for any image,
    or ideally all of them, but if not there are 2 or 3 specific images
    that I would love to use.

    I hope to hear back from you soon!
    Regards,
    Justin

So feel free to upload them under Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution/Share Alike, sourcing them to the website you found them on, and listing Averill Hecht as the author. Cheers, ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 07:03, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Um, you'll need to forward that original e-mail to the OTRS system with the urls of the uploaded photo(s) each time one is uploaded from him. That way a OTRS user can verify the licensing and tag the photo. Imzadi1979 (talk) 07:10, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
Done. All photos from www.vintagekingshighways.com are ok'd for use with OTRS. Photos from other sites may require getting the webmaster to send an email to wikimedia saying "Yes these photos are by Averill Hecht" - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 14:44, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to rename all highway articles

According to the Ontario Municipal Act of 2001 (Which supercedes the earlier Highway Traffic Act whenever the two contradict one another), all highways maintained by the province are known officially as Provincial Highway Number X. While WP:Use common names implies that we should use the most common term (in this case, that would be Highway X), it makes no reservations against using a slightly less common name to avoid disambiguation. WP:CANSTYLE also reads in the section most applicable to highways: "Do not disambiguate geographical features unnecessarily"

Therefore, I am proposing, based on the lack of articles currently named as such (except Provincial Highway 1, which Ontario doesn't have), that we rename all of the King's Highways to Provincial Highway X. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 02:55, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

To be honest, in order to maximize consistency with the word order that most other provinces — and many American states — use, and to make sure that there's no ambiguity and no potential for future naming conflicts with other jurisdictions, I'd actually prefer Ontario Highway X rather than "Provincial Highway X". But yes, I think there should be a rename of some sort; I don't like the current naming situation for Ontario highways at all. Bearcat (talk) 04:20, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
Just to provide some insight, there was a huge and rancorous "discussion" about four years ago. (Floydian, if you think the current discussion at WT:ELG was ugly, this was supposedly about ten times worse.) The result was WP:SRNC, the State Route Naming Convention, which happened when I was first getting active about editing. We rarely discuss SRNC anymore, and even the idea of revisiting anything to do with it is contentious. The result was to endorse <State> <Type> <Number> as the naming convention. (Michigan and Kansas were given an exception with a different scheme in the final proposal.) That's why the naming scheme in the US is the way it is. I know that Canada isn't the US, but I'd say my preference would be to follow the same scheme, so I endorse Bearcat's idea. Imzadi1979 (talk) 04:54, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
Bearcat's suggestion makes a lot of sense. After doing that, and in the interim until other provinces get boogeying on their organization, the usused Provincial Highway X's should be set up as redirects. Are they Provincial Highways in other provinces, or Provincial Trunk Routes? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 17:22, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

An admin will have to do this task, as all the Ontario Highway X articles are currently redirects. Also consider Ontario Provincial Highway X as a possible alternative, which follows the same naming scheme as New York State Route 70. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 16:21, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

  • I recently reverted some bold moves as I didn't see anything at WT:CANADA and then saw this discussion. This idea may have merit, but I think it needs a wider audience and some more time to see if changing these from the common name to a peculiar construction not in common speech is a good idea. I'm going to go ahead and transplant this there. –xenotalk 03:20, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Toronto traffic peaks

The following are two pdf's that show the peak traffic counts for AM and PM rush hour on Toronto's expressways and arterial routes. I'm sure many uses can be found for this.

Am Volume Pm Volume

Cheers, ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 14:41, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Maps

some of the following has been taken from the original conversation at Talk:Highway 401 (Ontario)
Less infomative Map

What happened to the map ? It was of better quality and easier on the eyes. Was it changed because it wasn't a .svg ? I'm sure it could be changed. I think the map should be reverted back to the old more appealing one. Po' buster (talk) 16:41, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

If no one minds I will change it back to the former .png image Po' buster (talk) 12:51, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
No:
  1. Nicer is irrelevent. The old map conveys less information
  2. The png does not scale well
  3. You cannot see the outline of Ontario AT ALL
  4. It has a poor choice of colours to represent things.
  5. I do not posess the original and cannot make identical maps. The svg I have in flash format and can modify indefinitely and make more maps. Since I am the one editing these road articles...
All roads articles will have the maps switched to svg in the near future. They have already been made, and they will be used because they have a consistent colour scheme instead of red on blue. I have also reverted Highway 400. Only a select few 400-series have not been switched because I haven't made the zoom square. Next will be the other King's Highways - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 15:43, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
No offence but your "home made" maps are terrible. 1) The colour choices are terrible, they are hard on the eyes, do not depict the Province well, and show far to much of the surrounding States. They need to be removed. 2) You are to discuss major changes such as this. 3) Your near "cyber bullying" style of editing has become worrisome. You seem to feel you are the "final word" on many issues. Perhaps you should calm down and have a more open mind towards editing. 4) The old png maps may not work but the new svg. are even less appealing. Perhaps we could develop a new format. Po' buster (talk) 15:59, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
The oriinal maps are homemade as well, but by someone who isn't here anymore to continue making them.
Actually it is you I have noticed do that. You go around to articles you have had no part in editting and make controversial changes and act like you are right in doing so. I have rewritten this article from scratch from the pile of shit that it once was. I plan on bringing many highways in Ontario up to FA. This is more than most articles on Canadian content can attest to, and I would like to be allowed to do my thing without having someone and come in to tell me that the jello maps are of better quality. No discussion was necessary. You were bold, I reverted, now discussion is necessary if you want to continue to push the white square with a few squiggly lines. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 16:10, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
I don't feel my revert was bold at all. You're maps could be 100 times better if the black and orange/yellow were changed. With those two minor colour changes the maps could actually be pretty nice. I say that you seem to think you have the final word because of such edits like the "bumpy hills" edit which you instantly reverted. The phrasing is terrible even it is a direct quote. Remember no one "owns" the articles, even if you have put countless hours in rewriting it. Po' buster (talk) 16:18, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
Exactly, but I am an informed user editing an article that he knows the subject matter of far far far more than most other people on the planet. I have studied maps my whole life, and I have a pretty good idea of how things work regarding them. This doesn't matter because I am an anonymous internet user. If you feel some simple colour changes would work, then by all means suggest them, and I may make the changes. Currently they are pretty prescribed colours according to the standards concocted by WP:USRD, which I've made some simple changes to. The old map doesn't even show the outline of Ontario (unless you have superhuman sight), the new map shows the lakes, surrounding places, and puts things into context better. It is a larger resolution and it provides far more infomation than red and blue lines. As it stands, I outright Oppose reverting to the old map. Feel free to make your own as well if you feel mine are terrible. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 16:58, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
Would you be willing to change the black & orange, to say gray and red ? Po' buster (talk) 17:26, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

The red for sure (I just double checked and its supposed to be red for the highlighted colour). I'll try with grey, but it will be a very dark shade of grey if anything. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 04:09, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Looking over Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Maps task force#Standards, there are some discrepancies between your map and what that WikiProject does. (See File:New York Route 3 map.png for example.) I think the original map (File:Highway-401.png) is missing too much information, and that your new map (File:Ontario 401 map.svg) has some issues. For the new map, I would tilt Ontario slightly, then cut off the top third of the map, as well as a fifth to the left. You'd still be able to identify neighbouring states and the lakes, just not so prominently, as the primary purpose of the image is to show the highways in Ontario. I'd change the base continental colour from green to the cream colour used by the US project, but for urban areas (if you identify them) I'd use a colour that isn't as blindingly harsh as the yellow they use (see File:Interstate 190 (NY) map.png; perhaps the green you use on your map now would be a good choice). I like the identification of the municipalities, but I'd make the borders more subdued (a much lighter, almost imperceptible grey). I would not use blue to identify roads; leave that colour for waterways please. If possible, we should set our own standards for maps for the Canada WikiProject, as I don't like some aspects of the US Roads standards. This would be a good place to start. Mindmatrix 16:29, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
The green and pink I use for land/urban buildup are the same colours as used in the MapArt series of Atlas'. The blue I used for the same reason. I agree with the rest however, let me see what I can do tomorrow when I have a chance to work on it. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 17:18, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
I don't think we should be using the same colours as commercial cartographic companies - they may take exception to it (or worse). As an aside, I just found Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps/Conventions, which has some useful conventions, but none for technical maps such as roads etc., and fr:Aide:Géolocalisation/en, which is a project in French Wikipedia to add localisation info to maps, which may be of use here. Mindmatrix 18:35, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
MapArt seems to have found a good way to portray maps to both amateurs and experienced cartographers in a clear concise way. A mixture between the MapArt style, Floydians version, and the guidelines Mindmatrix provided may turn out quite nice. Po' buster (talk) 18:44, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
I'm moving this discussion over to WT:ONRD since it has become a general discussion regarding the colour standards for our maps.
The only problem with MapArt is that their lines have outlines in different colours. Lakes for example are light blue with dark blue outlines. This would be rather redundant on our maps. However, building from those base colours of pink for urban areas (#FFE4D0) and light green for the base colour of the area in focus (#EBFFD9):
  • The area not in focus is good as a lighter shade of grey (#E0E0E0).
  • In the case of 400 series highways articles' maps, the other freeways should probably be dark grey (#484848 to #666666 seems best, if not following the normal scheme for non-selected freeways).
  • Supposedly the dark blue is not suitable for freeways, trying to think of a good substitute. Either way they should be twice as thick as Provincial Highways.
  • Dark green (#38A800) for Provincial Highways looks great and stands out well against the light green. They should be twice as thick as Arterial roads.
  • Arterial roads should be grey if the above is not carried out as grey. Otherwise... yellow? a dark yellow.
  • Water should remain the shade it is (a #C3D6EF fill with a #0978AB outline)
Will upload an example later on. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 16:28, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

It has been nearly 2 weeks and still no updated map. You have been given sufficient time to upload an updated map. If one isn't available the map should be reverted back to the former one which matches the rest of the 400 series maps until an updated one can be provided. Po' buster (talk) 22:14, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Please read WP:DEADLINE. At this moment it is a stalemate between you and I regarding the maps. I haven't changed the others as I am remaking everything. I am dealing with a lot of stuff on here right now, and I will get around to it. Are the colours suggested above ok to you? They essentially conform to the current map at List of numbered roads in Kawartha Lakes, except another colour is needed for freeways. Again - any suggestions? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 23:39, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Dealing with former provincial highways

Though I wish some sort of style had been settled on already, it seems some former provincial highways are handled in one way, and others in a different way. Some roads have had numerous provincial highway numbers and now are two or three different county roads. Some have just been through numerous renumberings, but still follow the same route; if they are a county road now, the number is generally the same and the route unchanged. Still others are numbers that have been recycled to other parts of the province (Ontario Highway 102 is a good example, moved from Hamilton to Thunder Bay). Because there are so many different situations, we have to settle on a consistent method.

What I propose is using set index articles for any highway that has been split. For a good example see Ontario Highway 121, which is now two different county roads, and a differently numbered provincial highway (118). A set index article would be used where a route number no longer exists, and contains a quick summary of the uses of that route number has had over the years.

If the entirety of the highway is now designated Foo County Road X, then a simple redirect to Foo County Road X is in order.

Obviously this is very general, and I'm sure hundreds of exceptions will quickly pop up. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 14:23, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Adding Coordinates to roads

A number of Ontario roads are tagged with {{Coord missing}}, for example Bayview Avenue (see Category:Canada articles missing geocoordinate data for more). Is there any convention for adding coordinates to roads? Perhaps one could select a major intersection (I see that the {{Infobox Ontario road}} has a "junctions" field), or some other point on the road. --papageno (talk) 15:38, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

The convention is not to. If we had a linear coordinate system it could be done, but since we can only specify a single point it's not really possible for roads (I'd imagine it would be tough to come to an agreement on which one intersection is most important as well). I'm guessing they were put in there by a bot or an AWB run. I remove them as I go. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 15:48, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
Logical. Not sure if it is worth it to take the matter up with the owner of the bot (User talk:The Anomebot2) that did add the tag. I'll delete them as I find them. --papageno (talk) 17:05, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Conversion to {{Infobox road}}

I propose converting {{Infobox Ontario road}} to {{Infobox road}}. Floydian has objected to this. Are there any other objections? --Rschen7754 22:17, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

In putting on my "I'm a member of ONRD for the purposes of cross-border collaboration" hat, no objection here. Imzadi 1979 → 22:28, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
Support - There never seemed a good reason for the change earlier this year without a discussion. Most of the differences are cosmetic. Secondarywaltz (talk) 00:22, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
Tried to discuss it. What does nobody get about the fact that nobody edits these articles from a project standpoint, aside from myself? Nobody in Canada responds, that's why USRD members have to take it upon themselves to enforce their view of what an infobox should look like (see for example discussion on New Zealand routes. Many of them have photos in the infobox. But USRD as a group don't want photos in the infobox. Who will bend first, New Zealand or America? The one with the majority of editors of course!). I made announcements well ahead of time. I made the change to a select few articles (including the flagship 401 article which is by far the most viewed article under our scope), waited, and then begun rolling it out to a few more pages. Not one person opposed this over the several month course of my actions. This is a blow for blow of WP:SILENCE. When one outside editor (woslinker) popped in with the desire to merge the infoboxes of other countries into Infobox road, I ran an AWB run and updated every current Ontario highway to IOR. AGAIN, not one person spoke up in opposition. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 02:55, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
Consensus can change, and even if no one spoke up then, people are speaking up now. Imzadi 1979 → 03:00, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
The US editors definitely spoke up when you did that. --Rschen7754 03:03, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
Um, "USRD as a group" hasn't said it doesn't want photos in the infobox. Two of us have expressed an opinion that we don't like them. It's still a discussion in progress, feel free to comment. Imzadi 1979 → 03:23, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
I believe it was you that told me not to take part in the discussions if I'm not converting to infobox road . - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 03:30, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
The main advantage I see of using a standard infobox is that there is just one set of parameters to learn and then it's possible to edit any road article. When there are over 40 road infoboxes, all of which are similar but slightly different, it means there are a lot more things to undersand before you can go and edit road articles in general. I do think Infobox road is a little tighly controlled though with only certain parameters working for certain countries. -- WOSlinker (talk) 06:33, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
And they have what, if anything, to do with the consensus for articles that are in another country? The US has over 100 editors in it, over a dozen of which are routinely active. Canada has none. Therefore, the amount of input the US has in worldwide infobox applications should be proportionate to the number of editors that focus solely on one specific region of the world. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 03:12, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
Oppose for several reasons which are not related to the purely aesthetic qualities that I feel are far superior to the bland Infobox road, nor the organizational aspect that won't be granted to Ontario because only coloured signs get coloured infoboxes (maybe one day someone will realize the purpose and understand that not every use of anything on wikipedia has to be based on something in real life). You'll also have to get the support of any editors that are currently replacing infobox road with IOR or adding new infoboxes. I don't see how the votes of editors who have not once edited an Ontario road article (adding categories aside) apply here. Anyways, my reasons:
One: The lack of extra parameters for proposed, opened, lanes, towns, regions, districts, etc.
Two: The universal use of 'Existed' as opposed to Proposed (most highways in Ontario were proposed years before their construction into the wilderness, and many others are descendents of colonization roads from the 19th century) and Opened (in this cased, opened implies past tense but existing in the present. Existed implies no longer existing, regardless of the use of 'present'.
Three, the position of the map (which only provides context of surroundings) is at the top above more important information such as from where, to where, and what's in between (far too much data to fit in a 300 pixel map)
Four, the rapidly developing nature of the articles under our scope requires a template that can be adjusted constantly to work with various situations. IR is on lockdown, and only things that a majority of articles can use seem to be added.
Five, and perhaps this is just aesthetic, but the spacing is much more compact in infobox road. This does not work well with the tall non-square shields used in Ontario, not to mention it crowds too much in too little space.
Six, can those simply voting support provide any reason besides "globalizing (aka making biggier and bulkier) templates" or "well thats how Canada is so far" to make this change? Calling for the "Canadian status quo" (always room to improve those crappy articles, WP:OTHERTHINGSEXIST) or for arbitrary compilation of templates (any policy or guideline that shows this purported desire to globalize templates?) is not a legitimate reason. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 02:34, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
If I'm not mistaken, towns= works with IBR. --Rschen7754 02:45, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
Actually, towns and regions were added quite a while ago. Two, use |history=Proposed in ####. Three: a road "has existed from 1919-present" which make the wording proper, and in any event, if could be changed. Four: pursuant to a discussion on WT:NZ, two new parameters were added to IR, one of which was activated for Canada: Tourist routes. The other was a location type: Primary destinations. Have you proposed any additions to IR lately? Four: ask nicely and IR can be modified within minutes or hours, but be aware that some modifications might not gain consensus, but non-controversial ones will be made. Five: IR actually supports the altered spacing for Ontario already. You told us the optimal sizes for ON shields on IRC, and those are hard-coded into the subtemplate for ON transclusions. In fact, shield sizes can be altered for any state/province/country value, and even by type within the geographic division. Six: any reasons you initially had for creating IOR have been corrected in IR. Now you're coming up with more. If All of the others of ONRD cared, they should have shown up here or at the other forums that this has been discussed after ample invitations. Imzadi 1979 → 02:57, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
According to the infobox road documentation, you only put in a country name for regions, and it used for Europe. Yes the template supports ON shields, but only the lines they appear in are spaced. Any lines without a shield have no cellpadding. Why is it controversial for an area you don't edit to customize things in a logical fashion (yes I am referring to the colours here. Why do I need the support of the majority of WP:HWY (which is, regardless of what anyone says otherwise, almost entirely the member base of WP:USRD) for something that will be applied to this small minority of articles only? You don't want colours not used on signs? keep it in the US or get the support of non-US editors to make that an absolute. Otherwise, deal with the needs of other regions or don't try to assimilate them into your melting pot. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 03:12, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
Comment: Last week, I sent messages to the editors (names were mentioned off-wiki) whom Floydian said were actively substituting {{Infobox Ontario road}} and another who had commented previously. None of them responded. —Fredddie™ 03:01, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
Again, an indication of how many people edit the project as well. How many people here have actively researched a road in Ontario? How many have made any changes to an Ontario road article that weren't ridiculously minor (ie done with an AWB run)? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 03:12, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Now that I think about it, who decided that infobox road was the global standard? Oh right! The same project that is now cramming it down others throats. Couldn't get away with Britain, they have active editors creating an independent project... too bad. Better go for the smaller fish, that way you have a bigger collective blob to push other regions around with. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 03:15, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

My reading of this debate has always been, and continues to be, that Floydian arbitrarily decided to create a distinct infobox for Ontario roads not because of an unavoidably unique need that Ontario roads have which roads elsewhere don't, but because of a Floydian-specific want that he couldn't get an instant consensus for. I also know that it's untrue that nobody objected to switching over to this proprietary box — I did. And it's also untrue that Floydian is the entire Ontario roads project; just because this isn't the only thing that I devote some attention to doesn't mean that I'm not involved at all. But that's all neither here nor there, because even though I still have yet to see the first genuine reason why Ontario roads needed our own special infobox, I'm certainly not prepared to get into a revert war. I'm willing to step in with my administrator hat on if this discussion gets out of line — but other than reminding everybody that there is an administrator watching, I'm not inclined to get too actively involved in arguing about it. Bearcat (talk) 03:35, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, Bearcat. No one has done any reverting, in fact, I don't think anyone had any intentions of making any switchovers. I know that when the IR revamp was underway, I had to manually edit some ONRD uses of IR to accommodate the changes so the articles would continue to display correctly. It was at that time that Floydian switched several more articles to IOR, but there are still ON articles using IR. I've left them all be, except for any transclusion errors.
I'll say this, cross-border collaboration is made more difficult when everything is proprietary. I've continually tried to enlist Floydian's help on updating the articles related to the Great Lakes Circle Tours, as MI and ON share a long border through 3 Great Lakes. I was told to wait until his work on the 401 was done, which is fair. Honestly, I merged all the tours into the parent article for now, but I still want to get them up to good shape. That project will require MI, MN, WI, IL, IN, OH and ON collaboration. I'm just frustrated. We, and I mean those editors that actively maintain the template, have done everything possible to appease Floydian's concerns with the template, and he keeps coming up with more! Maybe I should have objected more strenuously last spring, but some of his original requests were a "fix it the way I want now". If that wasn't the case, that's how it felt to me. At any rate, all of the concerns have been addressed, and now, he's complained about the location of the map.
Floydian, as far as colors go, I have a counter proposal for you. I'm prepared to propose at USRD that we switch the US transclusions from the default blue to a shade of green that approximates MUTCD guide sign green. M-231 (Michigan highway), a future, under construction highway is already using a built-in parameter and value to use orange (toned down because the "correct" shade is just too bright). That same parameter can be used to switch to brown for historic/scenic/park highways.
Here's my counter proposal: Canada (not Ontario) uses guide sign blue for freeways. ON already uses it for the local lanes on the 401, so it's signage based. Highways get MUTCD green since their guide signs are green. County roads, since there is no standard color in use, uses the default blue. Streets should switch to {{infobox street}} in general. How's that sound? You get a country-specific setup, and it's signage-based. As for the map, it's been in that location for years, and I can't support moving it elsewhere. Imzadi 1979 → 03:57, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
That being said, I think that before we do this, we need a commitment from Floydian that he will support changing to IBR if we actually do this. I think that we have tried to accommodate Floydian as much as possible without him showing some signs of reciprocation. I'm not saying this to be mean, but at this point we have to set a boundary to prevent our totally changing the entire appearance for IBR if Floydian's not even going to convert ON to IBR. --Rschen7754 05:19, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
I would be happy to accept that. There was not really anything other than the colours; the other things may be a few minor added parameters at most, or the passing of the type parameter into the browsing subtemplates (though it may already do so by now). However, knowing this shouldn't be a problem to work with later, I do give my commitment under that scheme. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 06:18, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
Ok, the browse uses type/number parameters, but each country has a separate subtemplate to set that up. The non-US/non-meta templates aren't protected under WP:HRT because their transclusion counts aren't high enough. (The meta templates are transcluded with every usage of the template.) As for implementing specific colors for Canada, it looks like USRD is switching the default color to a shade of green. I'm going to suggest that when we tweak the green, that the same shade is implemented for Canadian provincial routes. (Why reinvent the wheel?) There's a shade of blue already selected for the UK along with all of their colors in the subtemplate. I'd suggest that the freeway blue use that shade, which will need a |header_type=freeway, or similar coding, added to each freeway article. Otherwise, I'll leave it to CRWP to pick a different shade. We're tweaking the green with an eye towards toning down the intensity a bit without losing the impact totally. Once both the CRWP and USRD color choices are finalized in a few days, they can be rolled into the color subtemplate in one edit. It's up to you if you want to start transitioning back to IR from IOR now or wait, but the colors are coming shortly. Imzadi 1979 → 07:23, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
A short addendum to my proposal: if the shade of blue picked for the freeways is too similar to the default blue, how about defaulting to a shade of light grey instead? (Changing the default, not the freeway blue) Imzadi 1979 → 18:32, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
Oppose - I'll stick my head in here too. This is another case of USRD editors trying to push their standards on the rest of the world, where their standards don't fit. At the end of the day there are separate infoboxes for separate countries for a reason, exactly the same reason we have separate place infoboxes etc. Jeni (talk) 00:40, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
Proposal - USRD editors stick to US articles and stop trying to impose their point of view on the rest of the world. This is the junction list argument all over again. Jeni (talk) 00:40, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for your opinion and proposal, but I have every right as a project member to comment here. And Yes, I do edit articles that affect Ontario. Imzadi 1979 → 00:44, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
Well, you don't have to be a project member to comment on proposals. Any Wikipedian is free to do so. --Rschen7754 00:57, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
I think what Jeni is getting at is the ollective group of USRD showing up sporadically en masse to dispose of this template, but I digress. You guys pick the colours, I don't care what they are, I just wanted the organization by types. You've won me over. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 03:07, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Divided highway

Just in case anyone is interested, divided highways links to "dual carriageways" on wikipedia. The term carriageway is not used by the majority of the international community. The term carriageway is very british centric, just like the term divided highway is very north american centric. So I have request a move of "carriageway" to "roadway" which is a neutral commonly used term throughout the world. Just thought some of you maybe interested in the discussion at Talk:Dual carriageway. UrbanNerd (talk) 22:56, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Dual highway or divided highway was used by the department of highway prior to 1952, when they became "controlled access highways". - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 23:15, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Hwy 417

In case anyone knows ...Is the name "queensway" official, or is it just a nickname or extinct name for Ontario Highway 417 ? UrbanNerd (talk) 19:48, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

The highway was officially constructed with that name, which it retained throughout the 60's and 70s until 417 was designated. Highway 417 south of the split is not part of the Queensway. Instead, it follows Regional Road 174 alongside the Ottawa River. Given that, I'd assume the name has been retained. I do not live in Ottawa, however, so I couldn't say for sure. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 20:13, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
Ya it is a very odd topic. I can't seem to find any info on the naming. I'm pretty sure it's just a nickname sort of thing nowadays, but that's just my pov. I'll keep looking, thanks. UrbanNerd (talk) 20:49, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Road 38 (near Kingston)

Formerly King's Hwy. 38, it has since been downloaded. However, its Wikipedia page states that it is CR-38. Shouldn't the section in the Kingston area be a regional road? RakureX2 (talk) 22:39, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

As Frontenac is a county, it would be County Road 38. In Kingston it would be City Road (I assume), or on some agreement with Frontenac. In either case "CR" would be correct, though when I get to Highway 38 the abbreviation won't stick around. Cheers, ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 00:10, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

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Leaderboard

Just a comment on why I removed it here. One, the table is VERY inaccurate at the moment. There's no way that Saskatchewan's actual WW score is lower than Michigan's. Two, the table is already available in two other places, as part of the national project. We should be encouraging editors to use the national pages as well as this one to build the national project. Three, the table is a national effort, not a Ontario effort. Putting it here makes it look like ONRD owns Canada Roads WikiProject, when it's the other way around. Sorry, but you don't need it here to satisfy one person. Imzadi 1979 → 02:55, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

P.S. Hissy fits in edit summaries as I just saw do not encourage editors to participate. Rather such edit summaries drive them away. No one person owns this project, and all editors are free and welcome to edit the page as part of the collaboration. Imzadi 1979 → 02:57, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
It was more of a frustrated outburst, but regardless,
I don't see how one could conclude that ONRD owns Canada Roads WikiProject... The project page essentially begins with "the parent project of this project is the Canada Roads WikiProject." The table is inaccurate now, but thats because things are being set up. Having the table there will niether encourage nor discourage participation. I'd have no problem with Saskatchewan having a transclusion of the table. It's just a reference, and its on the project page. We may be nationalizing things right now, but I'm still sticking solely to Ontario, and I'd like that progress table amongst all of the quicklinks, subpages, and various parts of the project backend (though they are inactive atm). The point is that removing it or adding it is a case of personal preference. I make heavy use of the WP:ONRD page, so it stands to greatly benefit my productivity to have it where I need it. Down there you have a news template that is transcluded across the various state projects. Consider this table to be the news for me. If an editor feels the inclusion of the table on the subprojects degrades their performance, I'd be open to discussion on disposing it.
Also, the template needs to be changed for Canada so that it shows beyond Stubs (since there aren't ~55 rows). - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 04:18, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
There's no need to change the template. You do realize that every day when the WP1.0bot runs, it is refreshing the full Canadian table? The biggest disadvantage you will ever find in the live table is a lack of history. There is no way to do any kind of historical comparison. The live table for the US is a product of Rschen's absence earlier this year. Until we got the bot to do the regular table (and daily), he had a program written for a computer class that would make the updates, and he did it weekly. He couldn't release that code to us, and so we had to come up with an alternate path. Trust me, I was manually updating the table for a few weeks until the bot came online. We tried to build a full table, but we couldn't over parser function issues. Fortunately the bot is doing it now every day like clockwork and at most, the regular table is 23 or so hours out of date. Once we get the Canada Roads WikiProject banner in full use, and get task force tagging for WP:HWY done, expect to see the bot making a global leaderboard.
Now, as far as quick links go, you can make your own user page that transcludes whatever you want without cluttering up the main project page. I have a folder on the bookmark bar in my browser with all of the links I need. (Link to the map list for MI with all of the citation templates filled out, links to MDOT resource pages like the Physical Reference Finder Application or the Traffic Management Information System, MSHP and USRD project pages, etc.) That way everything is in one central place for me. Remember though, the ONRD page is designed for the project, not one member, and it should be kept streamlined so that anyone can find the links they need without having to look around tables and lists and charts they don't need. Imzadi 1979 → 04:52, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
This is true, but I also consider it a repository for all the lists and backend tools (including various statistics) to help with article management and creation (eg the subpage where I've listed all of my books and maps), from all members... Its just that others haven't contributed to what is largely my repository of data at this point. I do agree about streamlining though. Most of the project was built from the Golden Horseshoe framework that was already here, and the main page feels too crowded and overbearing. It could do with a fresh face. I may copy my coding from WP:PROGROCK and go from there. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 05:58, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
The best way to streamline the main page though is to shuffle everything off to its appropriate subpages. Now, several of us have made our own userspace subpages with all of the tools and charts and tables and templates we want in one place. I've done that through bookmarks in my browser's bookmark bar. Being a repository is fine, but if everything is literally all on one page, it's not as useful. Imzadi 1979 → 06:33, 14 December 2010 (UTC) (P.S. Canada Roads WikiProject is getting a new logo. That map logo doesn't look good at smaller sizes, and I've come up with and idea that says roads in Canada better.)
Sweet! I'm going to copy the code over because it creates tabs at the top for subpages, so it'll help to cut down the landing page. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 06:36, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
A thought, but can you make the tabs appear in green with white type? Then they'd be like exit tabs on top of a BGS? If so, do the Canada Roads WikiProject page the same way. My signature has the correct hexcode for MUTCD Green. (I'm thinking of proposing a switch in the infobox at some point to go all the way to that shade now that people have gotten used to the current green.) Imzadi 1979 → 07:27, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
Good idea. I'm heading to bed now, but I'll get things cleaned up in the morning. Cheers, ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 07:33, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
The active tab might look better if it were white with green text, as the inverse of the inactive tabs. Imzadi 1979 → 22:03, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
Will do. I wish I could change the hover attributes so that a white underline appeared instead of an (invisible) blue one. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 22:42, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
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