I'm cleaning up all the articles in the San Juan Islands region. I'm not quite sure what to do with San Juan Island. Here's the factors I'm weighing:

• It has one true city, Friday Harbor, which IMO has enough going on to support its own well-developed article. It's also far-and-away the easiest access point for the island, so most travelers will at least pass through it.
• It has a resort community, Roche Harbor, which does pass the Sleep There test, but IMO is too small to support a compelling article on its own.
• Outside of those communities, it has two other popular and noteworthy attractions that should be covered in a natural way (Everything Else):
  • Lime Kiln Point is equidistant from each community, and picking one city article for it would be arbitrary and confusing. It doesn't justify its own Park article.
  • San Juan Island Historical Park is split across two sites, one close-ish to Roche Harbor and one far from both but closest to Friday Harbor. It could maaaybe justify its own Park article, but I'm not prepared to write it (I haven't been there yet).
• "Friday Harbor" is well-known amongst people in this corner of the world, "Roche Harbor" is also decently well-known. I don't think people are as broadly aware of which of the San Juan Islands these communities are on, or of the difference between the "San Juan Islands" archipelago and "San Juan Island"-singular. I can see this tripping up people navigating through the site.

If I were free from policies and constraints, the most natural way for me to describe this place to travelers would be through two articles: an article for Friday Harbor and an article for Roche Harbor+Everything Else. However, I don't see how to fit this cleanly with WV's structure.

Right now, I'm leaning towards merging everything into one San Juan Island article, by changing this a Region into a Rural Area and turning the Friday Harbor and Roche Harbor article into redirects. I would group the See listings by Friday Harbor/Roche Harbor/Elsewhere, and for the other headings there are too few listings outside of Friday Harbor for it to matter. This would also reduce the copy-pasting needed to maintain all the redundant Get In/Get Around/Do across these articles.

Alternatively, I could divvy up Everything Else, making Friday Harbor effectively the whole southeast half of the island, and Roche Harbor the northwest half. I'd probably give Lime Kiln Point to Roche. I could then also create a San Juan Island National Historical Park outline for User:Someone Else to fill in.

Whatever happens here will probably also apply to Orcas Island/Eastsound/Orcas Village, which I haven't dug into yet.

Any thoughts? Gerode (talk) 18:51, 13 June 2025 (UTC)Reply

My thought is that if the best way to serve the reader is to have a Friday Harbor article and a "Rural San Juan Islands" article only, that's what we should do. But the Roche Harbor article looks OK to me, so I'd be inclined to keep it. If we keep the two existing city articles, would a rural area article that covered the rest of the San Juan Islands have enough content? Alternatively, how many of the attractions outside Friday Harbor and Roche Harbor are relatively close to either, such that they could reasonably be covered by one or the other article? Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:34, 14 June 2025 (UTC)Reply

That sounds reasonable. Roche Harbor does unambiguously meet the WV article standard, so I'm fine with deciding to keep it and working through the remaining puzzle accordingly. I can draft a Rural San Juan Island article and see if it comes together, or see that I'm better off expanding the two city articles into west-side/east-side articles. Gerode (talk) 18:26, 14 June 2025 (UTC)Reply

Great! Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:59, 14 June 2025 (UTC)Reply