Talk:National park

From Academic Kids

An Invitation

Several Wikipedians have been working to set up this structure of the world's national parks and other preserved areas. The need now is to start filling this structure in with content.

A few parks, generally in the U.S., have articles already, but there is room for so much more. A few suggested guidelines have been worked out for these and related articles:

• Features or regions and parks can be separate -- The Grand Canyon and Grand Canyon National Park are separate articles. This is because the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River extends well beyond the park boundaries, and the park includes more than the canyon. Other good examples of this are the Everglades and Everglades National Park, Yosemite Valley, and Yosemite National Park (which has a number of major features or regions worth an article). Where it seems appropriate, create separate articles along these lines:

• • Natural or Historical Feature or Region -- all the information specific to the region, including pictures, or why would one want to visit. This should be linked into the natural and historical context for that feature or site. Example: Grand Canyon should not only be linked to the park, but to other articles about the Colorado River, Arizona, and the geology, hydrography, and ecology of the American southwest.
  • National Park or Reserve -- the organizational and historical information about the park itself as an entitiy, with links to the political and organizational schemes and structures it fits into. Example: Grand Canyon National Park should not only link into Grand Canyon but eventually other nearby or contigous parks or preserves, the National Park System, adjacent Native American reservations, etc.

• There is more than one kind of park -- Nomenclature and categories change from one country to another -- something we are still working with. National parks in Britain are a very different thing than parks in the U.S. Also, what would be a national historical park or monument in the U.S. or Canada tends to be a National Trust property in England (which we could/should include into this structure somehow). Be inclusive, but in lists like those linked to this article, break out different kinds of properites as necessary.
• Pictures are good -- They do have to be PD or the equivalent of course. But such pictures do exist for many of the sites we would want articles about. NPS pictures, as government pictures are PD, but should be properly cited. As appropriate, your own snaps could be excellent (more emphasis on Jellystone Falls, and less on Aunt Mabel, though) See Grand Canyon for a good example.

Well, this is just a start -- and this is a talk page after all, so sound off if you have something to add or change. Remember -- edit boldly. ClaudeMuncey, Sunday, April 7, 2002

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Hi, I added the two different entries on Grand Canyon NP and the Canyon itself, for reasons you indicated above. Additionally, this makes it possible to give history of the park (when did what are become a NP, when extended, etc.) separately from a history of the natural feature. The article entries on the features should also exist if only because they are more likely to be linked. If you want to structure the national park pages (or at least the US ones), you may set up WikiProject page, and link to it on all the NP pages.

Anyway, I'd like to contribute on some of the other parks as well, preferably on the ones I have visit or will visit in the near future. jheijmans

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Two things I like about Wikipedia:

• nifty people
• new things I never saw before -- its a big place

I had not run into WikiProjects before, so thank you. I will work something up from the content above. and feel free and edit boldly . . . . especially if you have some nice pictures from the ones you visit. ClaudeMuncey, Tuesday, April 9, 2002

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Hi, I have introduced a proposal for a WikiProject Protected Areas. That was before I read this talk page. You have some good ideas here which can also be used in the project. It's rather theoretical for the moment, but I'm planning on a few testcases in the near future (probably an Australian national park and some other kind of protected area). When you have the time could you have a look at it, and let me know what you think of it? Thanks! -- Guy

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The articles in the list with links are probably candidates for redirecting/renaming "Protected areas of [country]", in the same way as I did with Australia. That way they are more inclusive and areas other than national parks can be included. Any objections? Please see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (protected areas), Wikipedia:WikiProject Protected Areas and compare with Protected areas of Australia. Guy 20:11 Oct 10, 2002 (UTC)

External links

The external links only lists national parks in English-speaking nations. However, many non-English speaking countries have English site(s) dedicated to national parks (and some, are not in English, but still provide potentially useful contact information). Now, there is a separate WP article (see projects in the discussion above) for the natl. parks of the world, so, two years later, I invite others' suggestions as to whether to integrate the new links I just added (or all the links - i.e. linked internally) into this aforementioned article/project, or whether we should have a separate one for the National Park article (and especially considering the likely possibility of further links for other countries being added in the future). El_C

A Wikiproject is not an article. What I think you are asking is whether we should have a separate daughter project just for national parks (out of all protected areas). I would say no. For one thing, protected area classification varies greatly by country and for another we barely have any active contributors in the one Wikiproject. Rmhermen 18:37, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)

Actually (and on further recollection), I was attempting to pose the question — not very successfully, I realize now — whether the govt. and otherwise agencies responsible for Natl. Parks (and respective equivalents) should be listed in this article or in the List of national parks article, or both. You are correct in stating that this does not, in fact, pertain to the protected area project. My question, then, was -not- whether we should have a separate natl. parks project, but I can easily see now how it could be construed as such. Sorry for the confusion. El_C

Image quantities, sizes, captions

I see all of the back-and-forth on the images. Here are my thoughts:

• I remove "small" formatting wherever I find it because I cannot read it on the screen. I don't know what settings other people are using, but I have a Mac that I set up on which I use Netscape, Safari, and (something else), and it's too small in all of those; I also Work on a Windows system set up by someone else on which I use Explorer, and it's too small there. I don't know why we still support this format. Please don't use it is all I can say. Elf

So long as it is available, I suspect that I will continue to use it for all captions. I am going by a 1024-to-1280 which I think reflects the average. There must be settings on your Mac to make it legible. Since it is available in Wikipedia, I never even thought twice upon using it. Also, note that I use it also for bibliographical reference lists. I suggest you take this issue to higher channels as addressing it somewhat sporadically in individual articles will likely not solve this problem for you and other Mac users who face a similar discrapency. El_C

So you're saying it's a good idea that every time someone uses Wikipediathey have to use different settings than when they view everything else on the web? (And note that I said it's not a Mac 'problem'.) I don't think so. But someday I will bring it up elsewhere. Elf | Talk 21:29, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Not at all, I am simply trying to direct it when contributing towards what I see as the average resolution size of visitors, but that is just my own approach. This (average) will likely change in the future, and I presume the articles will invariably then be changed accordingly. Sorry, I misread your comment about it being a Mac issue. If you would like it to be addressed systemically, then you should bring it up elsewhere, and I encourage you to do so. El_C

• Natl vs National--why on earth would one prefer "Natl" to "National"? Elf

I used it simply because it fits in the caption in one line at 1024:768 (which I understood to be a sound resolution average). Ditto for neglecting to bold it (it is still readable on this and other machines I used to view the article). Otherwise, it makes little difference one way or another. El_C

• Size and placement of photos-- for a summary article like this, it would be easier to scan the *information* (which is primarily what this encyclopedia --and this article in specific--is about) if they are all on the smaller side and all consistently in the default location off to the right. Elf

All the pictures, with the exception of Dragon Pond (centre, but at the end of the article) here were placed at the right side when I originally submitted them, I agree enitrely with your argument on that front. See the revert that I just applied moments ago — it reflects the original placement of all the pictures. I address size bellow.El_C

• Size in general: Remember that not everyone is using a huge screen to work on the internet. WHen I'm working on my laptop, images more than about 300-350px in Wikipedia take up too much real estate. Some of the original photo sizes in this article completely overwhelmed my laptop screen. Also remember that, even in the U.S., nearly half of people using the internet are using dial-up connections, not broadband, so although I like a lot of photos in an article, smaller file sizes (automatically done in Wikipedia when a smaller image is displayed) is much better. If the reader wants to see a large photo in its full glory, let them click & go to the image page. Elf

I just did not see anything wrong to have one-single picture at 599px at the end, and others at 199-to-299px. I set my monitor to 1024:768 when I work on WP. Normally, I would agree with you, but an article entitled national park inherently should place some emphasis on nice visuals (also). El_C

• I would like to see even more variety of landscapes among the national parks. But please only with small, consistently placed images. Remember when we say that Wikipedia is not paper, that also means that layout design that you might use on paper doesn't necessarily apply to articles online, where the window sizes are scalable by the user and different screen sizes apply, so having images in various locations around the page might work on paper or on your particular browser setup, but this needs to be geared towards a wider audience. Elf

See my comment about my own picture placement (rightwards) above. I would also like to see a wider veriety of pictures and I encourage others to contribute these. Note that Yellowstone and Yosemite were purposfully placed nearby where they are mentioned in the text (as per the history of natl. parks). El_C

• Please don't add photos of uncertain copyright & licensing origin. Means someone has to come through and clean them out later,or if this ever makes it to a featured article candidate (for example), someone will have to find all new, legit, images to use. Elf | Talk 20:45, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Point taken, but just to clarify, it was not uncertain, I was simply being absent-minded at the time (which I will attempt to avoid in the future). As mentioned, in the request made in my talk page today to better qualify these, my current HDD no longer possesses this information. I will try to retrace my steps as per the origins of each picture suffering from unclear licensing origin, but as said, it will take me some time, I suspect. Which I think is fine for now, as this article will not reach featured status anytime soon (though, of course, I am hopeful that eventually it could). El_C

I agree with Elf and with Grunt who changed it first. These pictures are just too large and (myself) too many for this small amount of text. Additionally the Yosemite picture is not of the same quality as the other picture and detracts from the overall appearance. The bolding is irrelevant (at least in my browser) -all links are bold. Adding or removing bolding from link doesn't change their appearance. Small tags and abbreviations are not desirable in captions. I think we some caption rules somewhere. Rmhermen 21:56, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Captions doesn't mention small text but its sparse examples (one in article, one on talk page) use normal text. I left a question there. Rmhermen 22:07, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)

Give me a chance to reply before you engage in any further reverts, and for the time being, leave my own version (the original). As said, I will go with the consensus, but it does not need to be reached immediately, within the next few minutes. Just be patient. This article has been picture-less for two years before I added my contributions, why the sudden rush? I will be back later with further (more specific) thoughts. I think we are making good progress with this discussion, and in fact, I am well on my way to be persuaded — I am only asking to allow for this discussion to take its due course (should not take long). El_C

Please stop reverting the changes of myself and Grunt. You are the one who started these reversion not us. Your version already has at least three people who disagree with it. I also left a request for comments on Wikipedia:WikiProject Protected Areas. There is no sense in which yours is "the original" version. Rmhermen 22:52, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)

There is a sense, it is the original for the purposes of our dispute, with respect to picture placement and captions (per se.) — and that is all I am refering to here. The reason I reverted back to my version is: Grunt simply changed my custom px-size into generic 'thumb,' and I found it to be an aesthetically poor choice. Unincidentally, he has yet sought to return and address this, so nothing happned. Then, as for your alternative (which, should be noted, is different from Grunt's), Elf has already mentioned, you have that picture on the left and we both think that picture should be on the right. I urge you again to remain patient with respect to changes to the original picture placement/captions until a consensus could be reached. By contrast, if you were to delete all the pictures which suffer from an unclear PD license, then I cannot say anything about that until I am able to demonstrate otherwise. To reiterate, the dispute is over your alternative, and mine stays until it is resolved, then it changes (and invariably these changes will also be changed & improved on at some point, and so on). With best intentions, I was just asking you to be patient, it will not take long to be resolved — again, my addition of pictures has been in place for over two months, before then, the article was picture-less for two years. Good call on alerting contributors from the Protected Areas project to this, their input is likely to make the process, from which I withdraw for the night, more expedient, and result in an improved version. El_C

I do not know why you keep insisting that your version is more important than mine or Grunt's. There is no reason that the page should stay at your version. I see the dispute as over your constant versions of any changes to your version. I also note that the response on Wikipedia Captions is that the CSS already renders caption text in a smaller font so using the small tag as well is not necessary. I have found "your" Shenandoah picture used at [1] (http://www.spiritoftrees.org/folktales/macdonald/mikku_trees.html) but no mention of its origin there either. Rmhermen 14:43, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)

I never said it was more important, you are simply distorting now. I already said (and will not repeat if you refuse to read) that in the case of a dispute that will be the version up there until it is resolved, period. I really do not see why it needs to be so complicated. I already noted that source for Shenandoah that I submitted. Listen, you can go ahead and delete all the pictures and start from scratch, that is how much I am attached to any these (purportedly "my" pictures — a fine debating technique! ). I am not the only one who uses small for captions, so this is something that needs to be dealt with systemically rather on a sporadic, individual article basis. Lastly, I am going to choose to wait until other contributors step in as "dialogue" with you is proving rather circular, and esp., with an unecessarily combative tone you have been exhibiting since the beginning. El_C

You began the combat -instantly reverting any changes to your pictures. I have now replaced the pictures with ones from our other national park articles. I had a hard to finding them. A suprisingly large number (almost all) of our national parks articles have no pictures, especially ones outside the U.S. I have already noted that small captions are dealt with systematically. The CSS renders all caption smaller than regular text, so now there is no need to use the small tag. The Shenandoah picture was the only one I tried to look for -I saw you added them all at the same time and hoped to find that they came from a single PD archive. When they didn't seem to I didn't look any farther. Rmhermen 16:13, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)

1. You never asked why I reverted back the changes you made to the original picture placement.

2. You never asked why I reverted back Grunt's changes to the original picture placement.

3. Instead, you kept insinuating I have some ego-based agenda, whereas I was merely trying to stick to the rules and processes as I understood them.

4. I still would like to see where it is mentioned that small tages are not allowed (systemically, as a policy) in captions.

5. I never said an .edu domain automatically means it is not copyrighted, I merely agreed with you that it is the only picture of lesser quality, thus, I was not going to bother to search for its origins (which, just by chance, I recall was from an .edu domain: a professor of geology, I believe).

6. I will attempt to be more diligant when submitting images in the future, that these have a clear PD licensce. The new pictures you have added to supplant mine seem very nice.

At any rate, I am stepping out. The record is clear here, and it is available for all to judge for themsleves. Based on this experience alone, I am hopeful that our paths do not cross again. All the best to you with your contributions to wikipedia. El_C