Wiki page on Sydney’s (old) trams

[Glen]

Sorry if this has been raised before.

Does anybody know why the Wiki page on Sydney’s (old) trams has all of the routes numbered?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Sydney

I thought they never showed route numbers.

A bit confusing to students of history, eh?

Not the first attempt though to number them after the fact:

http://www.tundria.com/trams/AUS/Sydney-1947.shtml

[hornetfig]

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =986680447
Were added last November

Ask this dude called "GriffinRails": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GriffinRails

[boronia]

The tundra map does state

Tram routes in Sydney were identified by their termini. The numbers used on the maps and below are strictly for convenience, and were never used by Sydney Tramways itself. Routes ending in A and B (e.g. 12A and 12B) are only distinguished on the maps where they diverge - where they both run, only the number (e.g. 12) is shown.

I presume the Wiki article is intended in the same way, but with different numbers; the fact is not clarified.

[tonyp]

That's the problem with Wikipedia, it's open to anybody to bugger up. This is mild compared to political articles. I've come across this before elsewhere. Some enthusiast decided that it would help clarify the Sydney tram routes by giving them numbers and he's obviously now edited this entry. It's like Chinese whispers - after a while people will start thinking Sydney tram routes had numbers and next thing you know its an historical "fact".

Like every other on-line product from Silicon Valley big tech nowadays, Wikipedia is pretty-much rooted. Oh for the days of the old peer-reviewed encyclopedias like Britannica. For us with local public transport interests, the Wikipedia pages run by the transport agencies are pretty good, but there's no guarantee against intrusion by enthusiasts. In one instance I found that station distances on one line had been edited by inserting straight-line distances instead of the correct distances from Central. Fortunately I have original records of railway data at home that I can cross check from.

[Linto63]

Other problem is now that journalism is becoming a dying profession, many articles just rely on easily available online sources such as Reddit, Wikipedia etc, so myths become accepted facts. And sadly it has carried across to some of the enthusiast publications here. I saw an example in a publication that was a word for word copy from the Wikipedia article, and upon checking that articles history, it had been there for some years. Although I sent the publication an email, as the Wikipedia and hence the published article were glaringly wrong, but no reply was forthcoming or correction was ever published.

Most government agency articles are no doubt heavily edited by the department's spin doctors, pumping up their achievements and removing text that illustrates their shortcomings. Wikipedia did an investigation on the IP addresses of who was editing the federal politician's own articles and it came out that most of it was being done from within the Parliament House, either pumping themselves up or seeking to trash their oponents.

[matthewg]

Someone go in and remove the (fictional) route numbers then.

[matthewg]

I went and removed the fictional route numbers and put a comment in the changelog to the effect that the old Sydney system didn't use route numbers and any such numbers were fictional.
Griffenrails has a youtube channel. He's done quite a few videos and has a very young sounding voice. Some of his work is quite good though. Probably needs to work on those research skills, but he's putting effort in and probably will only get better at it.

[matthewg]

he's obviously now edited this entry. It's like Chinese whispers - after a while, people will start thinking Sydney tram routes had numbers and next thing you know its a historical "fact".

It can get worse than that - and it comes back to a lack of journalism skills. I have a colleague who was called a 'marine biologist' in a respected journal despite telling them multiple times she's an engineer who just works with marine biologists. Now people don't believe she's a robotics engineer (specialising in underwater robotics) because National Geographic said she was a marine biologist...
People know Wikipedia and it's like can be 'unreliable', but unfortunately respected journals are now getting sloppy too.

And closer to the topic, the number of people who were dead certain that Sydney freight car 24s was preserved with no motors. It was repeated as fact in multiple forums. No one actually went to the museum and took a look!. It goes pretty well for a car that supposedly has no motors. (Actually one of the motors has a ground fault so has been cut out, so the car is moved with only one motor, pending opportunity to remove and service the motor but it's got them, not empty space

[Glen]

Great work matthewg !

I appreciate your efforts, as will future historians I am sure.