Talk:Garrison station (Metro-North)

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Requested move 12 April 2018[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: move the stations to Garrison station (Metro-North) and Garrison station (RTD), per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 04:22, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]


– Per WP:USSTATION; we're in the confusing situation where Garrison Station redirects to Garrison (Metro-North station), while Garrison station is a light rail station in Denver. The Metro-North station is probably the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for this title. It has significantly more page views than the RTD station, and it concerns a topic with over one hundred years of history. If there isn't a primary topic, Garrison station (Metro-North) would be a natural disambiguation. RTD is the disambiguator used for other Denver light rail station articles. Mackensen (talk) 23:12, 12 April 2018 (UTC)--Relisting. Dekimasuよ! 06:25, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's still 12 times more likely that readers are looking for the Metro-North station, despite the fact that typing in "Garrison station" takes them to the Denver station. That's plenty to determine that most readers are looking for it. No need to put a roadblock in readers' way when we don't need to.--Cúchullain t/c 19:14, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Partial support: agree that these should be moved to "Garrison station (disambiguator)", but think location-based disambiguators would be better. Why not title this page Garrison station (New York)? "New York" is much more recognizable both nationally and internationally than "Metro-North", which only people familiar with the system would recognize. Similarly, fewer people know what "RTD" is, and the Colorado station should also have a location-based disambiguator. --Scott Alter (talk) 07:57, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'd prefer a location-based disambiguation, but I think it also makes sense for this article to match similar articles. System disambiguation was used for other Metro-North stations and for other RTD stations. Mackensen (talk) 13:31, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'd agree most station articles should have location-based disambiguation, and Metro-North and RTD should not be exceptions. The Metro-North articles were all moved 2 days ago to be more WP:USSTATION compliant. Previously, all Metro-North articles were named like this one - with unnecessary parentheticals. I just found the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains#Naming convention for Metro-North Railroad stations, but there was no discussion on which disambiguating term to use. I'd prefer using location-based disambiguation for all Metro-North (and RTD) stations. Because these articles were all just moved recently without disambiguator discussion, I would not just accept that this article should match the others without appropriate discussion, as consensus on the matter has not been reached. The disambiguating term needs to be discussed before blindly accepting that all Metro-North stations are disambiguated by system. Depending on consensus, other Metro-North stations may need to be moved using location-based disambiguators too. --Scott Alter (talk) 16:10, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
We've typically moved stations in local/regional transit to the name of the system, partly because that's how it was in the deprecated versions, and partly because in some cases it can be more informative for readers. City names don't work for systems that reach out into outlying communities that wouldn't be familiar for readers, and states can be broad for large states where several cities have transit systems. So for example, with Lafayette station (BART), BART is more recognizable than (Lafayette, California), and more precise than (California). With Metro-Rail, some stations would be (New York) but others would be (Connecticut). But I think a case can certainly be made for using the state in some if not most cases like this. It may be worth a wider discussion, and if there's consensus for it, some additional clarification at WP:USSTATION.--Cúchullain t/c 17:42, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Cuchullain that the state and city names don't work if there are several large transit systems in the same state. Also, regarding I'd prefer using location-based disambiguation for all Metro-North (and RTD) stations, in this case, the system is more recognizable than the state, and per WP:USSTATION, either state or system can be used. In this case, you definitely move RTD article to the system disambiguator, or the city disambiguator, since the state is vague. Metro-North is the same, since readers are likely looking for "Garrison Metro-North station", not "Garrison station in New York". Having state first and system second doesn't help our readers. I highly doubt that someone who is looking for a specific station in a specific system would not already know what the system is. Any other suggestion is nonsense, since a reader in the Hudson Valley probably wouldn't know about or be looking for a light rail station in Denver. epicgenius (talk) 20:25, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I don't agree with or think all of your points make sense, so I'm not going to try to change your mind - but want to respond so others see my argument. State and city names do work as disambiguators even when "there are several large transit systems in the same state". The only time they don't work is when there are multiple stations with the same name in the same city, but serving different systems/lines. There are 2 big points you are overlooking. First, the point of disambiguation is to distinguish between articles of the same name - not specifically to provide more description of the subject of the article. There are (at least) 2 places named "Garrison station." The title of both articles should be "Garrison station". However, due to the inability of having two articles at the same title, disambiguators must be used. If you were to present the two articles (without titles) to people and ask what the difference is between these two stations, you will most likely get a response that one is in Garrison, New York and the other is in Lakewood, Colorado. Most people's instincts when looking at these two articles and comparing them would be location-based, and not be to say one is part of Metro-North and the other is part of RTD. Location is what sets these two stations apart. Second, I find it incredibly hard to believe that in this case, the system is more recognizable than the state. I'd guess that most people outside of the tri-state area do not even know what Metro-North is. (I had no idea what RTD was before this RM, but I know that Colorado is a state, and therefore "Lakewood, Colorado" must be a city in Colorado.) Wikipedia is an international encyclopedia. And even to readers where the station is local, the location (city and/or state) is much better known than the system. Do more people know of "New York" or "Metro-North"? If someone already knows that Garrison station is part of Metro-North, then they definitely know that the station is located in New York (or Connecticut). Readers are likely looking for "the railroad station in Garrison, New York." If everyone who knows Metro-North knows where the system is located, but some people do not know where Metro-North is located, then location is clearly a better disambiguator. Readers may be anywhere in the world, and you should not be catering article naming to local readers. --Scott Alter (talk) 01:08, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, then. For the record, I highly doubt that outside North America, someone could name individual states besides CA, TX, and FL. (NY is generally thought of as the city, but that's an argument for another time). Also, it's not like the entire substance of the article is based on the title. Whatever the title is, your search engine will give out the most relevant result based on what's in the prose section of the title. And if you're searching on Wikipedia, either you use the search engine (most likely), or you type in the title on the URL bar and one of the disambiguators will redirect to the other. So this argument over what is the correct disambiguator is secondary to the actual argument - the question of whether this article gives an adequate summary of the subject. epicgenius (talk) 03:02, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Again, I think this discussion will need a wider discussion than just here at Metro-North, considering how widely system disambiguation has always been applied for local/regional systems. Probably this needs an RfC. To good thing is that the "Xxx station" format makes it a non-issue for the majority of stations.--Cúchullain t/c 15:00, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
What should be the next steps here? Creating an RfC? Should someone move the page in the meantime? –Daybeers (talk) 15:50, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
In the past redirection of the uppercase version would have been deprecated as a partial title match (WP:PTM), although as these things continue to get downcapped it may be more convincing to argue in favor of such a setup. To draw upon the example from PTM, if we had a page called "Louisville zoo" rather than "Louisville Zoo" that would presumably indicate that the name of the zoo is simply "Louisville," so it would then be appropriate to add the zoo to the "Louisville" disambiguation page. Dekimasuよ! 04:13, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.
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