Which state do roadgeeks know the least about?

[rschen7754]

There's actually a somewhat mathematical answer to this, believe it or not. Wikipedia editors assess articles by their completeness. The Wikipedia road editors are rather data-driven, and so I created a statistic (called Ω) that indicates, in numerical form, a region's average article quality. 0 is all articles being perfect and complete. 6 is having no information other than a few lines about its terminus and length.

So of course there's a map.


The states we know the least about on Wikipedia are New Mexico, North Dakota, West Virginia, New Hampshire, and Tennessee.

Just for the record, a ton of the WA articles have been edited extensively, and likely created, by our own Bruce (aka SounderBruce); credit where credit's due, as he's spent loads of time on research and writing up many WA-related articles. Many have been featured. If I had to guess why WA is as green as it is, I would guess that it's because of him.

Couple other things:

(1) what's the color for American Samoa and the Mariana Islands? Looks purple.

(2) why are MI and DE so dark? Lots of roadgeeks from those areas? Or another roadgeek who is also heavy on the wiki edits?

For AS/MP there is just a list article.

The map (which I myself have updated many times) is a bit subjective though - people know a lot of about California, but the articles are often a mess since the history of each route (especially in the urban areas) is so complicated.

[JayhawkCO]

I'd also argue Mississippi as no one has bothered to tackle the state routes on Travel Mapping.

Chris

[Max Rockatansky]

There's actually a somewhat mathematical answer to this, believe it or not. Wikipedia editors assess articles by their completeness. The Wikipedia road editors are rather data-driven, and so I created a statistic (called Ω) that indicates, in numerical form, a region's average article quality. 0 is all articles being perfect and complete. 6 is having no information other than a few lines about its terminus and length.

So of course there's a map.


The states we know the least about on Wikipedia are New Mexico, North Dakota, West Virginia, New Hampshire, and Tennessee.

Just for the record, a ton of the WA articles have been edited extensively, and likely created, by our own Bruce (aka SounderBruce); credit where credit's due, as he's spent loads of time on research and writing up many WA-related articles. Many have been featured. If I had to guess why WA is as green as it is, I would guess that it's because of him.

Couple other things:

(1) what's the color for American Samoa and the Mariana Islands? Looks purple.

(2) why are MI and DE so dark? Lots of roadgeeks from those areas? Or another roadgeek who is also heavy on the wiki edits?

For AS/MP there is just a list article.

The map (which I myself have updated many times) is a bit subjective though - people know a lot of about California, but the articles are often a mess since the history of each route (especially in the urban areas) is so complicated.

In regards to California the best Highway stuff is found off Facebook.  CAhighways might be the most descriptive historic highway site for any U.S. State.  California Roads have a huge following on social media platforms and even we feature a ton of the road network.  Oddly nobody seems to be all that interested in updating the Wikipedia pages (myself included) for some reason when it comes to California. 

[Scott5114]

How much is there to discuss about NM really? I've been there; the roads system is unspectacular. Us traffic signal fans could have some good discussion about their exclusive use of vertical traffic signals, the sign enthusiasts could lament NMDOT's inability to use the proper Zia sun symbol. They don't have many construction projects on the docket. So there ain't a ton to do (except bemoan their always-crappy signage, of course).

There is always something to discuss about even the most boring-looking roads. There's always historic research, if nothing else (date road was designated, realignments, renumberings, decommissionings, replacement of bridges, etc.). New Mexico was the state to most recently conduct a complete renumbering of their route system, which took place in the 1980s.

Just for the record, a ton of the WA articles have been edited extensively, and likely created, by our own Bruce (aka SounderBruce); credit where credit's due, as he's spent loads of time on research and writing up many WA-related articles. Many have been featured. If I had to guess why WA is as green as it is, I would guess that it's because of him.

I have no doubt that it's Bruce! I remember the days of him first starting to edit Wikipedia in his early teens. I believe he's branched out to do Wikipedia work on other modes of transport in Washington, too.

(1) what's the color for American Samoa and the Mariana Islands? Looks purple.

It is purple. I believe it is that color because those territories don't have any numbered routes, or at least none that meet Wikipedia inclusion standards. So it's basically an N/A.

(2) why are MI and DE so dark? Lots of roadgeeks from those areas? Or another roadgeek who is also heavy on the wiki edits?

Michigan is dark pretty much single-handedly because of Imzadi1979, who is also on this forum as bulldog1979. The man is a relentless researcher, and goes above and beyond in bringing as many articles he can up to Featured Article status. That level of quality is on par with basically writing a term paper on a single highway. Every possible aspect of the route and is history is researched. Most of the time you cannot rely on just DOT sources; we're at the level where you're pulling newspaper articles off of microfiche to nail down the exact date a segment opened. The grammar and word usage is gone over with a fine-toothed comb, and the article usually passes through three levels of peer review (first the Good Article process mentioned above, then the A-Class review, where a number of roadgeeks look over it, in preparation for the final Featured Article review).

It cannot be stressed how much of a time sink the Featured Article process is. My preference (which resulted in the middling chartreuse Oklahoma) has always been to write as much as needed to get the article to an acceptable standard without going through the more formal review processes, then move on to the next one. Breadth first, rather than depth. So in all my time on Wikipedia, I've only written 3 featured articles (Kansas Turnpike, Chickasaw Turnpike, and Creek Turnpike). Imzadi1979, meanwhile, has gone through the Featured Article process 32 times, and gone through the Good Article process an additional 225 times.

This obviously took a lot of work, dedication, and time. MDOT has also been very willing to help him out; I remember hearing at one point he had successfully requested so many documents from them that they had to burn multiple DVDs to get them all to him through the mail.

Delaware is at the level that it is because it has only 64 articles covering the entire state highway system. Only one of those is Featured (all of Imzadi1979's 32 Featured articles are in Michigan), while the other 63 are Good Articles.

[hbelkins]

Not that I'm Wiki's biggest fan or anything, but given the sheer number of posted and inventoried Kentucky state routes which are all in one system, and the way changes are made as new numbers are added and dropped, a comprehensive list of Kentucky state routes would be hard to create and keep current. Heck, there are even a pair of duplicated four-digit route numbers in separate parts of the state (KY 3215 in Owen and Lawrence counties, I want to think). If KYTC can't even keep track of route numbers to avoid duplicates like this, how could a user-driven third-party entity do it?