Talk:List of Alaska state parks

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What should be linked at what shouldn't?[edit]

Currently, it looks like pretty much everything is linked. A great many of them are redlinks. I think we should go through tis list and try to determine which are legitimate redlinks, meaning subjects on which reasonably informative articles could be written, and which shoulld probably be de-linked. Full-on State Parks should probably all be links, but many of the SRAs and SRS are tiny roadside campgrounds that nobody other than the State Park system has ever written a word about. The reason is thet there sin't much to say about a fifteen site campground that is just there to give people a place to sleep. Or are state parks in the magical realm of "automatically notable" geographic locations? Thoughts? Beeblebrox (talk) 21:06, 29 November 2015 (UTC) Note: WikiProject alaska informed of this discussion. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:09, 29 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Suggest adding a one- or two sentence summary to the minor entries when de-linking: size, location including coordinates, main facilities, access. Dankarl (talk) 16:12, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I have the unfortunate duty to point out that the statement "but many of the SRAs and SRS are tiny roadside campgrounds that nobody other than the State Park system has ever written a word about" is a slight embellishment. I was going through a pile of books the other day when this first came across my watchlist. It just so happened that the first book in the pile was the 23rd Edition of Lou Jacobin's Guide to Alaska and the Yukon (1969). Page 233 is devoted to the topic. Granted, it's a list, albeit much better annotated than ours (see Dankarl's suggestion, above) and suggests that readers write to the Division of Lands office in Anchorage for more information. Also in that pile was the 66th Edition of The Milepost (2014), which devoted an entire column to Deep Creek and lesser space to lesser facilities. So it's probably safe to say that just about any travel-type publication from a reputable publisher is going to contain at least some mention of this topic.
As for reorganization, I wanted to discuss the title and purpose first. As the main article for a category, in this case Category:State parks of Alaska, readers should expect it to be the focal point for information on the topic. Methinks this should be titled either "Alaska State Parks" (reflecting its branding) or "Alaska Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation" (reflecting its position within the executive branch), and contain a list of parks AFTER providing some sort of encyclopedic explanation of the division's operations and of state parks in Alaska, such as history (Wood-Tikchik happened to be a sliver of land claimed by the state because it wasn't previously divvied up by the feds, so it's not that glamorous a history, but it's still history nonetheless). The division also includes notable functions such as the Office of the State Historian. I previously mentioned that the Alaska Heritage Resources Survey information may be out of place in Alaska, but it could work here if our coverage were to place focus on the division.
As for redlinks, some just need to be changed or updated. For example, Wickersham State Historic Site is the same place as Wickersham House (Juneau, Alaska). When I first visited Juneau, it was the House of Wickersham, a private tourist attraction. Google "Ruth Coffin Allman" and you'll see that we have another boilerplate NRHP permastub that doesn't exactly do proper justice to the subject. Similiarly, Caines Head is represented by Fort McGilvray, which today is actually a component of Caines Head rather than the other way around. Foot access in and out depends on tides (and is the road through Lowell Point still bumpy as all fuck, too?), so I can't imagine it's really that popular. There's surely others of this sort in the list. Most of the redlinks I see could do without articles, but could do with other information. Some of them are tricky. Kepler-Bradley was a recreation spot back when it was along the road between Palmer and Matanuska, rather than the road between Palmer and Anchorage, but I doubt that much has been written about it recently. Finger Lake and Montana Creek? Absolutely independently notable. Finger Lake is the division's regional headquarters, too (oh yeah, something else which could be mentioned). RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 03:13, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
No that I think about it, in a lot of cases it may be appropriate to just have a paragraph on the SRA/SRS in an article on the feature it is based around. Now that I think about it some more, I have already done this several times, for example, Quartz Lake State Recreation Area and Lake Louise State Recreation Area. Might not work in every case bit it would be a way to turn a lot of those red links blue without creating a whole pile of two-line stubs. Beeblebrox (talk) 06:00, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

2017 redux[edit]

I'd like to open this discussion back up so we can try, one way or the other, to get rid of all the redlinks in this article. I suggest we try an example as a test case for how we want to handle these, and I would further suggest that it be Liberty Falls SRS.

This is an absolutely gorgeous, and quite loud, waterfall on the side of a hill above the Copper River. The entire SRS is ten acres. There are ten campsites, all clustered along a very short loop road that one can drive in less than a minute. There are no hiking trails or other attractions of any kind, (and in fact the surrounding terrain is quite steep and dangerous) it's just a nice place to camp by a waterfall. The site has it's own page on the DNR website [1], a decent write up in the Milepost, and an entry at GNIS U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Liberty Falls.

That is enough to justify a short stub, but is that desirable? It most likely won't ever be anything beyond a short stub because there's just isn't that much to say about it, being such a a small facility centered around one feature.

Alternately, we could say that any site like this, where we can verify its existence and write one or two lines of text, but there is no parent article to attach them to should just be briefly described here. The risk is that it may make this article difficult to navigate, but we may be able to mitigate that by turning it into a sortable table or something like that.

Thoughts? Beeblebrox (talk) 03:11, 30 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well crap, was hoping for some real input here. As a counter example to Liberty Falls, I am thinking of writing up Captain Cook SRA. It is not one of the better-known parks, but it has a large campground, a substantial beach on Cook Inlet, a lake that now has its own article, hiking trails,a nd is the terminus of the Swanson River canoe trail. To me that is an easy pass to having a full, if brief article. What I don’t know squat about is how, if we do as suggested above, to make a fancy sortable table with all the information that would otherwise go here for items for which there si very little to say. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:37, 15 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
By the way that article is live. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:09, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Kind fo talking to myself here, but in case anyone else is interested, in contrast to the Captain Cook SRA, which I felt merited its own article, I added content on the Blueberry Lake State Recreation Site to the article on Thompson Pass and created a redirect. I think this is the right approach for these really small parks. (Do camp there if you’re ever up that way though, it’s stunningly beautiful and there’s grayling in the lake.) Beeblebrox (talk) 21:44, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Goal[edit]

I think the goal here, contrary to what I said a few years ago, should be to turn all these links blue. The DNR website alone provides sufficient information to add something, somewhere, on every unit in the system, and if you’ve got The Milepost you can add a little more in many cases. So for most of the small SRS/SRA locations a mention in a related article and creation of a redirect to that section is probably enough, for the larger and more popular parks full articles may be in order. It’s a big job and it’s going to take quite some time if I’m doing it all myself.... Any assistance in this endeavor would therefore be greatly appreciated. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:52, 23 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Progress[edit]

Beeblebrox (talk) 19:06, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • All Copper River Basin area parks linked via redirect to new sections in existing articles. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:04, 18 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Content/redirects added for Fairbanks area parks. Still a lot of redlinks on list. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:34, 23 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Created redirect for combined article on the 2 parks in southwest, expanded Wood-Tikchik State Park enough to nominate for DYK. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:25, 24 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delta Junction Area now all blue links, including new article Fielding Lake. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:55, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Randomly discovered that Nancy Lake State Recreation Area was riddled with copyright violations, and always had been. Deleted it and wrote entirely new article including content on the SRS of the same name. Going to try and get it on front page via DYK. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:24, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It got nearly 3,000 views while featured on the main page. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:10, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Content created for all interior region parks. There is now content for over 50% of all park units. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:05, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Content added for all Kodiak area park units. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:10, 25 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Content added for all Mat-Su park units, although I had to kind of punt on two of them because the only information I could find was that they exist and DNR considers them "associated" with Denali SP. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:11, 25 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Obviously this kind of stalled out. And now I'm busy with arbcom and RL work. If anyone wants to hop in and do some of this, do let me know, it's pretty easy. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:24, 21 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I think that this list should be remade. For example, take a look at the featured 3 state park lists: List of Louisiana state parks, List of Pennsylvania state parks, and List of West Virginia state parks. - 21 October 2020. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PeakAsian (talk • contribs) 14:33, 21 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I would certainly welcome having a fancy sortable table and maps and all that if someone wants to put the work into coding it and setting it up. I'd suggest it still be split by region. We probably aren't ever going to have images from every single park unit unless someone with the necessary skills wants to spend some time searching for free images on Flikr or something. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:56, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Beeblebrox, or wants to do some travelling. I agree that it would be nice to have a table with maps. I'm going through categories, slowly, and updating rivers, mountains, glaciers and parks within the scope of Alaska. If you see anything that needs some attention I would be more than willing to take a look at it. --ARoseWolf 12:49, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Redirects[edit]

Why do we need lakes from List of lakes of Alaska redirected to this article? It appears that there were articles on these lakes but those articles were since deleted per AfD discussions. They were then redirected to the State Parks article sometime after the deletion took place. --Tsistunagiska (talk) 18:25, 2 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for the very late reply, which lakes are those? Beeblebrox (talk) 19:57, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If perchance you meant Moon Lake (Alaska) I fixed that one. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:15, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for fixing that. --ARoseWolf 12:50, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
By the by, the afd involved was Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Grebe Lake (Alaska). Beeblebrox (talk) 23:17, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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