Talk:A6 road (England)

Gard Street, Derby
I doubt this street exists - it looks to me it looks like the OP means Garden Street which runs up to Duffield Road at the 'Five Lamps'. S/he is probably confused by Agard Street, further round the inner ring road. I've checked on Multimap, (NB - Streetmap truncates the name - that's what that '.' tells you :-)) - I also have the advantage(?) of being Derby born and bred. If no one objects in the next few hours I will revert Gard to Garden. Bob aka Linuxlad 16:39, 18 August 2006 (UTC)  (later - Now done. Of course this in only the name of the W branch of the split - the E one is still Ked. Road IIRC)

Essay?
I added the Essay-entry template to this article, as it is really just a long-winded description/narrative/essay on the road's path and not about the road itself. Okay, waypoints are useful and interesting, but compare this article to, say, A1 or A66 for a much better example of how a major UK road wiki article should look — superbfc  [  talk  |  cont  ] — 19:51, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

July 22, 2007
I can completely appreciate all the hard work that obviously went into editing this article, and putting in all the many wiki links, but I have to agree with superbfc's comments. This article truly is overly long, overly descriptive, and should be re-formatted (by someone who knows the area, ideally). Use the following page as a guideline: A66 Road. It is possible to be both informative, and conform to the quality and style of Wikipedia. :) Ariel ♥  Gold 20:38, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

February 2008
I suggest that the long route description is copied to a new article "A6 route description" so that the original editor's work is not wasted, and linked from this article which should be shortened as described above. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.114.0.185 (talk) 09:26, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I would agree with that. paypwip (talk) 09:30, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I also agree with this idea Saga City (talk) 19:35, 24 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Sounds good to me--Brunnian (talk) 10:55, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I've been bold and gone ahead as proposed. Dave.Dunford (talk) 18:29, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I'd have trimmed all of the extraneous details from the old route description first before deciding if it's too long. In the US, we can write articles on 300-mile highways that have been balanced to provide enough details, but not too much. U.S. Route 131 is about a 267-mile-long highway, yet the level of detail doesn't ovewhelm. Sometimes the answer isn't splitting up articles, but it's trimming the fat to leave the meat behind.  Imzadi 1979  →   19:55, 10 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I considered that, but I didn't have time or the energy and it appears no-one has been able to face it either in the several years since the issues were first noted. It's a question of quality rather than of quantity: the route description contains excessive unencyclopaedic and unsourced detail, numerous unnecessary italics, typos, redlinks and lots of bare external links. It's frankly rather a mess and will take a fair amount of work to get it into shape; meanwhile the A6 is a pretty important road in England and the article as it stood wasn't a good advert for Wikipedia. Maybe it would be better to move the route description into some user space somewhere where it can be worked on? Dave.Dunford (talk) 20:45, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm trimming this up a fair amount by dropping most of the references to adjacent businesses. Something that will need to be fixed is the reliance on references to "left" and "right"; we should be using map directions. instead. Also of note is the amount of bloat that came from historical details that should be in a proper history section of the article.  Imzadi 1979  →   21:08, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I took 20K out of the article just by removing all of the extraneous business names and removing the external links. (External links like those don't belong in the body of an article per the MOS anyway.) I invite others though to continue trimming, since I think there's more extraneous details that can be removed, but I'll leave it to a Briton to do so.  Imzadi 1979  →   21:57, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Long-winded and confusing
Although this has been brought up in the past, it is incredible how long-winded and confusing this article is. It also seems to frequently stray off topic, as if written in a 'stream of consciousness' style. For instance, there is this gem:


 * In Loughborough there is the BP Elms Park Service Station on the right, and close-by a Sainsbury's supermarket; helpful for vegetarian students at the internationally renowned local university

This is hardly relevant! Although a lot of work has clearly gone into writing this article, it overwhelmingly comprises irrelevant and frivolous information, and is unreadable: quite the opposite of what is required in a useful article. Is this article cited in any projects anywhere?

Fortnum (talk) 17:12, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree, this is blatant discrimination against non-Vegetarian students based in other East Midlands population centres. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.94.137.1 (talk) 15:34, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
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I have just modified 3 one external links on A6 road (England). Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071027174239/http://www.road-to-nowhere.co.uk:80/route-guides/A6/ to http://www.road-to-nowhere.co.uk/route-guides/A6/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20050930231959/http://www.highways.gov.uk:80/roads/projects/a_roads/a6/alvaston/ to http://www.highways.gov.uk/roads/projects/a_roads/a6/alvaston
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20051025095740/http://www.u-to-us.com:80/semmmsp1/ to http://www.u-to-us.com/semmmsp1

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Needs to be updated for Bedford western bypass
The A6 disappears outside Bedford now, when it meets the A421. It doesn't go through Bedford any more (though the traffic still does!) The official route follows the A421 westbound for a couple of miles, then goes north as the A428 on the new bypass *"Branston Way" before regaining its identity between Bromham and Biddenham. See OS map on eg streetmap.co.uk not google maps. Update needed.. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 00:31, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
 * The whole article is a bit of a mess. The underlying problem seems to be that what was once a major national road has been rerouted and renumbered literally hundreds of times since the M1 and M6 were built, and it doesn't have a clear identity any more. It's a bit like Route 66 in the US. --Ef80 (talk) 15:24, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Junctions debate
There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Highways that may affect the content of this article. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:15, 22 November 2022 (UTC)


 * The major junctions in this article has been reduced from 23 to 15. Even though fifteen is still quite a lot for an infobox, you do have to take in to account/consideration that the A6 it is 282 miles long. However, if you can reduce it, then please do. If not, then I will do it in the new year. Roads4117 (talk) 18:37, 16 December 2022 (UTC)