 | This is an essay which contains the advice or opinions of one or more members of the U.S. Roads WikiProject. While it is not a part of the standards the project promotes, it provides some recommendations and ideas for members to consider. |
The purpose of this page is to answer frequently asked questions about USRD and many of the roads projects in the upcoming RFCs and other discussions that are not necessarily relevant to the topic at hand.
Disclosure: while I have been part of the U.S. Roads WikiProject for over 15 years, and I believe that what I post here is fairly in line with the opinions of most established road editors, I do not presume that I necessarily speak for them in every matter. Where I am aware of differences in opinion, I will attempt to make that clear.
- Why are there so many crap road articles?
With 30,000 articles across all the roads projects, it is impossible for the relatively small team of roads editors to keep up and expand every article or even patrol every edit or new article.
There is also a tendency for road editors to focus on the areas they are familiar with and passionate about. We cannot control what an editor works on; this is a hobby, after all.
Finally, it is difficult to find sources for even an unfamiliar U.S. state, let alone another country (usually in another language, sometimes in a language that uses an entirely different keyboard). Some of the most recent debates involve an Indian state that speaks Kannada, which is not a major world language and where it is not possible for an English-only editor to transcribe entire sources into Google Translate since it uses a different alphabet. We have to face the reality of paywalls and the fact that many newspaper archives, especially in third-world countries, are not available online at all.
- Why are there so many crap road articles that are at good article status?
There is a tendency for some reviewers to pick articles on short roads because they are an easy review, especially during times of nomination backlog drives. We do not control that process or its reviewers and have no way of vetoing or removing an article from GA status by fiat. The intensity of GA reviews can be highly variable, unfortunately.
There is also a tendency for some editors to pick articles on short roads to nominate at GA, and while we do encourage more difficult work after a while, we cannot force editors to choose more consequential articles. This is a volunteer effort, after all.
Finally, there have been a few scenarios where the only road articles remaining in a state that were not GA were on short roads.
- Why are there some articles on roads that do not meet WP:GEOROAD or WP:GNG?
In some instances, editors not affiliated with the roads project have voted to keep these articles, even if road editors have voted to delete or redirect them. We cannot control when that happens.
- Why is the roads project so hostile to outsiders?
First of all, there are times when the roads project has been unnecessarily hostile to outsiders, and I apologize for that, though I recognize that no editor is perfect. There were also some mistakes made in the mid-2000s, partially fueled by the relative youth of many of our primary editors (including myself).
That being said, the roads project has had a history of interference from those outside - from hundreds of AFDs about notable topics (WP:USRD/P, Wikipedia:WikiProject Highways/Participants), to the to the current debates. It is natural for road project editors to view critical posts from outsiders with suspicion, whether they are right or wrong.
Speaking for myself, but I believe most of the other primary road editors would agree: we are willing to answer good-faith questions posed with civility and an open mind. I am not willing to answer questions that are accusatory, rude, or condescending.
- Why are roads project editors single-purpose accounts?
This term has a negative connotation and such an accusation can lead to someone losing their adminship or other userrights.
I will also challenge this assertion: many road editors have GAs and FAs in other subject areas. As for myself, I have also served as a sockpuppet investigations clerk, ArbCom clerk, Meta administrator, m:Steward, global sysop, English Wikivoyage administrator, OTRS agent, Wikidata administrator and oversighter. Very rarely did these roles have anything to do with roads. (It was also a lot of time and stress, which is why I have stepped back from all of them).
But indeed, some editors do only edit road articles. I will posit that there is enough workload that editing road articles can take up the entirety of one's Wikimedia career, and there still is enough work for editors and ages to come. Inside the roads projects, I believe we have created a collegial editing environment that has managed to retain many long-term editors over the years.
- Why do road project editors focus only on creating permastubs rather than good quality content? Why do road project editors always vote Keep on road-related AFDs?
I would like to challenge this as well. We regularly send away articles on non-notable routes. We encourage similar mergers with the Rockland County Scenario. Our notability standards are here.
Our 2013 goals included ensuring that 25 of the 50 states had no articles at Stub-Class. Over time, the statistics in the US show a trend of fewer stubs and more high-quality content. And after all, it was our WikiProject that first popularized the use of WikiWork.
- Why don't road project editors believe in sources? Why do they use original research?
Dozens of editors have spent collective centuries working on these articles, and have worked hard to bring them up to Wikipedia standards as they understood them, and also as GA and FA reviewers and delegates have also understood them (yes, even in 2022). Many articles have appeared on the Main Page and gathered tens of thousands of views.
We do not believe that reading a map is necessarily original research - the policy uses vague phrases like "interpret" and "analysis". There are some conclusions that read more into the map than is there. But for most uses of reading basic symbols and interpreting them - there is nothing wrong with that and it is an activity I have been doing since I was five years old.
- Why do road editors review each other's featured article candidacies?
I don't like this either, but this is a necessary evil as too many recent road FACs have become archived for inactivity. In earlier years, FAC delegates were more gracious and the reviewers were also more plentiful. In recent years, this has become a necessity. The FA process delegates are good at balancing out whether a FAC has had independent review.
- Why don't road project editors remove all uncited text, per WP:BURDEN?
I do not believe that this is not an effective or responsible way to go around things. There have been cases when I have used BURDEN to remove a fact that I doubt can be sourced or that is an obvious opinion. However, I prefer to tag a statement that could plausibly be verified rather than expect someone to come along later and find it in the history (which they probably won't) and then have to rewrite it from scratch.
Following this policy to the letter means that we should write a bot and code it to delete every unsourced statement on this site. That seems irresponsible to me. And yet, the section starting with "Whether and how quickly material should be..." is utterly unenforceable and gameable with WP:POINT-style actions.
I will also point out that many BURDEN deletions have been made on the premise that maps are not reliable sources, when there is no consensus to that effect - bringing into question the use of BURDEN to justify the revert as one that basically seals the revert war shut.
- Why don't road project editors just give into what "outsiders" are asking?
Many of these changes would be significant shifts to the model of article writing, and some would be unsustainable and push editors off the site if put into practice.
- Given all the above questions that people have asked you, why do you keep editing Wikipedia?
I will speak for myself here. I served as a steward several years ago and nearly left Wikimedia after all the drama related to events that happened during my term (see m:User:Rschen7754/SE2015 for more). Years later, the WMF block of Fram raised serious concerns about how the Wikimedia Foundation spends its money and treats its editors. Yet, I still believe that I can have an impact here, in a world of misinformation.
Maybe at some point, maybe during or after this saga, or maybe years down the road, all the opposition will become an insurmountable issue. Or it may be that given my real-life commitments I may have to step away. But for now, that is where I land.
Postscript
editAdded September 13, 2023 since this page is being linked from the Signpost:
- Your side "won" question 1 at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Using maps as sources. Why did you make the decision to fork even after that?
We saw question 1, "can maps be valid sources?" as a no-brainer, especially when tables, charts, and graphs were thrown in. The fact that a significant number of editors, especially well-respected ones, were opposing such a softball question was an ominous sign for the future and signified that a large portion of the opposition was more interested in a certain conclusion being reached (that would de facto result in the end of covering roads in any sort of intellectually honest manner on Wikipedia) than in looking at the question in a fair and unbiased manner. This was not to mention the numerous vitriolic personal attacks and casting of aspersions that were made there.
The failure of the other proposals had already been used to attack long-standing methods of sourcing in road articles, for example at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Interstate 40 in Tennessee/archive2.
It was clear that this would just be the first of a long series of debates, and given the spread to other areas such as area codes, that what would be needed would essentially be a campaign to Save Wikipedia. Speaking for myself - maybe ten years ago I could have done such a thing, but not now, and even if successful, it would have come at a great personal cost (time, energy, mental health). Wikipedia is (or was) a great website, but it's just a website, we're all volunteers, and this is supposed to be a hobby. So we chose to fork at this point because we care about our editor base and did not want to lose them in a never-ending sea of discussion after discussion aimed at eliminating us from the project.