Talk:Buses in Ipswich

Routes

I've just reverted to a version that I think is a suitable starting place. This includes the geographical information which is, frankly, essential at the start of the article and which was removed by the previous reversion. There are a number of other constructive edits which were removed when Adam simply reverted to his favoured version.

Now, routes. It is established I think at AfD that standalone list of route articles outside of London are unlikely to survive. There's pretty good consensus on that. My gut feeling is that, with some time and thought and discussion on the article talk page, we can come to some form of consensus on what material should be included and what sort of level and depth.

As a starting point, there are a number of pretty good (if not excellent) Buses in xxx articles such as Buses in Bristol and Buses in Portsmouth. Neither of these list every bus route in the urban area in question. In fact, I can't find a UK based one which does (or, for that matter, one in some other part of the world although I can't promise that my search has tried to cover every city in the world so far...). That strikes me as suggesting that a sensible course to take would be to summarise the current route position in a prose section as a starting point and then to try to reach some form of consensus with regard to the level of detail to include. There isn't anything, for example, on park and ride services or on coach services passing through the town - although I'm sure there must be some. These deserve a mention - see the Bristol article for example - and should be the first priority.

Lots of the historical information here is worthwhile by the way. It's good to see some form of referencing as well. But we need to get some form of consensus here really. Blue Square Thing (talk) 16:14, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

My revert only meant to revert the list, I apologise for my mistake, I have replaced the constructive edits by yourself and Charles' adjustment of the prose.  Adam Mugliston  talk  16:28, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

And I think at least one of my edits conflicted with at least one of yours in that the rvt managed to rvt the edit where you did this and not the previous one where you reinstated the list of bus routes which is the deal we need to resolve. I'll add a note about a specific issue to your talk page, but let's see if we can build up some form of consensus based on the sorts of articles I've mentioned above. Blue Square Thing (talk) 16:48, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Right, glad at least someone is willing to have a civilised discussion. For example, each of the New York City boroughs has a list of bus routes alone. I have been told before that a list would fit in as part of a prose article, which is what I followed. I have disproved that WP:NOTDIR, WP:NOTGUIDE and WP:FANCRUFT have something against lists of bus routes, therefore I believe most people have run out of arguments against.  Adam Mugliston  talk  17:09, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Per your suggestion, I have included a park and ride section. Fully sourced and linking to the Ipswich park and ride article.  Adam Mugliston  talk  17:29, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

It was me who mentioned prose articles in the deletion for Colchester; and though I did say that these lists can fit into the prose article - I did not envision them being complete recreations of the deleted lists. There was a clear consensus that those lists in their existing format did not have a place in the encyclopaedia so you need to look at summarising the lists in prose or concatenating it down to a small list of only the key facts about key routes. per WP:NOTTRAVEL it shouldn't list every route or every detail about included routes. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 18:06, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

But that is the point I made on my talk page. The list doesn't give every detail, only the main points and termini, together with the operator.  Adam Mugliston  talk  19:47, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

The case of the New York Boroughs is interesting - there is also obviously the case of London as well as a number of other major world cities (Paris for example has a very basic list of bus routes somewhere or other). I think the general feeling seems to be that major world cities might just about have some notability with regard to bus route lists - and in some cases bus routes themselves - but that there are a number of problems even with those. The Paris list, as a I say, seems very poor to me, there are issues with some of the London lists (the historic bus routes list for example requires a date caveat in order to make it even vaguely sustainable) and so on. We've been through the standard issues with regard to these lists plenty of times and I think it would be difficult, at present, to establish a case for a fairly small UK town or even a UK county. London, yes, fair enough, but I would argue that the way forward is half decent prose based articles, with lots of third party sourcing and which summarise information.

I know I've said this a number of times before, but information gets out of hand and out of date very quickly - it looks to me as if there have been a number of changes to bus services within Ipswich within the last 2 months for example, with others indicated to be likely in the next six months. That makes keeping a list anywhere other than the really official sites very, very difficult in my opinion. Blue Square Thing (talk) 09:55, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, several changes have happened, which is why I waited until now to publish the article. Changes in the next few months regard the timetables and operating hours alterations, rather than routes and so would not require much (if any) updating here. I'm not abandoning this, so I will keep an eye out to update when necessary.

It seems to me as though we're not going to reach much of a consensus. If this was an AfD, the material would stay with a no consensus result.  Adam Mugliston  talk  10:01, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

So let's work on what we can reach consensus over. There's detail being added - with reasonable third party sourcing - to the routes and we've added or substantially changed sections on the bus stations (which I think have more to add on them by the way - history for example), park and ride (which I think is solid) and coach services (which is probably about right). I think there's the capability to add more detail on routes but, at this point, it's more important to work on developing that in the same sort of style as other reasonable quality articles rather than going down a list route I think. Blue Square Thing (talk) 10:10, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, I could do a subsection on the number of routes operated and mention the suburbs served. Perhaps also a more detailed mention of the old Superoute 66 (now just plain 66) with a link to the Kesgrave busway. That could be a start, although personally, I would like some more detail. Idea I just had, could be to list the suburbs served, with a route number next to the them maybe? I do however feel that the list as it was provides sufficient detail to demonstrate the service, without too much detail to overpower potential readers. We could perhaps limit the number of points travelled through, to an amount relating to the length of the route, if that makes any difference.  Adam Mugliston  talk  10:21, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

I was just thinking of something similar myself actually. If the 66 is a bit odd (especially if it's part guided) then it deserves a sentence or two certainly. I would try for prose first rather than a list - and perhaps try and make it more of a set of examples rather than authoritative? I'd also stick to just the routes that are "town" routes rather than anything that ends up in somewhere like Diss but just happens to stop a couple of times along the main road. The council website has some lists of those, although there are probably too many to include all of them. Exemplars may be a better way forward - you could always try and put something together, save the edit and then revert your edit to allow discussion on it (given that anything resembling a list risks all sorts of stuff...). Be interesting to see what others feel about this sort of approach as well - might be worth waiting a while.

My big issue with this sort of thing is that if we try and be too authoritative then we end up with major league time issues - these are a big enough problem in other areas of the project which are a bit more mainstream and attract a greater number of editors; we need to be very aware of this and see if we can avoid it where possible. Blue Square Thing (talk) 14:01, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Ok, I'll make a draft of something in my userspace, then you can see what you think, as no one else seems to really be participating in this discussion.  Adam Mugliston  talk  14:11, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

This is a working draft for now. Let me now what you think and what else should go in etc.  Adam Mugliston  talk  14:28, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

I think I could live with something along those lines, although I'd be *very* interested to hear what other people have to say as well - it is the middle of the day and I'm only here because it's the school holidays so I'm only partly working! I might be tempted to use the Borough council website as a source for the routes and to see what can be found in places like the EADT rather than using timetable pages. Suffolk On Board is better than the company ones, although the maps are useful certainly. Blue Square Thing (talk) 14:59, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

It does need some tidying up though I feel, but I'm not sure how to make it any better. I know you would like to wait for more, however I think that the only people who care to comment are people who are against information with even such a level of detail.  Adam Mugliston  talk  15:25, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

That doesn't make their comments any less worthwhile though. Remember, I have consistently tended to vote delete at AfD for lists of bus routes but have strongly supported attempts to develop prose articles (I only became aware of this article in the last three days btw, which is the only reason I didn't contribute to the article previously). Yet I have been convinced that there's a case for more detail and that what you have isn't unreasonable as a starting point - whether it turns into a slightly briefer section I don't know, but I would **really** like to hear what others have to say on the proposal - there's no desperate rush! Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:52, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Well if you'd like others opinions, I think we should ask for opinions, as I don't think many people (if any) will find this.  Adam Mugliston  talk  17:23, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

As I typed elsewhere recently:

It's clear to me from WP:NOTDIR that such detailed bus route information is unlikely to be appropriate as encyclopedic content. An example given in that policy (For example, an article on a radio station should not list upcoming events, current promotions, current schedules, etc., although mention of major events, promotions or historically significant program lists and schedules may be acceptable) can be extrapolated to other topic areas such as bus routes. The most up-to-date information can't realistically be maintained here on Wikipedia, and readers would be better served by visiting a dedicated timetable/planning site or similar, e.g. http://www.transportdirect.info. It should also be noted that WikiProject Buses/Bus route list guide did not achieve consensus and isn't fully in accordance with NOTDIR.
Having said all of that, IMO it can be encyclopedic to include historical and notable information about certain routes, giving such information due weight within the content of the overall topic. However, a default to including all such information (particularly where such information is liable to change and cannot be reliably sourced, e.g. Large blocks of material based purely on primary sources should be avoided) falls under what Wikipedia is not, i.e. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and therefore does not aim to contain all data or expression found elsewhere on the Internet.

A small amount of (notable) information would seem to be more suited to prose, but if there's a greater amount (again if notable and deserving due weight) then this would be more clearly presented within a table. Sorry if that's not much help... just my 2p. -- Trevj (talk) 11:27, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Current operations

I've taken this section out of the history as it seems to summarise the current operator and so on. But I'm really unsure about the section title or whether it needs to be in the history or not. Would like opinions on this please. Ta Blue Square Thing (talk) 09:56, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

It was part of the history section, however it was indicated that this continues into the present. A new section could be started, however I think it would also fit in fine where it was.  Adam Mugliston  talk  09:59, 14 August 2013 (UTC)