After contributing images to several route articles on Wikipedia, and contributing here and there in other niches on the site under a few different accounts, I've finally decided to begin drafting an article for US 74A from Asheville to Forest City. I believe it could stand on its own as an article rather than just being in the special routes article. Similar ones for roads like US 17A in South Carolina exist, for example.
Here is the draft. The forum software is gonna break the link by removing the parenthesis at the end from the actual link so look out for that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:U.S._Route_74_Alternate_(Asheville%E2%80%93Forest_City)
Feel free to share any (constructive and polite) critique and/or other suggestions/tips.
Do it on the AARoads Wiki instead.
Wikipedia is a hostile environment for road editors now—the bar of "notability" keeps rising and rising, to the point that you may face pretty long odds getting a mere bannered route accepted. These days, they basically demand that you have a bunch of newspaper articles on a route for an article to exist, and even then those may be deemed not good enough if they don't focus on the road enough. (How much is enough? More than you can actually find in the real world!) The site culture actually rewards people that delete articles over those that create them now.
Most of the roadgeeks on Wikipedia have decamped to the AARoads Wiki (https://wiki.aaroads.com/), which uses the same software, is content to allow just about every road article within reason, and has nicer maps. The policies are greatly pared back and only focus on the important stuff, so you won't get accused of violating WP:BYOP, WP:MONGO, WP:DEEF, and WP:FJORD every time you turn around. If you do Discord, we have a server that has a lot of overlap with the membership here as well as on the AARoads Wiki. All in all it's a much more chill, low-drama environment, one which I recommend over Wikipedia.
Run as far as you can from Wikipedia. AAroads is far more friendly grounds to get your feet wet making Wiki style road pages.
Quote from: Scott5114 on February 23, 2024, 05:37:22 PM
Wikipedia is a hostile environment for road editors now—the bar of "notability" keeps rising and rising, to the point that you may face pretty long odds getting a mere bannered route accepted. These days, they basically demand that you have a bunch of newspaper articles on a route for an article to exist, and even then those may be deemed not good enough if they don't focus on the road enough. (How much is enough? More than you can actually find in the real world!) The site culture actually rewards people that delete articles over those that create them now.
Most of the roadgeeks on Wikipedia have decamped to the AARoads Wiki (https://wiki.aaroads.com/), which uses the same software, is content to allow just about every road article within reason, and has nicer maps. The policies are greatly pared back and only focus on the important stuff, so you won't get accused of violating WP:BYOP, WP:MONGO, WP:DEEF, and WP:FJORD every time you turn around. If you do Discord, we have a server that has a lot of overlap with the membership here as well as on the AARoads Wiki. All in all it's a much more chill, low-drama environment, one which I recommend over Wikipedia.
The only way any of my article changes stick is when I quote a different wikipedia page and then they are okay with changes.
Quote from: Scott5114 on February 23, 2024, 05:37:22 PM
Wikipedia is a hostile environment for road editors now—the bar of "notability" keeps rising and rising, to the point that you may face pretty long odds getting a mere bannered route accepted. These days, they basically demand that you have a bunch of newspaper articles on a route for an article to exist, and even then those may be deemed not good enough if they don't focus on the road enough. (How much is enough? More than you can actually find in the real world!) The site culture actually rewards people that delete articles over those that create them now.
Most of the roadgeeks on Wikipedia have decamped to the AARoads Wiki (https://wiki.aaroads.com/), which uses the same software, is content to allow just about every road article within reason, and has nicer maps. The policies are greatly pared back and only focus on the important stuff, so you won't get accused of violating WP:BYOP, WP:MONGO, WP:DEEF, and WP:FJORD every time you turn around. If you do Discord, we have a server that has a lot of overlap with the membership here as well as on the AARoads Wiki. All in all it's a much more chill, low-drama environment, one which I recommend over Wikipedia.
Damn. I had no idea. That's both very disappointing and very stupid. I can see how an environment like that can easily make people feel all high and mighty about what they think should and shouldn't be on there.
Recently, I made a Wikipedia article for the forum itself - and it was promptly deleted.
Quote from: KCRoadFan on February 26, 2024, 08:21:07 PM
Recently, I made a Wikipedia article for the forum itself - and it was promptly deleted.
TBF, I'm not aware of AARoads, muchless this forum, ever having met Wikipedia's criteria for "notability", even before the latest round of bs.