Talk:Sidu River Bridge

Discrepancy in height
The Civil Engineering article (an off-line source that I have) lists the deck height above the valley floor at 500 m. The on-line abstract for the ESWP paper lists the height at 550 m. Shouldn't we go with the smaller number? Or the 500 number because it may actually be a rounding issue, and 500 has only one sig fig? - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 19:42, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Here is a source (in Chinese) that says it is 560 meters above the canyon. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 03:46, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Chinese name
This page give this, 四渡河特大桥, as the chinese name. I have no way to verify that. It is apparently also called the Siduhe bridge. It is possible to search google on the chinese name. I am looking for a reliable source that says the bridge has opened. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 23:31, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Merge proposal
A merge with Siduhe Bridge has been proposed. This is needed because they cover exactly the same subject. I consider that the primary name should be Si Du River Bridge because primary sources (two gentlemen involved in the project at a high level) have published scholarly articles about the subject in reliable publications using this name. The source for the other name is a wiki; I do not consider it to be as reliable source for the English name of this bridge as the ASCE Civil Engineering magazine. A redirect should be created from Siduhe Bridge to Si Du River Bridge. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 03:27, 26 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment - HighestBridges.com appears to be a closed wiki, but still seems to be largely a self-published source. Also, it is copyrighted here. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 04:21, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Reference format
This article has been set up using the Wikilinks to full references style to coordinate between the references and the footnotes. More specifically, it uses the "enclosing inside cite tags" format. Additions to the article should follow that style, or it should be discussed here if someone considers another method more beneficial for the article. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 00:22, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Length of bridge
Reviewing the profile view of the bridge in Wang 2009, it appears that the west side of the bridge passes into a tunnel very soon after the deck passes through the tower. The span lengths listed are actually for the main suspension cables, not for the bridge deck. Shouldn't the total length be shorter? - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 00:01, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Siduhe Bridge Discrepancies
Although some engineering papers have figures of 560 meters for the height of Siduhe Bridge, a PDF sent to me on the 10 highest bridges along the Hurongxi highway by a bridge engineer in Shanghai has a height of 496 meters as the clearance. Figures based on the elevation difference between the tower tops and the river level are of no significance and are not "clearance below" measurements anyway. Gorge bridges often have general measurements that are not accurate since the depth of the gorge has no significance to the engineering of the bridge itself.

Local government media either exaggerated or rounded up the height of the Beipanjiang 2003 suspension bridge as being 404 meters high when the actual height was 366 meters. (Though still high enough to be the World's Highest Bridge in 2003). Colorado's Royal Gorge bridge has long been exaggerated as being 1,053 feet high when in fact the deck to river level height is approximately 955 feet as measured with a laser rangefinder and also as measured by 20 foot line increments on the official USGS topo map. Blatant exaggerations can easily become accepted fact as different sources begin to copy statistics from one another. An exaggerated Siduhe bridge height figure is in danger of becoming accepted as fact if allowed to perpetuate on a website as popular as Wikipedia. While my angled laser rangefinder reading from a September 2008 visit may not be completely accurate, the 472 meter figure is likely to be more accurate than any previous figures published in bridge papers including those by the bridge engineers themselves. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eric Sakowski (talk • contribs) 07:46, 30 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I think that we should follow the Wikipedia policy on WP:Verifiability. In this policy, under the reliable sources section, it says: "Where there is disagreement between sources, their views should be clearly attributed in the text: "John Smith argues that X, while Paul Jones maintains that Y." Consider the following.


 * The height measurement from the deck to the river surface has been reported as 472 meters by Eric Sakowski, 500 meters by Chongxu Wang, and 550 meters by Yinbo Liu. (link to footnotes 1, 4 and 5).


 * We can leave the bridge infobox at 472 meters, as that is the most conservative measurement. If you can find other WP:reliable sources that can verify one of the numbers, then by all means we should add them. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 22:04, 30 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I added text about the discrepancy along with a note (following the guidance given at WP:REFNOTE). - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 05:06, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Siduhe or Si Du He Name?
The spelling of a Chinese bridge name as one word or several words is neither wrong or right as much as an issue of consistency. Signs throughout China often have bridge names with the English wording contracted into one word while there are other examples where there is a separation between each word to match the Chinese character.

In most English language translations on the internet, a single word contraction is used more often than not. It also makes it easier to remember a bridge name and makes searches easier in English. A perfect example is the Beipanjiang Railway bridge which is the world's highest railway span. A search of "Beipanjiang Bridge" brings up hundreds of entries while a search of "Bei pan jiang" brings up none. These 3 words mean "North Winding River". A search of "Siduhe Bridge" brings up hundreds of entries on the new suspension span while a search for "Si Du He bridge" brings up just 5 entries. In addition, most Chinese bridge engineering papers have the English translation as one word despite the use of 3 words in the Chinese engineering papers on the Sidhe bridge. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eric Sakowski (talk • contribs) 08:27, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

The most reliable sources given to date in the article use the name Si Du River Bridge. The ASCE has been publishing for more than a century--making it a very reliable publisher. They have a reputation for accuracy (in fact they published a correction to the Si Du River Bridge article (one diagram's measurements were wrong). The International Bridge Conference is a well-established, highly-reputable academic conference where a call for papers produces a situation where not every submitting author gets to present a paper. Please suggest or add some specific references that use the other name and we can compare them with what has been given to date. If we do want to discuss English-language Google hits as a measure of dominance of one name versus another, I offer the following: "Siduhe Grand Bridge" gets over 40,000. "Si Du River Bridge" gets over 3,000. "Siduhe Bridge" gets over 2,000. "Siduhe River Bridge" gets 138. My search for "Si Du He Bridge" brought up zero results (less than your five). I have also just found Naming conventions (Chinese), which we can discuss and see how it applies (although it will always be seocndary to the "use English" convention I mention at the beginning of this post). - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 20:20, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Please read Naming conventions (use English). This is the generally accepted standard on Wikipedia for English names of foreign subjects. Specifically, the section on divided usage states "Google hits are an unreliable test" and "more weighting (should be) given to verifiable reliable sources than to less reliable sources (such as comments in forums, mailing lists and the like)."


 * Using the Naming conventions (Chinese) it should be called "Sidu River Bridge". The 'si' and 'du' are two Chinese characters and the 'he' is a third character meaning river. Therefore under the conventions the river should be named the 'Sidu River' and the bridge the 'Sidu River Bridge'.ShakyIsles (talk) 22:33, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Removed claim to highest bridge
The height in the article refers to the distance under the roadway while "List of tallest bridges in the world ranks bridges around the world by the height of their structure. The structural height of a bridge is the maximum vertical distance from the uppermost point of a bridge, such as the top of a bridge tower in a suspension bridge, down to the lowest visible point of a bridge, where its piers emerge from the surface of the ground or water." That article does not list this bridge as the tallest. GS3 (talk) 17:41, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I have reverted my own edit as I now see there is a distinction between List of tallest bridges in the world (height of structure) and List of highest bridges in the world (clearance under bridge). GS3 (talk) 18:01, 1 August 2011 (UTC)