Talk:Motel

Notes

Is it necessary to mention that many or most (which I highly doubt) motels are run by Indian immigrants?Pdxgoat 21:16, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You can have your doubts, but this contention of motels run by Asian Indians is supported in an February 27, 2002 article of USA Today. It may seem like a stereotype, but according to the article, there are 17,000 Indian-owned motels, to be precise. In fact, I'll quote from the article: "Asian-Indians own more than 17,000 hotels and motels, representing more than half of all economy lodging in the USA, says the Asian American Hotel Owners Association."

Read the article and weep: http://www.usatoday.com/money/general/2002/02/27/minority-biz.htm

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What's the copyright status of the picture? --Robert Merkel

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The link to United States highway system was correct. Motels started in the 1920s and 1930s in response to the US highway system and not the Interstate highway system which started in the 1950's.

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The copyright status of the picture should be considered in question, as the picture is from the site linked at the bottom of the article. It's on the page for California (http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/motelcalifornia.html) and there is a copyright notice at the bottom. If nobody else cuts it over the next day, I will. User:ClaudeMuncey

I've now removed the image link:

http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/calroute66motel.jpeg

-- Egil 09:07 May 2, 2003 (UTC)

It looks like there are plenty of images of route 66 motels and early motel chain branding already on-wiki; these are available but not in use on this page as it's already rather full of similar and repetitive images at the moment:

A California U.S. Route 66 motel	Roy's Motel and Café US 66 Amboy, CA	Red Crown Tourist Court of Bonnie and Clyde fame
Alamo Plaza Hotel Courts (Waco TX) as the first motel chain	Holiday Inn "Great Sign", used until 1982. One or two of these are in museums, the rest were scrapped.	Howard Johnsons "lamplighter" logo

It's tempting to put the historic police car in the section on "crime and illicit activity" but then the Lorraine Motel (from the MLK assassination) would likely need to be moved or removed. Nonetheless, anything that breaks the illustration pattern of "a motel, another motel, yet another motel..." might be worthy of consideration. 66.102.83.61 (talk) 21:57, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Motel (Brazil)

Curiously, in Brazil, Motel has another conotation. The term is used for Hotels that host suite rooms for couples. I heard some people reffering to these kinds of hotels (or Motels) as Hotels-by-the-hour or 1-hour hotel. The nicest Motels in Brazil have huge suites (some of them can have 400 or 600 square metters) with Jacuzi, dance floor, sauna, steam rooms and even retractable ceeling.

--Pinnecco 18:12, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

It's the same here in Taiwan, for many of the motels (especially high-end designer motels) are commonly used as hourly hotels. They have very huge room, some of them even have 2-story room with a mini waterfall or small swimming pool inside. Although they do offer a 12-hour long stay to motorists, most of the customers who go to this kind of motels see them as love-hotels which are very popular in Japan.--SElefant 16:41, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

It may be worth looking at some of the other-language Wikipedia articles on "motel" to see if there's any different international perspective. While the French article just looks like a highly-abridged version of this one, the Portuguese Motel article describes basically an adult motel for short-term (4 hours or less) occupancy with only token acknowledgement that the US original was a "motor hotel" for travellers. 66.102.83.61 (talk) 18:15, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Brands and spam

This article has started to acquire links to various motel chains. If all chains in all nations are linked here this article will become mainly a linkfarm (and there would be no principled basis for limiting such links to the US and Canada). To avoid that it would be best to eliminate links to specific chains or brands, and allow links only to sites or pages which deal with the general subject. Kablammo 01:48, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Motels in small countries like Pakistan

Motels are constructed between distant cities. But small countries like pakistan has motels inside a city. It is to introduce idea of motel in people. (Engineer Khawar Iqbal from University Of Central Punjab Lahore Pakistan) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.102.44.49 (talk) 05:08, 15 September 2007‎ (UTC)

Difference between a motel, a hotel and a resort

what is the difference between a motel, a hotel and a resort? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.94.150.36 (talk) 11:50, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Motels are a kind of hotel which is inexpensive, basic amenities, placed on long roads between cities, and usually has a certain floor plan (as described in the article). A resort is on the other end of the scale: large, with many amenities, usually located in big tourist spots. (This is from a USA point of view; apparently the distinction is different in other countries.) 64.81.245.109 (talk) 19:37, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

::Somewhere, I forget where, I saw an "official" definition was that rooms in a motel are accessed from the outside, typically from a parking lot; while rooms in a hotel are accessed from an interior hall. Motels are providing more amenities these days, I can remember when TVs were rare and if provided were often coin operated; today you get cable TV, wifi, often a mini fridge, etc. Some hotels can be pretty basic. Wschart (talk) 19:44, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Something about food in India

can we say motel to Dabhas (indian style food place)...jitendra bhatt, india, delhi —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.162.59.66 (talk) 20:40, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

US POV

The entire article has an US POV at the moment. A slightly dominant coverage of the US is expected because motels were invented there but every single example is American. And any specific information is American. Hence I added the tag to warn readers. Gizza^{Discuss ©} 10:46, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I should qualify my statement somewhat. Not everything is US-related as there is an image of a Malaysian motel but the other three are still American. Gizza^{Discuss ©} 10:49, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I've re-added the tag. Didn't know it had been there before. Some IP removed it without explanation. I'll also cleaned up some images. There was serious overload.--Crossmr (talk) 11:09, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

One thing to watch is the "motels are being restored and preserved" claim. It's true of U.S. Route 66 where there is US federal funding under the National Park Service Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program; the "period of outstanding historical significance for Route 66 is 1926 to 1970" and everything from roadside diners to drive-ins may qualify for restoration matching grants. That doesn't mean that it's necessarily true anywhere else, whether in the US or in another country. To focus entirely on US 66 and presume the same restoration efforts are being done everywhere else is not only US-centric, but WP:WEIGHT on the eight individual US states served by that road only. Go anywhere else and these are dying a slow death.

I also note that the bit about "motel" as short-stay no-tell motel in South America was in this article here but removed. This connotation appears in both the Spanish and Portuguese languages; I've cited those language wikis (es:Motel and pt:Motel) plus one source used by the Italian version of this page. 66.102.83.61 (talk) 21:38, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Heavy expansion

I saw nothing about the entire world, just the united states. I came here to learn about motels across the world, and what cultures they have. I already know what american hotels are like, seeing as I've been in several.Wikimann1234 (talk) 21:48, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree that with the comments about that this article is very US-skewed. Of course, what complicates the situation is that, as I understand it, the motel is very much an institution which has arisen in the USA. What I am thinking of doing is to take the specifically US-oriented material within the article, and collecting this in a sub-section dealing with Motels in the USA. I'd appreciate feedback, pro or con, on this. 124.185.78.196 (talk) 21:14, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm, i disagree with that. Motel is, de facto, american creation. I would fix (or remove) section "Timeline of motels in the United States", expaned History with more data, and Architecture with more international motel styles, and that would be it, i think. --WhiteWriter ^speaks 21:42, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

International motels is what I was looking for. Main type of accomodation in a lot of places, though sometimes they share the trade with backpackers. Having a room with a kitchen instead of just a bed means you can save money\ensure you can get the food you like. 118.208.74.99 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:41, 29 January 2012 (UTC).

US POV again

This page was already tagged as

once before as it is a US-centric mess. Someone removed the tag, not sure why, but I'm afraid I shall have to reinstate it given the latest attempts to turn this back into an article about the United States and remove English spelling instead of WP:RETAINing what was there. K7L (talk) 16:23, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

"When an English variety's consistent usage has been established in an article, it is maintained in the absence of consensus to the contrary. With few exceptions (e.g. when a topic has strong national ties or a term/spelling carries less ambiguity), there is no valid reason for such a change." Quoting from WP:RETAIN. The article was clearly established in US English (a perfectly acceptable spelling variety) for years before it was changed. A call to expand international coverage is NOT is any way, shape or form a call to change the variety of English used. So your edits actually disrespect WP:RETAIN and the entire WP:ENGVAR guideline and are wrong. Period. As for the international coverage, the international versions section, added after the previous tagging as part of a major expansion satisfied the need for the tag. Is the article a bit US-first? Yes, but as motels originated in the US, that is to be expected. It is clear, by your calling it "English spelling", there by denigrating US spelling, that you need to check WP:ENGVAR and understand it much better. oknazevad (talk) 16:54, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I looked at this page and its history. It's a mess. Way too much detail about individual US motels that likely aren't even particularly notable. The rewrite only made this worse. Changing the spelling isn't going to fix that, the useless trivia needs to be removed and the page cleaned up. No one cares that some individual lodging in Baton Rouge that used to be good in 1939 is now a dump. Maybe this whole article should be sent for peer review? 2001:5C0:1000:A:0:0:0:AD7 (talk) 23:21, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Can't disagree with that. There does seem to be a bit too muchl trivia. oknazevad (talk) 03:48, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

The bulk of this article appears to have been written in 2012 in English, but with an annoying amount of US-specific trivia. The user(s) who expanded the page mistakenly removed the {{globalise}} tag even though much of the new text added was sourced to one book "The Motel in America" or was specific to individual US motels, US-based chains or U.S. Route 66. There's way too much emphasis on the Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program given that it applies only to one decommissioned highway (a fifth of which no longer exists) in a handful of states in one country. On every other road, these are in decline and governments are not sinking massive subsidies into restoring these out of historic nostalgia. They're low-end properties even for their era (1950s and 1960s) and many have seen better days. The excess detail about this one country needs to go, it's undue WP:WEIGHT and mostly trivia. K7L (talk) 15:15, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

The article has been written in English since the start. American English is English! And for you to imply otherwise is ignorant and insulting. Cease. oknazevad (talk) 18:11, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

This article is not about the United States. If you want to create Motels in the United States, create it. K7L (talk) 16:27, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

There is NO requirement that American English be used only in articles about the United States! And, let me make this perfectly clear, since you don't seem to understand it; a "globalize" tag is NOT a call to change the variety of English used. And American English is the English language. There is not now, no ever been, any reason to change this article from the variety of English used by the first major contributor, as explicitly called for in the WP:RETAIN guideline. oknazevad (talk) 19:01, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

The bulk of the text was contributed in 2012 in English. WP:RETAIN says it should remain that way. The "globalise" tag and the amount of useless US trivia on this page is an entirely different issue, but also needs to be addressed. K7L (talk) 22:37, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

First, stop saying only British English is English. It's ignorant and insulting. Secondly, the 2012 text should have been added in American English, as that was the existing established variety, which WP:RETAIN says to keep. Re-read the part about first major contributor. That's what I fixed. oknazevad (talk) 01:59, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

The 2012 text *is* the bulk of the article. WP:RETAIN was intended to prevent exactly what you are doing... taking text and changing it for the sake of doing so. K7L (talk) 05:23, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

K7L, please stop hijacking the Motel article to British English. Read and understand WP:RETAIN. You can't convert the national variety of English just by adding a lot of text so that you can claim that the "bulk" of the text was in that variety. It says "the variety used in the first non-stub revision is considered the default." That goes back to the beginning, in 2006. There are also fairly strong national ties to the US. Chris the speller ^yack 18:21, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

If you want to create Motels in the United States, create it. Please stop violating WP:RETAIN by replacing text originally written in proper English with some other dialect in existing articles. I am particularly concerned about a long string of edits in which you purport to be "translating French to English", my spell checker indicated clientèle *is* English, along with "centre" and a few others:

This is not an article about the US per se, nor about the US highway system. The U.S. Route 66 coverage needs to be split out so as not to give undue WP:WEIGHT to what is, alas, just one road (of which 20% no longer exists) in one country. This page is about motels worldwide. Stop hijacking this topic in the expectation the world revolve around the US. K7L (talk) 18:39, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

You have taken this discussion far afield. The use of "clientele" vs. "clientèle" has nothing to do with this discussion of national varieties, and your spelling checker is bonkers. The French word "clientèle" does not appear in respectable English dictionaries. You have changed this discussion to a general attack on my edits; this is not the place for that, even if such an attack were warranted. Stick to the topic, and go read WP:RETAIN again, where it talks about the first edit, and note that it says nothing about "bulk". Chris the speller ^yack 20:31, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Clientèle is a loanword and is valid English. WP:AWB is for non-controversial edits, not for pursuing some agenda against the existence of French words in the English language - something which has been happening since 1066 (and here, this is not independent of the UK/US split as "metre", "centre", "theatre" and a few others do use the French original spelling or something close in English, but not in the US). I've read WP:RETAIN but I've also read through the revision history of the article. The stub which was here before was replaced by a complete rewrite in 2012. The text that's here now was originally English and should have been left English. K7L (talk) 15:53, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring#User:K7L reported by User:IJBall (Result: Page protected). —BarrelProof (talk) 08:23, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Permanent link here. oknazevad (talk) 12:18, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Subsequently archived at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RRArchive273#User:K7L reported by User:IJBall (Result: Page protected). —BarrelProof (talk) 05:20, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

American or Canadian first?

An editor made this edit today, where they changed "as the Canadian and American" to read "as the American and Canadian". The edit summary stated "Canada inserted before American anonymously in March 2012. Changing it back." Naturally, I reverted this edit, and left the edit summary "if there is a purpose to reverting an inconsequential edit from 3 years ago, please discuss it on the talk page". Then, a different editor reverted again! They left the edit summary "because it was part of a pattern of inappropriate behavior, and because the motel was largely an American development originally, so putting Canada as primary is WP:UNDUE".

I'm just reading here about an edit war, and believe I have inadvertently stepped into it. No matter, I'm completely neutral in this, so may I ask if there was consensus some place (eg. on this talk page or at ANI) to forensically seek out 3-year old edits and revert them? I've only seen this done with blatant vandalism, but if a seemingly normal edit has stood for 3 years, reverting it twice, by two different editors, seems kinda like disrupting Wikipedia to make a point. But as I said, this rooting out of 3-year old edits may have been officially sanctioned someplace. Thanks! Magnolia677 (talk) 07:19, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Like I said in my edit summary, it is one part undoing damage caused by behavior that was indeed decidedly disruptive and against consensus and guidelines, and itself was decidedly WP:POINTy. A look at the archived noticeboard discussion linked in the section immediately above this, along with a look at the article history, shows a clear attempt to hijack the article. The original edit was part of that, so its reversal is part of removing that disruptive element.

Especially when one considers this from a purely logical editorial position. Motels originate in the US, mostly along the U.S. numbered highway system, which was far better developed than any Canadian highway system at the time motels came into existence. So the ties really are to the US first, not Canada. Plus the usual concerns that the US has a far larger population, and the word "American" is alphabetically before "Canadian".

Really, there's no reason to list it the other way other than pointy, hijacking behavior. So to both deny the bad behavior, and to make a sound editorial decision, they should be switched. I personally wouldn't have bothered hunting out the original edit, just done it as a regular edit, but the effect is the same. oknazevad (talk) 13:39, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that's precisely it. There are strong ties to the U.S. in the origin of the motel phenomenon, so it seemed decidedly strange to see Canada mentioned first in the summary of the origin. When I noticed that, my gut impression that it was probably the result of the agenda-pushing that's been evident here since about 2012 (and was the subject of the Admin noticeboard discussion referenced above). A review of the edit history seemed to confirm that suspicion. Perhaps on a different day I would have held myself back, but this time I did not. —BarrelProof (talk) 15:31, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

It may also be worth noticing that the source that is cited in support of that sentence contains no mention of Canada whatsoever. It mentions only places along the U.S. west coast "from San Diego to Seattle". —BarrelProof (talk) 15:48, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

@Magnolia677: – Aside from the obvious WP:TIES justification, "American" comes before "Canadian" alphabetically. So there really is no rationale to have that sentence read "as the Canadian and American". I suspect it was just trouble-making on the part of the few editors who feel this article is too "Ameriocentric", despite the fact that the "motel" concept and term both originated in the U.S. (hence the justifiable strong WP:TIES to the U.S. here). --IJBall (talk) 19:14, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

 Comment: - I just looked through the article's history. Way back in March 2012, an IP editor inserted the line "as the provincial highways and the United States highway system began to develop" here. It appeared to be part of a number of good faith edits by that IP editor. Furthermore, when that line was added, there was nothing in the article stating that edits needed to be in American or British English. Well over a year later, in July 2013, User:Oknazevad made their first edit to this article. Since then, Oknazevad has made dozens of edits to this article, but it wasn't until yesterday--almost 2 years later--that they finally changed that IP editor's addition to read "as the American and Canadian"? Likewise, User:BarrelProof made their first edit to this article here in July 2013. That same editor has made several edits to this article, but just like Oknazevad, it wasn't until yesterday that SUDDENLY!! that 3-year old line "as the provincial highways and the United States highway system began to develop" became a must-change edit! The timing certainly makes it appear...you know...what's the word I'm looking for? Magnolia677 (talk) 15:55, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Instead of impugning our good faith here, you really should read the recent WP:ANEW thread to understand the true story here. Namely that the article was written in American English first, and there has been repeated attempts to hijack it in violation of WP:RETAIN over the past few years. To bring an article in line with RETAIN and consensus is perfectly appropriate. And the other apparently innocent edits are clearly part of the same pattern of hijacking behavior. As for the timing, the entire issue was finally closed just the other day, as the editor who has been trying to hijack the article was finally told to knock it off. He was plain and simply in the wrong, and it took administrative action to get him to stop. In short, now that the low grade edit war and bad faith behavior is at an end, the damage can be repaired. Most immediately to the sentence, there's no mention of Canada in the source at all, making any mention of Canada at all WP:OR. It will be struck. oknazevad (talk) 16:13, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Certainly the recent admin noticeboard discussion (which was not initiated by either myself or oknazevad) was a reminder that there has been a questionable effort to de-emphasize the U.S. in this article for some time, and probably prompted my suspicion about that sentence. Before that edit today, I had not edited this article in more than a year. As I said, perhaps on a different day I would have held myself back, and the March 2012 edit may indeed have been in good faith, but as noted above, the cited source doesn't even mention Canada, so the right thing to do with that sentence may be to remove Canada from it altogether. Canada is not supported by the source as being part of the origin of the motel phenomenon. If the suggestion is that Oknazevad and I are socks, that is clearly off-target and easily dispelled. (I have no recollection of why Oknazevad and I both became interested in this article, but we've had overlapping interests for years – perhaps I had noticed the article in their contribution history.) —BarrelProof (talk) 16:22, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, it is incorrect to say that "an IP editor inserted the line 'as the provincial highways and the United States highway system began to develop'" in this edit. The only part of that line that was inserted by the IP editor was the phrase "the provincial highways and" before the phrase "the United States highway system". Before that edit, the part about the U.S. was already there, and the insertion was not supported by the source. The same edit also changed "mom-and-pop" to "mum-and-pop", which was an WP:ENGVAR change to shift the article away from U.S. English. Other edits by the same IP editor at around the same time included various other WP:ENGVAR changes, such as changing the spelling of "colorful" to "colourful" and "signaled" to "signalled" and adding "favoured", "organise", "modernise", "co-operative" and "pro-actively" (which are not ordinarily hyphenated in U.S. English), and inserting the term "motorist hotel" as an alternative to "motor hotel" ("motorist" seems relatively rare in U.S. English), and inserting many other discussions about Canada. The edits by that IP editor show a clear pattern of trying to emphasize Canada and introduce non-U.S. spellings, and they may indicate the origin of what eventually led to the admin discussion a couple of days ago. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:00, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

It was shortly after that string of IP edits that Chris the speller noticed the WP:ENGVAR changes, as reflected in this edit. In addition to what is noted above, there were "Travellers" (vs. "Travelers"), "colour" (vs. "color"), "specialised", "standardised", "centralised", "mobilised", "popularised", "weatherised", "penalise", and the inclusion of an accent in "clientèle". Several of these changes were repeated in many places. There are way too many WP:ENGVAR issues that started around March 2012 for the changes to be inadvertent. It's almost as if someone were looking for every possible difference between U.S. English and other variants and trying to put all of them into the article. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:16, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Note that the introduction of the various -ise spellings is actually contrary to the usual Canadian English convention as well as contrary to U.S. English (and contrary to British Oxford English as well). As stated in the Canadian English article, in Canadian English, "words such as realize and paralyze are usually spelled with -ize or -yze rather than -ise or -yse. (The etymological convention that verbs derived from Greek roots are spelled with -ize and those from Latin with -ise is preserved in that practice.)" —BarrelProof (talk) 18:34, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Non-consensus article move

K7L just moved the article from Motel to Motels in the United States. I strongly object to that, and I have submitted a request to revert the move. If K7L wants to create a separate article about Motels in the United States and thinks it could be adequately distinct from the Motel article, I don't necessarily object to that. But it should not be done by destroying the edit history of the Motel article. I also suspect that the content of an article about Motels in the United States might contain a lot of unnecessary duplication, but I'm willing to see what might be proposed. One would think that after the recent fuss and page protection, it would be obvious that an article move would be controversial and should have been formally proposed and discussed prior to being performed. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:46, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

The {{split}} of the article to Motel and motels in the United States was proposed as far back as November 4, 2013 and received no response and no objections. Most of what's here was dumped here by an IP back in 2012 and sourced to one book, "The Motel in America (The Road and American Culture)" [Professor John A. Jakle, Professor Keith A. Sculle, Professor Jefferson S. Rogers] ISBN 0801869188 and is WP:UNDUE country-specific information which, if we need it at all, needs to be split out because of its size (53 kilobytes of a total 71 kilobyte page pre-split, much of it info about individual US chains - many defunct - segregation in the Confederate south, the Route 66 Corridor Preservation program and other topics irrelevant to motels in general outside one region of one country). This should not have been submitted as a "non-controversial request" if it reverts something which was already opened for comment and only received silence. K7L (talk) 23:56, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Actually, the request to revert the undiscussed move was not submitted as a "non-controversial request". It was submitted under "Requests to revert undiscussed moves", as you can see here. In regard to the other remarks, I refer back to what I said before. I did not actually oppose the creation of an article about Motels in the United States. (Although I suspect that it might result in a lot of unnecessary duplication, I'm willing to see what article content is proposed for that; hopefully it would not just be a redundant copy of the existing Motel article.) What I objected to was the action of moving the Motel article to that name. Moving the current article to that name is obviously controversial and should not have been done (without being discussed first). —BarrelProof (talk) 00:34, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

I support the split 100 percent, but Canada should have been included with the US. Canadian and American motels are identical, and both are an ocean apart from European motels. But this would have meant that the new article could have used either British or American English, which would have meant that the ridiculous language feud would have also followed to the new article. I'm all for improving the project, but obvious improvements which are intentionally avoided lead me to direct the article's creator to... Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. Canada must go into the US motel article. If not, why not? Be honest now. Magnolia677 (talk) 00:55, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Changed my mind. Splitting the article is a bad idea. The new article should be deleted and whatever was added to it merged back into the motel article. Magnolia677 (talk) 22:36, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Motels in the United States spinoff?

OK, now that it seems most of the detritus accompanying this mess of a "move" attempt has been cleaned up, the issue would now seem to be what to do with the Motels in the United States spinoff article. As it looks mostly duplicative of this original, I'd suggest we plan on a merge, and conversion to a redirect as the plan of action, either under the umbrella of a WP:AfD request, or just as a "manual" cut-and-paste effort... Thoughts? --IJBall (talk) 05:47, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

As a clear WP:POVFORK, that's the only result that is acceptable. oknazevad (talk) 06:53, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Oppose. There is a huge amount of excess, country-specific information which does not belong in the main article such as a lengthy description of the history of discrimination and Jim Crow segregation as it affected the traveller in the southern US (and just the southern US, pre Civil Rights movement). That content isn't motel-specific (the same complaints could be made about hotels, restaurants or just about any service essential to motorists in interstate commerce) but is US-specific. There's also a huge amount of excess detail about individual chains and organisations, some defunct, which only operated in the US. United Motor Courts? The American Hotel and Motel Association? Alamo Plaza Hotel Courts? The United States Numbered Highway system and the Asian American Hotel Owners Association? All interesting trivia about the history of lodging in one specific country, but meaningless to providing an understanding of motels in general. The "tourist guest home" is a B&B-style operation, so is veering off-topic for any motel article. The American Magazine "camps of crime" diatribe, which they attribute to J. Edgar Hoover? That's specific to one country's government... if Hoover even wrote it (and all indications are Courtney Riley Cooper ghost-wrote this, with Hoover playing along during the initial backlash and backing off only after "cabin court" operators started complaining to their congresscritters). The Negro Motorist Green Book tells us more about the Jim Crow south than about motels per se. The long list of every film, video or theatrical production which ever mentioned a motel is plain WP:TRIVIA. All of this tells us little about motels in general. Much of it is the product of over-reliance on one WP:RS, a printed book entitled "Motel in America". Take a look at the main articles for hotel or inn, they're a very general overview, they touch on the main points without going into excessive detail about one narrow subtopic or one country, then leave the details to sub-articles. If the Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program has subsidised nostalgic restoration of a few neon motels on one road in one country, great, note it in the article for that country - not in the main article on motel as it's not happening internationally and including it in the discussion of motels globally is actually misleading the reader. The fate of Amboy, California has more to do with Interstate 40 in California bypassing U.S. Route 66 than about motels specifically. Heck, why not create a proper Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program article instead of using motel as a WP:HATRACK; there's more to that programme than fixing up old motel signage? Dumping all of this into the main article yields a page where 5/7 of the text (about 53Kb of a 71Kb page) is country-specific history and trivia which does nothing to enhance our understanding of motels globally, and constitutes hugely WP:UNDUE weight to describing the fate of individual US motels ("40 Winks" in Ohio is a dump, "Alamo Plaza" in Baton Rouge is a dump, all of Aurora Avenue is a dump... this is getting really repetitive - but I'm sure that the reader will be greatly relieved that the Maples Motel family-owned in some obscure corner of Ohio is still business as usual). There's also way too much about some individual US chains which left the motel business to build hotels decades ago and never looked back. This has nothing to do with POV, it's just excessive detail which should never have been dumped back into the main article as the upper-level page (below hotel as the top-level) should be a concise, informative global overview and not somewhere to dump fifty kilobytes of country-specific detail about any one country. Keep the main article as an overview, keep the WP:SPLITOUT country-level page for the lengthy country-specific detail. K7L (talk) 13:45, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

If there is some unnecessary detail here, hypothetically, we can just delete it (and it will remain safely accessible in the history if it's desirable to use for some purpose later). We don't need to couple together the idea of removing things from this article with the idea of creating the other one. We don't necessarily need an article about Minor details about motels in the United States, and we also don't need an article about Motels in the United States if it will just duplicate much of the content of the Motel article. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:25, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Go ahead and try... but don't be surprised if the next edit or the next revert war dumps all of the WP:TRIVIA and the WP:UNDUE coverage of individual US motels and chains back into the main article. I've been trying to bring the amount of irrelevant excess detail down for years, but even small changes only meet repeatedly with arbitrary reversions. Certainly this page shouldn't be a WP:HATRACK for in-depth analysis of racial segregation in the United States if that issue is not motel-specific (indeed, it pre-dates the appearance of the word "motel" in dictionaries in the 1950s) but is specific to one region or one country. Segregation is a valid topic... for some other, country-specific article. Not this one. The lists of individual motels in The Simpsons, Cars (film) and the like are just trivia and likely should have been removed and not re-inserted in this article. At the current time, 5/7ths of the article seems to be either country-specific detail, overcoverage or trivia. I'd hate to think what this article would look like in terms of Wikipedia:Systemic bias if a book "The Motel in Latvia" existed and was over-relied upon the way "The Motel in America" seems to have been summarized and dumped here as huge blobs of text about individual US chains marketing and franchising. K7L (talk) 04:34, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

New wholesale WP:ENGVAR changes

K7L, I haven't had time to review all of the changes you are introducing to the article in the last hour or so, but I notice one type of change that I strongly object to. That is the major and obvious WP:ENGVAR changes. This has been discussed before. I see no justification for it. You replaced "freeways" with "motorways", introduced "favoured" and "car park", replaced "theaters" with "cineparks", replaced "automobile" with "motorcar", replaced "automobile tourists" with "motorists", replaced "restroom" with "water closet", replaced "travelers" with "travellers", added "modernisation", replaced "television" with "telly", and replaced "kilometers" with "kilometres". That is not appropriate. It is precisely the sort of behavior that was involved the recent edit warring dispute, as recorded at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RRArchive273#User:K7L reported by User:IJBall (Result: Page protected). Several editors (myself, oknazevad, Chris the speller, IJBall) have all objected to that same type of editing, and its inappropriateness was confirmed by Swarm as well. —BarrelProof (talk) 01:04, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Not this nonsense again. K7L has already been blocked by Swarm, but that still doesn't deal with the underlying POV-pushing. Frankly, if one were to remove from this article all the material that is now duplicated at the Motels in the United States article, this article would be left barely more than a stub. That tells me that this article is not appropriate for a split, and the only reason to do such is to create a clear WP:POVFORK. Yes, it was proposed months ago, but the fact that no one else acted upon it makes it clear to me that there was no consensus for such a split, mostly because anyone reading this talk page could see that the proposal was not in good faith and was clearly made to force an inappropriate ENGVAR change against policy and consensus. This is all so very clear by the attempt by K7L, again, to hijack this article to change the ENGVAR, as seen in the reverted edits. There is no good faith editing here, and frankly k7L should be topic banned from this article, as he's clearly shown no ability to act in good faith here or abide by consensus. oknazevad (talk) 14:28, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

My suggestion is if K7L pushes this one more time, we should move for an Article ban for K7L at Motels – two years of behavior, and now two blocks, makes it pretty clear that they're never going to give up tilting at this windmill. --IJBall (talk) 23:52, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Only one block, actually. It will expire in a few hours. —BarrelProof (talk) 00:42, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Ah, you're right – I thought K7L was blocked last time, but I guess it was just a warning, with the article protected. --IJBall (talk) 00:53, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

The "Splitout"

Well, I went out and got a third opinion and that editor agreed that the "splitout" of Motels in the United States was justified, and this article should be trimmed (with any relevant material shifted to the "splitout" article). Honestly, I don't know where to start on that, but I thought I'd at least mention that this was the suggestion that was offered. So other editors may want to think about trimming this article, and shifting some of the content to Motels in the United States. FWIW. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 16:30, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Tense

Why is the architecture section written in the past tense? --Sm5574 (talk) 14:06, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Nomination of Motels in the United States for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Motels in the United States is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Motels in the United States until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.

—BarrelProof (talk) 20:33, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

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