Talk:Alaska Route 2

Road to Nome issue (yet another bogosity check)

The idea of extending this road to Nome has been around since at least the 1950s. It has been officially studied to death in the decades since. Mike Kelly, in his first House campaign in 2004, long before either Sarah Palin or Sean Parnell became governor, frequently brought up the issue. Of course, once he went to Juneau, he focused on other issues, which led to his barely being re-elected in 2008 and losing this year.RadioKAOS (talk) 14:29, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Huh...guess I forgot that I already tagged this as an issue, with no one really paying attention since. It appears that bringing it up in the article space finally woke someone up. That user insists that I'm "blathering weird comments about politics." No, I'll tell you what's weird. That would be relying upon one source, rather limited in substantial information and mostly completely lacking in proper historical perspective, to explain an issue which is far more extensive and for which sources are abundant. User:BIL did this with several articles in attempting to explain the concept of a road to Nome. Discovering that this user lives in Sweden might possibly explain a lack of perspective and knowledge herein. Let me introduce another, polar opposite source here:

Sundborg, George (July 29, 1957). "Chambers Launch New Drive for Road to Nome". Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Fairbanks. pp. 1–2. (relevant excerpts follow)

A concerted drive to obtain completion of Highway 97, a road connecting Fairbanks and Nome, was launched over the weekend when a goodwill delegation from the Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce met with the Northwestern Alaska Chamber of Commerce at Nome.

Highway 97 was the theme of the trip. The visitors were met at the airport at Nome by a 50-foot banner saying "Welcome Fairbanks Chamber, Terminus Highway 97." At meetings which followed, the 540-mile highway was the main topic of conversation. On Saturday morning the Fairbanks visitors were given a ride over the 36-mile section which has been completed on the Nome end (ed. note - this is the current Nome-Council Road or whatever they may be calling the road these days). They left for home reinvigorated by the highway-building enthusiasm shown by their hosts at Nome.

Highway 97 is on the primary road system for Alaska approved for future construction by the Bureau of Public Roads and the Alaska Board of Highway Commissioners. A start has been made at each end to close the overland gap between the two largest cities north of the Alaska Range (ed. note - the BPR is currently the Federal Highway Administration; the ABHC was a territorial-era concoction. There were many of these sort of boards formed in territorial days as an attempt to counter the federal control was pervaded life in the territory in general. The road on the Fairbanks end became the Elliott Highway.).

The references to "Highway 97" show that in addition to the idea of a road to Nome, the idea of U.S. Route 97 in Alaska may have a history which contradicts not only what's been written so far on Wikipedia, but also the websites used to justify those statements.

Anyway, I blanked the section as a result. Feel free to restore it when you can do a little better job than merely parrot the first item your Google search returns. If you feel I'm being a little harsh, keep in mind that the section, as it was written, has the potential to leave readers with the impression that a road to Nome was Sarah Palin's idea. That would be one massive fail, falling under WP:PROMO, WP:RECENT and WP:UNDUE. Alaska-related articles ALREADY SUFFER from too much interjection by editors who appear to have an agenda to promote Palin, with not enough (in some cases, nothing) being done to balance that.RadioKAOS (talk) 00:42, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

I included Sarah Palin (then the governor) not to honour her, but to show the political support for the project. It is my opinion that it is acceptable to mention plans for a project on Wikipedia if there is support (with sources) from those who shall finance it (doubtful with private suggestions like the Bering Strait Bridge). I would like to mention the road to Nome in this article. Without mentioning Sarah Palin, whom you seem to have personal feelings against. You can add your history details. --BIL (talk) 06:46, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I don't have issues with Palin. In fact, I even voted for her. Looking back, I honestly don't know why, but that's editorializing, so I'll stop now. The main problem I have is pertinent to Wikipedia. WP:ALASKA has been practically non-existent for years, so Alaska-related articles are at the mercy of editors who may possibly be limiting their contributions and sources to recent items reported by corporate media outlets, without regard to proper historical perspective, to the point of creating undue weight. As a result, Palin winds up being given far too much credit for her contributions to life in Alaska, far in excess of reality.

The road to Nome is a topic which could become its own article, but not if you limit your consideration of available sources. Compare mentions of this topic thus far with those on the Gravina Island Bridge and the Knik Arm Bridge. Unlike the road to Nome, very little actual construction of anything associated with those projects has actually occurred to this point. Perhaps not coincidentally, the coverage of the Gravina Island Bridge is skewed due to selective sourcing. Virtually all the sources used to cover that topic, not only on its article but in every associated article, appear to be from media coverage of Palin during her 2008 vice-presidential campaign, when plenty of other sources exist, some of which aren't quite so politically slanted.

In the search I conducted (not via Google, but via the newspaper search engine hosted by the Alaska State Library), I came up with a number of hits covering many years. The material available to search cuts off at around 1975. It's likely safe to say that there were many other stories published since. And that's only one newspaper, albeit one with a direct connection to the topic at hand.

The article I quoted above states that the Elliott Highway and the Nome-Council Road were both constructed as the beginning stages of a road from Fairbanks to Nome. These edits on the subject make it appear to be the other way around, that those roads were constructed for some other reason and that the road to Nome is an extension of those roads.RadioKAOS (talk) 08:03, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Before I forget, let me revisit the specific statement which started this:

A 500 mile extension of the Route 2 to reach Nome in western Alaska has been proposed by the governors Sarah Palin and Sean Parnell.

This statement could be torn apart on any number of different levels, but to make it easy, "proposed" was obviously the wrong term to use when an alternative source states that it's been on the books for years before either Palin or Parnell were born.RadioKAOS (talk) 08:33, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

You do not have to discuss criticism in detail against how the previous text was formulated. If you read my previous comment I allow you rewrite the text as you like, as long as something is written. I should not write it since I assume you will erase it, since it seems to be preferred that Alaskans write about Alaska. --BIL (talk) 20:13, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

I'd just as soon drop this argument and get back to work. I will readily acknowledge that at times, Wikipedia is not unlike cultural depictions of The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. This is due to the limits placed upon it by editors who don't acknowledge that sources are everywhere, even reliable sources. Over-reliance upon Google plays a major role in that, as Google is far more about steering you in a particular direction than in helping you find something.RadioKAOS (talk) 22:23, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

I haven't read your source before, and haven't found much before year 2009, except that google found a source from 1908 suggesting a road to Nome. But thanks for providing the source. --BIL (talk) 06:10, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Why not number it from the end that can't change?

Every time the road is extended even one mile all the mile markers will be wrong. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:12, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

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