AARoads Forum

Hey everyone,
As I've mentioned here and there on the forum, Wikipedia policies have been gradually tightening more and more as time goes on. This has led to an annoying group of people questioning whether highways are "notable" or not, and thus whether they should be deleted from the site. Although there's been a back and forth, these people seem likely to win the debate in the long term. Of course, Wikipedia's road content is an invaluable resource for our community, and it would be a big loss were it to be destroyed. Thus, Alex has graciously agreed to host this content on a brand-new wiki that's all about roads–the AARoads Wiki (https://wiki.aaroads.com/)!

The team making up the core of the US Roads WikiProject on Wikipedia has moved over to the new wiki and has done a lot of really fantastic work getting everything set up. Right now, the content is mostly identical to what you can find on Wikipedia. Over time, though, this wiki will evolve from being a small part of a bigger encyclopedia, into a roads gazetteer that covers pretty much anything a roadgeek might need as reference. The wiki covers the United States and Canada for the time being, but we're open to expanding to other countries if anyone is interested in writing about them. (And we have the Wikipedia versions of these articles backed up, too, so even if they're deleted from Wikipedia you won't be starting from scratch.) Also, even if something isn't a traditional article, if it's road related (and isn't fictional), we'd like to have it in our Annex section! It's the perfect place for things like a list of the shortest highway in each state (https://wiki.aaroads.com/wiki/Annex:List_of_shortest_state_highways_in_the_United_States), for instance.

One of the really cool features of the new wiki are the interactive maps, which you can pan and zoom. They currently appear on a subset of articles, but we plan to roll them out across the whole site. These maps are based on the OpenStreetMap Americana project (that means they have actual shields!), and use a custom map legend made just for AARoads that is intended to more closely resemble the legends used on traditional American maps, like state DOT maps. (And yes, it includes county lines! Although we don't have the county names working just yet...) We plan to have a big, easily browsable version of this map available soon, for when you just want to explore the world using an easy-to-read, roadgeek-friendly map.

Interested in pitching in? We'd love to have you on board! Like all wikis, this one is a work in progress, so there's plenty to do. There's a banner at the top of the page that will take you to a list of tasks you can get your feet wet with. And if you've been put off by the bureaucracy of editing Wikipedia, don't worry. Our goal is to cut down on the number of rules, to let you focus on writing the best road content you can. If you need help, we have a Discord server (https://discord.gg/5f8cFd3Dx5) full of experienced roadgeeks that will be happy to help you out (or if you just want to talk about Limon or I-238 or whatever, that's cool too).

We hope you'll make the AARoads Wiki your first stop when you just need to know something about roads. And if you have any suggestions or comments, we would love to hear them–this wiki is a part of your community, so we want to do whatever we can to make it as useful as possible to everyone in the hobby. We hope to see you there!

While I'm kind of busy with my own projects on GN I would encourage anyone wanting to write something for California highways to rip the public documents they need from our page.  I purposely embed hyperlinks and add scans for pretty much everything in the public domain.  The way I see it, reference materials should be easy and free for everyone to use:

https://www.gribblenation.org/p/golden-state-highways-version-30.html?m=1

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on September 07, 2023, 09:34:46 PM
While I'm kind of busy with my own projects on GN I would encourage anyone wanting to write something for California highways to rip the public documents they need from our page.  I purposely embed hyperlinks and add scans for pretty much everything in the public domain.  The way I see it, reference materials should be easy and free for everyone to use:

https://www.gribblenation.org/p/golden-state-highways-version-30.html?m=1

I've been working on uploading scans of public domain documents to Wikimedia Commons and then transcribing them to Wikisource. Many of the AASHO/AASHTO minutes have been done on there, making them friendlier to read. I've also transcribed various federal highway reports to Wikisource. Those efforts have been warmly welcomed, so that will continue.

Quote from: bulldog1979 on September 07, 2023, 11:55:32 PM

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on September 07, 2023, 09:34:46 PM
While I'm kind of busy with my own projects on GN I would encourage anyone wanting to write something for California highways to rip the public documents they need from our page.  I purposely embed hyperlinks and add scans for pretty much everything in the public domain.  The way I see it, reference materials should be easy and free for everyone to use:

https://www.gribblenation.org/p/golden-state-highways-version-30.html?m=1

I've been working on uploading scans of public domain documents to Wikimedia Commons and then transcribing them to Wikisource. Many of the AASHO/AASHTO minutes have been done on there, making them friendlier to read. I've also transcribed various federal highway reports to Wikisource. Those efforts have been warmly welcomed, so that will continue.

With California specifically it probably has the largest source of state highway magazine publications and other public domain documents.  The California Highway Bulletin ran circa 1912-1916 which was followed by the California Highways & Public Works 1924-67.  Both publications have been scanned on archive.org but they are purely chronological.  David Rumsey has the 1918-2005 state highway map scans and the 1935 Division of Highways county survey maps scanned.

The Arizona Memory Project scanned all the Arizona Highways volumes.  The modern stuff isn't really road oriented anymore but the early volumes very much were.  Archive.org has a bunch of Florida Highways magazine scans but I haven't quite deep dived into those like I have with California and Arizona.

Thanks for the pointers to the reference materials! I'm sure that they'll come in handy. Would you happen to know of anything like that for Nevada? I'm wanting to dive into the history of the road system there (especially US 91, since there's currently not even an article on it, it just redirects to I-15), but I'm not even sure where to start.

Quote from: Scott5114 on September 08, 2023, 03:52:08 AM
Thanks for the pointers to the reference materials! I'm sure that they'll come in handy. Would you happen to know of anything like that for Nevada? I'm wanting to dive into the history of the road system there (especially US 91, since there's currently not even an article on it, it just redirects to I-15), but I'm not even sure where to start.

Unfortunately I've never found such a publication for Nevada.  I have found the Nevada State Highway Map archive to be useful:

https://www.dot.nv.gov/travel-info/maps/historical-maps

I have done some work on my own regarding the early evolution of the Arrowhead Trail into US 91 for Nevada.  In particular the Arrowhead Trail routing through St. Thomas, Valley of Fire and what is now Nellis AFB is interesting:

https://www.gribblenation.org/2021/03/valley-of-fire-state-park-and-legacy-of.html?m=1

I'm not sure "those people" will win "the debate." Highway pages on Wikipedia aren't just lists of start and end points, they include photos, mention and link to other pages on topics such as national parks, and often provide history that also includes other things.

Have there been any Wikipedia pages regarding highways removed so far? Every time I've wanted to know about a particular one, I've been able to find a Wikipedia page.

Max, thanks for the pointers, I'll be sure to take a look at them!

[Note for those who are here from the Wikipedia Signpost article: Some parts of the following discussion have been simplified for the benefit of those who aren't familiar with the exact details of Wikipedia policy, and have no desire to become a practicing WikiLawyer (a profession that doesn't pay all that well). -S.]

Quote from: Quillz on September 08, 2023, 01:10:39 PM
I'm not sure "those people" will win "the debate." Highway pages on Wikipedia aren't just lists of start and end points, they include photos, mention and link to other pages on topics such as national parks, and often provide history that also includes other things.

Have there been any Wikipedia pages regarding highways removed so far? Every time I've wanted to know about a particular one, I've been able to find a Wikipedia page.

Unfortunately, "is this good content or not" is not the question Wikipedia policy wonks ask, it's "is it notable or not". And "notable" is defined by the types of sources discussing the article or not. And "those people" have come to the conclusion that:

• DOT sources cannot be used because they are not independent of the subject.
• Maps cannot be used because they require the editor to interpret them.
• Newspaper articles cannot be used because they are primary sources. (This one is just outside the Overton window at the moment, but that seems to be shifting. If this ends up becoming a mainstream view, you're going to see a lot of content purged, not just roads. So it's possible that may be a bridge too far, but it is the logical outcome of the policy as currently written and interpreted.)

So without those three things, what else could you possibly cite a road article to? With things like Route 66 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike, there are books, but nobody's writing a book about Oklahoma 34 or K-177 or Nevada 160.

No road articles have been deleted yet, but enough editors (many of whom who have been contributing to Wikipedia since before this forum existed) have seen the writing on the wall and decided it was best to get out now while the content can be saved, rather than wait until the deletions actually start. And, of course, trying to win a never-ending argument with these people and convince them that they're being morons takes time out of the day that would be more happily spent actually writing about the roads. Essentially, the roadgeeks have gotten fed up with the non-roadgeek Wikipedia community making things difficult for difficulty's sake, and have decamped to AARoads so we can actually do what it is we like to do without anyone interfering.

Quote from: Quillz on September 08, 2023, 01:10:39 PM
Have there been any Wikipedia pages regarding highways removed so far? Every time I've wanted to know about a particular one, I've been able to find a Wikipedia page.

Not yet.  Rather than attacking articles directly via deletion, they're doing the death by a thousand cuts method.  They're casting doubt on the validity of sources (mostly maps, esp. Google Maps), muddying the waters on what makes a highway "notable", and complaining about a lack of "significant coverage" about minor highways among other reasons.  It's almost like they want a 350-page biography on every single highway in the U.S., which just isn't going to happen for designations like MD 990.

This has been going on for at least 10 years, but it's really ramped up in the last 24 months.  Recently, several of these discussions happened at the same time, which got exhausting really fast.  We just decided to cut our losses and bail.  Morale in the Discord server is sky high and editing a wiki is fun again.

I can see that happening for some minor highways, but many well known ones have very detailed Wikipedia pages. So they, for example, will eventually not have any information at all on US 66?

EDIT: Re-reading, I guess in that specific case there would be. This is more about minor highways that wouldn't have books written about them.

Also what exactly is the "point?" Is it just some cost/bandwidth issue, having to host less pages?

Although ultimately as long as the same/better info can be accessed in a similar useful fashion, that's what matters.

Quote from: Quillz on September 08, 2023, 01:10:39 PMHave there been any Wikipedia pages regarding highways removed so far? Every time I've wanted to know about a particular one, I've been able to find a Wikipedia page.

There are no removals that I'm aware of, but like dying or going bankrupt, this is the sort of thing that starts slowly and then moves very fast.

Wikipedia currently doesn't include articles for a few primary state highways, such as very short-lived ones that functioned as spurs off I-235 in Wichita soon after it was built, but that's more of an edge case.

Quote from: Quillz on September 08, 2023, 02:00:07 PM
Also what exactly is the "point?" Is it just some cost/bandwidth issue, having to host less pages?

These same people have decided that Wikipedia is essentially complete and now the focus should be on quality instead of quantity.  They recently decided to purge thousands of Olympians from the site simply because they appeared in an Olympics database and someone decided years ago that that was enough to write a (very) short article about them.  I believe the same thing is happening to soccer players right now as well.  They can have their Pyrrhic victories whether they recognize them as such or not.

I can see the pros and cons. On one hand, Wikipedia has long been dogged by allegations of not being a particular good source for information, so wanting to ensure every article has a solid source (writings, documents, etc.) can have its advantages. But then you run into issues of things that obviously exist not having any information on them.

But on the other hand, it's the free market at work. If Wikipedia keeps doing this, then rival sites like the AARoads one will appear that cater to particular segments. This itself has its pros and cons.

Quote from: Quillz on September 08, 2023, 02:00:07 PM
Also what exactly is the "point?" Is it just some cost/bandwidth issue, having to host less pages?

I can't say I really understand the motivations myself. The Foundation certainly isn't hurting for money, at least as far as anyone is publicly aware of, and for the longest time "Wikipedia is not paper" (implying "so don't worry about resource usage") was a guiding philosophy. Deleting articles wouldn't even save any server resources, since all deleting an article in MediaWiki does is set it to not display to non-administrators (it remains in the database, and admins have the technical, if not political, ability to restore most deleted articles at any time).

The only guess that I have is that the people pursuing these changes have some platonic ideal of what an encyclopedia should look like, and their motivation is to make Wikipedia match that ideal. Since most paper encyclopedias don't have articles on state highways, minor Olympic athletes, area codes, and Pokémon*, Wikipedia must not either, or it won't be a legitimate encyclopedia in their eyes. This, of course, entirely undermines what the average Internet user finds useful about Wikipedia (i.e. that they can type any subject into it and get at least a cursory treatment of the subject), but unfortunately, these editors are of the opinion that whatever principles they're following are more important than whatever needs or opinions the uninvolved readers may have.

As I said in another thread where this came up:

Quote from: Scott5114 on June 26, 2023, 07:16:35 PM
Most of the people who are pushing this crap were not on Wikipedia at the time it got popular and do not know what made it successful. Most of the editors who were around in the 2005-2010 era were teenagers or college students at the time, and have since taken on enough real-life responsibilities that they don't have time to babysit a website for free all day. Those that do still have the free time have gotten burned out from the whole "you're just minding your own business writing about something you enjoy and some asshole shows up out of the blue to pick a fight with you about something stupid" thing that tends to randomly occur.

It's kinda like what they say about family fortunes–generation 1 builds the empire, generation 2 maintains it because they were able to observe what generation 1 did right, generation 3 ruins it because generation 1 was out of the picture by the time they came along.

---

*Pokémon were actually deleted years ago. If you search for any but the most well-known Pokémon, you are redirected to a line in a table, rather than a full article. Searching Google for a Pokémon normally returns Bulbapedia, a fan-run independent wiki, as the top result. We've taken Wikipedia's treatment of this style of content as precedent for what will eventually happen to the highway articles, and thus used Bulbapedia as a model for the niche the AARoads Wiki will occupy.

Quote from: Scott5114 on September 08, 2023, 03:08:34 PM

Quote from: Quillz on September 08, 2023, 02:00:07 PM
Also what exactly is the "point?" Is it just some cost/bandwidth issue, having to host less pages?

I can't say I really understand the motivations myself. The Foundation certainly isn't hurting for money, at least as far as anyone is publicly aware of, and for the longest time "Wikipedia is not paper" (implying "so don't worry about resource usage") was a guiding philosophy. Deleting articles wouldn't even save any server resources, since all deleting an article in MediaWiki does is set it to not display to non-administrators (it remains in the database, and admins have the technical, if not political, ability to restore most deleted articles at any time).

The only guess that I have is that the people pursuing these changes have some platonic ideal of what an encyclopedia should look like, and their motivation is to make Wikipedia match that ideal. Since most paper encyclopedias don't have articles on state highways, minor Olympic athletes, area codes, and Pokémon*, Wikipedia must not either, or it won't be a legitimate encyclopedia in their eyes. This, of course, entirely undermines what the average Internet user finds useful about Wikipedia (i.e. that they can type any subject into it and get at least a cursory treatment of the subject), but unfortunately, these editors are of the opinion that whatever principles they're following are more important than whatever needs or opinions the uninvolved readers may have.

---

*Pokémon were actually deleted years ago. If you search for any but the most well-known Pokémon, you are redirected to a line in a table, rather than a full article. Searching Google for a Pokémon normally returns Bulbapedia, a fan-run independent wiki, as the top result. We've taken Wikipedia's treatment of this style of content as precedent for what will eventually happen to the highway articles, and thus used Bulbapedia as a model for the niche the AARoads Wiki will occupy.

Yup, that's the main issue and pretty much the reason WHY book encyclopedias have largely faded. Because you've got Wikipedia. Interestingly, their philosophy mimics the skeuomorphism that was popular in the 90s/00s. On one hand, replicating a real world object made it familiar. The problem was a lot of software programmed in deliberate limitations that mirrored real world objects. I remember in particular a phone app that only let you have nine speed dial settings, because that's what a real phone was limited to. It didn't take into account you're using a computer with tons of memory and is smart, and could create hundreds of speed dials, organized in all sorts of ways. It seems, then, Wikipedia is having the same issue: not taking advantage of the platform they're on.

It seems a bit slow and unstable, no doubt due to a massive influx of traffic on the wiki's servers/services.

As far as international information, I know SABRE over there in the UK has their Roader's Digest (https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page), which might be worth collaborating with them on for the AARoads wiki, or at least linking back to their wiki in the meantime.

It's sad that Wikipedia's inflexibility has led to this, but I love the idea of the roadgeek community having its own wiki where we set the rules that work for us, rather than having them imposed top-down by people who don't really understand what we do.  Congratulations to everyone who's worked to bring the AARoads Wiki into reality!

That said, I have noticed that many of the pages seem to load very slowly.  It could probably use some SRE work to bring it up to speed with other web sites.

Quote from: dgolub on September 09, 2023, 09:32:43 AM
It's sad that Wikipedia's inflexibility has led to this, but I love the idea of the roadgeek community having its own wiki where we set the rules that work for us, rather than having them imposed top-down by people who don't really understand what we do.  Congratulations to everyone who's worked to bring the AARoads Wiki into reality!

That said, I have noticed that many of the pages seem to load very slowly.  It could probably use some SRE work to bring it up to speed with other web sites.

We are looking at what we can do to improve performance, but that is the drawback of shifting to what is basically a volunteer-managed site (Wikimedia has professional devops engineers running the site). It's basically Scott and I trying to figure out what can be done. Any more ideas (we are running MediaWiki, the documentation is at mediawiki.org) would be welcome.

A good chunk of the slowness also happens when you are the first person to visit a given page in a while, since the server has to build the page and store it in its various caches. If you're visiting a page someone else has visited recently, it's quite speedy since it can pull from cache.

It doesn't help that MediaWiki seems to be designed under the assumption that a wiki will always be run by an organization with the budget to throw infinite amounts of server and human resources at managing it, though.

I have noticed the slowness. Good to see there is around 15k articles already, though.

Are most of the articles just copy/pasted from Wikipedia? For example, I like the California ones on Wikipedia because they'll have tables showing mileposts, major junctions, etc. Is all that being retained?

Directly copying/pasting would be the fastest way to build these types of pages.  The format essentially is the same as the main Wikipedia page. 

Quote from: dgolub on September 09, 2023, 09:32:43 AM
It's sad that Wikipedia's inflexibility has led to this, but I love the idea of the roadgeek community having its own wiki where we set the rules that work for us, rather than having them imposed top-down by people who don't really understand what we do.  Congratulations to everyone who's worked to bring the AARoads Wiki into reality!

That said, I have noticed that many of the pages seem to load very slowly.  It could probably use some SRE work to bring it up to speed with other web sites.

And the weird thing is, Wikipedia in general acts like they don't impose rules top-down, they act like anyone can participate in determining what the rules are

Quote from: Scott5114 on September 08, 2023, 01:46:27 PM

• Newspaper articles cannot be used because they are primary sources. (This one is just outside the Overton window at the moment, but that seems to be shifting. If this ends up becoming a mainstream view, you're going to see a lot of content purged, not just roads. So it's possible that may be a bridge too far, but it is the logical outcome of the policy as currently written and interpreted.)

Honestly I would love for that argument to win out on Wikipedia. No more quickly building articles about specific events based on news articles about the event. (Especially since so many of them have inaccuracies because of the rush to release a news article)

Thank you to everyone involved in making this happen!  Losing any Wikipedia road content would certainly be devastating to folks like us to whom the pages are certainly more "notable"  than, say, most of the Kardashian family.

Most of my general web surfing these days is on my phone's browser.  Wikipedia articles always load up with a "mobile"  version of the site.  The first article I tried pulling up on AARoads Wiki loaded up the normal version of the site that needed to be zoomed in.  Will mobile sites eventually be created to mirror the normal sites?

Again, many thanks to everyone who is making this possible!

Quote from: Quillz on September 09, 2023, 04:17:44 PM
I have noticed the slowness. Good to see there is around 15k articles already, though.

Are most of the articles just copy/pasted from Wikipedia? For example, I like the California ones on Wikipedia because they'll have tables showing mileposts, major junctions, etc. Is all that being retained?

There is a bit more to it than merely copy-pasting (Wikipedia page histories have to have the names of past editors extracted and retained to comply with the license), but yes, the text that currently appears is the same as was exported from Wikipedia a couple of months ago (the exact revision exported is normally linked to in the page history). We plan to retain the format of the articles (including the junction lists) and expand upon it. We are now no longer subject to the Wikipedia style guide's prohibition of image galleries, for instance.

Quote from: ran4sh on September 09, 2023, 04:29:44 PM
And the weird thing is, Wikipedia in general acts like they don't impose rules top-down, they act like anyone can participate in determining what the rules are

Well, that's because they don't, and anyone can participate in rule-making. However, the problem is 1) only those who are bureaucratically minded tend to participate in rule-making, and often (as is true of our opponents in this case) the people interested in setting policy do not actually contribute any articles to the website, (indeed, just participating in policy-making discussions can be a full-time job, leaving little time to actually write content) and 2) once a rule has been decided, it is difficult to get it changed since, by default, the discussion is treated as a solved problem that need not be revisited. (This is often because the discussion was acrimonious the first time around and there is an aversion to reopening old wounds.)

Quote from: ran4sh on September 09, 2023, 04:32:40 PM
Honestly I would love for that argument to win out on Wikipedia. No more quickly building articles about specific events based on news articles about the event. (Especially since so many of them have inaccuracies because of the rush to release a news article)

This is indeed why the "no primary sources" rule has been promulgated, but if strictly enforced, it has the side effect of making certain subjects nigh uncoverable on Wikipedia, because of the dearth of secondary and tertiary sources available. Also, relying on secondary sources is no guarantee of reliability either. While a secondary source author has the advantage of hindsight and perspective of how future events transpired from the subject event, they also introduce the risk of telephone-game errors, as well as projection of the author's own biases onto their analysis of the primary sources.

Quote from: wriddle082 on September 09, 2023, 05:10:23 PM
Most of my general web surfing these days is on my phone's browser.  Wikipedia articles always load up with a "mobile"  version of the site.  The first article I tried pulling up on AARoads Wiki loaded up the normal version of the site that needed to be zoomed in.  Will mobile sites eventually be created to mirror the normal sites?

I've put that on our to-do list.  :nod:

Quote from: Scott5114 on September 09, 2023, 05:48:34 PM

Quote from: wriddle082 on September 09, 2023, 05:10:23 PM
Most of my general web surfing these days is on my phone's browser.  Wikipedia articles always load up with a "mobile"  version of the site.  The first article I tried pulling up on AARoads Wiki loaded up the normal version of the site that needed to be zoomed in.  Will mobile sites eventually be created to mirror the normal sites?

I've put that on our to-do list.  :nod:

Awesome, thanks again! 👍

This should ultimately probably be a boon. Bulbapedia, for example, is an excellent example of how game-specific wikis can work. Not only are there articles on every Pokemon, but you get highly technical pages detailing game formula, various RNG seeds, and so on. And that's not even getting into all the pages it has on the anime, the trading card game, etc.

Ideally, I think what could be really nice is a whole subset dedicated to history. Pages about auto trails, wagon roads, original highway networks in states before any major changes happened, so on.

Is anyone else having issues creating an account because it wants you to do a ghost CAPTCHA?

Quote from: Scott5114 on September 09, 2023, 05:40:29 PM
2) once a rule has been decided, it is difficult to get it changed since, by default, the discussion is treated as a solved problem that need not be revisited. (This is often because the discussion was acrimonious the first time around and there is an aversion to reopening old wounds.)

Unless we created the rule then it's fair game to ignore.

Quote from: chrismarion100 on September 09, 2023, 09:43:27 PM
Is anyone else having issues creating an account because it wants you to do a ghost CAPTCHA?

Send me a PM with what username you'd like and an email address and I can create an account for you.

Quote from: chrismarion100 on September 09, 2023, 09:43:27 PM
Is anyone else having issues creating an account because it wants you to do a ghost CAPTCHA?

What do you mean by that? I can see the question, though it is a bit hard to see since there is no line break before it.

Thanks for those who got this started.

Just getting to this thread now, but Wikipedia's rejection of DOT sources due to lack of "independence" is just about the most ridiculous thing that I've heard in a month.

Quote from: ran4sh on September 09, 2023, 04:32:40 PM

Quote from: Scott5114 on September 08, 2023, 01:46:27 PM

• Newspaper articles cannot be used because they are primary sources. (This one is just outside the Overton window at the moment, but that seems to be shifting. If this ends up becoming a mainstream view, you're going to see a lot of content purged, not just roads. So it's possible that may be a bridge too far, but it is the logical outcome of the policy as currently written and interpreted.)

Honestly I would love for that argument to win out on Wikipedia. No more quickly building articles about specific events based on news articles about the event. (Especially since so many of them have inaccuracies because of the rush to release a news article)

The other problem with newspaper articles is that the average person editing Wikipedia isn't diligent enough to look at what an article itself claims for its source. Newspaper articles that say, for example, "sources say xyz" are of questionable value because nobody knows who the sources are and where they claim to be getting their information (except the reporter, who isn't telling, and the sources who wish to remain anonymous). People see a news report about an event that "sources say" is expected to occur in the future and they treat it as established fact that the event will occur. It would be more accurate to say "media reports indicated xyz" or similar, but that distinction is probably too subtle for the average person who thinks, "Ooo, look, I can beat everyone else to putting this on Wikipedia."

I dunno, a newspaper article covering the dedication ceremony of a highway seems like an extremely reliable primary source to me.  Trying to wedge universal rules for source types is bound to exclude some reliable information at some point

Are those redlinks for cities and states eventually going to/allowed to become articles?

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on September 10, 2023, 10:46:14 AM
I dunno, a newspaper article covering the dedication ceremony of a highway seems like an extremely reliable primary source to me.  Trying to wedge universal rules for source types is bound to exclude some reliable information at some point

I agree with that first sentence. I also find it mildly amusing that in most research contexts, use of a primary source is considered a good thing, but not in the Wikipedia world.

Quote from: epzik8 on September 10, 2023, 01:18:26 PM
Are those redlinks for cities and states eventually going to/allowed to become articles?

No, those are an artifact of being exported from Wikipedia; they were blue links on Wikipedia. We are gradually fixing those to all point back to the relevant Wikipedia articles, but there are so many articles that need to be fixed it will take some time. (This is an easy task that anyone who would like to pitch in can do; we even have a small bit of software–a "gadget" in MediaWiki parlance–that lists every link in the article and lets you choose whether to leave it pointing to AARoads Wiki or change it to a Wikipedia link.)

We've talked about maybe creating some sort of city-level articles that discuss the road system in a given city, but nothing has been decided. Even so, we wouldn't need these for small towns and unincorporated places with only one or two state highways, so those links would need to be changed anyway.

Quote from: 1995hoo on September 10, 2023, 09:19:54 AM

Quote from: ran4sh on September 09, 2023, 04:32:40 PM

Quote from: Scott5114 on September 08, 2023, 01:46:27 PM

• Newspaper articles cannot be used because they are primary sources. (This one is just outside the Overton window at the moment, but that seems to be shifting. If this ends up becoming a mainstream view, you're going to see a lot of content purged, not just roads. So it's possible that may be a bridge too far, but it is the logical outcome of the policy as currently written and interpreted.)

Honestly I would love for that argument to win out on Wikipedia. No more quickly building articles about specific events based on news articles about the event. (Especially since so many of them have inaccuracies because of the rush to release a news article)

The other problem with newspaper articles is that the average person editing Wikipedia isn't diligent enough to look at what an article itself claims for its source. Newspaper articles that say, for example, "sources say xyz" are of questionable value because nobody knows who the sources are and where they claim to be getting their information (except the reporter, who isn't telling, and the sources who wish to remain anonymous). People see a news report about an event that "sources say" is expected to occur in the future and they treat it as established fact that the event will occur. It would be more accurate to say "media reports indicated xyz" or similar, but that distinction is probably too subtle for the average person who thinks, "Ooo, look, I can beat everyone else to putting this on Wikipedia."

There's also the circular citations where a reporter on a deadline looks something up in Wikipedia to help flesh out a story, and then that story is used to cite the information in Wikipedia the reporter looked up in the first place.

I've also caught the Oklahoman straight up copy and pasting from Wikipedia. Which led to the silliness of the text on Wikipedia getting flagged as a copyright violation until I pointed out that the text was added to the article years before it appeared in print...

Quote from: 1995hoo on September 10, 2023, 01:32:13 PM

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on September 10, 2023, 10:46:14 AM
I dunno, a newspaper article covering the dedication ceremony of a highway seems like an extremely reliable primary source to me.  Trying to wedge universal rules for source types is bound to exclude some reliable information at some point

I agree with that first sentence. I also find it mildly amusing that in most research contexts, use of a primary source is considered a good thing, but not in the Wikipedia world.

Indeed, I shared this whole saga with a friend of mine who has a master's in library science, and she was absolutely appalled that primary sources would ever be disallowed, to the point that she was rethinking her trust in Wikipedia altogether.

Quote from: rschen7754 on September 09, 2023, 01:18:35 PM
It's basically Scott and I trying to figure out what can be done.

Quote from: Quillz on September 09, 2023, 07:16:49 PM
This should ultimately probably be a boon.

Forgive me for my ignorance of how this stuff works, and please be so kind as to enlighten me.

1.  What is the goal of the Wiki?  Is it to eventually become basically a better Wikipedia?  One in which anyone and everyone is free to contribute and discuss and edit?  Or will there be a group of gatekeepers?

2.  I used to participate in an internet forum that eventually died a pitiful death because basically one guy was running it, he couldn't afford to run it anymore, and nobody else in the 'community' was able, ready, or willing to do anything about it.  Is there any danger of this Wiki eventually dying because whoever is running the show just throws in the towel (similar to what could imaginably happen to this forum someday)?

Basically the "majority"  of group think at Wikipedia has decided highways are not important enough to feature on the site.  The AAroads Wiki is an attempt to salvage the existing content road of Wikipedia before the looming purge takes effect.  Wikipedia is just in danger of losing itself to unhealthy group think, not so much financially.

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on September 10, 2023, 03:26:25 PM
Wikipedia is just in danger of losing itself to unhealthy group think, not so much financially.

I was asking about the long-term stability of the AARoads Wiki, not Wikipedia.

Hosted by Alex much like the forum and AAroads web page is.  That coupled with who else is working on the Wiki gives it a pretty reliable footing.

Quote from: kphoger on September 10, 2023, 03:11:30 PMWhat is the goal of the Wiki?  Is it to eventually become basically a better Wikipedia?  One in which anyone and everyone is free to contribute and discuss and edit?  Or will there be a group of gatekeepers?

The consensus is preservation of North American road-related content that is at risk of deletion as attacks on article notability and sourcing ramp up to what veteran observers believe will be a likely successful attempt to overturn WP:GEOROAD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(geographic_features)#WP:GEOROAD).  Beyond that, there is a spread of opinion as to how much effort to invest in defending the legacy content on the English Wikipedia.  Some favor rearguard action, while others want to commit immediately to the Pokémon model of focusing efforts on the AARoads Wiki so that it will climb in search engine rankings, especially once road articles start disappearing from Wikipedia proper.

It has already been agreed that anonymous (IP-only) editing will not be allowed on the AARoads Wiki, and sourcing guidelines will be modified to better reflect the probative value of the underlying material so that article development is not held hostage to an artificial distinction between primary and secondary sources.

Quote from: kphoger on September 10, 2023, 03:11:30 PMI used to participate in an internet forum that eventually died a pitiful death because basically one guy was running it, he couldn't afford to run it anymore, and nobody else in the 'community' was able, ready, or willing to do anything about it.  Is there any danger of this Wiki eventually dying because whoever is running the show just throws in the towel (similar to what could imaginably happen to this forum someday)?

No guarantees can be given.  However, roads-related forums (including not just us, but also SABRE) tend to be much better off than ones dedicated to writing, for example, because the subject matter attracts multiple numerate and tech-literate enthusiasts who can help keep things ticking over in the engine room and implement robust fallbacks in the event of serious technical problems.  (The writing forum I'm a member of has basically just one person handling the technical work and essentially had to start from scratch six years ago when CompuServe closed, forcing the members to set up their own Web forum.  People had been keeping private archives of the legacy content, but none of them was complete or in a form that allowed migration.)

An interesting observation I've had on Gribblenation over the last couple years is that some of our commonly most viewed Top 20 articles often comprises roads that were deleted from Wikipedia.  Granted most of those articles aren't often "numbered highways" but it does illustrate that this isn't per se a recent trend.

Quote from: kphoger on September 10, 2023, 03:11:30 PM
1.  What is the goal of the Wiki?  Is it to eventually become basically a better Wikipedia?  One in which anyone and everyone is free to contribute and discuss and edit?  Or will there be a group of gatekeepers?

I can't answer the latter questions, but a "better Wikipedia" for roads, yes, that's the goal. Bulbapedia was cited by myself and some others, and is a great model. There are articles about every single Pokemon, as well as every single trading card, every single anime episode. And then highly technical articles dealing with the really complex formulas for calculating damage, predicting RNG, possible stat ranges, and so on. Something like 50,000 articles on just one video game franchise. It seems that is the end goal here. Every numbered highway has an article, gives at least some cursory information. Perhaps articles about historical alignments, historical highways, etc.

This is a worthy project and a natural extension of what AARoads is all about. I will definitely be checking it out, and would love to contribute as time and energy permit.

SM-G991U

Quote from: Quillz on September 10, 2023, 07:05:11 PM

Quote from: kphoger on September 10, 2023, 03:11:30 PM
1.  What is the goal of the Wiki?  Is it to eventually become basically a better Wikipedia?  One in which anyone and everyone is free to contribute and discuss and edit?  Or will there be a group of gatekeepers?

I can't answer the latter questions, but a "better Wikipedia" for roads, yes, that's the goal. Bulbapedia was cited by myself and some others, and is a great model. There are articles about every single Pokemon, as well as every single trading card, every single anime episode. And then highly technical articles dealing with the really complex formulas for calculating damage, predicting RNG, possible stat ranges, and so on. Something like 50,000 articles on just one video game franchise. It seems that is the end goal here. Every numbered highway has an article, gives at least some cursory information. Perhaps articles about historical alignments, historical highways, etc.

Is it limited to numbered highways?  I didn't see any indication that the AAroads Wiki is beholden to such a standard.  If an unnumbered highway is notable, then why not add an article?

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on September 10, 2023, 07:13:01 PM

Quote from: Quillz on September 10, 2023, 07:05:11 PM

Quote from: kphoger on September 10, 2023, 03:11:30 PM
1.  What is the goal of the Wiki?  Is it to eventually become basically a better Wikipedia?  One in which anyone and everyone is free to contribute and discuss and edit?  Or will there be a group of gatekeepers?

I can't answer the latter questions, but a "better Wikipedia" for roads, yes, that's the goal. Bulbapedia was cited by myself and some others, and is a great model. There are articles about every single Pokemon, as well as every single trading card, every single anime episode. And then highly technical articles dealing with the really complex formulas for calculating damage, predicting RNG, possible stat ranges, and so on. Something like 50,000 articles on just one video game franchise. It seems that is the end goal here. Every numbered highway has an article, gives at least some cursory information. Perhaps articles about historical alignments, historical highways, etc.

Is it limited to numbered highways?  I didn't see any indication that the AAroads Wiki is beholden to such a standard.  If an unnumbered highway is notable, then why not add an article?

No idea, I was just trying to give a vague explanation of why this project will be great once fully realized. I have no say or control in what is or isn't being added.

Just so many of you know, Wikipedia still has articles on the former New York State Route 25C and 25D, which the AARoads Wiki doesn't have yet. Since the articles on the Wiki so far swipe most of the material from the existing wikipedia articles, including many of the photos we've posted in them, I'd also like to point out that I've recently been posting pics of Adirondack Drive between Farmingville and Selden, New York to the Wikimedia commons. Having said that I don't think an article on Adirondack Drive would be worthy on either Wikipedia or the AARoads Wiki.

Just about any file uploaded to Wikimedia Commons can be used on AARoads Wiki as well, so feel free to dump photos there. Missing articles from Wikipedia can be requested for import on the Cleanup page.

We've had some discussion on the inclusion criteria for non-numbered roads in the past, and will be refining them as we go along. I'm going to be writing some more articles on historic Washington highways as well (including never-built roads) given that I never had the opportunity to do so on Wikipedia.

Quote from: kphoger on September 10, 2023, 03:11:30 PM
What is the goal of the Wiki?  Is it to eventually become basically a better Wikipedia?  One in which anyone and everyone is free to contribute and discuss and edit?  Or will there be a group of gatekeepers?

In addition to what was contained in Jonathan's reply upthread, the goal is also to branch out somewhat from what Wikipedia allowed. Our wiki is not necessarily tied to the traditional "encyclopedia" model that Wikipedia seeks to emulate. (The term that we've decided best fits what we're shooting for is "gazetteer".) Accurate coverage of more or less anything pertaining to (real) highways is allowed, within reason (coverage of things like local streets or section line county roads isn't really within our remit, for instance). If it doesn't fit in the typical "encyclopedia article" mold, we have an Annex section that can hold the content. So, for example, I stashed the list of Oklahoma county codes you put together for me in there, since it might be useful to a roadgeek: https://wiki.aaroads.com/wiki/Annex:List_of_Oklahoma_county_codes

Anyone who is interested in editing the wiki can join. (In fact, we'd love more help, especially in states we don't have active editors in!) In practice, probably only roadgeeks would get a whole lot out of editing it, so our editor base is likely to be drawn from this forum and/or any other roadgeeks that happen onto the site from Google or whatever. The core team of editors are the same editors that have been maintaining the articles for years on Wikipedia, so we do have opinions about things like formatting and article structure that we'd like to keep consistent from article to article. But the mantra of "nobody owns the articles" has been drilled into us from years of Wikipedia, and since that has worked well for us for years, I would expect that would continue rather than shifting to a formal "gatekeeper" model.

Quote from: kphoger on September 10, 2023, 03:11:30 PM
I used to participate in an internet forum that eventually died a pitiful death because basically one guy was running it, he couldn't afford to run it anymore, and nobody else in the 'community' was able, ready, or willing to do anything about it.  Is there any danger of this Wiki eventually dying because whoever is running the show just throws in the towel (similar to what could imaginably happen to this forum someday)?

Currently myself and rschen7754 have direct backend access to the server, and there are currently nine people (including myself, rschen, and Alex) with administration rights in the wiki software (and we have a few others who have expressed interest in requesting rights eventually). Much of the core team of wiki editors have been working on this set of articles for decades at this point (rschen7754 and I both started in 2005, for instance; the earliest version of many of the Oklahoma articles were illustrated with circle shields because the meat cleaver didn't exist yet, and I was bugging KTA for information to use in the Kansas Turnpike article when I was in high school) so I would expect that if any of us were to get sick of it we could just pass the reins off to someone else.

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on September 10, 2023, 07:13:01 PM

Quote from: Quillz on September 10, 2023, 07:05:11 PM

Quote from: kphoger on September 10, 2023, 03:11:30 PM
1.  What is the goal of the Wiki?  Is it to eventually become basically a better Wikipedia?  One in which anyone and everyone is free to contribute and discuss and edit?  Or will there be a group of gatekeepers?

I can't answer the latter questions, but a "better Wikipedia" for roads, yes, that's the goal. Bulbapedia was cited by myself and some others, and is a great model. There are articles about every single Pokemon, as well as every single trading card, every single anime episode. And then highly technical articles dealing with the really complex formulas for calculating damage, predicting RNG, possible stat ranges, and so on. Something like 50,000 articles on just one video game franchise. It seems that is the end goal here. Every numbered highway has an article, gives at least some cursory information. Perhaps articles about historical alignments, historical highways, etc.

Is it limited to numbered highways?  I didn't see any indication that the AAroads Wiki is beholden to such a standard.  If an unnumbered highway is notable, then why not add an article?

We do not have exact inclusion guidelines written down just yet. Historically, the US Roads project on Wikipedia went for a 'state maintained numbered highways only' criteria because that was a clear, unambiguous standard that was set by a body separate from the project, so we could justify inclusion by saying "well, it's not us saying the road is important, it's the DOT, if you don't like it, take it up with them".

Now that we are on our own wiki, we could potentially expand the inclusion criteria. However, every article that is included in a wiki does impose a bit of a maintenance liability on its editors; links in references go dead over time and need to be replaced or removed, when templates used in articles are upgraded, articles need to be checked for breakage, and so on. So any expansion needs to be carefully considered to ensure that the benefit of additional coverage outweighs the maintenance costs. Also, it is somewhat tricky to write an inclusion guideline that would allow things like, say, Nipton Road that would be of general interest, while excluding obscure roads nobody cares about like Las Grande Ranchoristo Terrace in the McMansion Heights subdivision (and yes, we have encountered people that will write articles on such things even under Wikipedia's rules–recently there was an instance of someone writing an article for a 2,300-ft-long street in Melbourne, and they were so adamant about its inclusion that they managed to get themselves sitebanned for abusing multiple accounts to try to obstruct the deletion discussion).

I can think of dozens of unnumbered roads just in California and Arizona alone that have way more significance from a historic standpoint than a high percentage of state highways.  This isn't directed at this Wiki project but we as a community (emphasis this is my opinion) don't do such a great job documenting these types of highways.  There certainly is an opportunity for this project to break the mold from mentality of only numbered routes are important.  Granted I know in the near term this isn't the priority but I would urge those involved in building this Wiki to consider things like this. 

To clarify, I'm talking about unnumbered roads along the lines of say "San Francisquito Canyon Road"  and not the subdivision loop road.

It's certainly a possibility. One part of the problem, as alluded to above, is the difficulty in defining this class of roads, such that someone without direct familiarity with them (like, say, an editor from the East Coast) could say with some accuracy whether a road is one of these historic unnumbered roads, or something not worth covering. Do you have any suggestions for how the line might be drawn?

Quote from: Scott5114 on September 10, 2023, 07:33:32 PM
Currently myself and rschen7754 have direct backend access to the server, and there are currently nine people (including myself, rschen, and Alex) with administration rights in the wiki software (and we have a few others who have expressed interest in requesting rights eventually). Much of the core team of wiki editors have been working on this set of articles for decades at this point (rschen7754 and I both started in 2005, for instance; the earliest version of many of the Oklahoma articles were illustrated with circle shields because the meat cleaver didn't exist yet, and I was bugging KTA for information to use in the Kansas Turnpike article when I was in high school) so I would expect that if any of us were to get sick of it we could just pass the reins off to someone else.

I was a Wikimedia steward with full access to the software at one point, so I'm pretty well versed in how the application interface operates. Where there's a bit of a struggle is keeping the application running with acceptable performance. I'm a software engineer professionally but I don't have a lot of PHP or Apache experience. Scott has a bit more Linux experience. We're open to suggestions on how to get it running better (https://github.com/aaroads-wiki/aaroads-config).

Quote from: Scott5114 on September 10, 2023, 08:09:34 PM
It's certainly a possibility. One part of the problem, as alluded to above, is the difficulty in defining this class of roads, such that someone without direct familiarity with them (like, say, an editor from the East Coast) could say with some accuracy whether a road is one of these historic unnumbered roads, or something not worth covering. Do you have any suggestions for how the line might be drawn?

Part of the fun in this hobby (at least for me) is discovering things about roads and places I didn't know existed or fully understood.  I don't really know if you really can have a fully hardened rule and get a good mix of unnumbered highways, my thought would be that is a subjective measure.  Certainly, the lower end of where that line is going to be pretty obvious as we've already discussed.   I am certainly not suggesting subjectively looking at everything submitted for unnumbered highways is a perfect system.  Part of the problem I see with Wikipedia is that they are now too structured and rigid (hence why this project exists to begin with) with their rules in general.  Why replicate the worst aspects of the existing Wikipedia model when something that may require more subjective effort may yield a fuller product?  Wikipedia definitely was a far more interesting place when it wasn't burdened by a bunch of stodgy rules created by the editorial elites.

Quote from: Scott5114 on September 10, 2023, 07:33:32 PM
Also, it is somewhat tricky to write an inclusion guideline that would allow things like, say, Nipton Road that would be of general interest, while excluding obscure roads nobody cares about like Las Grande Ranchoristo Terrace in the McMansion Heights subdivision (and yes, we have encountered people that will write articles on such things even under Wikipedia's rules–recently there was an instance of someone writing an article for a 2,300-ft-long street in Melbourne, and they were so adamant about its inclusion that they managed to get themselves sitebanned for abusing multiple accounts to try to obstruct the deletion discussion).

What, exactly, is the problem with allowing such an article?

Quote from: kphoger on September 11, 2023, 09:54:08 AM

Quote from: Scott5114 on September 10, 2023, 07:33:32 PM
Also, it is somewhat tricky to write an inclusion guideline that would allow things like, say, Nipton Road that would be of general interest, while excluding obscure roads nobody cares about like Las Grande Ranchoristo Terrace in the McMansion Heights subdivision (and yes, we have encountered people that will write articles on such things even under Wikipedia's rules–recently there was an instance of someone writing an article for a 2,300-ft-long street in Melbourne, and they were so adamant about its inclusion that they managed to get themselves sitebanned for abusing multiple accounts to try to obstruct the deletion discussion).

What, exactly, is the problem with allowing such an article?

The problem is that a wiki article takes a non-zero amount of effort to maintain over the years, even if it is not expanded at all. Most articles will include one or more templates, which are basically small bits of software that take input and turn it into a particular type of output (the familiar "infobox" that appears on most articles on Wikipedia is an example of this). Over time new features often need to be added to these, which can cause the required input to get a certain result to change, meaning that someone has to go through all of the articles and update them to match the new way the template works. There is also the problem of links being used in references breaking over time; someone has to go through and check these (and either fix or remove them). There is also, of course, the fact that just because someone types some text into a wiki page, that doesn't mean it's true; it is a good idea to have someone periodically spot-checking that the references actually supports what the text claims.

This all takes a non-zero amount of time to accomplish, of course, and with a smaller editor base than Wikipedia has, the opportunity cost from time that we could be spending researching to expand existing articles is a bigger concern. This time sink is justified if it is an article on a major highway that a reader is likely to actually want information about, since that's what wiki editors are for. But if I were to, say, make an article on the cul-de-sac I live on, I'm probably the only person who is ever going to care about that article. This means that the updates and verifications to that article are going to spread the other editors thinner than if the page didn't exist at all, and it will help fewer readers than if that editing time was spent researching, say, the history of K-15 or something like that. (There is also the problem that the more obscure the subject, the harder it is to find references on it; this means that we have no real guarantee that anything written about a minor residential street is accurate or not beyond what can be verified by looking at a map.)

Quote from: Scott5114 on September 11, 2023, 11:59:08 AM
But if I were to, say, make an article on the cul-de-sac I live on, I'm probably the only person who is ever going to care about that article.

Hey, I'd probably read it!  I'm sure you could come up with something interesting, such as when and why each of your neighbors found it necessary to advertise their favorite sports teams by painting their logos on the curb next to the house number.  Is that practice allowed or prohibited by local ordinance?  Did it start with just one guy?  Is there now a friendly rivalry between residents of your cul-de-sac?  An unfriendly rivalry?  Are non- OSU fans allowed to move in?  Inquiring minds want to know...

Since the core group behind the fork comes from Wikipedia, we start with that framework as a baseline for the new AARW. We aren't rigidly beholden to that framework of policies and guidelines going forward though. We have a prime opportunity to review all of those rules just to see what does or doesn't make sense for us.

Much has been said so far about loosening inclusion standards from the rigid application of the General Notability Guideline (which is supposed to supplement, not supplant subject-specific guidelines). For example, the article on M-144 from the 1930s (https://wiki.aaroads.com/wiki/M-144_(1937%E2%80%941939_Michigan_highway)) in the Lansing area was demoted and deleted off Wikipedia, but it was restored onto AARW and polished up. So where some of the naysayers have been picking at the edges to declare certain topics as ineligible for articles, we're able to say that every state highway, current or former, warrants an article to have a full set in the future, just as we had tried on WP. From there, we can expand to other categories where we can articulate some sort of guideline.

One other angle is that we can reexamine the concept of a reliable source. We have ideas in mind to allow some additional sources that WP doesn't currently accept, like the long-standing well-regarded roadgeek websites. Because we aren't going to worry about "notability", we won't have to focus on the independence of a source in the same fashion as WP has.

If a county has numbered county routes/roads, a list of those might not be a bad idea, IMHO, with articles for the more "notable" ones.

I also know SABRE has an article on nearly every classified road in the UK and Ireland, might not be a bad idea to at least link over there for a more in-depth look at British and Irish roads, an maybe just cover the more basic/important bits as we see fit on this wiki.

https://www.tiktok.com/@bmacs001/video/7277383641397857579

Quote from: freebrickproductions on September 11, 2023, 10:07:47 PM
I also know SABRE has an article on nearly every classified road in the UK and Ireland, might not be a bad idea to at least link over there for a more in-depth look at British and Irish roads, an maybe just cover the more basic/important bits as we see fit on this wiki.

One day we do want to expand to covering roads in every country. One problem with SABRE is that due to their licensing, they cannot import the current Wikipedia articles.

Quote from: rschen7754 on September 11, 2023, 11:24:26 PM
https://www.tiktok.com/@bmacs001/video/7277383641397857579

Has AARoads ever gone viral before?

Also https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Next_issue/News_and_notes&curid=74677104&diff=1175001390&oldid=1174586075 (draft of story for internal newsletter The Signpost)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/posts/6561226760591766

Quote from: rschen7754 on September 11, 2023, 11:24:26 PM

Quote from: freebrickproductions on September 11, 2023, 10:07:47 PM
I also know SABRE has an article on nearly every classified road in the UK and Ireland, might not be a bad idea to at least link over there for a more in-depth look at British and Irish roads, an maybe just cover the more basic/important bits as we see fit on this wiki.

One day we do want to expand to covering roads in every country. One problem with SABRE is that due to their licensing, they cannot import the current Wikipedia articles.

I was more of linking/referencing to SABRE for information on British/Irish roads. Especially since it's probably gonna be more in depth on that subject that the current Wikipedia articles are.

Quote from: freebrickproductions on September 11, 2023, 10:07:47 PM
If a county has numbered county routes/roads, a list of those might not be a bad idea, IMHO, with articles for the more "notable" ones.

I also know SABRE has an article on nearly every classified road in the UK and Ireland, might not be a bad idea to at least link over there for a more in-depth look at British and Irish roads, an maybe just cover the more basic/important bits as we see fit on this wiki.

Long term, we may get county road lists. It's a matter of people finding the time to write them and finding the sources for the information.

As for SABRE, we currently don't have any British articles. By design, we focused our time and energies on importing US and Canadian articles first. To put things in perspective, we got the server in the middle of June, and we only now felt like we had done enough work to launch after almost 3 months. There's still work to be done as we need to create/convert maps over to the new mapping format and edit articles to fix the links and other artifacts from the import process. We currently have over 15,000 articles on the server, and many still haven't been touched from the initial import process. Importing was automated, while the rest is semi-automated at best.

If there is a demand and a user base to expand our coverage, we can import more articles. We've  already discussed expanding the concept of a reliable source to encompass well-regarded roadgeek sites, but I don't know that we'd stretch that to include other wikis. We could encourage editors to consult the sources listed for a topic on The Roader's Digest, but I wouldn't be in favor of citing that wiki directly.

I'm reading this with interest.

In the Dutch road enthusiast community, we decided to do something similar, already back in 2007, when the Dutch-language 'roads wiki' (Wegenwiki) was launched. It now has nearly 23,000 articles, but none of those were copied from Wikipedia due to the poor quality of the road articles on the Dutch Wikipedia.

The problem we had with the Dutch Wikipedia at the time was the poor quality of road articles (and the NL Wikipedia in general) and the excessive bickering and edit wars over names, notability and style.

Setting up your own Wiki has some advantages, you can retain some creative control, can use relevant sources, don't have to worry about intricate Wikipedia guidelines and 'common' knowledge about a million conventions and notability issues. A smaller, dedicated team also allows for better and more consistent article structure. Many outsiders update road articles only if they hit the news headlines and this tends to mess up the article quality, or overemphasize whatever is the latest (anti) road hype.

A problem with copying Wikipedia articles en masse may be that Google sees the AAroads Wiki as a mirror site instead of its own thing, which could rank it lower in the search results.

Quote from: Chris on September 15, 2023, 07:44:30 AMA problem with copying Wikipedia articles en masse may be that Google sees the AAroads Wiki as a mirror site instead of its own thing, which could rank it lower in the search results.

This has been cited as a reason to allow the roads articles to disappear from the English Wikipedia over time.  However, the AARoads Wiki was announced just eight days ago and we are now seeing imported articles floating up to within the top five results on their own.

(I did find the Wegenforum Wiki useful in understanding why the NBd was created, by the way.)

I recently tried to find a source that Wikipedia might find suitable regarding evidence of the colored US shields in Florida. The source I thought would have this evidence didn't have it.
https://www.fdot.gov/gis/floridatransportationmaparchive.shtm

However, on the 1956 map, which I thought would have it, I found some interesting info.
https://fdotwww.blob.core.windows.net/sitefinity/docs/default-source/co-gis/past_statemap/flstatemap1956.pdf?sfvrsn=c0a0c1a1_0

1)Florida SR 100 east of Bunnell used to be part of SR 11, which I learned earlier this year.


2)Florida SR 44 east of DeLand actually used to be part of SR 40. Evidently, SR 40 ran south along an overlap with US 17 then turned east along where SR 44 is today.

Are there plans to copy over the wikiproject pages? (Or has this already been done?) There are some good resources in there.

Quote from: NE2 on September 16, 2023, 12:24:12 AM
Are there plans to copy over the wikiproject pages? (Or has this already been done?) There are some good resources in there.

The pages have been copied over but are still being cleaned up.

Signpost story went live: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2023-09-16/News_and_notes (also comments are possible)

Quote from: rschen7754 on September 16, 2023, 01:35:23 AM

Quote from: NE2 on September 16, 2023, 12:24:12 AM
Are there plans to copy over the wikiproject pages? (Or has this already been done?) There are some good resources in there.

The pages have been copied over but are still being cleaned up.

Additionally, we have an "Annex" namespace that is intended for resource pages that would be of general interest to roadgeeks rather than only being useful for project maintenance (so it would be ideal for, e.g. history resources or notes on mass renumberings). Many of the WikiProject subpages will probably eventually end up there, rather than buried under the WikiProject structure.

You know, just to bring up Bulbapedia again: the latest mainline games got some DLC released 48 hours ago, and already there are about 1,000 new articles detailing it. The amount of dedication in just a single day is astounding. And I'm talking the articles dealing with data mining, stuff like that. Really gives me hope this wiki will be similarly passionate. Getting new articles up and running in just a few days. Pretty neat. (For example, an article about the new Crosstown Connector in Bakersfield).

I can't help but wonder if the "reading a map is original research" thing is being at least partly fueled by the fact that such is a skill that is dying out in the era of GPS navigation.  I find that people don't even try to figure out where they need to go; they just plug the address into their phone and trust it to tell them where to go (which can be a huge problem if the data has issues or is outdated, if there's a malfunction in the device, or the road network is a little tricky in the area and the algorithms for generating the directions can't produce something useful).

Quote from: vdeane on September 16, 2023, 04:24:11 PM
I can't help but wonder if the "reading a map is original research" thing is being at least partly fueled by the fact that such is a skill that is dying out in the era of GPS navigation.

Reading a map is a 1st-or 2nd Grade skill; it is literally taught in public schools from the moments after left/right/up/down is understood and basic compass directions. So if even children have these things as required two-dimensional steps to get a grade, they're only a few steps away from basic reading skills.

Thanks to all involved in setting this up - backend, frontend, and content.

Anyone else can't sign up because of this "Incorrect or missing CAPTCHA." bug thing

Quote from: chrismarion100 on October 02, 2023, 04:22:19 PM
Anyone else can't sign up because of this "Incorrect or missing CAPTCHA." bug thing

The question is there. If you can't see it can you post a screenshot?

Same. Can't sign up due to missing CAPTCHA.


(https://i.imgur.com/QTxqWt7.png)

I can confirm the new account creation is working (as I just created an alt account for myself). Just be sure to do the captcha correctly.

I figured out the captcha, it certainly wasn't intuitive

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on September 07, 2023, 09:34:46 PM
While I'm kind of busy with my own projects on GN I would encourage anyone wanting to write something for California highways to rip the public documents they need from our page.  I purposely embed hyperlinks and add scans for pretty much everything in the public domain.  The way I see it, reference materials should be easy and free for everyone to use:

https://www.gribblenation.org/p/golden-state-highways-version-30.html?m=1

Just a note that I've had a love/hate relationship with the Wiki pages on California highways (perhaps because I've been working so long to be an authoritative resource. That said, I don't mind borrowing WITH CREDIT, and I welcome corrections to my pages from the Wiki team. We're all one big family, and we should be saying the same thing (but perhaps with slightly different focus).

(but I was there first  :-D )

Quote from: cahwyguy on October 03, 2023, 12:27:46 AM

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on September 07, 2023, 09:34:46 PM
While I'm kind of busy with my own projects on GN I would encourage anyone wanting to write something for California highways to rip the public documents they need from our page.  I purposely embed hyperlinks and add scans for pretty much everything in the public domain.  The way I see it, reference materials should be easy and free for everyone to use:

https://www.gribblenation.org/p/golden-state-highways-version-30.html?m=1

Just a note that I've had a love/hate relationship with the Wiki pages on California highways (perhaps because I've been working so long to be an authoritative resource. That said, I don't mind borrowing WITH CREDIT, and I welcome corrections to my pages from the Wiki team. We're all one big family, and we should be saying the same thing (but perhaps with slightly different focus).

(but I was there first  :-D )

I'm tempted to create an AAroads Wiki account to clarify the western terminus history of US 66 in California.  That item (7th and Broadway) in particular is something hard to look at and not edit when I stumble upon it on Wikipedia. 

But yes, both our sites are chock full of information regarding California that would never been acceptable on regular Wikipedia.  It seems crazy to me that DOT sources in particular would ever been a reference issue.

Quote from: andrepoiy on October 03, 2023, 12:26:47 AM
I figured out the captcha, it certainly wasn't intuitive

Maybe it's a generational thing? If all else fails you can Google it.

I can't seem to create my own user page for some reason, it says I don't have permission.

Quote from: andrepoiy on October 02, 2023, 10:04:32 PM
Same. Can't sign up due to missing CAPTCHA.


(https://i.imgur.com/QTxqWt7.png)

A line break has been added to make the captcha question more obvious.

For those who don't have trouble signing in, I just started adding info on the realignment of Florida SR 40 and extension of SR 44 on Wikipedia. Those on the AARoads Wiki should follow up on that, and add further info when they can get it.

I'm also working on a sandbox for the new description of Florida State Road 60, and I've updated the future projects for Florida State Road 50.

This has now been mentioned on the 2 Girls 1 Podcast podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6Hd4QKaOkAvarPBPn536Sw?go=1&sp_cid=3b95b2fe14f6f875e9eeab07d014d72f&utm_source=embed_player_p&utm_medium=desktop&nd=1

The Florida State Road 60 page on Wikipedia has been updated. I see that FL 33, 40, 44, and 50 still need to be worked on at the AA Roads Wiki, and the SR 33 page still needs SR 33A shields for both versions.

Did anybody else know that the Pan-American Highway was blown up by communist guerillas in El Salvador during the 1980's?

Quote from: D-Dey65 on October 11, 2023, 09:03:50 AM
The Florida State Road 60 page on Wikipedia has been updated. I see that FL 33, 40, 44, and 50 still need to be worked on at the AA Roads Wiki, and the SR 33 page still needs SR 33A shields for both versions.

Did anybody else know that the Pan-American Highway was blown up by communist guerillas in El Salvador during the 1980's?

Hi, if you want the AARoads Wiki updated, I would suggest that you create an account and update it yourself. We simply do not have the resources to chase down forum posts and figure out what needs to be updated.

Hi Rschen7754 - It's good to see you on the AARoads wiki. I remember you from many years ago when I was active on Wikipedia. I haven't edited there in any major capacity in years because of disagreements in its direction, but saw your last Center Line newsletter about the changes. I was wondering what the deal was with the AARoads wiki and now understand the why.

The AARoads Wiki made Slate: Why Wikipedia's Highway Editors Took the Exit Ramp (https://slate.com/technology/2023/12/wikipedia-road-highway-editors-wiki-railfans-roadgeeks.html)

Interesting notion that road fans/roadgeeks aren't interested in anything but immediate history.  Can't say that's something I agree with. 

The perspective offered in the article is intriguing, but I find myself in disagreement. In the United States, railfans have traditionally focused their passion on the historical aspects of railroading, particularly the early 20th century. The decline in the rail industry during the latter half of the century has garnered less attention, as the narratives from that period tend to be more somber. There is also a tendency in historical accounts to overlook key developments in railroading during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. An exception to this trend is the Brightline service, which represents a notable success in renewing interest among railfans in contemporary rail initiatives.

Contrastingly, in countries like China and Japan, there is substantial enthusiasm for modern rail infrastructure, fueled by significant investments in this area.

The history of highways, conversely, tends to focus on more recent developments. There was scant literature on road infrastructure prior to the creation of the interstate highway system, with only sporadic mentions of bridge and road improvements. Comprehensive documentation generally began during the WPA era, subsequently followed by other government-funded programs. This correlated with the rise in commercial photography for the sake of preservation and documentation.

This backdrop poses unique challenges for documenting niche subjects, where secondary sources are scarce. Such was the case in a debate I engaged in over the use of materials from the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Historical Society. While a *few* considered this a primary source due to its direct connection to the subject, in many instances, it's the most reliable documentation we have. Where else are you going to find scans, track layouts, and schematics? Secondary documentation is next to nil for the railroad.

The phrase "It's bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy" encapsulates my experience as a Wikipedia administrator. Over time, the platform has become bogged down with controversies over minor issues, excessive bureaucracy, and declining participation. This has led to outdated content, broken links, and references that diminish the utility of the resource.

Scant in the past?  If anything there is more information available regarding highways the further back in time you go.  The problem is that it often comes from primary sources like State Highway Departments or AASHO (which Wikipedia doesn't like). 

Off the top of my head here is a list of State level publications on highways I'm familiar with which pre-date the Interstate system that I'm aware of:

-  California Highway Bulletin (1912-1916)
-  California Highways & Public Works (1924-1967)
-  Arizona Highways (1920-current) (note, the magazine isn't really "road" centric anymore)
-  Florida Highways (1924-1950)

Quote from: Scott5114 on December 08, 2023, 03:55:57 PM
The AARoads Wiki made Slate: Why Wikipedia's Highway Editors Took the Exit Ramp (https://slate.com/technology/2023/12/wikipedia-road-highway-editors-wiki-railfans-roadgeeks.html)

Is this where I announce that the AARoads Wiki is a sham; we sent ourselves out here because we're trying to take over the Empire, but first we have to defeat the forces from Anacreon Wiki, the Thespis'wiki, and Korellian State Policipedia before starting out on the creation of a New Galactic Wikipedia (keep an eye out for a user called TheMule360, just a hunch).

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on December 08, 2023, 06:07:48 PM
Scant in the past?  If anything there is more information available regarding highways the further back in time you go.  The problem is that it often comes from primary sources like State Highway Departments or AASHO (which Wikipedia doesn't like). 

Off the top of my head here is a list of State level publications on highways I'm familiar with which pre-date the Interstate system that I'm aware of:

-  California Highway Bulletin (1912-1916)
-  California Highways & Public Works (1924-1967)
-  Arizona Highways (1920-current) (note, the magazine isn't really "road" centric anymore)
-  Florida Highways (1924-1950)

Well, before around 1900 there's a sharp drop-off and many of us do really stop caring.

Quote from: rschen7754 on December 08, 2023, 08:07:10 PM

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on December 08, 2023, 06:07:48 PM
Scant in the past?  If anything there is more information available regarding highways the further back in time you go.  The problem is that it often comes from primary sources like State Highway Departments or AASHO (which Wikipedia doesn't like). 

Off the top of my head here is a list of State level publications on highways I'm familiar with which pre-date the Interstate system that I'm aware of:

-  California Highway Bulletin (1912-1916)
-  California Highways & Public Works (1924-1967)
-  Arizona Highways (1920-current) (note, the magazine isn't really "road" centric anymore)
-  Florida Highways (1924-1950)

Well, before around 1900 there's a sharp drop-off and many of us do really stop caring.

I mean hey, transportation corridors are rarely fully developed in the vacuum of the post-1956 Federal Highway Aid Act era.  It does the reader a disservice to not hit on full history of a corridor if there is something tangible prior to the 20th century to address.  Digging for stuff that old is hard, but often not impossible.

I remembered pursuing the transportation libraries in Kentucky and West Virginia back in college and there wasn't that much old stuff pre-WPA era to pursue. While the state did have records, it wasn't in a way that was easily digestible and not as easily accessible. Very little was online or in a database. In other words, worthless to Wikipedia. Both states have since added highway plans to a geo-coordinated map but that is still considered a primary source and an interpretation of a map, so it would still be worthless to Wikipedia.

I'd be curious if other states had developed publications on the line of California, Florida, and Arizona.

So far I haven't had much luck with Nevada and New Mexico (two states I also write about frequently).  To your point all the publications I listed above have been scanned online and are now easy to access.

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on December 08, 2023, 10:45:00 PMSo far I haven't had much luck with Nevada and New Mexico (two states I also write about frequently).  To your point all the publications I listed above have been scanned online and are now easy to access.

It looks like some material from New Mexico has now been scanned, including the report of the State Engineer covering the 1912-1914 biennium (https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000679194).  I've gone through some of these in print and they include maps of the state highways (including NM 1, NM 2, and NM 3 at their much longer original lengths), as well as photos of early construction.  One of the early reports even has a photo of what was eventually designated as NM 1 (and then, on mostly new alignments in the same corridor, US 85 and I-25) back in the days when it was a wagon road.

Edit:  New Mexico also had its own state-published highways magazine similar to CHPW, but I don't know if back issues have been scanned.

Quote from: seicer on November 14, 2023, 10:10:03 PM
Hi Rschen7754 - It's good to see you on the AARoads wiki. I remember you from many years ago when I was active on Wikipedia. I haven't edited there in any major capacity in years because of disagreements in its direction, but saw your last Center Line newsletter about the changes. I was wondering what the deal was with the AARoads wiki and now understand the why.

Missed seeing this, but good to see you are still around as well!

One thing I have to know before I join; Is this connected to what is today known as the Fandom website? Because I go under a different screen name there.

Quote from: D-Dey65 on December 11, 2023, 07:00:45 AM
One thing I have to know before I join; Is this connected to what is today known as the Fandom website? Because I go under a different screen name there.

No. It's not part of Fandom.

Quote from: 1 on December 11, 2023, 07:02:03 AM

Quote from: D-Dey65 on December 11, 2023, 07:00:45 AM
One thing I have to know before I join; Is this connected to what is today known as the Fandom website? Because I go under a different screen name there.

No. It's not part of Fandom.

To expand on this, AARoads Wiki runs entirely on a server paid for by Alex, same as the forum does. The only connections to any other site are that it uses Wikimedia Commons to host photos, the same as Wikipedia does, and uses OpenStreetMap for maps.

We are taking signups for those interested in editing other countries on the AARoads Wiki: https://wiki.aaroads.com/wiki/AARoads:International

Rather than doing a blind mass dump of everything on Wikipedia, we are looking to slowly import and fix as we go.

We made Gizmodo: https://gizmodo.com/competing-wikipedia-editors-only-about-roads-aaroads-1851298769

Quote from: rschen7754 on March 01, 2024, 10:08:39 PM
We made Gizmodo: https://gizmodo.com/competing-wikipedia-editors-only-about-roads-aaroads-1851298769

And the Gizmodo article made Slashdot: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/03/01/2246227/rogue-editors-started-a-competing-wikipedia-thats-only-about-roads

What was the reasoning Wikipedia doesn't like primary sources? Aren't those generally the best sources of information?

Quote from: Quillz on March 02, 2024, 06:14:43 PM
What was the reasoning Wikipedia doesn't like primary sources? Aren't those generally the best sources of information?

I think they think of them as biased -- just someone talking about themselves.  And then they think if someone on the outside talks about the topic, that it makes the topic significant.

In terms of any topic that deals with policy implementation, including transportation capital projects that are progressed in accordance with such, along with the fact that I've spent most of my academic and professional careers performing policy research, I find Wikipedia's stubborn and myopic view on this matter to be totally ridiculous

Quote from: Quillz on March 02, 2024, 06:14:43 PM
What was the reasoning Wikipedia doesn't like primary sources? Aren't those generally the best sources of information?

The way I'm to understand it is over a fear that first hand sources (such as questionable government regimes) might not be reliable or misleading.  To me that just seems like needless bureaucracy for highways.  But there isn't a reason (several more accurately) why I haven't written on Wikipedia since 2005. 

It's frustrating and one of the reasons why I stopped adding content years ago. But the moment you find some XYZ site that produces the same content and looks "reliable" - it's fair game.

""I realized that there was a large portion of very vocal people on Wikipedia who just really didn't care about quality," Zeleny said."

I found the problem and it's not the road article editors. The name starts with Z.

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on March 02, 2024, 06:19:38 PM

Quote from: Quillz on March 02, 2024, 06:14:43 PM
What was the reasoning Wikipedia doesn't like primary sources? Aren't those generally the best sources of information?

The way I'm to understand it is over a fear that first hand sources (such as questionable government regimes) might not be reliable or misleading.  To me that just seems like needless bureaucracy for highways.  But there isn't a reason (several more accurately) why I haven't written on Wikipedia since 2005. 

I understand being potentially skeptical of government sources, but one should have the same skepticism towards media and press. If some State/National Agency said something that could be disproven in the field, we'd be right on it. And that's the Catch 22 of Wikipedia; we're not allowed to use that source but if we found the discrepancies, we'd be guilty of performing original research.

I just think of the old Church Hearings as an example.  According to Wikipedia as I've read their asinine policy, I am to trust newspaper articles about the hearings more than the transcript itself (or, at least, take the newspaper articles as verification of the content of the transcript).  That's totally absurd.

Quote from: bulldog1979 on March 02, 2024, 12:15:53 AM

Quote from: rschen7754 on March 01, 2024, 10:08:39 PM
We made Gizmodo: https://gizmodo.com/competing-wikipedia-editors-only-about-roads-aaroads-1851298769

And the Gizmodo article made Slashdot: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/03/01/2246227/rogue-editors-started-a-competing-wikipedia-thats-only-about-roads

And Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39572441

I don't think I'm clear on something, does the prohibition on first party sources carry over to the AAroads Wiki?

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on March 02, 2024, 08:47:52 PM
I don't think I'm clear on something, does the prohibition on first party sources carry over to the AAroads Wiki?

Absolutely not. It is one of the main reasons why we forked.

Quote from: LilianaUwU on March 02, 2024, 08:48:53 PM

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on March 02, 2024, 08:47:52 PM
I don't think I'm clear on something, does the prohibition on first party sources carry over to the AAroads Wiki?

Absolutely not. It is one of the main reasons why we forked.

I see, thanks for clarifying.

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on March 02, 2024, 08:47:52 PM
I don't think I'm clear on something, does the prohibition on first party sources carry over to the AAroads Wiki?

Stuff like laws, DOT stuff, definitely not.

There is a hierarchy of sourcing: https://wiki.aaroads.com/wiki/AARoads:Content_policy#Sourcing

Maybe the Wikipedia policy was meant to scare people into forking in some.sort of hare-brained scheme to save money.

Quote from: Rothman on March 03, 2024, 08:18:25 PM
Maybe the Wikipedia policy was meant to scare people into forking in some.sort of hare-brained scheme to save money.

Not really. Every revision of every deleted article still exists in the database along with every revision of ever extant article. Deleting highway articles does not save server resources. Deleted articles may not have to be actively indexed for search proposes, but they still exist. So far though, the powers that be haven't really gone on a deletion spree with the articles.

We are currently importing the European E roads. Spain will follow shortly after that.

For those interested in having countries imported, you can post a request at https://wiki.aaroads.com/wiki/AARoads:International.