Talk:List of Maine state parks

Identifying the Maine State Parks

Answering the question "what are the state parks in Maine" is an example of a fundamental question one would expect to find answered in Wikipedia. Of course, we do have an article with a list, but there are other ways to answer the question and they give different answers answer. In Wikipedia, we can look at:

• The Wikipedia list article
• The navigation template at the bottom of the list article and included on each of the separate articles about State Park
• The category Category:State parks of Maine

Those three locations do not contain the same list of parks. I initially thought addressing this would be simple. For example, "Androscoggin Riverlands" is in the list article, but not in the template or the category. The simple solution would be to add it to the template and the category. However, Swans Falls Campground is included in the template, but not in the list article. While it is a red link, so is Penobscot River Corridor and that is included in the list.

I decided to look at some external reliable sources to see what they had to say. The two sources I reviewed were:

• The state of Maine DACF (Department of agriculture, conservation and forestry) site which had a search for parks option
• The USGS site, searching for "State Park" within "Maine"

Unfortunately, those two searches just made the problem more complicated, as the lists created by those external sources did not match any of the Wikipedia lists nor with each other. The results of these five sources can be summarized in the following table:

Table of Maine State parks according to various sources

		Wikipedia			Reliable sources
Index	Name	1 Per template	2 List of Maine state parks	3 Cat:State Parks	4 Park search	5 USGS search for State Park in Maine
1	Allagash Wilderness Waterway	x	x	x	x
2	Androscoggin Riverlands	Y	x		x
3	Aroostook	x	x	x	x	x
4	Baxter	x	x	x	x	x
5	Birch Point	x	x	x	x
6	Bradbury Mountain	x	x	x	x	x
7	Camden Hills	x	x	x	x	x
8	Cobscook Bay	x	x	x	x	x
9	Crescent Beach	x	x	x	x	x
10	Damariscotta Lake	x	x	x	x	x
11	Ferry Beach	x	x	x	x	x
12	Fort Allen Park					x
13	Fort Edgecomb State Park					x
14	Fort Knox State Historic Site					x
15	Fort McClary State Park					x
16	Fort O'Brien State Historic Site					x
17	Fort Point	x	x	x	x	x
18	Grafton Notch	x	x	x	x
19	Holbrook Island Sanctuary	x	x	x	x
20	Katahdin Iron Works Historic Site					x
21	Lake St. George	x	x	x	x	x
22	Lamoine	x	x	x	x	x
23	Lily Bay	x	x	x	x	x
24	Mackworth Island	Y	x	Y	x
25	Moose Point	x	x	x	x	x
26	Mount Blue	x	x	x	x	x
27	Mount Kineo State Park	Y	x	Y	x
28	Owls Head Light State Park	Y	x	Y	x	x
29	Peacock Beach	x	x	x		x
30	Peaks-Kenny	x	x	x	x	x
31	Penobscot Narrows Observatory	Y		Y	x
32	Penobscot River Corridor	x	x		x
33	Popham Beach	x	x	x	x	x
34	Quoddy Head	x	x	Y	x	x
35	Range Ponds	x	x	x	x	x
36	Rangeley Lake	x	x	x	x
37	Reid	x	x	x	x	x
38	Roque Bluffs	x	x	x	x	x
39	Scarborough Beach State Park				x	x
40	Sebago Lake	x	x	x	x	x
41	Shackford Head	x	x	x	x
42	Swans Falls Campground	x			x
43	Swan Lake	x	x	x	x
44	Tacoma Lakes State Park					x
45	Two Lights	x	x	x	x	x
46	Vaughan Woods	x	x	x	x	x
47	Warren Island	x	x	x	x
48	Wolfe's Neck Woods	x	x	Y	x	x

• x existing prior to edits made on 25 Oct 2020
• Y added 25 Oct 2020 or later S Philbrick(Talk) 17:10, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

1. Template:Protected areas of Maine State Parks
2. List_of_Maine_state_parks
3. Category:State_parks_of_Maine
4. Maine Park Search
5. USGS Feature Name: State Park State:Maine

These five options produced a total of 48 entries; only 21 of the entries I found in each of the five options.

If we look at the entries where a row has one or more blanks, some patterns emerge. The USGS site identifies several locations as state parks, such as Fort Edgecomb State Park, Fort Knox State Park, and more that I characterized by the state of Maine as historic sites, and included the second table of the list article with the heading "state historic sites". This appears to be a definitional issue, with the USGS applying the label "state Park" to some locations that Maine refers to as historic sites. Because most of these are listed in the historic site table, it would not be appropriate to move them into the state Park table. That does leave one open issue — Fort Allen Park is identified in the USGS search, but does not appear in the state of Maine list of historic sites or parks. Wikipedia does have an article discussing the park: Fort_Allen_Park, so when we review the state historic site table, it will be appropriate to determine whether it belongs in that table.

Several entries do not appear in the USGS list. As examples, the first two items in the table above, the Allegash Wilderness Waterway, and the Androscoggin Riverlands. My current assessment is that if the location is identified by the state of Maine as a state park with USGS does not list it, the main site should trump the USGS list. I hope really is more familiar with how the USGS populates its entries could weigh in to help determine whether this assessment makes sense.

There are a number of entries with the entry shows up in the list, shows up in the state of Maine search but is not in the template or the category or both. I think there is a simple explanation and simple solution – whomever was working on populating the templates and the categories missed a few items, most likely because the template for category was populated at an earlier stage of the list article. When additions were made to the less they were not always made to the template or category. Unless someone thinks I'm missing something, I'm planning to update the template and category to reflect any entry in both the Wikipedia list and the state of Maine list of parks.

I note that Penobscot Narrows Observatory shows up in the state of Maine drop down list, and has an article but is not in the Wikipedia list. I propose to add it. I believe that leaves one special case that requires consideration. Peacock Beach State Park is in the Wikipedia list, but does not appear in the drop-down list in the state of Maine search. The article discusses the history and may explain the omission. This location was a state park up until 2010. While the article is short on details, it appears that the state had concerns about the cost of maintaining this Park, and the town of Richmond took over the management. While this arguably means it is not technically a state park of Maine, note that the state of Maine website does mentions the location. It is not covered by the state park pass, but that's also true of some of the locations that are considered state parks. I'm open to further discussion, but given that we have an article about this location, and spell out the special circumstances in the article, I think we provide better service to our readers to keep the article in the list, and add it to the template and category.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:10, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

One other situation is curious. The USGS site makes reference to Tacoma Lakes State Park. That park is mentioned here but it is my speculation that that entry was simply generated from the USGS mention. I note the site has a list of Maine state parks here, and it is not on that list. Maybe someone can do some more research and see if it is in fact a state Park, but absent such evidence I'm not including it. S Philbrick(Talk) 16:49, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Category edits

I made some edits to the category:

Added

• Mackworth Island

• Mount Kineo
• Owls Head Light
• Penobscot Narrows Bridge and Observatory
• Quoddy Head State Park
• Wolfe's Neck Woods State Park

Not added

• Penobscot River Corridor (red link)
• Scarborough,_Maine (no substantive discussion of the state park only an item in a list)
• Swans Falls Campground (red link)

There is some potential to quibble with some of the ones I added. for example, Mount Kineo State Park links to the article Mount Kineo, and one could argue that the article is about the geological feature not a state park, but the state park constitutes about 70% of the total peninsula, so it isn't the case that the state park is a minor feature of the subject matter of the article.--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:57, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Template edits

I added the following entries to the template:

• Androscoggin Riverlands
• Mackworth Island
• Mount Kineo State Park (Mount Kineo)
• Owls Head Light State Park (Owls Head Light)
• Penobscot Narrows Observatory (Penobscot Narrows Bridge and Observatory)--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:17, 25 October 2020 (UTC)