Wikipedia

[Molandfreak]

Over the weekend, I ground out a 9800-byte Wikipedia article. This is the first non-stub road-related article I have written. By the end, I had completely lost my mind over the amount of detail I had put into an article about a 15-mile stretch of road. How do the people who write featured articles quadruple the length of this one do it? 

[Bruce]

Nice work.

I tend to break up everything into bite-sized chunks that can be accomplished in a short amount of time, and try to push off momentum to get things done. Of course this backfires when I leave things on the backburner to go pursue another goal.

I've been focusing hard on freeways as of late, and it's led to some great progress. Interstate 182 is at 18K characters, while Interstate 205 got up to 37K. I find it's harder to constrain myself to writing in summary style, which made Interstate 90's national overview a fun change of pace.

[Scott5114]

That's a pretty good article, probably good enough to garner B-class rating if you put some references in the first paragraph of the route description. (For anyone not familiar with Wikipedia assessment ratings, B-class is actually very good–it's the highest you can get without going through one of the more intense review processes to achieve Good Article, A-class, or Featured Article assessments, and I've always felt like to do the most good for the project in the least amount of time, it makes the most sense to shoot for B-Class.)

With all three of the featured articles I've written (Kansas Turnpike, Chickasaw Turnpike, and Creek Turnpike), the intent was to write a featured article from the very start. (I find it's easier to do this with a stub article than a lengthier one which may have a lot of unsourceable cruft in it that may need to be done.) In the most recent effort, Creek Turnpike, I actually had gathered the sources well ahead of time and sat on them for a few years until I finally had the motivation to write the article. Then, I took the interesting nuggets of information out of them and made them into a bulleted list, with a fully-formed reference on each bullet point (you can see this in this old diff from my sandbox). From there, it was just a matter of expanding those bullet points out and connecting them into something resembling prose. That process started in March 2013 and the article cleared FA in May 2013.

[Max Rockatansky]

Good article, but it kind of makes me wonder why you just don't do your own page?  I used to do page updates on Wikipedia in my very late teens and early 20s.  I kind of found a adhering to the Wikipedia format structure restricting and it got kind bland for my tastes after awhile.  I kind of dig being able to go all in crazy detailed as I want and not really worrying about adhering to someone else's format. 

I guess that's a question I don't think that I've ever been to pose before.  I know a lot of the forum users update Wikipedia rather than do their own pages?  Any particular rationale behind why you do it?  I suppose it's far more likely Wikipedia will be around for a long time as opposed to something like a personal site (as an example I can think of).

[Scott5114]

Some of the benefits of editing Wikipedia as opposed to doing a custom site are:
- Guaranteed traffic. Your article is going up onto one of the largest websites in the world. It will be seen by more than the random roadgeek that hears about your site from an AARoads thread.
- Don't have to worry about setting up your own server, search engine optimization, paying for hosting/domain name.
- The Wikipedia brand name is (rightly or wrongly) seen as authoritative. The site is often the first reference source people check. If it's just something to settle a bar bet or for their own personal amusement (i.e. not something mission-critical to get right), it may be the last source they check.
- There are other roadgeeks there that will sometimes pitch in and help to improve your articles.
- There are bots and other automated tools that stay on top of things like checking for dead links.
- Wikipedia is basically guaranteed to be around in some form or fashion until the end of the universe at this point. It's like a cockroach. Because of its free license, it's been copied and copied and copied. There are so many copies of Wikipedia around that even if the original site got nuked, all of the content will still be available many times over.

Drawbacks of Wikipedia:
- The house style (Neutral Point of View) is indeed very bland and gets boring to write after a while. You can't come within sneezing distance of anything resembling an opinion. I sort of slowed down on editing Wikipedia because I started to feel like my writing skills were going downhill from not being allowed to describe a scenic route as beautiful or say an interchange sucked.
- Some people may chafe at following USRD standards and the site Manual of Style.
- There's hundreds of policies you need to know and remember, most of them identified in casual conversation as inscrutable acronyms. Better be familiar with RS and GNG, lest your article be declared NN and brought to AFD. 
- There are the inevitable non-roadgeeks that will waltz in and cause problems because they think they know shit but they don't.
- There are some editors with really big personalities who know a lot about their subject matter (which may even be roads) but are a pain in the ass to have to deal with. You may spend more time arguing the finest points of wikidrama with someone rather than actually writing content.

[Bruce]

Another benefit is access to resources beyond those available at a local library. Between the Wikipedia Library and Resource Request forum, I've been able to get my hands on a lot more material to work with.

[kinupanda]

Nice work! I've been wanting to get U.S. Route 281 in Texas to GA status for... well, a while (at least 5 years, according to my user page, where it's still listed as a "current goal"), but just haven't gotten around to it. When I'm not doing vandalism cleanup or other such janitorial work, I tend to find a random route's article and make some improvement, even if it is standardizing the infobox or fixing some awkward grammar. Every bit helps, I think.

[ran4sh]

- There are the inevitable non-roadgeeks that will waltz in and cause problems because they think they know shit but they don't.

I agree, for example on the I-575 article I had found a paragraph where someone was asserting that I-575 and I-985 were both built for the purpose of enabling suburban sprawl, so I added a "citation needed" tag (most Georgia roadgeeks know that Gainesville was a developed city before the Interstates and I-985 was meant to connect to it rather than simply enable sprawl) Then some non-roadgeek (not even from the USA) removes the tag because they think that highways being built for sprawl is one of those obvious things that don't need citation.

As for "wikidrama", some editors assume that anyone who doesn't create content is automatically there to engage in wikidrama. Never mind that there are valid edits that don't consist of creating content (such as adding maintenance tags) and the reason I don't want to create content for Wikipedia is that I want to maintain copyright over the content and not have to release it per the GFDL and whatever else WP uses.

[formulanone]

- There are the inevitable non-roadgeeks that will waltz in and cause problems because they think they know shit but they don't.

...built for the purpose of enabling suburban sprawl, so I added a "citation needed" tag (most Georgia roadgeeks know that Gainesville was a developed city before the Interstates and I-985 was meant to connect to it rather than simply enable sprawl)

...Then some non-roadgeek (not even from the USA) removes the tag because they think that highways being built for sprawl is one of those obvious things that don't need citation.

Isn't declaring a road "something that creates urban sprawl" showing a bias, something WP frowns upon?

I guess you get around that by adding something one-sided in the Criticism or Critical Reception section of any given article.

[CNGL-Leudimin]

I do some ninja fixing if I find typos, wrong links, etc; most recently to the list of postal codes in Germany to correct two links that were going to French towns instead (EDIT: the article has since been deleted). I'm considering creating an account in order to hide my IP, but that changes from time to time.

[Scott5114]

I do some ninja fixing if I find typos, wrong links, etc; most recently to the list of postal codes in Germany to correct two links that were going to French towns instead. I'm considering creating an account in order to hide my IP, but that changes from time to time.

In the near future, they are planning to establish some other way of identifying anonymous editors other than by IP. Still, having an account has benefits, like being able to look up your own contribution history (useful when you want to see how you did something on a similar page but can't remember which one it was), maintaining a watchlist, and being able to easily receive messages from other users when they have a question about one of your edits. Editors also tend to give anonymous edits more scrutiny, since they're the most likely to contain vandalism or clueless edits, so in a way having an account can be more anonymous than being an anonymous editor.

[skluth]

I mostly just fix grammatical or obvious errors like CNGL-Leudimin. I find Wikipedia drama annoying, but I have written a few articles and built a few tables. To get rid of opinion, I've had better luck using the Talk page. Highlighting the opinion and why it's an opinion in the Talk page allows you to explain the problem rather than just pointing out a problem that others may not recognize by highlighting a section as "Citation needed." The Talk page is your friend.

I know some may not like being limited in what they can write according to Wikipedia standards but there are ways around it.  The easiest is to just cite an article stating (for example) how CA 1 is considered one of the world's most scenic highways. The trick with Wikipedia is just accepting it requires verifiable references for everything. This used to be true in academics too, but that ship has long since sailed.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

I got frustrated with the aggressive page monitoring. I made what I considered to be worthwhile edits that were reverted in all of five minutes. Bye.

[Scott5114]

I got frustrated with the aggressive page monitoring. I made what I considered to be worthwhile edits that were reverted in all of five minutes. Bye.

The problem is that just because an edit is worthwhile on its face, doesn't mean it complies with policy, doesn't duplicate other writing elsewhere in the article, is appropriate for an encyclopedia, is adequately sourced (considered a much more major problem if the entire rest of the article is properly sourced) etc. Without a diff, I can't say for sure what happened, but my guess is you tripped over one of those concerns.

Pretty much every Wikipedia editor has had an edit or even, in my case, an entire article, rejected early in their career. The editors who stick around are those who take the time to figure out what they did wrong and make future edits comply with the expectations of the community.

[ran4sh]

To get rid of opinion, I've had better luck using the Talk page. Highlighting the opinion and why it's an opinion in the Talk page allows you to explain the problem rather than just pointing out a problem that others may not recognize by highlighting a section as "Citation needed." The Talk page is your friend.

But tagging isn't really comparable to talk page discussion, discussion is a deliberate process that usually only affects the one article, while on the other hand, if I'm seeing similar problems repeatedly across various articles, it makes more sense to tag all of them. And the onus is on the person wanting to include content to justify why it complies, rather than the person wanting to remove content to justify how it is noncompliant. And I'm speaking from a general perspective, as on Wikipedia I have edited more than just road articles.

[skluth]

To get rid of opinion, I've had better luck using the Talk page. Highlighting the opinion and why it's an opinion in the Talk page allows you to explain the problem rather than just pointing out a problem that others may not recognize by highlighting a section as "Citation needed." The Talk page is your friend.

But tagging isn't really comparable to talk page discussion, discussion is a deliberate process that usually only affects the one article, while on the other hand, if I'm seeing similar problems repeatedly across various articles, it makes more sense to tag all of them. And the onus is on the person wanting to include content to justify why it complies, rather than the person wanting to remove content to justify how it is noncompliant. And I'm speaking from a general perspective, as on Wikipedia I have edited more than just road articles.

I was going by your specific example of "enabling suburban sprawl" where someone else removed the tag without justification. That's also a great example why I don't do much editing. BTW, a quick check shows "sprawl" is no longer on either page. I noticed somebody even added this wonderful line to one page: "All of I-985 is included as part of the National Highway System, a system of roadways important to the nation's economy, defense, and mobility." Smart way to stop a lot of opinion slipping onto the page.

[formulanone]

And the onus is on the person wanting to include content to justify why it complies, rather than the person wanting to remove content to justify how it is noncompliant. And I'm speaking from a general perspective, as on Wikipedia I have edited more than just road articles.

I think the responsibility should usually come from the one making the assertion. The more ridiculous the claim, the more it should be supported by those making the claim in the first place. I suppose some of that is to weed out Non-Notable articles, but some of it really looks like sniping after a while.

As Scott says, you really wind up grinding out a lot of statements which start to sound alike after a while, due to the tone of neutrality kept in the process.

[Scott5114]

I think it is constructive to look at it from the point of view of a regular article maintainer. Suppose you have been working on improving an article for a long time, perhaps with an eye to getting it to featured article status and getting it on the Main Page. You have worked on the article for weeks, and spent many hours researching, adding references, and copyediting it.

Randomly, a user you don't recognize adds a few sentences to the article. They don't flow well with the rest of the prose, they introduce new subject matter that you have never seen in your hours researching the topic, and the specific aspect of the topic they address focuses on a detailed aspect of the topic that is not really necessary for a general understanding of it. They, of course, provide no references for their claim. The editor's contribution history provides no indication that they have any particular expertise on the topic of your article, or even an established interest in it.

Do you keep that addition in the article, perhaps with a big glaring "citation needed" flag that will bar your article from reaching featured article status before it gets cleared? Do you reach out to the person who added it, asking them for a source which may or may not be forthcoming? Or do you quietly revert the addition out "rv unsourced", hoping that the person who added it will have moved on to something else and not even notice their addition was stripped away?

[ran4sh]

I agree with most of what y'all have said. The specific I-575 article problem I was referencing was about a non-road editor reverting my edit because I tagged requesting citation that I-985 was built for similar reasons. The responsibility should have been on the editor that added that claim, but I was the one that got reverted.

[tolbs17]

Sometimes the Wikipedia shows errors.

I-85 was relocated onto a new six-lane freeway NOT widened.

As of 1984, I-85 was relocated and widened to six lanes starting several miles north of the Yadkin River. Plans were made for widening to eight lanes around Salisbury.

[Dirt Roads]

Sometimes the Wikipedia shows errors.

I-85 was relocated onto a new six-lane freeway NOT widened.

As of 1984, I-85 was relocated and widened to six lanes starting several miles north of the Yadkin River. Plans were made for widening to eight lanes around Salisbury.

That Wikipedia statement is nearly correct.  The I-85 bridge over the Yadkin River at East Spencer was relocated further downstream away from the cluster of old bridges for US-70/US-29/NC-150 and the NCRR/Norfolk Southern mainline.  I highly suspect that the main reason for relocation was to simplify the coordination with the railroad, but the new alignment does pull in the curve and shorten the Interstate route quite a bit.

[skluth]

It's important to remember that many well-meaning Wikipedia editors are just bad writers who have never documented anything in their lives.

[Bruce]

Also important: Wikipedia only reflects what is reported in reliable sources. So if a newspaper gets a detail wrong, it's likely to be carried into the article until a proper, corrected source is found. If a statement is uncited, then it was likely added by a passerby and can be corrected by anyone with a proper source.

[Scott5114]

Nothing is more frustrating as a Wikipedia editor than knowing without a doubt that something is true, but being unable to find a source that says as much, often because the editors of the sources consider it to be obvious or uninteresting enough it doesn't need to be mentioned.

[Bruce]

Nothing is more frustrating as a Wikipedia editor than knowing without a doubt that something is true, but being unable to find a source that says as much, often because the editors of the sources consider it to be obvious or uninteresting enough it doesn't need to be mentioned.

I'm currently stuck on a few research projects for this very reason. A good deal of coverage for a major construction project before it happens and while it's underway, but nothing turns up when it's actually finished.