Talk:Highway 17 (Alberta–Saskatchewan)

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Lack of merger discussion

Merger discussion notices were placed on Alberta Highway 17 and Saskatchewan Highway 17 today. A mere two hours later, the two articles were merged without the actual discussion taking place. Two hours is hardly enough time for interested watchers to research the proposal and engage in a discussion. Why even place merger discussion notices then? Hwy43 (talk) 01:44, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I tend to agree that no consensus was even made, nor discussed. I would suggest resplitting this back and waiting for a discussion.Mitch32^{(Can someone turn on the damn air conditioning?)} 04:16, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

• Pardon my French, but it was a piss-poor merger as well. The name should be "Highway 17 (Alberta–Saskatchewan)" (note the en dash, not the slash) and the infoboxes should have been merged together displaying both markers at the time and both browser lines at the bottom. Other than the bad name and bad merger, I support the concept, just not the implementation. Imzadi 1979 → 04:25, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
• Support merger, but it should be done right as Imzadi1979 suggested above. Dough4872 04:30, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Before any hasty article renaming ensues, can those who support the concept of the merger provide rationale? Guidelines, policies, and the like? Hwy43 (talk) 04:44, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Why have two separate articles on the same road, or substantially the same road? Simplification and redundancy alone make a merger a good thing. Imzadi 1979 → 04:47, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

In the US, we have several articles that cover a two state routes that are either short in both states or intertwined in one article. An example of this is Route 54 (Delaware–Maryland), which covers the intertwined routes of DE 54 and MD 54. The article has a clean title and an infobox that combines the information of both state routes. Dough4872 04:51, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

The elaboration is appreciated. What does this mean for articles on highways that cross provincial borders once (not repeatedly) that happen to be assigned the same number as well?
For example, Alberta Highway 55 continues as Saskatchewan Highway 55 whereas most other Alberta highways continue into Saskatchewan under different numbers. Hwy43 (talk) 05:17, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

In that case: nothing. M-49 (Michigan highway) an Ohio State Route 49 share a number, but otherwise have separate articles. That situation is hardly unique in the US. There are cases where a short highway (say 2 miles) in one state has its article merged with a much longer highway of the same number in another state. In those cases though, it's as if it were one road even though officially it's two because of the state line. In other words, if this merger goes through and gets fixed, don't assume it is a precedent to merge everything with common numbers together in Canada; it's just one situation being discussed here. Imzadi 1979 → 05:30, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank goodness. That was a concern of mine. Hwy43 (talk) 06:07, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

• Support merger, and title. It's the same road, I would have done it eventually. 117Avenue (talk) 04:50, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
• Support merger and support article name suggested by Imzadi1979 per research and discussion. If this article merger stands, I intend to clean up the prose a bit. For example, the article currently describes the route north to south instead of south to north per WP:CRWP#Route description. Hwy43 (talk) 06:07, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I've done some clean up, with more to follow in the Lloydminster subsection. I used provincial abbreviations to bring down the redundancy of using the full provincial names. Not sure if there is a guideline that discourages such. If there is, feel free to replace the abbrevations with the full names and point me to the guideline for my own educational purposes. Hwy43 (talk) 05:39, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

So I was bold and move the article since it appears that the participants here all agree to the name at least. If the merger, for some as of yet unknown reason, is reversed, well, the name change won't matter at all. Imzadi 1979 → 21:50, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Did I support this new name? I meant I supported the "Alberta/Saskatchewan Highway 17" name, because it is in the convention set out in WP:CANRD#Naming conventions. 117Avenue (talk) 01:45, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Merged infobox

Now, once the SK shields are made, the code to the right will fix itself. The two markers will appear side by side, and markers will appear in the browser at the bottom. The reason they appear stacked is that the subtemplate that generates the markers needs the SK marker on its own line so that it can superimpose the number, as text, over the graphic. Once actual marker graphics are made (and it's being discussed and worked on, see here) then the template will call an actual graphic and the line break won't be needed. Imzadi 1979 → 04:54, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Sounds and looks good. Based on the south to north convention for describing north/south routes, should the SK shield appear first since the south origin is within SK? If so, does this impact your suggested article name above, or would the alphabetical order of the provincial names (Alberta–Saskatchewan) prevail? Hwy43 (talk) 06:15, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

The Alberta sign should be on the left, and Saskatchewan sign on right, because that's how they appear when driving north on the highway. Unfortunately the templates don't currently allow that. 117Avenue (talk) 18:10, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Svgalbertian (talk · contribs) is supposed to be making a set of SK shield graphics at some point that will eliminate the need to superimpose text over the marker. (Click and drag over the SK shield in the infobox, you can select the "17" because it is just a piece of formatted text, not an element of the graphic.) Once he makes those graphics, and we update the infobox subtemplates, the two markers will appear on the same line, Alberta on the left and Saskatchewan on the right. Also, all of the junctions and the browser at the bottom will get get the missing SK shields. As for the name, it helps that alphabetical is also geographical (Alberta is left of Saskatchewan on a standard north-up map.)

Something though that needs updating is the RMs... the list is for AB only, and it was that way in both of the pre-merger articles as well, I think. We should do something similar to how U.S. Route 131 handles the two states' counties using a boldface provincial abbreviation followed by the names using a line break to separate the two provinces apart. Imzadi 1979 → 18:35, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Looks like it's been done. 117Avenue (talk) 04:00, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Map

@Hwy43: I noticed the new map which looks really good; however, since this article is for both AB 17 & SK 17, should the map include both Alberta and Saskatchewan? MuzikMachine (talk) 21:14, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

@MuzikMachine: yes. Definitely. It crossed my mind the moment I added it to the article but have yet to put it in the queue of my to do list. You can see the to do list at User:Hwy43/sandbox#Alberta highway mapping to do list, and that I just added this request to it. Cheers, Hwy43 (talk) 09:17, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

MuzikMachine, it took over two hours, but we now have a satisfactory updated version inclusive of both provinces. It should more than do for now. I'll explore the Province of Saskatchewan's open data at some point to see if I can find equivalent GIS data for its provincial parks to match that on the Alberta side of the map. Hwy43 (talk) 06:37, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

MuzikMachine, I've explored and there is no provincial park boundary open data published by the Government of Saskatchewan. Unfortunately it is only available for a fee. I have added the missing second national park however, as well as the numbered municipal road system. Hwy43 (talk) 20:55, 12 November 2016 (UTC)