Talk:Buffalo-Pittsburgh Highway

I'm back in action, and I need your feedback on my newest project!

Swept in from the pub

Hi folks. I know that other than the thrice-monthly DotM changeout, I've been pretty quiet onwiki lately. But I just wanted to drop a note here to say a couple of things. One, I'm back to full-scale activity, and other than the occasional short break of the type I just got through with, I have no intention of derelicting my Wikivoyage duties at any time in the near, intermediate, or far future. Two: I've begun work in earnest on one of the many itinerary and travel topic articles I've had incubating in my userspace for a while. I decided to start now partly to relieve the monotony of constantly updating the Buffalo district articles, but also because due to the Buffalo's upcoming re-districtification, I don't project that a Buffalo district article will be ready for the Main Page until at least 2021, and I'd really like to get a piece of my work on the Main Page before then (and if it's in the FTT category, for which we have significantly more trouble finding worthy candidates, so much the better).

So: presenting Buffalo-Pittsburgh Highway. By way of background (and I went into detail about this in the sort of proto-Understand section I sketched out earlier), the Buffalo-Pittsburgh Highway was a historic "auto trail", i.e an element of the semiformal 1920s-era road network that served as a predecessor to numbered state and federal highways in the U.S. And so the goal of this itinerary is not only to trace out the original route as closely as modern-day infrastructure permits, but also to compare and contrast what a 1920s-era traveller would have seen vs. a modern-day one, and to list attractions along the way with a particular highlight on historic sites (especially sites related to industrial history - promotional literature of the day dubbed the BPH "America's One Great Industrial Broadway") or anything else that would have been extant and accessible to visitors in the 1920s. I'm aiming for a September or October 2020 FTT feature, to take advantage of the autumn leaves.

So with that in mind, and also keeping in mind that the article is still very much in embryonic form, I'm soliciting first impressions from the Wikivoyage hivemind. (Focus on the #Buffalo metro area and #Cattaraugus County subsections, which represent the article in more or less its intended final form; the rest is just notes and outlines that I plan to expand on later.) Any feedback is welcome, but the particular questions I'd like help resolving are:

• Is the information organized in an easy-to-understand way?
• Are the listings too wordy?
• Too many images?

and above all

• Are the driving directions (italicized in the article) written clearly enough? (When my wife and I go on road trips, she usually navigates using my written directions, and my lack of clarity is often a pet peeve of hers.)

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:14, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

• Yes
• No, not for anyone who actually cares about traveling to these places and learning. They are a little longer than usual but that's not a bad thing.
• Definitely no.
• Seems clear to me: it's not a for-sure until I'm actually on those roads but I feel like I understand what you're saying with your directions.

Great work, as always. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:11, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the vote of confidence! To clarify: when asking if there were too many images, I should have said to think more in terms of "image density" than aggregate number of images. I intend for them to pop up on the right side of the page at roughly the same interval throughout the article as they currently do in the #Buffalo metro area section. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:38, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Just quickly on images: You could definitely add 3 more if you like. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:08, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

I was wondering if maybe it should be tied in to industrial tourism. Buffalo, as we all know, was once an industrial city with many factories, while West Virginia is a major coal mining state. The dog2 (talk) 04:55, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

It looks good! It's a little early to make any final decisions, IMHO, but it looks like an excellent work-in-progress to me. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 23:19, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you everybody. Ground Zero, how about you? You've got a keen eye for these kinds of things. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:05, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi Andre. Welcome back. I think that there is a strong advantage to have our destination articles be concise, and organized and formatted consistently. This makes it easier for travellers to find the information quickly, or look something up while they are on the road. Travel topic and itinerary articles are another matter. I think that they are places where we can let loose and provide more detailed and differently organized information -- whatever works best for the subject. If readers don't like it, they can move on to another article. This draft article, once cleaned up for first-person sort of stuff, will be a great resource for someone who wants to follow your route. And for those who don't, we have lots of other articles to suit them. Go for it, I say. Regards, Ground Zero (talk) 08:44, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

LtPowers comments

I like this article so far! I travel the stretch between Salamanca and Ridgway a couple of times a year so I have a personal interest... and a few notes on what you have so far. 1) I believe U.S. 219 between Bradford and Pittsburgh (and perhaps even farther north) is still known as the Buffalo-Pittsburgh Highway, so it's not exclusively an historic designation (though it's not signed AFAIK). 2) The "Andrew Yang" reference may not age well... 3) While it's true Bradford was bypassed in the 70s, the freeway ended abruptly at Owens Way until sometime in the (I think) first decade of the 21st century. (The carriageways continued for a few dozen feet, but all traffic had to exit onto Owens.) South Ave wasn't truncated until then. 4) Wikipedia says the Susquehanna Trail passed through Buffalo. Powers ^(talk) 22:17, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Did I really not respond to this? Sorry Powers, I thought I had. As you can plainly see, I incorporated your tip about the Susquehanna Trail into the article (it actually turned out to be an important piece of information, as it clarified the BPH's historic northern terminus as being the corner of Main and Seneca, and not Niagara Square as I'd originally assumed). But I left well enough alone vis-à-vis the section about the 219 in Bradford, mainly because I didn't want to get too far into the weeds about highway construction and routing at the expense of focusing on local history and POIs (not to mention that what I wrote technically wasn't wrong, "Route 219 was rerouted in the early 1970s to bypass downtown Bradford via a modern four-lane freeway" and "while South Avenue does continue past Owens Way today, it ends in a cul-de-sac" are both true statements, even if the "early 1970s" date doesn't apply to both of them). -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 13:13, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Fair enough; thanks for the response. Powers ^(talk) 13:40, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Southern Tier Trail

Looks like the proposed Southern Tier Trail will parallel the B-P Highway from Buffalo to Salamanca. Powers ^(talk) 20:14, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

It's certainly something to keep an eye on, but given the damage COVID has wrought on New York State's budget (not to mention the reputation Buffalo Rising has earned as a publication that routinely blurs the line between local journalism and local boosterism and tends to decline to distinguish aspirational proposals from solid plans), I think it's best to hold off on mentioning it in the article for now. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 12:53, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Use of red text

Using red text to identify route discrepancies is unique to this article out of all Wikivoyage articles. Some considerations:

• Readers scanning the article who skip over the explanation may not pick up on this.
• People who are colour-blind may not be able to read this text at all (although I realize that this would be true of all of our red links).
• Although I have no visual impairment beyond garden-variety myopia, I find it uncomfortable to read several lines of red text. I mostly just skipped over it because it was annoying.

I think there must be a better way of handling this. This style could become a precedent for use in other articles, especially if this article is featured on the main page, so I think it worth trying to get this right. Ground Zero (talk) 12:05, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I agree; red text is also visually similar to redlinks, which could be confusing. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of ways to visually distinguish inline text that are both accessible and aesthetically pleasing. Bold and italics already have other meanings in Wikivoyage, and underlining and strike-through are non-idiomatic for this purpose. Font color and background color are not accessible. Maybe an outline? But that wouldn't show up on a text reader. It's a conundrum. Powers ^(talk) 13:39, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

What if we use Template:Infobox or something similar? —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:10, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Granger - Given the number of times that template would need to be used, I think the aesthetic concerns associated with that would dwarf the current ones. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:27, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I think that option looks okay. If desired, a new template could be created with a different background color to distinguish those boxes from the "All aboard!" infobox already in the article.

Another option is to use small text. That would be easier for readers doing the regular itinerary to ignore. For readers doing the reverse itinerary, I don't think it would be much harder to read than the red text. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:48, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Another suggestion. Use underlining and an additional indentation. Instead of: Make a left there, and then an immediate right. You're now on Hillside Drive. If you're following the itinerary south-to-north, the merge from Hillside Drive onto the northbound 219 is a half-mile (750 m) past the Cow Palace. This is actually the original routing of the Buffalo-Pittsburgh Highway, but the guardrail in the middle of the modern-day 219 prevents southbound traffic from accessing the north end of Hillside Drive directly.

Use this: Make a left there, and then an immediate right. You're now on Hillside Drive.

If you're following the itinerary south-to-north, the merge from Hillside Drive onto the northbound 219 is a half-mile (750 m) past the Cow Palace. This is actually the original routing of the Buffalo-Pittsburgh Highway, but the guardrail in the middle of the modern-day 219 prevents southbound traffic from accessing the north end of Hillside Drive directly.

This avoids the eye-jarring red, while making the important distinction stand out using formatting that isn't used elsewhere. Ground Zero (talk) 15:53, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I like this idea. —Granger (talk · contribs) 16:18, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

A contrarian argument would say that the existence of this thread is proof positive that the red text is doing the job it was intended to do, namely attracting the reader's eye to important information (or at least information that's important to travellers following the itinerary in the south-to-north direction). My actual position is that I'm sympathetic to the concerns that it's too garish, but I think Ground Zero's suggestion goes too far in the other direction and isn't eye-catching enough. Perhaps a good compromise would be shorter swatches of red text (covering only the words "if you're following the itinerary south-to-north" or the like), boldfaced for extra emphasis (as Powers said, "bold and italics already have other meanings in Wikivoyage", but bold-italics are much more rarely used, and there's a solid argument that using boldface for this purpose within text that's already italicized harmonizes with the mandate in Wikivoyage:Creating emphasis that boldface is for "call[ing] out important topics".

Here's what they would look like side-by-side:

Instead of:

Make a left there, and then an immediate right. You're now on Hillside Drive. If you're following the itinerary south-to-north, the merge from Hillside Drive onto the northbound 219 is a half-mile (750 m) past the Cow Palace. This is actually the original routing of the Buffalo-Pittsburgh Highway, but the guardrail in the middle of the modern-day 219 prevents southbound traffic from accessing the north end of Hillside Drive directly.

Use this:

Make a left there, and then an immediate right. You're now on Hillside Drive. If you're following the itinerary south-to-north, the merge from Hillside Drive onto the northbound 219 is a half-mile (750 m) past the Cow Palace. This is actually the original routing of the Buffalo-Pittsburgh Highway, but the guardrail in the middle of the modern-day 219 prevents southbound traffic from accessing the north end of Hillside Drive directly.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 18:48, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

That looks like a dead link to me -- something that can be safely ignored, rather than something that should stand out. And the bold red text is still jarring. Let's find something without colour. Ground Zero (talk) 20:19, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I personally prefer the bold red text to the original version, but I think the version with short underlining is the best option I've seen here. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:31, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I haven't finished reading the article, but the red text was one thing that I didn't like. If coloured text must be used, please use a different colour - readers already see red links as something that needs editors' attention, and probably see red text as a similar mark up for editors, just as red pen marks might appear on a paper article. I would go for something less attention grabbing, like simply putting the reverse directions in brackets, and using dark grey if you must use colour. AlasdairW (talk) 20:59, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Let's try it with boldface and underlining:

Make a left there, and then an immediate right. You're now on Hillside Drive. :If you're following the itinerary south-to-north, the merge from Hillside Drive onto the northbound 219 is a half-mile (750 m) past the Cow Palace. This is actually the original routing of the Buffalo-Pittsburgh Highway, but the guardrail in the middle of the modern-day 219 prevents southbound traffic from accessing the north end of Hillside Drive directly. Ground Zero (talk) 21:18, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

That works for me. Bolding makes sense, as that's our standard way to draw a skimming reader's attention to a word or phrase. We could include the underlining or not. —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:41, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

There are a few other instances of bolding in the italicized directions (e.g. At the west end of downtown, in front of the brick Emery Towers building, Main Street ends at the corner of South Avenue. Make a left), and the need for readers to distinguish at a glance between those and the reverse directions was part of why I was more insistent on keeping the red text in the latter. I continue to prefer the red, but I suppose I would be willing to settle for the above as a compromise if consensus indicates a need, so long as the underlining was present. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 02:03, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

I slightly prefer the bold, underline, and italics to the red text. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:39, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

This discussion has been open for more than a week, and there have been no recent comments. I think there is consensus for the last version with the boldfaced-and-underlined led-in phrase. I'll apply this tomorrow if there are no further comments. Ground Zero (talk) 19:08, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

I indicated that I "would be willing to settle for the above as a compromise if consensus indicates a need". However, I don't agree that there's any clear consensus here. Summarizing the comments in this discussion, I continue to feel that the red text should stay, you and AlasdairW feel that it should not, Powers and Selfie City are basically indifferent (the latter described his preference for bold/underline/italics as "slight"), Granger offered several alternate ideas without ever clarifying his/her own actual opinion. So we have a case where there's no predominant opinion yea or nay, and also an overall low number of editors who've participated in this discussion, and I would note that among the voices we have heard, the plurality opinion seems to be that the issue is unimportant. A strict reading of Wikivoyage's consensus policy would conclude that status quo bias applies here, but as a compromise, I think my second proposal ("shorter swatches of red text covering only the words 'if you're following the itinerary south-to-north' or the like, boldfaced for extra emphasis") is closest to the midpoint of the spectrum of opinions. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 20:29, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

You are proposing something new for Wikivoyage: the use of coloured text, which, as far as I can tell, we have never used for reasons other than linking. The status quo is not your innovation,. it is to use regular black text. I have pointed out that the use of coloured text raises accessibility issues for readers. I don't believe that accessibility issues can be ignored.

Granger wrote in reference to my original proposal, "I like this idea.", and in reference to the boldface-and-underline proposal, "That works for me. Bolding makes sense, as that's our standard way to draw a skimming reader's attention to a word or phrase. We could include the underlining or not." S/he has clarified her/his own opinion.

Powers has not commented on either my first or revised proposals, but wrote of the red text: "I agree; red text is also visually similar to redlinks, which could be confusing.... Font color and background color are not accessible."

Only SelfieCity slightly preferred the red text.

I do not see that you have consensus to begin using red text in any article, including this one. Ground Zero (talk) 21:19, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm happy to clarify my opinion, which is that any of these proposals is better than the garish red text.

I will also give my meta-opinion, which is that Andre, you clearly don't have consensus for the red text, and you should give up this battle and move on to something else. —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:02, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

By the way, @Ground Zero: User:SelfieCity did indicate a preference for underlining or bold/underline/italics as opposed to red text. As far as I can tell, User:AndreCarrotflower is the only person in this discussion arguing in favor of red text as opposed to not using red text. —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:04, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Quite right. I misread that. Thanks. Ground Zero (talk) 01:07, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

We need to be accessible, so if there's any issue with using red text, let's do something else. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:46, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

To an extent, on Wikivoyage, individual articles can serve as laboratories for innovations in formatting and style. Certainly Andre has been a major driver of these innovations. With that in mind, I'm personally willing to give him a fair amount of leeway. We certainly do have to consider accessibility and good UI design, but I don't know that there's such a hurry that we can't keep the status quo while we think about additional alternatives. Powers ^(talk) 21:56, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree that it's useful to innovate (both the red text and the bold underlining are innovations), and in this case we have been keeping the red text while this discussion takes place. So far the bold/italics/underlining proposal has gotten some support, while the red text has drawn significant concerns. Do you have other alternatives that you think we should consider? —Granger (talk · contribs) 15:22, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Powers is correct. As I said, I'm prepared to accept the bold/underline/italic solution if consensus is behind it, and I guess I'm prepared to describe the feeling against the red text as a consensus (though, in a community of some two or three dozen active contributors, I question how strong of a consensus three-against-one is, or three-and-a-half against one if we really want to count Selfie City's tepid endorsement). But what continues to rankle me is the larger issue that underpins all this, which Powers hinted at and which I'm going to expand upon.

From Ground Zero's comments above, we can infer that his position is that, because policy does not explicitly endorse the use of red text and yet I used it in this article, that qualifies de facto as a unilateral establishment of a new policy that should be vetted by consensus before being instituted. This interpretation wrongly presupposes several things: one, that anything not explicitly endorsed by policy is forbidden, and two, that the usage of red text in this article represents a new status quo for the entire site. This is not how Wikivoyage works or has ever worked. In Wikivoyage, what's not explicitly forbidden by policy is permitted (so long as it serves the traveller), not vice versa. In Wikivoyage, it's not de rigueur for the same issue to be dealt with using the same methods in every article (in other words, if some future editor is writing an itinerary article whose route differs according to direction of travel, s/he doesn't necessarily have to use red text just because I did in this one). In Wikivoyage, policy is not a straitjacket that constrains authors into a limited number of approved ways of doing things; it's a set of loosely applied guidelines that may place certain options off limits but generally stays out of editors' way and leaves them as free as possible to write and create according to their own individual style.

The last of those points, I think, is the most important of all: at Wikivoyage we actively do not want too much consistency between articles. Again, policy provides a framework to build off of, but it's a loose framework that allows ample room for editors to fill in the blanks according to their own individual methods. At Wikivoyage, we actively do not seek to be the McDonald's of travel guides, where no matter which location you visit, the food and the experience are always exactly the same and everything is completely standardized. If there are vast differences in tone between one article and another, we don't see that as a problem to be solved; we chalk it up to something that inevitably happens when there are multiple people collaborating on a project. And I notice this same mistaken pursuit of strict internal consistency seems to be behind a lot of what Ground Zero does on this site. I don't want it to sound like I'm coming down too hard on him, because the great majority of the work he does here is good, and I also recognize and appreciate his recent efforts to curtail the excessive copyediting, but it is noteworthy that much of what he's said in the past about his copyediting seems to jibe with what I'm arguing here. And I really think the way forward is to come to an understanding about this fundamental disconnect, rather than fighting all these little proxy battles over red text or excessive wta enforcement or what-have-you without getting to what's at the root of them.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:08, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree that our articles should be varied. But I don’t think Ground Zero is advocating the contrary. When others have argued for policy, Ground Zero has often been one to argue the traveler comes first. Where I agree with you is on the issue at hand: namely, that it red text isn’t particularly important. That’s why I haven’t taken a passionate stance on the matter. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 21:53, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Um, no. My objection to the red text is not that it is an innovation. At the top of this section you can see that my objection was based on accessibility and readability. In response, I proposed a different innovation — using underlining, which we haven't done before as far as I can tell.

The question of the status quo came up because you asserted status quo rights for an article that had existed for 12 days at the time. I'm not interested in the status quo, but what works best for readers. As I've noted, I find the red text to be jarring and confusing, and it raises an accessibility issue.

I will also note that when you asked for opinions about this unconventional article in the pub (now swept to the top of this page), I encouraged you to go for it. In those words.

My comments about the article have been almost exclusively about formatting issues, because I believe that consistent formatting helps the reader find information more easily. I know it helps me find information more easily. And I don't think there is any risk of Wikivoyage ever becoming so consistent that it would come anywhere near McDonald's level of consistency. Just look at a bunch of articles.

As for your broader complaint about my editing, I don't think this is the place to have that discussion. I don't know where that would be, but I think it's best to keep the discussion here about this article. Ground Zero (talk) 21:50, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm glad we have a community that encourages innovation, and I'm glad we experimented with the idea of using red text in this novel way. I'm also glad we've resolved the specific issue under discussion here. As for the question of how consistent/standardized Wikivoyage formatting should be, I suppose that would be better discussed at the pub.

By the way, though it's off-topic, I have a suggestion/request to avoid McDonald's-like consistency. Many Wikivoyage articles have a lead that says only "X is a city in Y", "X is in Y", or some variation of this. I find these intros monotonous and encyclopedia-esque, and I've been trying to add to them or rewrite them to be more interesting when I can (example). I encourage others to do the same for places you're familiar with, so that the lead draws the reader in and gives them a sense of the flavor of the destination. —Granger (talk · contribs) 23:44, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Speaking of which, I like this article's lead. Makes me want to take the Buffalo-Pittsburgh Highway and see what the region is like. —Granger (talk · contribs) 23:58, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree, and I appreciate the work you've been doing lately on the lede paragraphs of articles. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 00:35, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Refering to other travel guides

The description of the westmoreland museum tells us that "It's been described in Tripadvisor as "a hidden gem in a small town with a little bit of everything that makes art American"." Wikivoyage usually doesn't refer to othervtravel guides because Wikivoyage is a travel guide. Ground Zero (talk) 12:16, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, and I think if for some reason we need to quote another travel guide on something, rather than using our own writing, it should be one with recognised expertise: companies like Fodors, the Michelin Green Guide, or Lonely Planet, or individuals like Rick Steves, even Bill Bryson. Tripadvisor just collects punters' opinions, which are ten a penny.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 12:29, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I've been to the Westmoreland a few times, and I found that Tripadvisor review both accurate and mellifluously worded. I agree in general about citing other travel guides, but in this instance, I didn't think it was right to reproduce that quote without proper credit, nor did I think I could improve on the wording myself. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 12:50, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I typically remove all such references from articles when I see them, as violating the spirit and purpose of External links#What not to link to. Could we reconsider paraphrasing or summarizing, with credit given in an edit summary? Ikan Kekek (talk) 13:11, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Was this editorial text of Tripadvisor or an individual contribution? In the latter case we should attribute the individual, not the company. I think we should either use the quote and attribute the user inline or use our own words and attribute the user in an edit summary. I don't think we have to absolutely avoid mentioning other travel guides, the guideline is for not borrowing text when our own should be as good. – LPfi (talk) 18:49, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I don't think that's the main reason, though it's one reason; I think the main point is not to promote competitors in any way. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:06, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I havent been there, but how about something in the same spirit, so we can put this to rest:

"The excellent museum provides a tasty sample of authentic American art, surpringly tucked away in a small town."

Ground Zero (talk) 20:17, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I don't see the need here to quote a competitor (both for readers and for editors), and would normally simply remove that sentence. The Westmoreland Museum listing is already long, twice as long as the listing for the British Museum. AlasdairW (talk) 21:21, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps the British Museum listing should be made longer. There's certainly more to say about it than there is about the Westmoreland. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:43, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

I'm fine with Ground Zero's form of words, though we could use something other than "tasty". Maybe the word "quintessential" might be appropriate? (I haven't been to the museum.) Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:58, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

This discussion has been open for more than a week, and there have been no recent comments. I think there is consensus for the text I proposed as amended by Ikan Kekek. I'll apply this tomorrow if there are no further comments. Ground Zero (talk) 19:08, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Copyediting

I have restrained myself from copyediting the article with only very minor exceptions. "Itself" (and variations) is used for emphasis 30 times in this article. Like sprinkling exclamation marks liberally through a text, it's tedious. I have removed only two of these. In one case, the emphatic "itself was used three times in one short paragraph. In the other case, "yourself" was used where there was no possibility of confusing who "you" meant, and it was not being used with a reflexive verb form.

I also took out "still" used in this sentence: "to this day it still provides 52 megawatts of power" because it means the same thing as "to this day". Is any reader not going to get the point of one of "still" and "to this day" is used.

I hope that as I was asked to review this article my very, very few copyedits will be considered and not be automatically reverted. Ground Zero (talk) 12:32, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the light touch. I agree with most of your copyedits, though if we're going to strike an instance of "itself" from that paragraph about Buffalo in the beginning of the "Go" section, I'd rather it be "Before setting out on the road, it's worthwhile to explore Buffalo itself for a little bit" than "even if you're here on a weekend, Niagara Square itself makes a fine showcase". -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 13:04, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Distances in words

I find it odd and less useful that mile distances in this article are spelled out in words rather than in digits as is the norm throughout Wikivoyage. Ground Zero (talk) 12:32, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

In the "directions=" argument of listings, distances are in digits in all cases. In inline text, I followed the recommendation of most style guides which is to write out numbers one through ten in words, and only use digits for numbers ≥11. I couldn't find anything in our own manual of style that indicated any preferred way of doing this, so I did what I felt made things read more smoothly. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 13:07, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I can see both sides, although the advantage of numerical digits, as opposed to words, is the ability to add the conversion template to the metric system. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:31, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

All of the examples in Wikivoyage:Measurements use digits, and there is no distinction made between measurements in listing templates and those used in text, so I think the intent is clear, but I have proposed a clarification on the talk page. Using digits in templates and words in text (except where you're providing conversion) doesn't seem very logical. For measurements, ease of comprehension should take priority. Ground Zero (talk) 16:07, 28 April 2020 (UTC)