The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Several other similar navboxes have been deleted recently. (See WP:USRD/P#Other debates.) Basically, there have been three reasons for deletion:
They take up a large amount of visual space at the bottom of the articles.
They duplicate the function of "Transportation in X County, State" categories, which was a reason why the by-county navboxes were all deleted in the past. (Metropolitan areas in the US are defined at the county level, so the logic is still the same.)
And they pollute the "What links here" listing for individual articles because highways that do not connect in the real world are linked in articles.
These precedents support deletion. Two (Erie, Lehigh) contain links to non-highway transportation articles, so I'll leave it to commenters on whether or not those templates should be stripped of their highways and removed from the highway articles. Imzadi 1979→11:52, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep all: I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it, even if no one believes me (which no one does, LOL): These boxes are a great visual representation of the appropriate highways in said region/city/area for the casual "drive-by" user, especially those brand new ones. If there are supposed to be "Transportation in X County, X State" categories, why haven't they all been made, yet. Actually, to replace these boxes, categories in the form "Transportation (or Highways or Roads) in X City (or area or region)" should be made, if they don't exist. I have started categories like these before, and had other users get upset with me. Charlotte Allison (Allen/Morriswa) (talk) 21:07, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep all There is an easy way to refute the three points brought up in this deletion discussion:
The first, "They take up a large amount of visual space at the bottom of the articles," can be refuted by the fact that these are not very large templates by Wikipedia standards, and would really only take up a large proportion of things if the articles were a few lines long. Even if they are, these articles can be expanded on or the templates can be set to autocollapse.
"They duplicate the function of "Transportation in X County, State" categories, which was a reason why the by-county navboxes were all deleted in the past. (Metropolitan areas in the US are defined at the county level, so the logic is still the same.)" These may duplicate the categories, but we also have lots of other groups of templates which do the same for road, rail, aviation, and a whole slew of other things on this site. I also doubt that for things like the valleys and other geographic areas, there is going to be a duplication, as it is very rare that counties follow strict geographical guidelines, especially in newer counties outside of the east coast.
"And they pollute the "What links here" listing for individual articles because highways that do not connect in the real world are linked in articles." So? It's better to have these articles visually linked on the page, because they it allows for non-Wikipedians to easily find more relevant articles to the topic, without having to go through the categories. Templates are meant to make it easy to see these sorts of relevant articles, and can help increase clicks to an article when curious people use them. In terms of the "what links here" issue, I have found that temporarily unlinking or removing the link from the template can provide an accurate representation, although the thing also tends to list links when they were linked to the article by date, so that can also easily be done if you know what you are looking for.
Charlotte is correct in that these are useful, and it would be a shame to delete these boxes because no one finds them useful, as they really help non-Wikipedians with article navigation and I have always viewed the use of them in these road articles as a huge benefit to the topics which they appear on. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 22:53, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Its not that these templates aren't useful, its that categories handle the need better. Categories are cleaner looking at the bottom of the page as opposed to the clunky templates, which usually only collapse when there are multiple templates on the page. Also, the templates render the What Links Here function useless as it pollutes the links with roads that are only marginally related. For example, Interstate 78 in Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Route 233 have nothing else in common besides being roads within the area defined as the Susquehanna Valley. Also, the by-county categories are better than the metropolitan area templates as county boundaries are more static and not as subjective as metro areas or regions. For example, there could be varying definitions as to what counties comprise the Susquehanna Valley in Pennsylvania. Also, there is the discrepancy as whether for the template to cover the primary metropolitan statistical area or the combined statistical area which includes the primary metropolitan statistical area along with nearby metropolitan or micropolitan areas. Also the boundaries of metropolitan/combined statistical areas change every census with some counties added or removed. Therefore, I feel the by-county categories are better. Dough487200:19, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I do agree that the "Links here" function becomes virtually useless once a link is added to a template, so I wonder if there is a way to design a modification to that tool to remove template links. If anyone would be interested in this idea, I could bring it up to WMF people, since it might have more fans outside this discussion.
In terms of categories, I do agree that some of the roads on these things are marginally related. However, in the case of the Cape Cod one that I wrote above, I tried to model it off of the Boston template so that it not only provided road infrastructure, but also roads and proposed and cancelled infrastructure. In that way, it does provide more information than a category, because it functions more as multiple categories in the same visual space. We could make certain sections of the templates collapse down though when not relevant to the article (i.e. have roads that occur in one extreme of a geographic area listed above not show up when another road in the area is clicked on), so that could also be an option if people wanted to re-code the templates to do this. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 21:55, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all per nom. Weak Delete for the Lehigh Valley because other transportation infrastructure is included, though those could have their own templates if it's determined they're needed. --Molandfreak(talk,contribs,email)05:10, 3 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
