Why Wikipedia’s Highway Editors Took the Exit Ramp

hedge@beehaw.org to Technology@beehaw.org – 96 points – Why Wikipedia’s Highway Editors Took the Exit Ramp
slate.com

Not sure technology is the best place to put this...any suggestions for a cross post?

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Ben and the team of 40 Wikipedia editors split from the site to create the separate AARoads Wiki

So they've created a secondary source that now can be referenced in Wikipedia. Good for them.

In the near term, the secession harms not just Wikipedia itself, which needs robust road information...

Does it? It's an encyclopedia, not a map.

...but also generative A.I. tools that rely on Wikipedia as training data.

Ah right, because people want a single stop source for AI training without bothering about training dataset copyrights... is that it?

Does it? It’s an encyclopedia, not a map.

Maps don't give the history of roads (planning, construction, naming) or secondary information like communities served, relative lengths or controversies. There's plenty encyclopedic information that maps don't provide.

Fair point. Most of it is still going to hit a wall on the notability side though, particularly in an encyclopedia with a global scope, where they get compared to the likes of Via Appia, the Avenue of Sphinxes, and others.

Otherwise, there is still a whole Portal:Roads that isn't likely to go away.

There are hundreds of articles on census-designated places and unincorporated communities (like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialville,_Ohio) that have even less information than most articles on roads. The standards here are similar and would meet the same notability guidelines.

Well, seems like you might've found some candidates for deletion? 😉

Although...

Socialville was originally called Mormontown

That might have some historical relevance.

I think robust road information would be good for Wikipedia. I used Wikipedia as a guide on drawing Heraldry, which it has great resources for and even example images to trace off of.

"It's an encyclopaedia, not an art tutorial!"

There is still Portal:Roads, it looks reasonably robust to me.

"It's an encyclopaedia, not an art tutorial!"

Actually... an encyclopedia is an "everything" kind of intro tutorial. It isn't supposed too get to much in depth though, that's what sources are for.

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