Talk:New River (Kanawha River tributary)

Article name
Seems like this page would be better titled something like "New River (Kanawha River)", rather than "New River (West Virginia)", since the New River flows through Virginia and North Carolina in addition to West Virginia. Also it is by far the main tributary of the Kanawha River; I've often seen the two called the Kanawha-New River (akin to the Mississippi-Missouri River). If no one objects, I'll change the name in a week or a month, when I have the time (or remember!). Pfly 06:04, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

The river is never a class VI even well above commercially legal levels, so I changed that.--Rebel1916 (talk) 11:14, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

"Oldest river in America"
I tagged the remark about "some geologists" with a warning. It's OK to describe the local folklore about the New River being older than the mountains and second only to the Nile in age. I heard all about that when I visited the area in 1993. (I love this legend, by the way, and honestly hope that it turns out to be true.) But the part about actual geologists raising this hypothesis should not be mentioned in the article as though it were not part of the local folklore narrative, too. Without a citation from a published source (preferably a peer-reviewed geology journal) the "some geologists" bit is simply part of the legend itself. Bridgman (talk) 03:51, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

The associated link to "Second oldest river" designates the New River as, in fact, the third oldest - behind the Meuse and the Yangtze. The article also says it is second oldest, while the Nile is the oldest. So, there is evident inconsistency between pages. Please fix! Or I'll default to the "oldest rivers" article and change the New River article accordingly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.63.91.28 (talk) 20:00, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

"Only nontidal river that crosses the Appalachian Mountains" seems to infer that it goes all the way across the Appalachian Mountains. This would mean that it crosses the Eastern Continental Divide. The New River is entirely West of the Eastern Continental Divide. The Eastern Continental Divide follows the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which is the highest range of the Appalachian Mountains. The New River does not cross the Blue Ridge Mountains and therefore does not go all the way across the Appalachian Mountains. The New River may cross some mountain ranges that are on the Appalachian Plateau, but it does not cross "The Appalachian Mountains". By definition, the Eastern Continental Divide follows the "Appalachian Crest" from Potter County, Pennsylvania to Florida. Therefore no naturally flowing river,tidal, or non-tidal, could possibly cross the "Appalachian Crest" between Potter County, Pennsylvania and Florida. This article's statement that the New river "flows across the Blue Ridge Mountains" should be changed to "flows from the Blue Ridge Mountains" or "flows along the Blue Ridge Mountains". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Welkiner (talk • contribs) 06:03, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Article name
The New River is only named the "New River". In North Carolina and Virginia, at least, it is not known as, nor associated in any way with, the Kanawha River. The Kanawha River is a separate river for which the New River is a major tributary, but they are distinctly named rivers. The Kanawha River is a tributary to the Ohio River, yet it is not named "The Kanawha River (Ohio River)". I will be changing the name to "New River", as that is the one and only name of the river, in the near future, unless anyone has any commentary justifying the existing strange naming convention for this article. --Dan East (talk) 19:42, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
 * The qualifier (Kanawha River) is there because it's necessary to disambiguate this article from the articles about the various other rivers named New River. It's a common practice on Wikipedia to disambiguate rivers using the names of the rivers they flow into; there are some other examples on the New River page I linked above. Personally I don't think "(Kanawha River)" is necessarily the best or clearest disambiguator in this case — I think the meaning of "(Kanawha River tributary)" or "(North Carolina to West Virginia)" would be clearer — but some form of disambiguation is necessary. --TimK MSI (talk) 19:58, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the feedback. Looking at all the other New Rivers in Wikipedia, this New River, at 320 miles in length, is literally longer than all of the others combined. It also spans 3 states.  At which point is a river (or other geologic entity) large enough to the *the* named item of that type? --Dan East (talk) 21:21, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Personally I don't think it merits primary topic treatment, but requested moves would probably be the best place to find out if there's a consensus one way or the other. --TimK MSI (talk) 21:53, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose move. New River points to a rather lengthy disambig page and it's not clear why this New River, although perhaps the best known, should be favored over the two dozen or so other new rivers. The current Kanawha River nomenclature is clear about which New River this is, and there's already another New River in North Carolina so I think it'd be best to keep North Carolina out of the title. Bitmapped (talk) 04:13, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose move. Renaming it simply New River implies it is primary, since other rivers need qualifiers. The qualification that this river is longer than all others is specious; how about the one with largest discharge, or largest drainage basin?  There are a lot of measures more important than length. The effective title of the article is New River; the qualifiers are an administrative tool, and if I had my druthers, they'd be in smaller type, or visible only by mouse-over or some other means of downgrading them. Sbalfour (talk) 16:05, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Lead vs article
I've moved hunks of text out of the lead into sections of the article, because the lead was a sizeable portion of the article, rather than a summary of it. The lead is now 5 short paragraphs, and not a proper summary. 5 paragraphs is the maximum for the lead, though it's a practical guide, not an inflexible one. A long or complex article could have 6 paragraphs (and this one isn't long enough). As a result, the Course section now has two competing and redundant descriptions, one moved from the lead, that need to be reconciled. A detailed course shouldn't be part of the lead, only the river's location, source and sink, i.e. something analogous to, "the Ohio is a river in the midwestern United States that flows from Pittsburgh, PA to Cairo, IL". And there should be at least one sentence summarizing each section in the lead. Sbalfour (talk) 15:48, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Variant names section
I've seen this little bit of debris in other river articles. The encyclopedia is not an almanac or historical gazetteer. If any of the variant names are common local or cartographic names for the river, they should be raised to the lead and bolded, because they are alternate titles for the article. Other names, if they appear in the article at all, should be relegated to a historical footnote. For some articles like Monongahela River, the number of variant spellings is in the dozens to a hundred or more, and they're historical trivia, nothing more. Article text is precious. Sbalfour (talk) 15:59, 8 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Per the first of Wikipedia's central principles, Wikipedia does include features of "specialized... almanacs and gazetteers." And Wikipedia is not paper as a matter of policy. I would like to see the variant names better contextualized (possibly via the sources often cited in GNIS) but I don't think they should be stripped. --TimK MSI (talk) 00:24, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't necessarily think they should be stripped, but relegated to a footnote, and the main text summarize them. As I note, the Monongahela River has many dozens of meaningless alternate names, and I can add dozens more. When do we stop? 100 names, 200 names? 500 names?  I'm not being facetious - the Monongahela River has at least 200 alternate names. Sbalfour (talk) 04:29, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
 * If that comes to pass, the option of a separate article like List of variant names of the Ohio River is available. --TimK MSI (talk) 00:32, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

"New River (Kanawha River" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_River_(Kanawha_River&redirect=no New River (Kanawha River] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. Utopes (talk / cont) 03:49, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 24 February 2024

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No consensus. There is no concrete support for this beyond the nom, and two are questioning it or stating that the present title is better. There doesn't seem to be an overwhelming policy or guideline answer to this, so it's all a wash really. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 13:32, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

New River (Kanawha River tributary) → New River (Appalachian Mountains) – This would be a more familiar identifier to readers (the New gets over |Kanawha_River|New_River_(Kanawha_River) twice the pageviews of the Kanawha). The New is more often described as an entity unto itself than as a tributary to somewhere else; it is the most-viewed article (slow) currently disambiguated as a tributary. WP:NCRIVER says most rivers are in practice disambiguated by an appropriate political entity, but as this river crosses state lines, this is an appropriate case to dab by region. NPS sites describing its path frequently mention the mountains and don't mention where it happens to end. Hameltion (talk &#124; contribs) 23:55, 24 February 2024 (UTC) — Relisting. BD2412  T 17:12, 3 March 2024 (UTC)  — Relisting. JML1148 ( talk &#124;  contribs ) 10:08, 13 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Unsure. While I agree with the principle, the Appalachians cover a pretty huge swath of the eastern United States—from Georgia up into Canada—so what river the proposed title refers to may not be clear to many readers, while the present title is pretty clear.  P Aculeius (talk) 12:12, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I hear ya, though the present title is pretty clear is true only if you've heard of the Kanawha, and the proposed title does also identify it uniquely. And culturally, the New sits at the heart of Appalachia (map for reference). New River (Appalachia) might be preferable in that way. Hameltion (talk &#124; contribs) 14:53, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Relisting comment: Relisting for clearer consensus. BD2412  T 17:12, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * I don't think any change is needed. And to be clear WP:NCRIVER does not say . It actually says The current name is satisfactory. older ≠ wiser 23:37, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Just below that, WP:NCRIVER says: the following method of disambiguation is used (in order) ... In practice, most rivers needing disambiguation have been identified by an appropriate political entity ..., and then A river can be identified uniquely as a tributary of another river. My argument is that the parent river—less known and only in one state—is a less desirable disambiguator than the geographical entity of the Appalachian Mountains. Hameltion (talk &#124; contribs) 03:56, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Ah, yes. You are right about that. I had stopped reading. Seems there is a small lack of clarity in the guidelines with the alternation between "political entity" and "geographical entity". In any case, I don't particularly care too much. But I still don't see that the rename is needed or even necessarily an improvement. It was particularly for cases where rivers that are not uniquely identified by a single political entity that naming by tributary is preferred. older ≠ wiser 10:32, 15 March 2024 (UTC)