Minor things that bother you

[vdeane]

Facebook is being an ass again and making it impossible to use the "most recent" feed with FBPurity and tracking protection enabled.  It results in lots of missing posts and the "you're all caught up" error after not very long.  I have to disable everything and go with the stock Facebook code (including sponsored posts, a bunch of other posts I don't want, and algorithmicly filtered comments on posts).  It's honestly enough to make me want to delete my account because the whole site has gotten very frustrating to deal with, but then I remember all the roadgeek stuff I'd miss out on because of people who aren't here and the community not being on places like Reddit.  Why is the roadgeek community stuck on Facebook?

Reddit is full of crazy people like K12, so no thanks.  The forum isn't perfect as recent spamming issues this year highlight.  Did we forget the Dolphin Wars already? 

Facebook is pretty a pretty approachable interface.  That's why you have so many normals and boomer types in larger road groups.  Facebook also has groups for overlanding, sports touring, deep dive history and other like road topics that barely get touched here.

It doesn't hurt that Meta/Facebook is willing to throw a couple engagement bucks the way of hobby pages.  It isn't a lot but it isn't something I'll turn down either.  If I can figure out how engagement works on stuff like TikTok you can bet we will establish a presence. 

Try searching for specific phrases on Facebook.  Use the filter "posts I've seen" if you are trying to reference something super specific.  I don't tend to have the same issues you frequently speak of.

I think we have different ways of browsing things.  I'm old school.  I don't want algorithmic anything, I want to simply browse a chronological feed of everything I follow, nothing more, nothing less.  Kinda like how I open every thread I'm interested in here and obsessively read every post.  Browsing Facebook like that is a PITA for just posts from friends/pages/groups, and essentially impossible once you throw in comments.  And the more groups you follow, the worse that issue gets.  I haven't been able to tolerate the site without FBP shaping my experience for years now.  It's definitely a site that has thoroughly enshitified, which is why most members of my generation have jumped ship.  I'd follow, if it were for the roadgeek stuff keeping me there.

Honestly, I've never liked Facebook.  I only even joined once it became clear that I was missing out on a lot that was going on with people I knew in college because I didn't have it and that Google+ would fail (ironically, I don't think much better of Google these days, either).  And honestly, the internet becoming flooded with "normals" might be one of the things that makes me feel like it used to be better.  It's Eternal September everywhere now.  To say nothing of the influence it's had on politics.  I can think of family members who used to be similar politically who are now polar opposites and the main difference is the amount of time they spend on social media and watching certain news channels.

I've never really seen the issues people here have in Reddit myself.  A lot of that is probably because I've only ever lurked and don't have an account, but I wonder how much of it is a combination of my browsing habits (even if I got an account, I'd probably still keep my browsing to the few bookmarked subreddits I regularly/periodically check rather than dive into the general feed or "main" subreddits) and the fact that subreddits that aren't overrun by certain types of users tend to be much, much more heavily moderated than this site is (the forum users you mention probably would not have lasted very long on a Reddit roadgeek space I envision).

As for TikTok... don't bother.  I've heard that it's gotten much worse ever since Oracle took over and it's now just as politically charged as X/Twitter.  Video isn't my preferred format anyways.

Honestly, the main stuff that would be hard to replace for me is the Ontario and Québec roads groups.  Canada has very little forum traffic here, which is odd because we used to have more Canadian roageeks around (and meets in Canada used to happen with regularity; now they're rare and always hosted by Americans for Americans).

Also, Facebook will begin mandatory age verification across most of the country soon. When that happens, I expect users will be required to upload ID or verify with a credit card if they don't want to be stuck in the very limited teen version. As I refuse to submit to that for any website, I'll be forced out at that point regardless.

[Molandfreak]

"Real passion, AI visualized."

[Max Rockatansky]

Meh, we have AI classified as "spam" in all the Facebook groups I manage.  Very easy to filter out and delete offending posters.

The other two replies I'll wait to hit on in a bit.  I'm actually recording a podcast as I'm writing here.

[Scott5114]

"Real passion, AI visualized."

So passionate that they typed a couple of sentences into a computer about it...

[Max Rockatansky]

Regarding Reddit, most interactions I've had the forum have been with people who have extreme views on infrastructure.  New Urbanism and the "fuck cars" crowds seem to be very prevalent there.  K12 might be a car fan himself but he was every bit as nutty as those crowds.  I guess that I don't see what I'm supposedly missing?

Out west and particularly in California Facebook tends to be a very good source of road information.  I kind of chalk that up to road enthusiasm being more or less part of the mainstream culture of this coast.  Groups like Old Highway 101, California's Historic Highways and Freeways Los Angeles are as good as you'll find for serious road fan Facebook groups.  I don't really find keeping up with those groups to be very difficult (I actually admin Old Highway 101). 

Conversely, I feel like this forum is pretty east coast centric.  To that end most of the west coast folks who are very active are on Facebook or left the forum long ago.  Sparker having passed away certainly put a huge dent in the activity on Pacific Southwest.  I didn't even realize Jake had a huge presence here until well after I joined the forum.

I don't have a TikTok account, but I see it as an opportunity to grow our page.  I've always considered doing a series of YouTube videos similar to Sidetrack Adventures.  Both platforms have a far younger demographic than Facebook currently has.  In fact, the under 25 demographic comprises the smallest portion of our Facebook followers by a considerable margin.     

Some other platforms we have shared over the years include Instagram and Twitter.  The Twitter feed was an absolute dud and ended up being deleted.  Our Instagram page has 702 followers and for some reason my personal account also has a decent following.  We do have a regular podcast series co-produced with CAhighways that is just entering the fifth season.  In fact just got done recording the first episode of season five. 

I guess that learning a new platform never really per se bothered me much.  Facebook and Meta didn't have much of a learning curve.  Either way, it certainly seems that the hobby has branched out to multiple platforms over the years.  I don't foresee the "good old days" of the forum's prime coming back with so much competition.

[hotdogPi]

Allowing people to register for the forum again would certainly help, even if it required manual verification by an admin like what I did in 2013.

[Rothman]

I don't see TikTok helping much at all, but I don't see much that interests me on YouTube, either, roadgeekwise.  Every blue moon a well-done video is made, but most of the time it's just "Here's me driving for some length of time" or "Here's me rambling about something for far too long and with far too much opinion rather than fact."

I know others are into watching that kind of stuff, but it's hard for me to believe it's a large audience, even by our community's standards.

[Max Rockatansky]

I don't see TikTok helping much at all, but I don't see much that interests me on YouTube, either, roadgeekwise.  Every blue moon a well-done video is made, but most of the time it's just "Here's me driving for some length of time" or "Here's me rambling about something for far too long and with far too much opinion rather than fact."

I know others are into watching that kind of stuff, but it's hard for me to believe it's a large audience, even by our community's standards.

Here is the recent video Sidetrack Adventures did for Old CA 190 along Horseshoe Meadows Road.  At present moment it has almost 600,000 views:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yqIMBJEU5Ks&ra=m

Conversely when I covered the same topics on Gribblenation five years ago the article only got 6,700 views.  Our Facebook page I want say had about 30,000 views? 

I actually met this channel producer when in 2025 when I did a museum presentation at Fresno Flats.  He is out of San Diego and follows our page.  His YouTube channel hits hobby related topics largely related to old highways, specific scenic roads and infrastructure history.  Thing is, he's hitting a demographic that clearly is comprised of something way more mainstream. 

TikTok is where that whole short video about the Interstate numbering system grid went viral a couple years ago.  I want to say that it had a couple million views shortly after being released. 

I'm not saying any of the above is for everyone but I see the potential.  I'm certainly not adverse to public speaking but I really don't know fuck all about video editing.  I was thinking that some of the museum presentations or podcast scripts might translate well into some sort of YouTube voiceover. 

[Max Rockatansky]

Allowing people to register for the forum again would certainly help, even if it required manual verification by an admin like what I did in 2013.

Yes it would help, but the there is a tidal wave of other outlets to find road hobby stuff.  Often I feel as though the forum mostly exists to cater to folks who like how things were in 2010.  I find some amusing irony in that given there are slightly older hobby members who similarly pine for the days of MTR. 

[kphoger]

I'd much rather have a meeting than have my e-mail communication be ghosted by those same people...

See, my thinking is...if someone never answers my email, I have written proof that I tried to address something and other people never did their part. So I'm in the clear, and I can show the proof to someone else.

Whereas if I go to a meeting in person and bring it up, everyone can just pretend it never happened and blame me...

Unfortunately, a lot of my unanswered e-mails are of the nature, "How do you want me to do this?" or "Should I do A or B?"

Reddit is full of crazy people like K12, so no thanks.

I've never looked at roadgeek stuff on Reddit, but all the other types of threads I've looked at seem to have no more crazy people than any other social media platform—and a lot of them have far fewer crazies.

[kphoger]

Often I feel as though the forum mostly exists to cater to folks who like how things were in 2010.

  Put my name down for that.

I'm old school.  I don't want algorithmic anything, I want to simply browse a chronological feed of everything I follow, nothing more, nothing less.  Kinda like how I open every thread I'm interested in here and obsessively read every post.  Browsing Facebook like that is a PITA for just posts from friends/pages/groups, and essentially impossible once you throw in comments.  And the more groups you follow, the worse that issue gets.

  Put vdeane's name down for that too.

[Rothman]

I don't see TikTok helping much at all, but I don't see much that interests me on YouTube, either, roadgeekwise.  Every blue moon a well-done video is made, but most of the time it's just "Here's me driving for some length of time" or "Here's me rambling about something for far too long and with far too much opinion rather than fact."

I know others are into watching that kind of stuff, but it's hard for me to believe it's a large audience, even by our community's standards.

Here is the recent video Sidetrack Adventures did for Old CA 190 along Horseshoe Meadows Road.  At present moment it has almost 600,000 views:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yqIMBJEU5Ks&ra=m

Conversely when I covered the same topics on Gribblenation five years ago the article only got 6,700 views.  Our Facebook page I want say had about 30,000 views? 

I actually met this channel producer when in 2025 when I did a museum presentation at Fresno Flats.  He is out of San Diego and follows our page.  His YouTube channel hits hobby related topics largely related to old highways, specific scenic roads and infrastructure history.  Thing is, he's hitting a demographic that clearly is comprised of something way more mainstream. 

TikTok is where that whole short video about the Interstate numbering system grid went viral a couple years ago.  I want to say that it had a couple million views shortly after being released. 

I'm not saying any of the above is for everyone but I see the potential.  I'm certainly not adverse to public speaking but I really don't know fuck all about video editing.  I was thinking that some of the museum presentations or podcast scripts might translate well into some sort of YouTube voiceover. 

Well, sure, the two examples you provide fit what I said.  Sidetrack Adventures certainly doesn't hit that kind of views on all their videos, despite the other videos still garnering decent view numbers.

In my experience, TikTok is very heavy on "pay to play."  For most videos, if you don't pay for promotion, TikTok algorithm kills your distribution. 

I actually find that whole dynamic -- TikTok and beyond -- quite depressing.

[Rothman]

Allowing people to register for the forum again would certainly help, even if it required manual verification by an admin like what I did in 2013.

Yes it would help, but the there is a tidal wave of other outlets to find road hobby stuff.  Often I feel as though the forum mostly exists to cater to folks who like how things were in 2010.  I find some amusing irony in that given there are slightly older hobby members who similarly pine for the days of MTR. 

Tidal wave?  FB groups, Discord (yuk from me), YouTube and...Reddit?

[Max Rockatansky]

Discord is something I don't really know what to make of.  I tried Dan's road server for a brief minute but couldn't get into it.  Prior to it being created we had a long running Facebook Messenger chat that ran for about four years.  It ended up playing out and dwindling into a complaint fest by the time I left.

[kurumi]

I'm not a Facebook enjoyer, but the experience with FB groups (using Firefox, FB Container, and uBlock Origin) is decent. No ads, no "for you" posts that are political/engagement bait, and few to no off-topic posts. There's a search function that seems to do the right thing.

And the network effect: there are uncles and grandmas that would never join a separate forum like AARoads, but will share on FB what they remember about where Route Whatever used to go when they were kids. I've probably downloaded 50+ photos of old CT scenes and signs that I haven't seen anywhere else.

Even if you hate FB, you can join a few groups, lurk every week or so, copy and DL what's interesting and get out.

[JayhawkCO]

Facebook is for posting travel pics and for marketplace. That's all.

[Max Rockatansky]

Facebook is for posting travel pics and for marketplace. That's all.

And by extension road anything has a huge demand.

[kphoger]

Speaking of nutritional labels, why does a bag of microwave popcorn include ratings/values for unpopped popcorn? Who eats unpopped popcorn?

If you theoretically wanted to eat part of a bag, you could measure out the part you wanted before popping it, allowing you to leave the uneaten portion unpopped until you wanted it. (Most bags of popcorn are small enough that I don't know why you would want to split it, but maybe it makes sense if you were making it for a kid or someone who has strict sodium limits or something like that.) It's easier to measure popcorn when it's unpopped anyway.

I, for one, never want to finish an entire bag of popcorn.  But how, exactly, do you remove half the kernels before popping the rest of them in the bag?

[vdeane]

New Urbanism and the "fuck cars" crowds seem to be very prevalent there.

I mean, anything with a large number of young people is going to have more of them than roadgeeks overall, though like everything else, it varies by subreddit.  I don't really look at Urbanist stuff on Reddit, so I'm not sure exactly how prevalent it is, although I know that r/Albany does tend to veer that way whenever I-787 comes up.

Sometimes people will even start new subreddits just because they don't like the demographic makeup of the existing one.  There's an entire Star Trek subreddit for people who want to bash NuTrek rather than give it a fair shot (or at least there was) founded by people who where getting pushback on r/StarTrek.  Sailor Moon Crystal now has its own subreddit founded by someone who was tired of it coming up and being the subject of arguments in r/SailorMoon (to the skepticism of the latter community, which took the angle of "that wasn't really necessary and we're just going to ignore it").  I think it's safe to say that one's Reddit experience is very much shaped by which subreddits they browse.

That's probably true of Facebook to some extent as well.  I've only heard of some infamous groups (such as the NUMTOT one) thanks to people discussing them here, for instance.

Often I feel as though the forum mostly exists to cater to folks who like how things were in 2010.

  Put my name down for that.

I'm old school.  I don't want algorithmic anything, I want to simply browse a chronological feed of everything I follow, nothing more, nothing less.  Kinda like how I open every thread I'm interested in here and obsessively read every post.  Browsing Facebook like that is a PITA for just posts from friends/pages/groups, and essentially impossible once you throw in comments.  And the more groups you follow, the worse that issue gets.

  Put vdeane's name down for that too.

That sounds about right.  2010 is usually the year I identify for when the internet and technology overall was at its best.  Forums were still around, Google Maps and street view existed, smartphones existed but hadn't taken over, laptops were still the dominant means of browsing the web, Google still did no evil, Windows 7 was the main OS, etc.

[Max Rockatansky]

FWIW, to clarify I'm not the implying the forum doesn't have value.  I'm still here after all these years for a reason.  When the forum functions like it ideally should it often returns the best information and context for stuff I do research on.  At the end of the day the declining number of quality users and fairly narrow "roadgeek" niche just isn't enough to cover everything I'm interested that is road related.

Regarding that NUMTOT/Urbanism stuff on Facebook most of that is in the MUTCD compliance group from what I can tell.  Much of that group isn't exactly "teenage" also but trends towards folks in their 30s-40s.  I just wanted to see funny signs when I briefly joined and got exposed to something way different than what I expected. 

[hbelkins]

Allowing people to register for the forum again would certainly help, even if it required manual verification by an admin like what I did in 2013.

Yes it would help, but the there is a tidal wave of other outlets to find road hobby stuff.  Often I feel as though the forum mostly exists to cater to folks who like how things were in 2010.  I find some amusing irony in that given there are slightly older hobby members who similarly pine for the days of MTR. 

MTR's big drawing point was its lack of moderation. It was still reasonably viable and active in 2010.

[kphoger]

Unfortunately, a lot of my unanswered e-mails are of the nature, "How do you want me to do this?" or "Should I do A or B?"

I just had one of these today.

TUE 09/08/26 — Face-to-face:  Tell me how to pay out this certain type of job.
TUE 09/08/26 — Face-to-face:  I'll talk with so-and-so tomorrow and get you an answer.
TUE 09/08/26 — E-mail:  Tell me how to pay out this certain type of job. (so he doesn't forget)
THU 09/10/26 — E-mail:  Why is this pay not approved yet?
THU 09/10/26 — E-mail:  Because you never answered my question.

[Scott5114]

Unfortunately, a lot of my unanswered e-mails are of the nature, "How do you want me to do this?" or "Should I do A or B?"

A non-answer means "Kyle is free to do whatever he wants, and nobody can complain after the fact, because they chose not to answer his email."

[formulanone]

1) While there's lots of people with an interest in roads/highways/vehicular infrastructure, there isn't really a well-known term for that kind of interest. Sure, it was coined by its creators and has mostly taken hold within the hobby, but there hasn't been a breakthrough appearance of the word into the national lexicon. It hasn't appeared in a novel, a movie, nor used by truly famous individuals at a specific time and place.

2) This is a niche hobby; not because it's particularly exclusive, it just hasn't grown in terrific amounts. Going back to MTR, that's just a little over 30 years.

3) Something like Reddit takes time to grow. Either it's something with an already established presence and appears "easy to find" in searches, there's no real roadgeek sub-reddit ("sub" for short, think of it as a sub-forum) which has gained any sort of interest. That's not to say transportation discussion does not occur, but it usually goes into specific areas ("Spotted on the road" or "Trains" or in a something specific topic in a a state/city/area subreddit because everyone likes to complain about their traffic).

4) Facebook wasn't the original social media, but it grew at the right transition from desktop PC usage to smartphone usage. People (mostly) used their real names and friendships and it sort of grew out of there. I presume those friendships came before there was an FB group and then one enabled the growth of the other through increased membership.

I don't see a reason why a real "roadgeek" subreddit couldn't exist with any traction, but it just does not. There's one with a handful of posts and that's it.

I could make a new subreddit right now called Alanland or Interstate366.

[Rothman]

Roadgeekery predates the Internet.