Talk:Cumberland Valley Railroad

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References? I started this by cutting down and restating the "History of Franklin County" account and then checking it against the the explorepa.com accounts, while adding details from them. After doing this it's clear that I could have done the process in reverse - i.e. cutting down and restating the explorepa.com accounts and adding details from the "History of Franklin County." The 2 non-linked books are from explorepa and I haven't used them directly.

My question is - should I put explicit inline references in each paragraph to the 2 sources. It would be pretty boring (to read as well as to do), but once others start adding material it might be necessary. Opinions? Thanks Smallbones 09:41, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Don't understand what you did

From the diffs it looks like you deleted and added back every section - but that's just the way the software works sometime. I think you also added three lines (ok as far as I can tell), deleted 3,000 k of text (from where?) and took all the images from the text and put them in a gallery. I don't really like galleries, rather I think it is better to integrate images into the article where the subject is referred to (or nearby). If there is something about the picture placement that bothered you, please let me know, but I'll likely move the photos back into the text, once I figure out everything you did. Now if I can find the missing 3,000 k, I can properly evaluate the changes.

All the best.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:48, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I am in the process of revising and streamlining many of the U.S. railroad articles. A great many of them have as many photos as text. Unless it is a large railroad like PRR, NYC or UP, excessive photos are better placed in a gallery. I did not deleted too much text but rather formatted it to confirm to Wikipedia standards so it is an easier read. The article needed extensive cleanup, as do many of the railroad articles. Oanabay04 (talk) 22:59, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think that there was an excessive amount of photos, rather just about everything was referred to in the text. You've taken out the section headings, which is unlikely to increase readability. Perhaps we could get a third opinion? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:46, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

An article the length of this does not require more than two photos + system map. The more significant the railroad, the more photos are warranted. A history as short as that of CVRR only warrants a simple header stating "History." A company more notable, like Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad or New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, warrants subheaders and additional pictures. The CVRR article should reflect the simplicity of the New York, Ontario and Western Railway, Philadelphia and Erie Railroad or Unadilla Valley Railway. Hope this helps. Feel free to obtain a third opinion. Oanabay04 (talk) 14:05, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

OK, I think I understand now what you are trying to do. It might be called "rationalizing text and image use across articles." So, for example, if you found that the article on Downtown Pittsburgh was larger or had more images than the article on Pittsburgh, you'd want to remove text or images from the Downtown Pittsburgh article because Pittsburgh is obviously more important. And according to your importance scale, CVRR should rate few or no images (note that 2 of your examples have no images).

I have to disagree with this philosophy; it's certainly not the way these things are usually handled on Wikipedia. For example, if somebody thought that it's a problem that the Downtown Pittsburgh article was larger than the Pittsburgh article, the usual solution would be to improve the Pittsburgh article, not remove material from Downtown Pittsburgh. Comparisons of importance or notability across articles is seldom, if ever, done. Each article stands on it own. I've looked for guidance in the usual places on how many pictures are too many - and really couldn't find anything except a brief "Images should not overwhelm the article", which doesn't apply here. The images certainly don't overwhelm this article. More directly the Manual of Style WP:IMAGE RELEVANCE states:

"Images must be relevant to the article that they appear in and be significantly and directly related to the article's topic. Because the Wikipedia project is in a position to offer multimedia learning to its audience, images are an important part of any article's presentation. Effort should therefore be made to improve quality and choice of images or captions in articles rather than favoring their removal, especially on pages which have few visuals."

I'll copy this to the CVRR talk page, and revert to the previous layout of the pix. If you'd like I can ask the opinion a 2 editors who are very familiar with Pennsylvania history articles, or you can ask for an RfC if you'd like. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:38, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

I am not at all active on Wikipedia anymore, but Smallbones asked for a comment and here it is. I think that if the article is fully referenced and the pictures are relevant to the text then the article should be as is. There is no need to delete referenced or reasonable text from the article. Just because the CVRR wasn't a large and important railway in comparison to the PRR, doesn't mean that this article should be smaller in size or detail. For example Upper Pine Bottom State Park is a featured and detailed article even though the state park itself is little more than a picnic area. The three time defending national champions Penn State Nittany Lions wrestling team lacks an article entirely. The wrestling team is much more noteworthy and nationally known. It's simply up to the editors of Wikipedia to make good articles. We shouldn't remove material just because we perceive something as being less important than something else. Gerry D (talk) 15:07, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Smallbones and Gerry D. While it is fine to standardize articles to some extent (for example the 120 Pennsylvania State Parks all have the same infobox and have all been improved to the same basic level), I strongly disagree with making articles worse (for example, by removing content and references and formatting) in the name of "standardization". I think that saying some articles are less important and so should be shorter than others violates Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, which says in part: "Articles mustn't take sides, but should explain the sides, fairly and without bias." (Note that it is OK to rate an article's importance within a WikiProject on its talk page, but this is still not license to remove content because it is not very important).

I see Wikipedia as having a mostly one way ratchet - articles should move in the direction of improvement (note that things which temporarily worsen the quality of articles like vandalism are reverted as quickly as possible). Articles which are of higher quality (FA or GA) can serve as model articles for improvement of other articles.

I also note that WikiProject Trains has a manual of style, which includes a section on articles about rail transport companies. Having more sections follows this and Wikipedia:Manual of Style, while having the pictures throughout the article generally follows Wikipedia:Image use policy and WP:Galleries.

This article can certainly be improved and I appreciate your efforts, but I do not think deciding articles are not as important and then removing content, headers, and layout is the right way to do it. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:03, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I think you all missed the main point of my edits. Per WP:TWP/MOS: "The depth of coverage of the subject by the source must be considered. If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources should be cited to establish notability. Trivial or incidental coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not sufficient to establish notability. Once notability is established, primary sources may be used to add content. Ultimately, and most importantly, all content must be attributable." Most of what I removed was trivial. It also states that subsections should be limited to the following:

• History of the railroad and significant predecessors
• Territory and/or station list
• Company officers (presidents and CEOs only) through history
• Major service areas

Edits I made to the History section did that. The History section, in format and readable content should mirror that of the Ulster and Delaware Railroad page. I think we need opinions from administrators who can be more objective. Oanabay04 (talk) 12:46, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Detailed reply to Oanabay04

Oanabay04, I am an administrator and I resent your impugning my objectivity. Be that as it may, Choess is both an administrator and very knowledgable on railroads and their history and may be another person to ask their opinion on your edits. Wikipedia works on consensus and right now the consensus is against your edits, by 3:1.

Here is a detailed list of what you removed from the article:

Lead:

• It employed up to 1,800 workers.[3] This is cited to a reliable source and gives the reader a sense of the size of the railroad.

Early history:

• The quote on the original schedule: Leave Chambersburg at 4 o'clock in the morning; Arrive at Harrisburg at 8, at Lancaster at 12, at Philadelphia before 6 P.M. Returning it will leave Harrisburg as soon as the cars from Philadelphia arrived, about 5 o'clock in the evening and arrive at Chambersburg at 10 P.M.[2] This is also cited to a reliable source and gives the reader an idea of the slow rate of travel.

Growth:

• In 1999, the Pioneer was moved from its display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. to the as yet unopened National Museum of Industrial History in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. (The locomotive was later moved to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.)[7][8] Cited to RS and about the earliest (and only?) surviving engine from the railroad.

South Penn Branch Line:

• The South Penn Branch was a line that connected the CVRR main line to an iron furnace near Cowans Gap. It left the line near Marion and went to Richmond Furnace, a distance of 26 miles (42 km). This route was one possible route for a cross-Pennsylvania main line, rejected in favor of the route along the Juniata River. While this is uncited, it is clearly shown in the map you put in the infobox (File:CVRRmap1919Smithsonian.jpg) and the branch is mentioned briefly in the NRHP source cited.

Demise:

• Removal of details on two of the Conrail track names (for example you edited from the Reading junction north-east of Shippensburg, through PENNROAD, to TOWN and HAGER towers in Hagerstown to just Reading-Hagerstown)
• Removal of the year 1979–1980 the Shippensburg Secondary was abandoned and a description of the line from the west side of Carlisle to Shippensburg, including street-running trackage on Earl St. in the latter town

Headers and references

• Almost all section headers were removed (I think these should all be subsections of the "History" section to follow the TWP MOS)
• The article went from nine numbered references to just six.

You do not appear to understand the TWP MOS. There is nothing in it that says the article is limited to these sections, only that articles should include them. There is also nothing that says the article cannot have subsections within the History (or other sections) and the MOS for Wikipedia encourages such headers and sub-headers. I find they increase readability and can serve as a framework for expansion of the article.

As for the TWP MOS you quote, almost all of it ("The depth of coverage of the subject by the source must be considered. If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources should be cited to establish notability. Trivial or incidental coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not sufficient to establish notability.) is about Notability (whether or not the topic should have an article here). Only the last two sentences apply to this article (Once notability is established, primary sources may be used to add content. Ultimately, and most importantly, all content must be attributable.) but you removed reliable sources used as refs.

Finally it is useful to look at model articles and the WikiProject Train's Quality Scale. The articles you list as models are either stubs (Philadelphia and Erie Railroad or Unadilla Valley Railway) or C class (New York, Ontario and Western Railway), and so not as developed as this B class article. I looked at two FA railroad articles: Cincinnati, Lebanon and Northern Railway which follows the MOS (but does not seem as important as you would expect a FA to be) and Metropolitan Railway which does not follow the train MOS. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 23:50, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I'd been meaning to weigh on on this. I can't give as detailed a reply as I might wish just now (ironically, I have to get up at oh-dark-thirty local to drive to the Cumberland Valley), but a few points may be quickly mentioned:

1. Ruhrfisch has not heretofore edited Cumberland Valley Railroad, so it's not clear what the call for a "more objective" administrator actually means.
2. He is correct in saying that WP:TWP/MOS is being grossly misinterpreted here. The MOS gives "standard subsections" for train articles, but that is not the same as saying that these are the only subsections the article should have. Certainly many of our highly-ranked and peer-reviewed train articles (FA, GA) don't follow exactly those section headers. The section on notability is about determining whether a topic is notable, not about what level of detail should be included in an article.
3. I agree that Ulster and Delaware Railroad is a nice article, but I think there's a misunderstanding as to why it's nice. It's not because there's some arbitrary depth of content or article length that correlates with the importance of the railroad; the article is nice because it's well balanced between history, current infrastructure, and rolling stock. The London Necropolis Railway was a much smaller operation than the Ulster and Delaware, has a much longer article, but that article is also quite nice; indeed, it's a Featured Article. Once again, the key is not the absolute level of detail about the railway, but the fact that the article presents a well-rounded picture.

I don't want to be overly harsh, because I think the notion of improving articles through careful cutting is under-recognized. It is possible for railroad articles to get distorted because someone made extensive and injudicious use of, say, a contemporary primary source, and grossly padded out one aspect of the railroad's history with trivia while neglecting the rest of the article. However, a better way to deal with excessive information in one part of the article is, more often, to help fill out the rest of it. Looking at the material removed in this series of edits, I think the cutting may have been a bit excessive.

Ultimately, I think trying to select the "right" article size and level of detail by article-to-article comparisons is a poor idea. In my experience, articles on the most important and broad-ranging topics are the hardest to build up in Wikipedia, because of the sheer volume of facts and sources that have to be kept in play. But the fact that it's quite difficult to build a highly-rated and comprehensive article on the PRR or the UP shouldn't impel us to cover short lines in a cursory way. Rather than trying to build up or cut down a railroad article based on comparison to some other railroad article perceived to be of equal importance, we should strive to make each railroad article discuss its history, geography, infrastructure, rolling stock, and so on in a way that gives each of these topics proper weight relative to one another. Choess (talk) 03:23, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to everybody who commented. I do think however that I am at fault for letting Oanabay04's comment on "more objective" go by without a brief explanation. I have no doubt he is editing in good faith, and I think that our disagrement has been very civilly conducted. He could reasonably say that me picking two editors to comment that I have worked with could come up with an "unobjective" result without impugning the editors themselves. Just to be clear, I asked Ruhrfisch because I know of his interest in Pennsylvania history, his status as admin, and his many FA's (including some on "unimportant" topics). Gerry D is one of 2 or 3 editors that have given me good advice on Pennsylvania history/transport articles previously. I don't think that Onabay meant to say that I asked intentionally biased people.

That said, Ruhrfisch hit on a couple of point I would have liked to stress. In particular, the early schedule for the trip to Philly would seem trivial from many railroads, but here, during that brief period when the CVRR was a "far western" railroad it just seems shocking that the trip could have taken so long (It takes about 3 hours now by car) and that the Pittsburgh-Chambersburg route by stage took days.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:27, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

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