New book covering the first century of the US route system

[Scott5114]

I can't fathom the AASHTO database will last forever.

Boy, you are gonna love the fact that the wiki folks made their own copy of the whole damn thing.

https://wiki.aaroads.com/wiki/AARoads:AASHTO_minutes

Has there been any thought to creating a navigation system for the wiki so that stuff like this can be easily found?  Right now you have to know it exists and search for it.

I'm not really sure what sort of navigation system you have in mind, since the way most wikis are navigated is by following links from article to article. This list isn't an article and is technically intended to be used by the editors, thus it's "off the grid" in project space. The intended "navigation system" is supposed to be "You look up US Route 91 and everything from the AASHTO file about US 91 is in the article and cited to the relevant AASHTO minutes".

It's just that not everything from the AASHTO file has been written about yet. The wiki always needs more editors.

[NE2]

ith my own writing associated with AASHTO database stuff is that the applications don't account for temporary field signage staying in place.  A good example of this was when US 66 was truncated to Needles in 19

Has anybody downloaded the entire archive?

I have except for a few years where the maximum number of results are reached and I don't know if anything's inaccessible.

[vdeane]

I can't fathom the AASHTO database will last forever.

Boy, you are gonna love the fact that the wiki folks made their own copy of the whole damn thing.

https://wiki.aaroads.com/wiki/AARoads:AASHTO_minutes

Has there been any thought to creating a navigation system for the wiki so that stuff like this can be easily found?  Right now you have to know it exists and search for it.

I'm not really sure what sort of navigation system you have in mind, since the way most wikis are navigated is by following links from article to article. This list isn't an article and is technically intended to be used by the editors, thus it's "off the grid" in project space. The intended "navigation system" is supposed to be "You look up US Route 91 and everything from the AASHTO file about US 91 is in the article and cited to the relevant AASHTO minutes".

It's just that not everything from the AASHTO file has been written about yet. The wiki always needs more editors.

Well, it's certainly useful.  I've long toyed with the idea of a refresh of the interstate system, going back to the 1969 system and selectively adding corridors back as full chargeable interstates, but such is completely infeasible without a resource like that since the additions to the interstate system aren't grouped in one place like that anywhere else.  Maybe I'll actually get around to that now.

As for navigation, my gold standard is the Avatar Wiki, but the Tardis Wiki is good too.  Memory Alpha used to be much better until they got rid of the drop-down menus recently, but still might have features to draw inspiration.  Index/table of contents pages/portals would be nice; right now you're either relying on search or playing Russian roulette with whatever assortment populates the home page when you go there.  The main Wikipedia (and many other wikis) also has templates that can go on the bottom of a page to make navigation to articles within a category easy (such as one for all the interstates).

[Scott5114]

I can't fathom the AASHTO database will last forever.

Boy, you are gonna love the fact that the wiki folks made their own copy of the whole damn thing.

https://wiki.aaroads.com/wiki/AARoads:AASHTO_minutes

Has there been any thought to creating a navigation system for the wiki so that stuff like this can be easily found?  Right now you have to know it exists and search for it.

I'm not really sure what sort of navigation system you have in mind, since the way most wikis are navigated is by following links from article to article. This list isn't an article and is technically intended to be used by the editors, thus it's "off the grid" in project space. The intended "navigation system" is supposed to be "You look up US Route 91 and everything from the AASHTO file about US 91 is in the article and cited to the relevant AASHTO minutes".

It's just that not everything from the AASHTO file has been written about yet. The wiki always needs more editors.

Well, it's certainly useful.  I've long toyed with the idea of a refresh of the interstate system, going back to the 1969 system and selectively adding corridors back as full chargeable interstates, but such is completely infeasible without a resource like that since the additions to the interstate system aren't grouped in one place like that anywhere else.  Maybe I'll actually get around to that now.

As for navigation, my gold standard is the Avatar Wiki, but the Tardis Wiki is good too.  Memory Alpha used to be much better until they got rid of the drop-down menus recently, but still might have features to draw inspiration.  Index/table of contents pages/portals would be nice; right now you're either relying on search or playing Russian roulette with whatever assortment populates the home page when you go there.  The main Wikipedia (and many other wikis) also has templates that can go on the bottom of a page to make navigation to articles within a category easy (such as one for all the interstates).

Portals might be helpful. The problem is that we had portals on Wikipedia and nobody ever seemed to use them much, so people became disinterested in maintaining them. Obviously, the situation is different now that we're on a separate site, but it's hard getting people excited about something that previously nobody cared about much.

If you have the time, it would be helpful to get your opinion about this in front of the wiki editors and work with them to come up with a useful navigational system. The best place to do this is by creating a wiki account and posting to The Interchange, but there is also a wiki Discord where this kind of strategizing and stuff is commonplace.