AARoads:The Interchange

Project scope

We probably need a policy page on what is and is not desirable on this wiki. This should include both geographic extent (only U.S. and Canada to begin with?) and what constitutes too minor to be worth having an article over (primary state highways and up, like the status quo from Wikipedia?). Scott5114 (talk) 23:04, 18 June 2023 (EDT)

International

One day I would like to incorporate all the (notable) roads, worldwide. Wegenwiki does a decent job at this, so it is possible.

On the flip side of the coin, that day does not need to be today and we should focus right now on the countries where we have an active editor base. While invites are still going out, that is currently the US and Canada. If editors show up wanting to edit other countries and display enough commitment/competence I don't think we should stop them from editing those countries. Should there be mass deletions on enwiki, we might have to revisit this to make sure the information is not lost, however.

As far as all of the border cases and less notable highways, perhaps it's best to come up with a list of categories and go from there. --Rschen7754 23:28, 18 June 2023 (EDT)

I think probably the best thing we could do for the other countries' articles is put a process in place to request an expansion of the scope to cover that country. Perhaps a prerequisite would be having the editor(s) requesting an expansion write something like five draft articles to judge availability of sources and commitment to the project, and then we would import any articles we had at that time. Scott5114 (talk) 04:17, 19 June 2023 (EDT)

Indeed, though we should allow for work already live on English Wikipedia to qualify.

At some point I would want to revisit this and start allowing for at least lists or basic system articles to be created in every country. Ideally not before 2024, though if there is a mass deletion of content on enwiki, maybe sooner. --Rschen7754 11:50, 19 June 2023 (EDT)

For the moment, let's get the US and Canada running. That fits closest to AARoad's mission statement. From there, we can assess bringing in other countries as we build infrastructure, both technological and personal. Imzadi 1979 → 13:40, 19 June 2023 (EDT)

Agree with Imzadi here on "let's not worry about this right now", but I wanted to clarify for Rschen that the reason why I suggested requiring five new articles is to evaluate whether the proposer is likely to stick around and actually maintain the project, or if they're just going to bounce once they get their favorite country's articles up. (So crediting enwp work toward that wouldn't really satisfy answer the question the process would be asking.) Scott5114 (talk) 22:48, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

I think we could look at their track record and see how active they are. Once someone has put in a lot of investment, they're probably going to want to keep those articles going. --Rschen7754 16:42, 24 June 2023 (EDT)

• I agree it would be nice to cover as much of the world as possible, but let’s focus on the US and Canada first. Dough4872 16:05, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• Eventually, yes. –Fredddie™ 21:56, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Editor base might be an issue here, but I think it would make sense to add Mexico first once the US and Canada are stable, since it's the other major country in North America and it has highway connections to the US. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 22:27, 3 September 2023 (EDT)

Highway-adjacent areas

Do we have articles for these? Do we import them from English Wikipedia?

Pre-car highways

i.e. ancient Roman roads, Japanese roads

• I'd say these are outside our implied scope, which always seemed to correspond closely to the age of the automobile. The notable ones are likely to remain covered in Wikipedia. Imzadi 1979 → 14:02, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• I think it’s okay to cover pre-car roads in articles about modern car highways, but not in dedicated articles. Dough4872 16:05, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• No. --Rschen7754 19:15, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• I am open to inclusion of 18th and 19th century turnpikes or any other highway clearly engineered for use of wagons and other pre-automobile heavy vehicles. VC 20:41, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• I'm inclined to say no now, but I'm willing to revisit once we get an editor base. –Fredddie™ 21:56, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Yes, but not our first priority. First priority are articles under threat at Wikipedia due to map sources or whatever. Pre-car highways are so far safe over there.Moabdave (talk) 14:02, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• Usually not; many of them are only tangentially related to the modern-day roads that replaced them. We could cover them in a short "background" subsection of the History section if they were particularly relevant. Scott5114 (talk) 23:51, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• What VC said, essentially; I'm for including things like turnpikes that are direct precursors of modern highways, especially ones that evolved into modern highways. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 22:15, 3 September 2023 (EDT)

Historical highways

same as above, except there is still something driveable today

• If you mean decommissioned highways, they should be in our scope. Since we're covering state highways (and major county roads), former state highways should be included. Auto trails should too round out the early years of the age of the automobile that I have in mind for a historical boundary. That isn't to say that individual road articles can't and won't cover pre-car days, just that I think we get a rough boundary on how far back we want to go. Imzadi 1979 → 14:02, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• Decommissioned highways and auto trails should be covered. Dough4872 16:05, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
  • I think I mean more like wikipedia:Mammoth Road where there is still something drivable today, but the bulk of it is historical. --Rschen7754 19:04, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
    • Agree we should cover those types of roads, which would include pre-freeway turnpikes that are today modern roads. Dough4872 19:19, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• Yes, but higher scrutiny of whether the content should be part of another article, part of a list article, or a standalone article. VC 20:45, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• I'm OK with these. –Fredddie™ 21:56, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Decommissioned highways and auto trails should be covered. Scott5114 (talk) 23:51, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

DOTs

• At some point, yes. We're going to end up linking to these agencies in the articles. Unlike cities and such, it would make sense to have our own articles at some point. I could even see splitting out article son some predecessors in a state, like maybe covering the Michigan State Highway Department separate from MDOT. Imzadi 1979 → 14:02, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• I know that DOTs are important to roads, but many of them also cover other aspects of transportation such as trains, planes, public transportation, and driver licensing. I’m not totally sure if they are fully in our scope to have articles. Dough4872 16:05, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• Yes, we should include the top-level transportation agency in every state, even if much of the agency's focus is non-road forms of transportation. VC 20:47, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• Yes, but the articles should be tailored to focus on their road activities with some mention of other aspects. SounderBruce 02:02, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Yes, but I am hesitant to do a straight import per Bruce. --Rschen7754 14:40, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Yes. –Fredddie™ 21:56, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• No, without prejudice - these articles are not under threat at wikipedia, and are not likely to be. If that changes then yes. Moabdave (talk) 14:03, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• Maybe, if a case can be made that the scope of our coverage would be substantially different enough from enwp's that it's necessary. Otherwise, all we're doing is setting up a page someone on Wikipedia can import from when they find it. Scott5114 (talk) 23:51, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• Include both for the sake of completeness and out of spite to reduce page views on enwiki. TCN7JM 14:54, 31 August 2023 (EDT)

Highway-only government bodies such as FHWA

• At some point, also yes. I assume we'll be pulling over the index of AASHTO reports, so we should probably have an article on AASHTO. Including them and FHWA fits with the tolling agencies and DOTs. Someone should probably do separate articles on FHWA's predecessors. Imzadi 1979 → 14:02, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• Government agencies devoted to highways are within our scope. Dough4872 16:05, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• Definite yes. SounderBruce 02:02, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Yes. --Rschen7754 14:40, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Yes. –Fredddie™ 21:56, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• My response to the previous section applies here too. Scott5114 (talk) 23:51, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Tolling agencies/electronic transponders

• As adjuncts to the DOTs, yes. Imzadi 1979 → 14:02, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• Toll road agencies and ETC systems are within our scope. Dough4872 16:05, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• Yes to both. VC 20:47, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• Yes, but only if said agency/transponder is used across multiple facilities. I would also support including historic agencies (such as the Washington State Toll Bridge Authority). SounderBruce 02:02, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Yes. –Fredddie™ 21:56, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Meh, no opposition but not our top priority. These articles are not under threat at Wikipedia. And given they are routinely mentioned in mainstream media, I doubt they will be. Moabdave (talk) 14:05, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Companies that run service areas

• No. Imzadi 1979 → 14:02, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• I would say these fall outside our scope. Dough4872 16:05, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• No. --Rschen7754 19:21, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• No. VC 20:49, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• No. I don't think we should be mentioning the specific restaurant brands at a service area, either. –Fredddie™ 21:56, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• No. Moabdave (talk) 14:04, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• See my response to the DOT section. Scott5114 (talk) 23:51, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Bridges/tunnels

• I'm torn on this one. The big ones will still have their articles on Wikipedia, so we don't need to decide for a while. Imzadi 1979 → 14:02, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• I think these might fall outside our scope. Dough4872 16:05, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• Except for something like wikipedia:Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel where the road is the bridge, I think this is outside our scope. --Rschen7754 19:14, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
  • Something to consider: for that topic, we'd probably write it and title it as the highway designation and only mention the tunnel in a secondary capacity. In other words, we'd have merged it the other way.
• This question is easier to answer "no" now that tunnels are part of the bridge project on Wikipedia. VC 20:54, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• As I've said on Discord, only where it feels like we need them. Golden Gate, Tappan Zee, I-35W collapse. Things of that nature. –Fredddie™ 21:56, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
  • I'm sure the editing community we'd attract would probably create some of these anyway. I say we revisit the topic later when there's a bit more stability in the rest of the article corpus. Imzadi 1979 → 23:25, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Yes, but not actively. As long as the Wikipedia article is useful for our needs let's just link to that one, and clone or create articles here as needed when the Wiki-a-holes strike. Moabdave (talk) 14:08, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• As needed, as per Moabdave. Scott5114 (talk) 23:51, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• Generally agree with Moabdave, most bridge articles seem to be fine on Wikipedia at the moment, but if notability requirements get pushed up higher on enWiki, there might be a need to bring some articles over to AARoads.JJBers (talk) 09:46, 19 September 2023 (EDT)

Bike routes

(or other non-car highways - M-185 excluded)

• Not really. Even though AASHTO handles the USBRs, I think that's a bit out of our scope. Imzadi 1979 → 14:02, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• While bike routes may be numbered, they do not deal with car transportation and probably are outside our scope. Dough4872 16:05, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• No. --Rschen7754 19:15, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• No, but parallel or overlapping USBRs (and their state equivalents) really ought to be mentioned somewhere in the route descriptions. This is something that was sorely lacking before. SounderBruce 02:02, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• No. –Fredddie™ 21:56, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• No without prejudice. Currently IMHO these are littel more than a novelty. Even the bike clubs lobbying for their creation don't seem to use them. If it becomes a serious thing, yes.Moabdave (talk) 14:09, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• No coverage independent of mentions in regular road articles. VC 19:14, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• 🎵 Does anybody really know what bike route this is? Does anybody really care? 🎵 Scott5114 (talk) 23:51, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

City streets

• Not really. There will be some crossover/overlap, but I'd like to stick to roadways with state/provincial highway designations or major county road designations. Imzadi 1979 → 14:02, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• City streets have a different character and fall outside our scope which focuses mostly on numbered highways. Dough4872 16:05, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• Outside our scope, but I could see making exceptions for something like wikipedia:Santa Monica Boulevard. --Rschen7754 19:14, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• Most city streets are outside of our scope, but I support including principal arterials in this wiki, at minimum as part of a list article. Which level of government maintains the road and whether the road is numbered should not override the importance of a street for serving to move traffic. VC 20:57, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• I'll go against the grain here and support having articles on major streets in most cities and even some small towns or rural regions, provided they are identified as important by a higher body/level of government. SounderBruce 02:02, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• I'm OK with them to a degree. I think we could have a really good article on Broadway in NYC. But I would enforce a limit of how many streets we should have. 1 article per 50,000 residents is a number that has come up before. –Fredddie™ 21:56, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Same reasoning as bridges and tunnels. If the wikipedia article is usable for us, use it. If it's not, then we can create our own.Moabdave (talk) 14:10, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• No. A comprehensive article on, say, Broadway in New York City is going to cover a lot of ground that, frankly, none of us are interested in or good at writing or researching. Better to leave that to the urbanists. Scott5114 (talk) 23:51, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• Massively in favor; the only difference between roads and streets is whether a government's slapped a route number on it. The argument of streets not being important enough is inconsistent- if that were true, we'd have to wipe New Jersey Route 59 from this wiki. Streets in a city are equally as important as roads out in the country. BMACS1002 18:00, 13 August 2023 (EDT)
• I want to say yes but then we're gonna have to have a real discussion on what constitutes a notable city street. TCN7JM 06:46, 31 August 2023 (EDT)

Road signs in X

• I assume there will be some element of the AARoads community that will want to cover this topic area in depth. Once we're up and running, those editors should do things on a general level.

  Honestly, someone should put together a good history of the MUTCD, and the previous editions should all be transcribed to Wikisource, fork or not. (Note for later, get s: interwiki prefix working for Wikisource along with the w: prefix for Wikipedia.) Imzadi 1979 → 14:02, 19 June 2023 (EDT)

• I think road signs fall within our scope and should be covered. Dough4872 16:05, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• I'm OK with these. –Fredddie™ 21:56, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Reluctant yes. On wikipedia these articles tend to be crapmagnets. But I also get that now that we're doing this on a roadgeek fansite it will be inevitable that we have them, but hopefully we can have guidelines to keep the crap off of them more so than the wikipedia cousin articles. Moabdave (talk) 14:12, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• Strong yes. If we could nail down, say, the exact dates that state highway shields changed from one style to the other, that would be a big contribution to the roadgeek community and would be a real coup for us. Scott5114 (talk) 23:51, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Speed limits in X

• Anything written here should be overview articles. I fear some overly detailed articles listing every speed limit along every highway. Imzadi 1979 → 14:02, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• Speed limits should be covered, but don’t need to be overly detailed and should be kept to a general overview. Dough4872 16:05, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• I'm OK with these. –Fredddie™ 21:56, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Reluctant yes. Same as my vote for road signs. It's a crapmagnet, but it's OUR crapmagnet. ;) Moabdave (talk) 14:13, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• Yes, but nothing deeper than one article per country. VC 19:16, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• This should be covered as part of a system-level article and only mention the state statutory speed limits. We don't need an list of every 80 mph zone in the country. Scott5114 (talk) 23:51, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Automobile associations

• I could see some coverage from the era of auto trails, like how AAA signed highways. In that case, it's like covering AASHO/AASHTO. Imzadi 1979 → 14:02, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• I think these can probably be covered on here. Dough4872 16:05, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• No, however wikipedia:Automobile Club of Southern California might be an exception since they signed highways. --Rschen7754 19:16, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
  • wikipedia:California State Automobile Association too. Scott5114 (talk) 23:51, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
  • To add to this, if we covered all the automobile associations, we would probably have to include the AAA competitors. If we ever add the UK, there are multiple. It's a bit of a can of worms. ACSC/CSAA are different since they actually went and signed roads. --Rschen7754 01:43, 25 June 2023 (EDT)
• I think there's going to be some overlap with auto trails. Around here, the associations were only worried about one road, but YMMV. –Fredddie™ 21:56, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Yes, but only as needed for the ones not welcome on Wikipedia. Moabdave (talk) 14:15, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• ACSC and CSAA would be fine; everyone else can pound sand. Scott5114 (talk) 23:51, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Driving, drivers licenses

• No. This is starting to get off topic, just like if we decided to cover vehicle models. Imzadi 1979 → 14:02, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• This falls outside our scope, which is focused on highways rather than all aspects of car transportation. Dough4872 16:05, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• No. --Rschen7754 20:41, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• No. –Fredddie™ 21:57, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• No - just use the wikipedia articles, they are likely to be under threat. Moabdave (talk) 14:14, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• No in general, although there might be some limited latitude for a summary of state driving laws for each state (e.g. whether or not it is illegal to use a cell phone while driving or pull into the intersection on a flashing yellow arrow). This sort of thing would be perfect for the annex if we have one. Scott5114 (talk) 23:51, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Road safety in X

• No. --Rschen7754 20:40, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• I think road safety is outside our scope. Dough4872 20:45, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• I don't understand the question and I won't respond to it. –Fredddie™ 21:56, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• No - Just link to Wikipedia's article on the subject. Moabdave (talk) 14:38, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• No, although I would be okay if we included articles on specific safety features or items (see below). Scott5114 (talk) 23:51, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Specific road hardware and features

Things like "guardrail", "traffic signal", "flashing yellow arrow", "cable barrier", "rumble strip", interchange types, etc. (Basically anything you might see in a Road Guy Rob video.)

• I think these would be feasible if we took a more specific approach than Wikipedia and noted particularly unusual or notable instances of interchange types; which states do and don't have FYAs, etc. Scott5114 (talk) 23:51, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• I think these fall in our scope. Dough4872 21:36, 22 June 2023 (EDT)
• I think we can go beyond Wikipedia here. Many of us have civil engineering training, so there could be some road-specific features we could go further with. Tri-chord vs. Cantilever signage for example, or runaway truck lanes. - Floydian (talk) 14:32, 30 September 2023 (EDT)
• I have concerns along the lines that Scott mentions - can we do a better job than the Wikipedia article can? --Rschen7754 00:20, 1 October 2023 (EDT)

Hyper-specific road hardware and features

Things like "Thrie-beam guardrail", "3M programmable signal head", "Brifen cable barrier", etc.

• Yes, if we can ensure that the content is in depth enough and not overly commercialized—AARoads may well be the only place on the Internet where some of these things are discussed, and it would be helpful to document what we know as a reference tool. Scott5114 (talk) 23:51, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• I think we can cover these features. Dough4872 21:36, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

Road terminology

Articles in [1] (except for the List of highways numbered X pages)

• Yes. --Rschen7754 23:29, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• These should be covered on here. Dough4872 21:36, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

License plates

Articles like w:Vehicle registration plates of Oklahoma seem like they might be affected by the notability purges, and roadgeeks often have an interest in license plates as well.

• Weak yes, simply because these are potentially useful reference materials that would be of interest to our readership and are at risk of being trashed. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 13:32, 26 August 2023 (EDT)
• I think we can cover these since there is a lot of useful information these articles hold and it would be good to have them here if Wikipedia decides to go after them. Dough4872 16:48, 26 August 2023 (EDT)
• This feels like Annex: material. Imzadi 1979 → 05:46, 12 September 2023 (EDT)
• On the one hand, license plates are a pretty different topic from roads, and I don't think the stuff Wikipedia already has is at risk for deletion (trust me, people write entire books on license plate history). On the other hand, I kind of want there to be a license plate wiki that isn't bound by Wikipedia's content rules. I say put them in the Annex and see what happens. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 00:31, 14 September 2023 (EDT)

Lesser-notable highways

Do we want to discuss this by system? CA county highways (currently RCS) are a lot different than say, Virginia secondary highways. --Rschen7754 19:25, 19 June 2023 (EDT)

Yeah that might help, since there is so much variance by state/province. Dough4872 19:33, 19 June 2023 (EDT)

There are four options for all of these: separate article, RCS list, table, nothing. If any route is more notable than the others it would typically be classified with, it could always get a separate article. There will be more of these added later. --Rschen7754 22:19, 19 June 2023 (EDT)

• If there is no consensus I would suggest importing the status quo. --Rschen7754 01:59, 20 June 2023 (EDT)

Without going into detail in every section below, when it comes to secondary designations, I would create stand-alone articles on them if the state in question includes them on their official state highway map. Other clues for me are if the designation is used on BGSs along freeways for interchanges with them or intersection signage on surface highways. If these sorts of attributes are met, then we're talking about a true secondary destination and not merely an inventory number. Imzadi 1979 → 14:30, 20 June 2023 (EDT)

My default vote for all of these (except where noted) is we should have listicles for the class of roads. Articles are fine for the ones among them that have say more than 2 paragraphs of content available. (excluding bs filler stuff like "is not part of the NHS") Moabdave (talk) 14:27, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

State highways less than 1 mile (?) long

• I would say it's a case by case basis. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 22:35, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
  • Yeah. SH 110 in Colorado is a good example of this. It used to be a much longer and well-signed state highway that extended northeast out of Silverton and had a real purpose. It's also quite an old one, having been established back in the 1920s. These days, almost the entire route has been decommissioned, save for a block or two of Greene Street starting at US 550, which is now unsigned. The small length is only retained to connect US 550 to a CDOT maintenance yard in town.— MatthewAnderson707 (talk) 19:13, 19 August 2023 (EDT)
• Depends on the situation. In a state like Maryland where there is a large number of short highways that would otherwise be permastubs, a RCS list is a good idea. If a state only has a couple short highways, then we can always do separate articles. Dough4872 23:20, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• I've never been in favor of these lists, and in a fork, even less so. It's one thing to have something like a list of lettered spurs from a common mainline highway merged, or a list of Louisiana's hyphenated numbered highways in a common series merged together, but I'm not keen on merging unrelated highways together just because they're all short. It's just seemed too arbitrary. In a fork, I guess I'd rather treat all highways with equal dignity, for lack of a better term, regardless of physical length. Imzadi 1979 → 00:51, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
  • Indeed, if we discriminate with highways, it should be for an objective reason like they are secondary. --Rschen7754 01:18, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
    • That said, I'm generally more in favor of splitting out stand-alone articles than merging them together on our own wiki. Louisiana's hyphenated highways are a case where merging makes sense since there won't be a lot about them individually, and the grouping merged together is a more cohesive story. Individual special routes though? I'd split wikipedia:Business routes of Interstate 75 in Michigan since they're all separate state highways. In fact, BL I-75 in Grayling is on the NHS/STRAHNET. They're really only merged together to deal with the deletion/notablity pressures on enwp, but if we use a metric of state-maintained or -designated (and equivalents in other locations), then these would have their own articles. Imzadi 1979 → 14:39, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• We should use better criteria to create RCS lists than route length. I favor listifying 3-mile boat ramp highways along the same criteria as 0.9-mile highways that do or do not serve boat ramps. If we cannot say more than five information-dense sentences about a highway, regardless of length, put it in a list. VC 19:30, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• I'm with Imzadi here. –Fredddie™ 21:56, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Agreed with Imzadi. It's a last resort for states where there's tons of short, barely notable highways with no other means to group them into a listicle. I.E. only if it's either this format or 50 permastubs.Moabdave (talk) 14:17, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• This is too arbitrary of a criterion for me to support. Scott5114 (talk) 00:09, 22 June 2023 (EDT)
• Keep the category. No need for a list. TCN7JM 06:48, 31 August 2023 (EDT)
• Agreed with Imzadi. Merging shorter and less significant highways always felt like a compromise with Wikipedia's notability rules, and we don't need to do that here. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 12:58, 12 September 2023 (EDT)
• Go ahead and split back out. --Rschen7754 00:21, 1 October 2023 (EDT)

State highways that only serve institutions

• I think an RCS list would be a good idea for covering states that have a large collection of short state highways serving institutions such as Virginia. Dough4872 23:25, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
• This is the format of the lists in Minnesota and Utah (among other states), so sure. –Fredddie™ 21:56, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• An RCS list or table might be justified for these, but only if we can come up with a uniform definition of what constitutes an "institution". However, would there be much of a difference between an article on one of these and one for a highway of the same length with a town at the end of it? Scott5114 (talk) 00:09, 22 June 2023 (EDT)
• I'm on the same page as Scott, I think. Speaking from a Minnesota perspective, there are quite a few short "U.S. Route to population center" state highways that get standalone articles basically uncontested while the "state institution" ones get put into an RCS list. Aside from a few edge cases of designations that exist solely to loop around one plot of land, there isn't really a fundamental difference between these routes. I want to say both routes should get standalone articles, as I don't think it's a hot take to say that primary state highways should be allowed standalone articles if the content is there to support them. But I'm not sure that's the case for all of these routes. TCN7JM 06:59, 31 August 2023 (EDT)

IH/USH BLs

• I think these are best handled in an RCS list that is either standalone or in the parent article depending on number of routes, with separate articles for routes with more information. Dough4872 08:46, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• I think that if someone can write a decent article that these should be standalone. Remember, much of the mergers on enwp were to stave off deletion/notability issues under those notability standards. If we have a "state-maintained or -designated" basis for notability, then these topics wouldn't be subject to the same deletion pressures. I'd be all for in time splitting off each of Michigan's business loops/spurs and such into separate articles, as they once were. If others wanted to do the same in other states, more power to them, if they can write something decent. Imzadi 1979 → 14:30, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Create an RCS list, or stick in the parent article if there are low number, such as BL I-83 and BL I-81 (the only instances for their respective routes). Routes with a lot of information or that are clearly notable, such as BL I-70 in Denver, can be split off into standalone articles. VC 19:32, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Listicle, or list in a section of the parent highway's article, in most cases. In cases where the BL has an alternate designation (such as a state route) have one article for both. Dedicated articles for select cases, such as I-80BL Sacramento. Moabdave (talk) 14:20, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• Seconding what Viridiscalculus said. Scott5114 (talk) 00:09, 22 June 2023 (EDT)
• Maybe we should be considering a different solution because of our technical limits. Business routes of Interstate 40 is hitting the limits as to what will load in a page (besides adding extra DB size) and maybe combining everything is not the best solution. Maybe we need to split that particular one up by state. --Rschen7754 14:15, 8 July 2023 (EDT)
  • If we're splitting it up by state anyway, why not just move the coverage of those to the state-detail articles of the parent highway? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 14:43, 16 September 2023 (EDT)
    • I like that idea, the only issue is what to do about BLs that cross state lines. Dough4872 17:00, 16 September 2023 (EDT)

IH/USH bannered routes

• I think these are best handled in an RCS list that is either standalone or in the parent article depending on number of routes, with separate articles for routes with more information. Dough4872 08:46, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• See the section above, although I'll just note that I don't really consider some of the Alt./Emergency I-X routes to be actual highway designations in Wisconsin and Michigan. They exist for emergency detour purposes and aren't listed on the official state highway maps. Imzadi 1979 → 14:30, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• RCS unless the route has enough information or is notable enough for its own article, like US 1-9 Truck. There should be extra scrutiny for truck routes and emergency detours. VC 19:35, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Seconding what Viridiscalculus said again. Scott5114 (talk) 00:09, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

Alabama county routes

• No coverage except possibly for roads notable on their own. VC 19:21, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
  • Actually, I would be fine with a County highways in Alabama system article. VC 19:37, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• Maybe a list, but probably no standalone articles unless one is particularly interesting for some reason (like it's an old alignment or has a cool bridge or something like that). Scott5114 (talk) 00:09, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

Alberta secondary (500+)

Note that 900s are future realignments of primary routes

• 900+ should remain separate. Undecided on the rest. --Rschen7754 01:53, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Tables or RCS for the 500–800 series. Mention the 900s in the article of the related primary route. VC 19:25, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

American Samoa

• Individual articles, I don't think it's good to merge primaries away to a list. --Rschen7754 01:59, 20 June 2023 (EDT)

Arkansas institutional roads

RCS. Perhaps a standalone article for the set of airport roads. VC 18:51, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

Arkansas county roads

• Inclined to say no, not always signed, highly variable. --Rschen7754 23:41, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Systems article, but no coverage of individual county highways unless they are notable. VC 18:51, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

Arizona county roads

• Maricopa County Route 85 is abbreviated MC 85. This is notable as MC 85 is a major thoroughfare in the Phoenix metro area and a former section of both US 80 and SR 85. If this doesn't warrant its own article, it should at least later become part of SR 85, when the Arizona articles are imported. — MatthewAnderson707 (talk) 02:30, 26 June 2023 (EDT)
• Mohave County Route 91 (CR 91) comprises the entirety of old US 91 in Arizona. I'd recommend it be a section of a US 91 in Arizona article, or CR 91 being the main article with US 91 being a sub-section in the history section. Since its essentially the exact same thing. — MatthewAnderson707 (talk) 02:30, 26 June 2023 (EDT)
  • I'll make you a deal—if you make U.S. Route 91 in Arizona a thing, I'll make U.S. Route 91 in Nevada a thing. :) —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 13:35, 26 August 2023 (EDT)
• Possibly a list of notable Mohave County Routes. Ones that operate as significant or thoroughfare roads, since Mohave County has tons of them that literally make up only a few residential streets and what not. I'd put CR 1 (former SR 95 around Golden Shores), CR 10 (former US 66 - Topock to I-10 south of Kingman), CR 20 (major county road connecting Kingman to communities north inaccessible by other roads), CR 25 (similar situation to CR 20), CR 91 (former US 91) and CR 125 (former SR 62) as good examples for notable county roads. — MatthewAnderson707 (talk) 02:30, 26 June 2023 (EDT)

British Columbia pseudo routes and unofficial highways

• The unofficial highways can go to RCS, the pseudo routes are too minor and should be table. --Rschen7754 01:50, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Don't think we need to scrape the bottom of the barrel with these. Neutral on whether to include them in route tables at all. SounderBruce 02:02, 20 June 2023 (EDT)

California county routes (alphanumeric system)

• RCS, but some might be good enough for separate. --Rschen7754 02:04, 20 June 2023 (EDT)

California county routes (other counties)

• If they're like Lake County where almost everything is a CR, nothing. --Rschen7754 02:04, 20 June 2023 (EDT)

Colorado county routes

• [2] - didn't really strike me as notable. --Rschen7754 23:44, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Systems article, but no coverage of individual highways unless they are notable. VC 18:52, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

Connecticut special service roads

• Table, most unsigned. --Rschen7754 21:45, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

Connecticut 500+ routes

• Table, most unsigned. --Rschen7754 02:04, 20 June 2023 (EDT)

Florida 4 digit routes

• Do these refer to state highways or county highways? FL 9336 gets a standalone article, the others maybe not. VC 18:57, 28 June 2023 (EDT)
  • Except for 9336, all unsigned state highways. --Rschen7754 21:48, 28 June 2023 (EDT)
• Table, except for 9336. I will note that 5054 does currently have an article [3]. --Rschen7754 21:48, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

Georgia county routes

• Systems article, but no coverage of individual routes unless they are notable. VC 18:53, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

Guam

• Individual articles, I don't think it's good to merge primaries away to a list. --Rschen7754 01:59, 20 June 2023 (EDT)

Hawaii 3 digit routes

• I don't know what percentage of 3-digit highways are notable, so I don't know whether table, RCS, or standalone articles is the way to go. We could feasibly do, for example, a List of state highways on Oahu where we have coverage of all highways. Within those island-based articles, we could do RCS (with hatnotes to standalone articles for every entry) for the 2-digit highways, RCS (with limited hatnotes) for 3-digit highways, and tables for 4-digit highways. VC 19:03, 28 June 2023 (EDT)
  • Our article says Three-digit routes are typically secondary arterials or collectors, while four-digit routes are typically collectors and minor roads. Because HI is similar to WA in 4ds/3ds being related to 2ds, most of these were merged away to parent articles on enwiki. --Rschen7754 21:50, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

Hawaii 4 digit routes

• Table unless they are notable. VC 19:00, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

Idaho county routes

• Systems article, but no coverage of individual routes unless they are notable. VC 21:00, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

Illinois county routes

Systems article, but no coverage of individual routes unless they are notable. VC 21:01, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

• Right now we have four county-level table lists of routes, and a few redirects to articles on individual roads (none of which have been imported yet, leaving the redirects broken). I'm in favor of importing those articles and keeping the existing lists, and wouldn't be opposed to more county-level tables for other counties. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 22:35, 3 September 2023 (EDT)

Indiana county roads

• Systems article, but no coverage of individual county roads unless they are notable. VC 21:01, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

Iowa spurs

Iowa used to have a robust system of spurs very similar to Kansas. A lot of the lowest-volume roads were removed in 1980 and the rest (save one or two) were removed in 2003. Most of these roads started at the connecting road and ended at the intersection closest to the town post office. Over the years, I went back and forth on if those should be an RCS list or a routelist table. I decided upon the routelist table because after a while, there's only so much you can say about a 1-to-3-mile road surrounded by cornfields. If someone wants to create all of the standalone articles, I won't get in their way. That begin said, I recommend the status quo. –Fredddie™ 22:49, 23 June 2023 (EDT)

Iowa county routes

No individual routes or county lists. The draft I had been writing for years about the county road system, but could never publish it because reasons, I could publish here. –Fredddie™ 22:01, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Kansas spurs

• On English Wikipedia, bannered spurs are covered in the same articles as their respective parents (e.g., K-23 Spur in K-23), while town connectors are merged into a single long article with brief descriptions of each route. This approach seems to me reasonable, since each route is still findable on a search by designation (e.g., "K-86" typed into browser search plugin bar, or "en wiki K-86" in the search bar on mobile). (An addition to the to-do list: spurs article does not include the short-lived spurs off then newly constructed I-235 in south Wichita.) Argatlam (talk) 23:48, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• We should keep the existing scheme, with standalone articles if any of the spurs are particularly notable. Several of the spurs are Good Articles in Wikipedia; we will need to decide whether those are worth keeping standalone. VC 21:43, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• The existing scheme is fine. If someone's bothered to split one out and write enough about it that it made GA on Wikipedia, no harm in keeping it separate. (We should only combine routes when there's truly nothing to say about them.) Scott5114 (talk) 00:09, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

Kentucky rural secondary system

These routes are already organized as RCS with the supplemental roads, and they should stay that way. VC 21:39, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

• Is there a source for what constitutes a primary versus secondary route? If so, we could treat them the same way we do Texas FMs. Scott5114 (talk) 00:09, 22 June 2023 (EDT)
  • Yes, KYTC's State Primary Road System page has a reference to the state law defining the four types and describes the four types. This definition coming from the state was the key distinction for me creating the listicles. The key different between Kentucky and Texas is that Kentucky uses one numbering system for all four types. VC 21:15, 23 June 2023 (EDT)
• I wouldn't be opposed to articles for the more notable of these routes on a case-by-case basis, now that notability is less of a concern. (Of course, this may be a moot point unless we get an active Kentucky editor.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 12:30, 19 September 2023 (EDT)

Kentucky supplemental

These routes are already organized as RCS with the rural secondary highways, and they should stay that way. VC 21:39, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Louisiana B routes (100-185)

• The A routes <100 should always have an article and the mergers already done should be undone. Unsure about the rest. --Rschen7754 21:52, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

Louisiana parish roads

Systems article, but no coverage of individual parish roads unless they are notable. The RCS parish route list should be eliminated. VC 21:05, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

Manitoba secondary routes

RCS. The notable ones or ones with a lot of information can be standalone articles. VC 22:02, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Manitoba: Winnipeg city routes

RCS. The only one that clearly should remain a standalone article is Winnipeg Route 90, which is part of Canada's National Highway System. City routes that are wholly or mostly concurrent with a provincial highway should redirect to the provincial highway article. VC 21:50, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Michigan CDH and county roads

• The county-designated highways function as a pseudo-secondary highway system in the state. Unlike other county roads, they're drawn on the MDOT map in black instead of gray, and they have their designations noted with pentagon markers. They're marked on BGSs/junction signage as well. So exit 326 on I-75 in Cheboygan County has a C-66 on the BGSs, but exit 264 in Crawford County omits CR 612. These two factors satisfy my secondary test for some sort of state-derived notability.

  Based on all of the governmental nuances and importance of the county road commissions, I would at a minimum support the creation of county-level lists of primary county roads in the absence of external deletion/notability pressures, but that's a very long-term project. At least with the primary CRs, I'd use a GNG-style test for stand-alone articles outside of the CDHs, which are technically primary CRs. Imzadi 1979 → 14:30, 20 June 2023 (EDT)

Minnesota CSAH

• Similar to Michigan's CDHs, I'd be naturally incline to support something on CSAHs vs. CRs in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Imzadi 1979 → 14:30, 20 June 2023 (EDT)

• I'd say CSAHs are generally important enough to warrant RCS-style coverage given that they are technically funded in some variable part by the state. There's even a system in place to improve shorter state highways and then turn them back to county jurisdiction and make them CSAHs (this has resulted in quite a few Minnesota State Highways being deleted over the past couple decades). A few CSAHs were notable enough for standalone articles on Wikipedia and there are almost certainly a few more that are notable enough for standalone articles that nobody's gotten around to writing yet. I'll also say that CSAHs make up almost 70% of county highway mileage in the entire state and I'm fairly certain no one will want to write RCS content on most of it. At the very least, we should have tables. TCN7JM 06:14, 31 August 2023 (EDT)

Minnesota county hwys

No coverage. Perhaps a systems article, but better if the CR and CSAH systems could be explained in the same article. VC 21:06, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

The distinction between CSAH and CR is pretty nebulous in practice, with some counties using the same shield for both designations and others not. All routes are maintained by the county but CSAHs are given some variable amount of state funding to achieve this. It would seem silly to include one but not the other, and sure enough, as I've gone through and bluelinked Minnesota, I've noticed all the previously existing county highway lists include both CSAH and CR. That's about the most coverage I'm willing to say CRs deserve: one routelist row. TCN7JM 06:04, 31 August 2023 (EDT)

Missouri secondary state routes

• A list might be nice, or at the very most an RCS list. Almost all of them are too obscure for a full article, though. Scott5114 (talk) 00:09, 22 June 2023 (EDT)
• The supplemental road system capstone article is sufficient. There are individual routes that could be notable, such as Route M in Jefferson County and Route D in St. Louis County. VC 21:23, 23 June 2023 (EDT)
• I agree with VC. I think an RCS list is asking a lot. Like I mentioned in #Iowa spurs, after a while there's only so much you can say. –Fredddie™ 22:50, 23 June 2023 (EDT)

Missouri county routes

• Systems article, but no coverage of individual routes unless they are notable. VC 21:10, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

Montana secondary

• Keep as a table. VC 21:12, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

Nebraska secondary

• Keep the Spur, Link, and Recreation routes as tables. VC 21:13, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

Nevada urban routes 500-699

• If these roadways are better known by name, then we should title them by name, with disambiguation as necessary. The notable ones should have standalone articles, and the non-notable ones should stay as table entries. VC 21:18, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

Nevada secondary 700-895

Listicle for most, dedicated articles where enough content exists to support one. Moabdave (talk) 14:22, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Nevada county roads

• With the obvious exception of CC-215, listicle. Moabdave (talk) 14:22, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

New Brunswick collector routes (>199)

• Table, with standalone articles for notable routes. We might also consider RCS for the 100s, with standalone articles for notable ones. VC 21:21, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

New Jersey county routes (500-599)

• Pretty much a secondary system, with a lot of them being just as important, if not more important, than state routes. I'm for their inclusion. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 02:05, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• The 500-series county routes are essentially a secondary state highway system with many routes spanning as much length as state highways, so these roads can have individual articles. Dough4872 08:46, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Standalone articles. VC 21:53, 21 June 2023 (EDT)
• These routes exist at the same level as or higher than plenty of other state routes- if we're gonna keep NJ 167, these should be kept too. BMACS1002 (talk) 15:53, 25 June 2023 (EDT)

New Jersey 600-800 CRs

• These roads are best handled in tables by-county since there isn’t much to say about them. Dough4872 08:46, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• In the case where a route is notable enough to have its own article, it's usually better off to call it by its road, rather than route, name; never once have I heard a single New-Jerseyan refer to a 600-series route by its number. BMACS1002 (talk) 15:53, 25 June 2023 (EDT)

New Mexico frontage roads

• [4] is the current article. RCS, maybe even lower. --Rschen7754 21:54, 28 June 2023 (EDT)
  • Seeing the entire list [5], nothing. --Rschen7754 00:23, 29 June 2023 (EDT)

New Mexico FL routes

• Nothing - [6] is beyond our scope. --Rschen7754 00:23, 29 June 2023 (EDT)

New York reference routes

• List only, of course most refer to parkways and should redirect there. Rschen7754 23:46, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
  • Okay with keeping signed routes. --Rschen7754 17:38, 25 June 2023 (EDT)
• There are 4 reference routes that are signed as such and should keep their articles; otherwise a list should suffice in cases when they can't be lumped into another route's article.BMACS1002 (talk) 15:53, 25 June 2023 (EDT)

New York county routes

• I think tables by-county are the best way to handle these routes. Dough4872 15:30, 22 June 2023 (EDT)
• No coverage except for individual county routes that are notable, such as county routes that were formerly state routes like (signed) Onondaga County Route 57. VC 21:25, 23 June 2023 (EDT)
• Table, with exceptions possible. What I don't want is something like this [7], a RCS on a bunch of <1 mile routes. --Rschen7754 21:31, 23 June 2023 (EDT)
• All of the above, though individual articles that are currently active ought to be reviewed on a case-by-case basisBMACS1002 (talk) 15:53, 25 June 2023 (EDT)

Newfoundland - local roads (hyphenated)

• Table at least, if that. There's tons of them [8] --Rschen7754 01:51, 20 June 2023 (EDT)

North Carolina secondary routes

• Nothing, unsigned/paper routes. --Rschen7754 02:13, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Nothing, with the exception of the few secondary highways that are freeways or principal arterials. VC 21:56, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

North Dakota county routes

• No coverage. VC 22:24, 23 June 2023 (EDT)
• Lmao TCN7JM 06:18, 31 August 2023 (EDT)

Oklahoma secondary state routes

• Currently covered as part of the parent route (OK-74B is covered in OK-74). This remains the best way to handle these. Scott5114 (talk) 00:09, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

Ontario secondary routes 5xx, 6xx

• Case by case basis. Many of these go from Nowhere to Beyond-Nowhere. Some are notable enough for separate articles (ex. ON 599), remainder can be covered in RCS style articles until enough information becomes available to warrant a split. - Floydian (talk) 14:35, 30 September 2023 (EDT)

Ontario tertiary routes 8xx

• Same as secondary. There's only a handful (<14), so they could probably all get covered in a single article. - Floydian (talk) 14:38, 30 September 2023 (EDT)

Ontario 7000 series

• Table, unsigned. --Rschen7754 01:54, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• single article with a table. Similar to state highways to institutions. No 7000-series is notable enough for a standalone article. - Floydian (talk) 14:37, 30 September 2023 (EDT)

Pennsylvania quadrant routes

The assumption is that all the 6000+ are not notable at all.

• I think we can do tables by-county for the routes that are in the 1000-4000 number range, maybe could also include the 6000s since they are often former alignments of state and US routes. However, we can do without the 8000s and 9000s since they are basically ramps etc. Dough4872 08:46, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• Per Dough. --Rschen7754 23:47, 20 June 2023 (EDT)
• No coverage except for notable ones like SR 1002 (Lehigh County), Airport Connector, and President Biden Expressway. VC 22:07, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

PEI secondary routes (3dpei)

• Table. VC 21:28, 28 June 2023 (EDT)
• I wanted to wait for someone else to comment to not prejudice the discussion, but looking around Google Maps it seems that every other road is a secondary route or higher. I'm inclined to RCS or table. --Rschen7754 21:35, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

Puerto Rico: tertiary routes

Note that routes can be both secondary and tertiary

PR 1 is all four types of routes. –Fredddie™ 21:56, 20 June 2023 (EDT)

Quebec secondary 200-399

• I may be biased, but we should include those. They're not like other secondary systems, as they're treated pretty much like any other provincial highway. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 01:52, 20 June 2023 (EDT)

  I have did not realize they were supposed to be a secondary system. If they're not, we should treat them the same as 1-199. –Fredddie™ 21:56, 20 June 2023 (EDT)

  Well, they technically are, but from what I've seen, most of them are maintained just as well as 100-199 (which can be either good or bad, considering this is Québec). LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 04:23, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

• If they are functionally similar to the 100s, then they should be treated the same as the 100s. VC 22:09, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Saskatchewan municipal routes 600-799

• These aren't state highways and Masterhatch just went and merged them all away so I'm leaning towards keeping RCS. --Rschen7754 01:52, 20 June 2023 (EDT)

South Carolina secondary

• Inclined to say no coverage, mostly hidden numbers. --Rschen7754 23:47, 20 June 2023 (EDT)

South Dakota county routes

Do we have any articles as it is? Why would we? –Fredddie™ 01:51, 5 July 2023 (EDT)

Lmao TCN7JM 06:17, 31 August 2023 (EDT)

Tennessee secondary

Routes can be both primary and secondary

• All routes with at least one nonconcurrent primary section should have standalone articles. Routes that are entirely secondary should be RCS. Unsigned routes that run entirely with a U.S. Highway redirect to that U.S. Highway. VC 22:15, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Texas FM/RMs

• The current coverage model works well (listicle split every 100 routes). It might be nice to also have a table of all 4000 of them, though, for someone who is looking for a quick index and doesn't need the prose. Scott5114 (talk) 00:09, 22 June 2023 (EDT)
• I wouldn't be opposed to having more separate articles for the more notable FM/RMs, now that notability is less of a concern. A lot of these used to have their own articles on enwiki. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 12:32, 19 September 2023 (EDT)
• I could go either way (RCS listicles or separate articles), but if we did go back to separate articles, would we keep the listicles? –Fredddie™ 15:03, 19 September 2023 (EDT)

Texas Loops/spurs

• A listicle would suffice for these. Scott5114 (talk) 00:09, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

Texas business routes

• Treat them like any other bannered route. Scott5114 (talk) 00:09, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

Texas Park/rec roads

• A listicle would suffice for these. Scott5114 (talk) 00:09, 22 June 2023 (EDT)
• RCS. --Rschen7754 01:45, 25 June 2023 (EDT)

Utah county roads

AFAIK only San Juan County even bothers to sign them, and most of those are dirt roads. Coverage only for ones where enough info exists to support them. Moabdave (talk) 14:42, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Vermont 9xxx roads

Table. VC 22:20, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Virginia secondary

Capstone article. Otherwise, no coverage, unless one is notable. VC 22:17, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

• I think we can do tables by-county for these routes but limit which routes are included based on a number range or functional classification, since some counties have a large number of routes that consist of every residential street. Dough4872 15:30, 22 June 2023 (EDT)
• Because we are a road wiki now, table. Open to discussion on parameters. --Rschen7754 20:27, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

West Virginia county routes

Capstone article. Otherwise, no coverage, unless one is notable. VC 22:16, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Wisconsin CTH

System article, but no coverage of individual highways unless they're notable. (I don't think we have any articles currently, unless you count former state highways and the like.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 13:21, 30 August 2023 (EDT)

Interchanges

We do expect to cover at least some interchanges, but not every interchange. How do we decide this? Do we come up with our own wikipedia:WP:GNG? --Rschen7754 02:12, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Yeah, I think interchanges should only be covered if there is significant coverage in multiple sources. Dough4872 07:50, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Same for bridges and tunnels. If the wikipedia article meets our needs, link to it. Clone or create if not.Moabdave (talk) 14:43, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Part of me wants to have an article for every system interchange, but maybe pare that back to named system interchanges. –Fredddie™ 01:17, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

In California almost everything has a name (the list of names is hundreds of pages long), but that doesn't mean they are notable. --Rschen7754 01:46, 25 June 2023 (EDT)

That's why I'd limit it to system interchanges, which are freeway-to-freeway. –Fredddie™ 18:03, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

As long as it has a proper name that is/was in widespread use beyond the DOT offices, I see no reason to not include interchanges. SounderBruce 00:36, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

I'd add that the name should be both enduring and not merely descriptive. Imzadi 1979 → 05:50, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

• I think this is a good place for stuff Wikipedia wouldn't cover. Any interchange with a non-generic name generally has decent coverage of its name, we can be more detailed with ramp descriptions since we don't need a book or newspaper describing it. What I will still hold steadfast against is the plethora of what I call "SimCity 4 interchange types"... there's no such thing as a clover stack! - Floydian (talk) 14:43, 30 September 2023 (EDT)

City-detail articles

Feel this could be controversial, but for some Interstates in large states, perhaps city-detail (or metropolitan-detail) articles could be appropriate. For example, for Interstate 5 in Washington, I had to truncate a lot of Seattle-specific content that could very well fill out its own article (say Interstate 5 in Seattle). Other cities have the luxury of using named freeways to write about city-specific details, but no such luck in other states that never named their freeways. SounderBruce 00:36, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

How did the newspapers refer to the proposed freeway before the proposed freeway was designated I-5? Did they call it something like "Tacoma–Everett Expressway"? VC 15:18, 5 July 2023 (EDT)

I think that in general this is a bad idea, since someone might see that Seattle has city-detail articles (due to overflow content) and try to start something absurd like "Interstate 35 in Ardmore, Oklahoma" or something like that. I feel like the annex would be a great place to hold this kind of overflow content, however. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 20:44, 5 July 2023 (EDT)

I also think this is a bad idea generally for similar reasons as Scott. I could only see this as maybe a major metropolitan area sub article, like maybe an "Interstate 75 in Detroit", but by scope it starts at Flat Rock and runs to Waterford to encompass the suburbs of the Motor City. Maybe. It think we'd get too many minor ones, like someone trying to do "Interstate 75 in Flint", which I'd laugh at while deleting as out of scope. Imzadi 1979 → 16:22, 6 July 2023 (EDT)

It was simply referred to as the "Seattle Freeway" or "Central Freeway", but that was quickly dropped after completion. Since there's no definitive name (many just call it "the freeway" if not using the number), it's a tough one. SounderBruce 16:32, 6 July 2023 (EDT)

Select cases yes, but to be honest it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to codify it in policy that it's ok. My personal pet peeve is when I invest the time to read or review a roads article and the route description is nothing more than a regurgitation of Google Maps, consisting of endless repetitions of highway x proceeds in <insert cardinal direction here> until it's junction with y. It then turns <insert new cardinal direction here>. I feel like my time has been wasted as I could just pull up Google Maps myself and get the exact same information faster. I fear an explosion of such articles, as if one is describing a short roadway (of say less than 30 miles) that's the type of route description that tends to happen, just because you have the space so fill it. I'm ok with it on a case-by-case basis as we do have some very good "city level" articles, Arroyo Seco Parkway is one. But that's also due to some unique circumstances with that road. So IF we could codify some good criteria that would have to be met before just assuming a city/metro detail article is warrented, I'd be ok with it. But a blanket approval, no. Dave (talk) 11:54, 6 July 2023 (EDT)

I like the idea but as Scott said, how do we prevent Interstate 80 in Walcott, Iowa from happening? Issue special dispensations? Father son and holy moly that's a lot of detail, better split it off. –Fredddie™ 13:08, 6 July 2023 (EDT)

The jist seems so far seems to be "not opposed but concerned about its misuse". The criteria for state detail articles is sizable spans in 3 states. So there is some precedent to codifying guidelines for sub articles. How about someting like, "Split into city or regional sub articles if and only if the main article is at least a B class article (new scale, so GA in Wikipedia land) and the route description is at least x length of reviewed prose. Would that create the right incentives of yes, but only when the parent article is a quality article and long enough to break out? or is this an enwiki style policy where the cure is worse than the disease? Dave (talk) 13:25, 6 July 2023 (EDT)

We could have a minimum criteria (X population, Y prominence, or being the center city of a top X metropolitan area). I just want to make sure we can have comprehensive coverage of urban highways without it overshadowing the rest of the highway. SounderBruce 16:32, 6 July 2023 (EDT)

Why don't we hash out a list of potential city-detail articles and limit it to those? I think we can toss out any three-digit Interstate right away as well as the two 35E/35W splits since they're essentially already this same idea. I'll start working on a list. –Fredddie™ 17:35, 6 July 2023 (EDT)

Actually, having looked at it for five minutes, I'm not sure this is the right way. I think a case-by-case basis would be best and I would support Seattle straight away. That being said, we should absolutely look into lists of Interstates in metro areas. These could potentially morph into lists of numbered routes and then location pages that would eventually replace our enwiki bluelinkings. –Fredddie™ 17:48, 6 July 2023 (EDT)

General question: What kind of size limit do we want on articles? The biggest highway article enwiki is w:Ontario Highway 401 at 215 KB markup size and 48 KB prose size. The biggest Interstate article enwiki is w:Interstate 40 in Tennessee, which is 205 KB markup size and 59 KB prose size. w:Interstate 5 in Washington is 187 KB markup size and 56 KB prose size. w:U.S. Route 113 is 168 KB markup size and 65 KB prose size. If SounderBruce can greatly expand the size of I-5 WA with a lot more Seattle detail, how large do you think we should go before we need to split out the Seattle area details? VC 19:08, 6 July 2023 (EDT)

IMHO ON-401 and I-40 in Tennessee are probably too big. I reviewed the latter and it was too much prose for one sitting (at least for me). But I would be careful about having a hard length cutoff before you can split. As we've seen, roadgeeks are more than capable for filling up a route description with, let's just say barely relevant stuff to quickpass whatever criteria they are aiming for, Exhibit a. "Route x is NOT part of the NHS. It's NOT part of the Autobahn network, it's NOT a British motorway". I don't want to encourage more of that. That's in part why I suggested the parent article must be GA or higher before can be split into city detail articles. Dave (talk) 00:49, 7 July 2023 (EDT)

Project pages needed

What project pages will we need over time? We have a placeholder Main Page that will be expanded at some point to be all pretty and shiny. We have this discussion page that will get a fancy new name. Imzadi 1979 → 15:04, 19 June 2023 (EDT)

Imagine merging the roads projects on enwp, and then turning that merged project into the whole wiki. This page would be WT:HWY/WT:USRD/Village Pump/etc. We'd need some analogs to the project departments with their appropriate subpages, and while it's not a favorite, but we'd need some sort of MOS, even if we kept it lightweight. This can be merged with the standards pages into a simplified Standards manual. So:

• AARoads:Assessment (along with some sort of review forums)
• AARoads:Maps
• AARoads:Markers or AARoads:Graphics more generally?
• AARoads:Resources
• AARoads:Newsletter (I mentioned publishing a new issue of The Center Line jointly on enwp and AARW to announce the fork.)
• AARoads:Standards

What policy pages will we need beyond a basic blocking policy? Deletion policy, of course. Some admin discussion forum? Other pages? Imzadi 1979 → 15:44, 19 June 2023 (EDT)

We would have to work through this slowly, but civility/behavioral, sourcing, alternative accounts, bots, user rights come to mind. --Rschen7754 19:27, 19 June 2023 (EDT)

So:

• AARoads:Alternate accounts
• AARoads:Blocking
• AARoads:Bots
• AARoads:Civility
• AARoads:Deletion
• AARoads:Sources
• AARoads:User rights

Although, we might be able to combine a few topics. The civility policy could cover the use of alternate accounts and socking as a general behavioral practice, or alternate accounts and bots could go together. Sourcing/citations could even be covered as part of the Standards manual. I should have mentioned with my previous list, but a Graphics Department could handle Maps too. Imzadi 1979 → 14:45, 20 June 2023 (EDT)

We forgot the all-important and most controversial topic: naming conventions. --Rschen7754 00:07, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Yes, once we have an editor base can we have a redo of the SNRC poll? A fresh start means a fresh start. IMHO the one used to decide Wikipedia naming conventions got it wrong. So if we're ever going to re-address it, now is that time.Moabdave (talk) 14:46, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Article naming is a part of Standards. Hat tip to Scott5114 for the idea of a Manual on Uniform Road Articles (MURA). MURA would have subdivisions for Scope, Article titles, Article structure, Basic style/formatting, RJL and routelist tables, Sourcing/citations. Basically a one-stop reference for someone creating a new article. Imzadi 1979 → 23:19, 21 June 2023 (EDT)

Policy page

I started a draft policy page at User:Fredddie/Policies where I borrowed heavily from enwiki's WP:LOP. I was intending that everything be loose and flexible. When we iron out the scope and have SRNC2, I'd like to link to those pages. –Fredddie™ 00:44, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

For speedy deletions I would also include uncontroversial maintenance, maybe clearly out of scope pages (i.e. pages on Pokemon). As far as overall, while I think there will be a lot more detail eventually on some policies (especially content), I think this is a good interim document that summarizes our expectations. --Rschen7754 14:09, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

Consensus considered harmful?

Wikipedia likes to make a big deal about not being a democracy. There are reasons for this; wikipedia:Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion has a good summary of most of the arguments. (One I've seen made, which that page doesn't really touch on, is that this prevents people from recruiting meatpuppets or sockpuppets to bolster their side.) Instead, editors look to establish a consensus on topics of discussion.

Consensus is a laudable goal and one we should shoot for whenever possible. However, the downside of consensus is that sometimes it's not achievable, because one or two people involved in the discussion just do not possess the ability in any fiber of their being to just shut the fuck up and drop it already. When one of these people wedges themselves into a consensus-driven process, the result is just a discussion that goes around and around in circles and never ends. In discussions where there's a deadline for reaching a decision, like a deletion discussion, this often leads to a "no consensus" outcome that has all the gravitas of a tied NFL game or a hung jury. At best, it's a temporary end to the discussion; at worst it's a waste of everyone's time who participated.

So what I'd like to propose is that AARoads wiki is a democracy. At least, some of the time. If we have a nice, simple discussion where it looks everyone is more or less on the same page and just needs to hammer out details (like everything on this page above this section), great, we go with that and let the discussion go to its natural conclusion. (The analogy would be to a voice vote in a legislature.) But if it doesn't look like there's likely to be an agreement, perhaps we should just go ahead and do an actual poll of some kind. Our community will probably be small enough that even one or two people not agreeing with everyone else will likely constitute a large enough percentage of the respondents that the traditional yardsticks of "consensus" won't really be useful. Also, I've personally never cared for the fuzziness of what threshold constitutes "consensus" anyway; as far as I can tell it's mostly just admins eyeballing the discussion and saying "yeah, that's good enough for me". Supposedly strength of argument is to be taken into account, but if your argument is really strong enough, you should be able to influence a vote anyway.

wikipedia:Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 201#RfC on draftifying a subset of mass-created Olympian microstubs is a good example of the absolute unholy mess that can result when using this approach. TLDR (because there really is too much to read) is that there was a bunch of arguing that went on for pages and pages, an admin closed it no consensus, someone brought it to an appeal forum and managed to browbeat the closing admin into withdrawing his closure, and then another admin came along and closed it in favor those doing the browbeating. If it were just a simple matter of counting votes rather than a judgement call, the closure would have been a lot more simple and tidy. (Well, maybe not... but that's what community bans are for. ;) )

For straightforward pass/fail two-option polls, a simple (50% plus one vote) majority would probably suffice. For multiple-option polls (e.g. what Wikipedia calls RFCs), it would probably be a good idea to do something like instant-runoff voting, a.k.a. ranked choice voting (just because we're voting doesn't mean we have to import the bad ideas of democracy like first past the post!). We would also need to establish when a discussion goes to a vote; I imagine someone calling for a vote and then someone else seconding it would be enough to trigger one. I do think we would need to clarify that a vote isn't necessarily permanently binding and can be overturned by a later discussion or vote, but maybe we should specify a limitation on when a new vote can take place, to keep sore losers from triggering repetitive vote-a-ramas. (Perhaps another vote on the same subject cannot take place for some fixed time period. Or we could borrow a rule from the US Senate and say that nobody can start a vote and then also vote the same way as they did last time. Or do something like a California recall election, where some percentage of the total number of voters in a given vote must call for a new vote to overturn it.)

I'd like to hear everyone else's thoughts on this, because it would be a pretty substantial change from Wikipedia, but I think it might be a worthwhile one that would stave off some unnecessary drama. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:32, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

I like this idea and we should consider implementing mw:Extension:SecurePoll, which has the option for single-transferable voting. That way there is even more objectivity to the results. –Fredddie™ 01:46, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

I agree with the thrust of it but not with SecurePoll. Besides being able to see where people are at in real time and potentially their reasons for voting that way, I do not have a lot of faith in the usability of the SecurePoll extension and its maintenance or ease of use.

Some other thoughts: I would suggest scrapping the canvassing policy and replacing it with a minimum edit count (and tenure?) required for voting. Of course during the first few months we might have to relax that requirement. --Rschen7754 02:01, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

Yeah, the canvassing policy is stupid and I don't support bringing it over. I'm not so sure a tenure requirement is really necessary, although some states do have a tenure requirement for voting (in Nevada it's 30 days, for instance). If there is no tenure requirement, I do think it should be routine procedure to automatically checkuser any new account voting in a poll. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 02:15, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

I think we might run into problems in Europe if we did that. Also, CU only does so much as it is deleted after 3 months (and of course, we have database constraints). --Rschen7754 02:24, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

I fully support the idea of making this wiki more of a democracy and using majority votes and RCV for multiple option items as opposed to the consensus idea that Wikipedia uses. Dough4872 15:21, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

I was thinking about it a little more. I was thinking SecurePoll originally because it's a Mediawiki thing. But we're not relying on the WMF, so we don't need to use their solutions. A simple Google Form, which are free and fairly easy to use, gets the job done just as well. And so long as you have the link and everyone is truthful in saying who they are, we can have transparency in voting. –Fredddie™ 19:33, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

I like the idea of just having the vote take place on the wiki itself using some sort of RCV template. Then have an open-source script that you paste the wiki text into and it tells you the result. The benefit of this arrangement is that anyone could then run the same script and verify the result.

This means that votes would be public, which they aren't with SecurePoll or a Google form, but I'm fine with this as 1) this is the way discussions on wikis normally are anyway 2) public votes are used in legislatures, which is probably a better model for what we'll be doing than the "private citizens voting for a candidate" model 3) the reasons for secret ballot are so that you don't face repercussions for your vote or be bribed to vote a certain way (since with a secret ballot nobody can know whether the bribe was successful or not. Repercussions can be handled with the conduct policy, and if you're bribing people for votes on a road wiki, you're just kind of pathetic. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:44, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

Personally I like to see what way people are voting and why, because it might influence my own decision - and I often tailor my comments that way too. Because otherwise we have to allow voter's guides for secure polls. --Rschen7754 20:09, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

Wikipedia's governing by consensus policy is a joke. As is clearly visible at most contentious RFC's,AFD's, RFA's etc. typically one side browbeats the other in to submission until the abused party gives up. Consensus has come to mean which side shouts the loudest and wont' back down. I'll be quite happy if I never hear that horribly misused wikiword again. I'm ok with keeping Wikipedia's convention of including a rational with a vote so that the judge can give it more or less weight. However, if we go that route I would request we include a rule you CANNOT reply to someone else's !vote. You can say "support per X" or "I disagree with X's reasoning" but in YOUR vote space. None of this browbeating the other side into submission crap that has become the norm in Wikipedia. I would actually make it a blockable offense, I feel that strongly about it. Dave (talk) 19:07, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

Approval or range, not ranked choice. See https://rangevoting.org, more specifically https://rangevoting.org/CompleteIdioticIRV2.html. HotdogPi (talk) 19:30, 8 September 2023 (EDT)

You know, I think I like approval voting in a wiki context, as it would be dead simple to implement and easy to understand (just sign your name to everything you approve of; no comments in the votes are needed because there's no need for oppose votes). —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 17:30, 16 September 2023 (EDT)

This is very interesting to me, coming from OSM, where the term "consensus" has only ever been used as either a cluebat or a lament about partisan gridlock. On the OSM Wiki, canvassing is not only allowed but basically expected, and there's basically no control against sockpuppetry in the chaos that is OSM's fragmented communication landscape. The wiki's tagging proposals require a three-quarters supermajority. [9] However, since the wiki is merely supplemental documentation for the actual database, there's no guarantee that an approved or rejected proposal leads to any outcome other than words on a page. This greatly lowers the stakes, so that it would be utterly pointless to game the system. Unfortunately, a close call will inevitably generate reams of afterparty debate, punctuated by calls for consensus.

Given all the discussions that always go around in circles anyways, I've always looked up to English Wikipedia's nod to the idea of striving for consensus, even though it all goes downhill from there. (I also participate in another Wikipedia that counts votes.) I don't have any objection to the proposal to scrap consensus as a process, because a community as young as this one needs to experiment with new approaches rather than cargo-cult old traditions. That said, it may be worth (re)reading rfc:7282 for any principles that would be worth keeping in some other fashion.

 – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 18:24, 16 September 2023 (EDT)

Annex namespace

On Discord, we have discussed adding an Annex namespace for some of the cruftier things (for lack of a better term) that we will want on our site.

• Trivia
• Road-related but not really articles
• Unsourceable stuff
• Highest/lowest AADT

An analogy would how the Star Trek wikis are broken down. The main article space would be Memory Alpha. The cruftier Annex namespace would be Memory Beta.

What do you think? What are some other topics that we can toss into the annex? –Fredddie™ 01:40, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

As a first approximation, I would say "the annex can include anything you want as long as it's road-related". We should probably put a few limitations on it (we probably don't want to be hosting people's fictional highway plans, for instance) but it would be a good place for anything that can't be easily expressed in the form of an article (or is not sourceable). We may want to put a warning banner on it, for unfamiliar readers, saying that "regular policies do not apply here, so take this info with that in mind". —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 02:10, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

Aww, but I wanted FritzOwl Interstate System to be a thing. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 04:11, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

Don't you mean the FritzOwl System of Coat to Cost Highways? :P —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 04:29, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

Of course, how could I make such a silly mistake? LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 04:30, 22 June 2023 (EDT)

Random thought: Many of our editing resources would probably be of general enough roadgeek interest to go in the Annex, rather than project space. (Things like where to find shield specs, map archives, etc.) —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 03:37, 24 June 2023 (EDT)

I would agree with that. I was also thinking that the speed limits and road sign comparison articles could go there, too. –Fredddie™ 15:30, 24 June 2023 (EDT)

Maybe this could be a Library: namespace? Imzadi 1979 → 15:33, 24 June 2023 (EDT)

Or the Help namespace that is already built into the wiki. –Fredddie™ 16:49, 24 June 2023 (EDT)

I'd prefer leaving the help namespace for actual technical documentation on MediaWiki and any extensions we install (meaning if you are an experienced editor here you can just ignore the whole namespace). We could do a library namespace, but I think that kind of unnecessarily silos the editing resources away from the other annex content (many of our editing resources would also be useful for people who are only casual editors here, but have a general interest in roads). If there's anything that is really 100% wiki focused and not useful to someone with general roadgeek interest, the AARoads namespace is the appropriate place for that. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 02:30, 26 June 2023 (EDT)

We actually should import the entire Help: namespace. In looking up MediaWiki extensions, one of the pages suggested doing that. Imzadi 1979 → 05:59, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

Support the proposal overall. --Rschen7754 16:23, 24 June 2023 (EDT)

I like the idea for an Annex namespace for information that would be too trivial for main article space. I also like the idea of a Library namespace for editing resources. Dough4872 16:39, 24 June 2023 (EDT)

Would we want this to be searchable on Google? --Rschen7754 22:59, 3 July 2023 (EDT)

That's a good question. On the one hand, being searchable and discoverable makes the content more accessible, but on the other, we're not making any guarantees that it is sourced, vetted, or even correct... —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 20:46, 5 July 2023 (EDT)

Draft content policy

I have created a draft of a content policy, using User:Fredddie/Policies as a guide and formatting it according to the Standard/Support/Guidance/Option scheme used in the MUTCD. Please take a look and let me know what you think. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 03:34, 24 June 2023 (EDT)

Some points:

• SRNC did not cover Canada so you might want to add something in that regard.
• Under sources, you don't address maps at all.
• The scope probably needs further examination. I know at the moment we allow articles on many national and state scenic byways, as well as auto trails, without controversy. For Canada you could probably say primary provincial highways and get 90% of the coverage. --Rschen7754 12:16, 24 June 2023 (EDT)

I said it on Discord, but I don't think our fair-use content policy needs to be as draconian as enwiki's. I think if we limited uses to five or even three pages, that should cover the vast majority of uses. Shields I wouldn't even worry about because they're going to be between 24px and 72px and unlinked. Reason being is that we are a roads wiki, we are limited by nature. –Fredddie™ 16:06, 24 June 2023 (EDT)

I think this is a good start for a content policy. I do agree with Rschen that we need to mention information about using maps as sources, since this was recently a contested issue on Wikipedia. In addition, the scope should mention other types of roads such as auto trails, scenic byways, and whatever else we decide to cover including the extent of coverage of secondary state highways and county routes as well as how business loops/special routes should be covered. The scope should also mention what types of roads we decide not to cover as well. Dough4872 16:47, 24 June 2023 (EDT)

Regarding Rschen's points, #1 would cover state maps, and all we need to do is add "maps and atlases" to the list in #2 to cover Rand McNally, et al. –Fredddie™ 16:55, 24 June 2023 (EDT)

Well, this is a draft, we can change the wording as much as we like before it becomes policy. Some responses, though:

• Regarding the SRNC stuff, that's just temporary language that will be replaced when we decide what the new naming conventions are going to be.
• It says reliable sources include...but it doesn't say other sources are excluded. (I've done my time WikiLawyering, remember. ;) ) But yes, we can shim maps in there somewhere.
• The scope definition definitely needs to be expanded/made more precise, but it looks like it's several discussions on this page have not reached a conclusion, so I didn't bother to try to make the language perfect because it currently doesn't fully reflect consensus anyway. (The summary of the outcomes of the discussions will need to be added to the policy either way.)
• For the fair use policy, I was mostly using the enwp fair use guideline as a known good template; we can certainly loosen it if it's deemed prudent and within our rights to do. Still, though, it is actually designed to be quite a bit looser than the enwp guideline as-is—note that because the fair use rationale is in a guidance "should" statement rather than a "shall", not having a fair use rationale is not grounds to delete an image! —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 18:00, 24 June 2023 (EDT)

Assessment scale

I started a mockup of an assessment scale over at User:Imzadi1979/Assessment. Thoughts? Imzadi 1979 → 23:23, 25 June 2023 (EDT)

I assume anything in Annex wouldn't be assessed? --Rschen7754 23:28, 25 June 2023 (EDT)

I like this assessment scale, it kind of goes with the assessment based on the completeness of the big three sections that we have used on Wikipedia for years along with having more formal processes similar to GAN/ACR/FAC, with the notable change of merging ACR and FAC. I think we can have an “Annex-class” for pages that are part of the annex that don’t need to follow the article assessment scale. Dough4872 23:32, 25 June 2023 (EDT)

I don't think there'd be much need for an "annex" class—that was necessary on enwp because we needed to tag pages relevant to our project and tell the template to ignore the assessment. Here, we can just leave the assessment template off (or feed it a generic "N/A" argument).

I do agree that annex pages shouldn't be assessed, however. In most cases they will not be articles we can judge by the same criteria (and some people who might be interested in using the annex wouldn't be interested in having their page assessed anyway). —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 02:26, 26 June 2023 (EDT)

I think of the Annex, under the current ideas of what it would be, as its own project. Putting that content into its own namespace implicitly assesses it, thus we don't need to assess it explicitly. Imzadi 1979 → 16:02, 27 June 2023 (EDT)

What about importance? Are we going to carry that over? Personally I've found it useless, to be honest. --Rschen7754 03:01, 29 June 2023 (EDT)

I think we can use the same importance scale that we use on Wikipedia. However, I can also see us not really needing an importance scale either. Dough4872 18:11, 29 June 2023 (EDT)

Agreed it would be useless; highways come pre-sorted by importance for your convenience. If we need something like the importance categories in the future we can just group by highway system. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:09, 1 July 2023 (EDT)

There are of course outliers. For example Clark County Route 215 is significantly more notable and important than the average county route, even Clark County route. But I don't see the need to create infrastructure just to tell people that, it's fairly self evident. It would be about like those classy Wikipedia templates "This section is empty" or "This lead may be too long".

I've taken some time to think about this and I don't think assessments are worth the effort anymore. On enwiki, we incentivized destubbing articles and that was great because it meant reducing the likelihood of the article being deleted. That's (very likely) not going to happen here, so the same kind of incentives won't work. Plus, it was easy to game the system if you had a buddy for mutual back scratching, which led to many Good Articles that frankly weren't very good. I'd be much happier with tags that we could place in a section that needs some work. Hell, we could even turn off their display for people who aren't logged in. I guess the incentive would be that it's our content on our website, so we want to make it good to increase readership. This all being said, I am not against a formal review for "featured content" for lack of a better term. I just don't think we need the bureaucracy of grading articles. –Fredddie™ 00:49, 26 July 2023 (EDT)

You're correct that our incentives have changed a bit, and yes, assessment is a large amount of bureaucracy, especially if we're going to do a global reassessment rather than simply carry over the Wikipedia assessments. However, there's that old management axiom "If you can't measure it you can't improve it" (which is credited to so many people on the first page of Google results I'm just going to arbitrarily say Theodore Roosevelt came up with it). Assessments are subjective, but they are the only tool we have to see whether the project is moving forward or not. Frankly, without the assessments I become hilariously ineffective as an editor, because my entire editing workflow is structured around them; Oklahoma still has lots of articles with no history section or entirely unreferenced route descriptions, but without those being tagged "start" or whatever I'll spend more time finding them than if I can just go to the assessment list, sort worst to best, and grab what comes up. That, and I personally find it really hard to stay motivated without some sort of measurable progress I'm working toward. Without it, it just feels like I'm pouring time and energy to an endless task; at least if the number goes from 3.954 to 3.838 or whatever I have some proof to myself I did something. I suppose rather than using an assessment scale, we could just have a checklist of things that a featured article needs and then keep track of which articles have one check, which have two, etc... but that's just assessment with the serial number filed off.

Also, don't forget...because this isn't Wikipedia, if someone is engaging in bad faith conduct like falsifying assessments for useless wiki points...ban their ass. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 07:57, 27 July 2023 (EDT)

This reply is woefully late, but I get the same editing push by making sure "maintenance categories" are empty. The thought being is if there are no articles in the "Crappy history section" category, then I know everything is good. That's basically how I bided my time on enwiki. If we can tie the two together, you get your points and I get maintenance cats to empty, then everybody wins. –Fredddie™ 15:49, 21 August 2023 (EDT)

I would disagree, while the statistics have been abused in the past, baby:bathwater. Also for the reasons Scott states. --Rschen7754 20:36, 21 August 2023 (EDT)

I like the proposed assessment scale, and support keeping assessment around in general. The benefits of having a metric to keep track of article quality outweigh the downsides of editors abusing the metrics. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 15:03, 19 September 2023 (EDT)

Implementation

I have implemented this as {{level of service}} (or {{LOS}} if you're in a hurry). It accepts class (for the class, A-E), region (state, province or country), and type (e.g. state highway, Interstate, turnpike, system, w/e). I've placed it on Kansas Turnpike, Michigan State Trunkline Highway System, and K-107 (Kansas highway) as a proof-of-concept. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:41, 22 September 2023 (EDT)

I like this a lot. Can you expand a little more on how we should use the "type" field? What does it currently accomplish and is there any standard way it's intended to be used? TC (Eli) 00:54, 22 September 2023 (EDT)

This is meant to be used to indicate the type of highway. So Interstate 80 would be something like {{LOS|class=C|region=United States|type=Interstate}}. Other options would be "U.S. route", "State highway", "System", "County road", or however you want to categorize it. The categories it files the article under are by region, type, or both. (So you would have, e.g. D-Class South Dakota articles, D-Class state highway articles, and D-Class South Dakota state highway articles.) —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 06:21, 22 September 2023 (EDT)

It sounds like we would need a list of acceptable options. I would prefer using abbreviations, but then we get into problems like whether WA is Washington or Western Australia. (Though Georgia could be a problem). I assume the state categories would also need to feed into the national categories. --Rschen7754 12:28, 22 September 2023 (EDT)

SRNC 2.0

Further information: w:WP:SRNC and w:WP:USSH

There had been some discussions over there years that "SRNC didn't quite get it right" but none of us were willing to re-litigate. Now that we are moving away from that other site, now is our chance to fix what needs to be fixed, and indeed that is not my intent. So, if you would like to propose a change to SRNC, add a third-level heading below and we can discuss the merits of each proposal individually. –Fredddie™ 12:41, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

Edit: SRNC and USSH only covered the US but that does not mean we can't discuss other countries here. –Fredddie™ 12:52, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

Also just to be clear SNRC was a huge debate that decided the naming conventions for Interstate, US, and state highways. We're talking about article naming conventions with this debate. Dave (talk) 19:05, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

Interstate Highways

I wouldn't have a separate debate. Whichever option wins the debate for US highways I'd just use that same formatting, with the obvious substitution of "Interstate" for "U.S. Route" Dave (talk) 16:49, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

The way I reading this is that you would add the word Route to Interstate titles: Interstate 5 → Interstate Route 5? –Fredddie™ 18:37, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

Dope! Thanks for catching that. Fixed. Dave (talk) 18:42, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

U.S. Highways

Articles belonging to the United States Numbered Highway System should be named U.S. Highway nn instead of U.S. Route nn.

National - U.S. Route 1 → U.S. Highway 1

State Detail - U.S. Route 30 in Iowa → U.S. Highway 30 in Iowa –Fredddie™ 12:46, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

Support. Imzadi 1979 → 16:42, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

Needs more work I'm ok with having a vote for Route vs Highway on the national highway articles. However, there are regions where route is indeed the better choice, so I would not impose one word on all states. For example UDOT consistently uses "route" across the board in documentation. My preference for state detail articles is U.S. Route 30 in Iowa → U.S. Route/Highway 30 (Iowa) (choice of Route or Highway should be consistent for the state and based on local and/or DOT usage)- This makes it clear the Iowa is for disambiguation and not part of the title. I've seen Google Maps many times borrow the wikipedia title. It also makes it easier to pipe link and have scripts parse out the disambiguation portion of the title when it's not needed or desired. Dave (talk) 16:49, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

Oppose this suggestion. Parentheses implies disambiguation, while "in Iowa" implies that we're talking about a part of a larger whole. In the case of a state detail article, we are not disambiguating between multiple highways with the same name.

I would also not support splitting the nomenclature of a nationally applied designation in the article titles. We should be consistent from coast to coast. Imzadi 1979 → 19:55, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

I don’t support this proposal entirely because, as Dave mentioned, some states use “route” instead of “highway” to refer to their US roads. I think the title for state-detail pages and national-detail pages not split into state-detail pages should be “U.S. Route X” or “U.S. Highway X” depending on the local term used. However, we may need to vote which term to use for national-detail pages that are split into state-detail pages. As for state-detail page titles, I prefer “U.S. Route X in Statename” since that clearly shows we are referring to the segment of a longer US route in a state and not a separate highway as the parentheses disambiguator may suggest. Dough4872 20:04, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

I've got to be honest, my teeth grit at the thought of having my baby titled "U.S. Highway 50 in Nevada". If that is the approved convention I might just add a hatnote to the article that says "Note: this article was not written by an ignorant redneck transplant to Nevada. Please to not attack the author for any perceived ignorance from the article title. It was forced on him, in the name of consistency" I get it, that if we agree consistency is king, half the country is going to have to grit their teeth somewhat, but that one truly does sound baaaaad. And it's funny, because "U.S. Highway 40 in Colorado" sounds normal to me. Colorado does seem to use Highway as much as or more than Route. Similarly I've come to accept U.S. Highway 395 as you hear that from area transplants who are at least making an effort to not sound like Southern Californians (or whatever), but U.S. Highway 50 is fingernails on the chalkboard. ;) Dave (talk) 10:54, 1 July 2023 (EDT)

Comment — I don't have a strong preference on whether we use Route or Highway, as long as we are consistent. Highway sounds a little better to me. But AASHTO's committee is the Special Committee on U.S. Route Numbering. In that case, I don't know whether "U.S. Route" refers to the U.S. Highway System specifically or all federally numbered highways, which also include the Interstates and *cringe* Bike Routes. However, I am opposed to inconsistently naming the state-detail articles with Route and Highway. It would be confusing to have articles titled U.S. Highway 30 in Iowa and U.S. Route 30 in Illinois. VC 12:30, 1 July 2023 (EDT)

Comment I think this could be confusing in Ohio, which technically distinguishes between a "route" and a "highway" (the portion of a route that the state owns). I don't know if other states make the same distinction though. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 22:45, 17 July 2023 (EDT)

Comment If we stick with a uniform standard, what do we do about the better known U.S. Routes/Highways where one version is ingrained in popular culture? If we go with Highway, we end up with "U.S. Highway 66" despite what decades of Americana would suggest, but the Route convention leaves us with stuff like "U.S. Route 101 in California" and "U.S. Route 61 in Minnesota" that also go against the popular name. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 00:56, 4 September 2023 (EDT)

"U.S." vs. "US"

We have another mismatch or inconsistency issue to discuss. Currently on ENWP, we abbreviate the designations of United States Numbered Highways as "US #", although a few states have that hyphenated. We spell out the full names as "U.S. Highway/Route #" in text and "U.S. Route #" in the titles. As a pure styling matter, I think we should drop the periods in the titles and full name. This would follow the styling guidance from The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed., from 2010 and the 17th ed. from 2017. CMOS is a pretty standard style guide for American writing, and I think we should move toward following it. If nothing else, we'd have a consistency between punctuation on full name and abbreviation. Imzadi 1979 → 12:33, 3 July 2023 (EDT)

Oppose. I'm for the dots. Even for the abbreviations. –Fredddie™ 16:23, 3 July 2023 (EDT)

I’m fine with either, but think we should be consistent with using either dots or no dots for both the full title and the abbreviation, as in we would have U.S. Route X (U.S. X) or US Route X (US X). Dough4872 16:47, 3 July 2023 (EDT)

My first choice is the status quo. I can't justify that choice, only that I'm used to it and the inconsistency doesn't bother me. However, if the "consensus" (and I gag as i type that) is consistency is better I'd rather have no periods. Dave (talk) 01:30, 4 July 2023 (EDT)

I support the status quo. VC 15:14, 5 July 2023 (EDT)

Wikipedia has conditioned me to perceive the dotless form as sloppy. I cannot unsee it. As for consistency, I have a feeling this will force us to start writing "Washington, DC" in countless {{cite report}} invocations, which will take even more getting used to. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 22:45, 17 July 2023 (EDT)

I'm with Dave here. Support status quo; asked to pick a side, would prefer no periods. TCN7JM 00:02, 17 September 2023 (EDT)

Michigan

Michigan highways no longer need the highway disambiguator: M-1 (Michigan highway) → M-1 (Michigan). This will also future-proof if we expand elsewhere where motorways are named M-nn.

Additionally, Michigan CDHs would transform from A-2 (Michigan county highway) → A-2 (Michigan). –Fredddie™ 12:46, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

Support - Only need the state name in the disambiguator since we are a road wiki now. Dough4872 20:04, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

Support. --Rschen7754 01:48, 1 July 2023 (EDT)

Support — VC 12:17, 1 July 2023 (EDT)

Support—and for those that need disambiguation by years, I'd suggest "M-56 (Michigan, 1919–1957)". In fact, that could be the overall standard when we need to include years: append it after the state name. In the case of concurrent duplicates, the state name gets preceded by a city/county or something else, so "M-28 Business (Ishpeming–Negaunee, Michigan)" and "M-28 Business (Newberry, Michigan)". Oh wait, that's how it already works, but it would apply to other states too. Imzadi 1979 → 23:48, 4 July 2023 (EDT)

Kansas

Kansas highways no longer need any disambiguator. K-4 (Kansas highway) → K-4. –Fredddie™ 12:46, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

• I am not sure about removing all the disambiguators. For example, Albania uses K for their municipal roads. Finland uses it for their secondary main class roads. --Rschen7754 14:05, 30 June 2023 (EDT)
• I would leave them at least at K-4 (Kansas) for consistency with Michigan. Imzadi 1979 → 16:43, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

Agreed. It's obvious to us, it may not be to others. Dave (talk) 16:49, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

I am fine with consistency! –Fredddie™ 18:10, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

I also agree we should leave the state-name disambiguator per the above. Dough4872 20:04, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

Use K-X (Kansas). VC 12:19, 1 July 2023 (EDT)

Redirects from K-4→K-4 (Kansas) would be welcome, though. (At least until we start carrying Albania, Finland, et al.) —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:16, 16 July 2023 (EDT)

Nebraska

There was some discussion on Discord recently about Nebraska state highways, and it seems NDOT uses N-nn consistently, so following Michigan and Kansas, Nebraska Highway 2 → N-2 (Nebraska). –Fredddie™ 14:21, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

<state name> State Route x

This section covers multiple states that are currently named with the format <state name> State Route X. Among them California State Route 1, Nevada State Route 28 and Utah State Route 128.

California State Route 1 → State Route 1 (California). As the movie line goes "This dance is the Brazilian Creep. Of course in Brazil they just call it 'the' Creep". Nobody in CA calls a highway a California State Route, in neither official no colloquial usage. Again, the state name is there for disambiguation, it's not part of the title, adding parenthesis makes that clear. Dave (talk) 16:49, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

I'm not necessarily against this, but I've asked this question on the forum, what would be format for New York? New York State Route could be interpreted many different ways and all could be correct. –Fredddie™ 17:09, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

State Route 28 (New York). I don't see a need to handle it differently. Am I missing something? Dave (talk) 17:17, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

Is it "New York State" Route 28, New York "State Route" 28, or "New York State Route" 28? https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=33051.0 is the original forum post. –Fredddie™ 18:08, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

The usual confusion for New York is there is a major city with the same name as the state. To outsiders, when they hear "New York" it's not always immediately clear if it's referring to the city or the state. However, IMHO, State Route 9 (New York) is crystal clear, we're talking about the state here. I'd argue that's more clear than any of the options for interpreting New York State Route 9. Dave (talk) 18:12, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

Generally speaking, I'm in favor of moving the state name to parentheses wherever possible. The trouble is that in a few states, the state name is part of the official type. I believe that New York is one of these states. Imzadi 1979 → 19:49, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

Indeed, this would be my only concern with the proposal. --Rschen7754 20:01, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

Having joined Wikipedia after SRNC took place, I am okay with leaving the articles at “Statename Route X” since that’s what I have been familiar with my whole editing career. However, I am not opposed to the “Route X (Statename)” naming convention as many people will often refer to state roads as “Route X” or “Highway X” without the state name depending on the state. Dough4872 20:04, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

If a state includes the state name in their route naming, yeah, let's keep to what's actually used. I guess we'd break those states out of this proposal and group them in proposal of "keep the status quo". However, the states that I'm familiar with, that's not the case.Dave (talk) 21:29, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

That's where I would disagree, I think we would cause confusion if we had some one way and some the other. --Rschen7754 00:22, 1 July 2023 (EDT)

Agreed, and the only real benefit to doing the parenthesis thing to begin with is the pipe trick (where if you don't include anything after the | in a link, MediaWiki will autopopulate it with the article title minus any parentheses), so leaving a few states out of that benefit just because their DOT or legislature said so would be rather unfortunate. (Also, I presume we will have the title still be "State Highway" in the states where that is what they're called...if I ever have to call a road in Oklahoma "state route" I will eat enough rocks that I turn into an immortal dragon and rampage across the countryside.) —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:07, 1 July 2023 (EDT)

That's my issue with forcing "U.S. Highway 89 in Utah" (or "US. Highway 50 in Nevada") in the U.S. Route proposal above. It makes it sound like that Wikipedia article was written by a transplant who wants all the benefits of moving to the state but refuses to adapt to the culture of the state. Just go to any Utah/Nevada forum and watch as people are mercilessly mocked for saying "The 395" or "The 15". Dave (talk) 10:44, 1 July 2023 (EDT)

And using "U.S. Route 23 in Michigan" makes it sound like an Ohioan picked the title for that highway. Remember, this isn't about article body text but the titles. If you look at ENWP articles now where there is the Route/Highway mismatch in state-detail articles, we already ignore it in the body text and use the appropriate term. Imzadi 1979 → 11:49, 3 July 2023 (EDT)

OK so it sounds like the proposal isn't perceived as bad, but I should reformat it as Old: <state name> State Route/Highway/Road x -> State Route/Highway/Road (<state name>). With the choice of Route/Highway/Road matching what was decided in the prior naming convention poll, unless someone makes a convincing argument that word choice was decided incorrectly last time. Dave (talk) 10:39, 1 July 2023 (EDT)

More generically: <type> <number (<state>). That's essentially what Michigan and Kansas would do above, except the type there is just a letter prefixed onto the number.

Remember to the reverse pipe trick that works on Michigan/Kansas articles now. In writing a new article, a hypothetical "M-999 (Michigan highway)", piping a link to another highway as [[|M-998]] expands to [[M-998 (Michigan highway)|M-998]] upon saving. Putting the CDHs under the same disambiguator enhances the utility of that trick since we're likely to get some additional CDH articles spun out over time.

To add to the discussions above, I'd contemplate Minnesota switching to "Trunk Highway X (Minnesota)" and Wisconsin switching to "State Trunk Highway X (Wisconsin)" since that's the more formal naming. Imzadi 1979 → 17:59, 1 July 2023 (EDT)

I might be the outlier here, but I actually prefer the current disambiguation system. If we have to disambiguate the routes anyway, we might as well make it explicit in the name which system they're part of. This is most relevant in states like Illinois that love to reuse route numbers; if you just say "Route 50" in Illinois, it's not clear if you're talking about the east-west route downstate or Cicero Avenue in Chicago, so you'd need to clarify the latter with "Illinois 50", "State Route 50", or just "Illinois Route 50" anyway. (Of course, I should also add that my strongest opinion on SRNC is that it's ridiculous that this debate ever went to ArbCom in the first place, so I'm not *that* opposed to a switch.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 15:39, 19 September 2023 (EDT)

For 48 out of 50 states, if you type the state name into the search bar, most of the results are highways in the state-level system. That's a good thing (and I'd argue Kansas and Michigan should also have some sort of state-name redirect for searchability's sake, but I bet I'm in the minority there). Consistency makes things easier to find and, in my opinion, easier to digest. When I see disambiguating parentheses in the title of a road article, I automatically assume the road is one of multiple identically named routes in the same system, like an auxiliary Interstate number that's reused in multiple states, or two unrelated highways in the same state system with the same number, or the many special routes of Interstates and U.S. Routes. The state highways in South Dakota have nothing to do with those in North Carolina, so why would we name the articles like they do? The factor that most defines these highways is the state in which they're located, so putting that at the front just makes sense to me.

As with Minnesota County State-Aid Highways, we're not beholden to official titles here, and if we were going primarily by colloquialisms, we'd name every California highway article "the <number>". I'd say consistency, readability, and searchability should be our main tenets here. TCN7JM 16:09, 19 September 2023 (EDT)

I gave my opinion above but I never explained why. I originally supported what is the current nomenclature during SRNC. However, three arguments cause me to lean towards making a change: 1) International consistency - otherwise we wind up with things like United Kingdom A1 road 2) Michigan and Kansas 3) Because this is our wiki we can insist on consistent naming schemes and have the means to enforce it, and we can require the parentheses on everything and don't have nonsense like this. --Rschen7754 01:48, 20 September 2023 (EDT)

To this I would ask two things.

1. Who is actually searching for "United Kingdom A1 road"? Here in the U.S., if you're not intimately familiar with the official terminology, it's reasonable to assume you would call a state highway by its state name. The roadways are often branded with state symbology and the common abbreviations (officially and otherwise) are often just the state postal abbreviations. None of this is true in, say, Europe.
2. Is it really prudent to move heaven and earth and discard almost two decades of precedent for the benefit of two states instead of taking smaller measures to help those two states conform in case readers/searchers are confused? (Like the redirects I mentioned above.) I don't wanna be the "it's always been this way" guy, but I feel like the articles being named this way for nearly the entire history of this project has to matter at least a little. Temporal consistency matters as much as nomenclatural consistency, in my opinion. TCN7JM 14:34, 20 September 2023 (EDT)

I don't think we necessarily shoehorn every state and country into one format. I'm loath to support moving Iowa's articles to Highway 1 (Iowa), etc. when Iowa Highway 1 and Iowa 1 are used almost interchangeably by the DOT. I think consistency among a specific set of articles (read: across one state or country) is more important. That all being said, Iowa Highway 1, State Highway 74 (Oklahoma), New York State Route 17, A1 (Great Britain), and N82 (Ireland) can all coexist without the need to make one group look like all the others. –Fredddie™ 16:23, 20 September 2023 (EDT)

I think it's useful to consider what each state's DOT or residents call other states' similarly named routes when they need to disambiguate. Since California was given as an example, I'll point out that Caltrans sometimes says "California SR X" and "Arizona SR Y" to distinguish the two states' state route systems. [10] Meanwhile, in Ohio, people say or write either "SR X" short for "State Route X", or "Ohio X" short for "Ohio State Route X" for routes near the state line. A title of "State Route X (Ohio)" wouldn't be terribly surprising, but it doesn't seem like a significant improvement over "Ohio State Route X". I think it's fine if Michigan, Kansas, and Nebraska stick to their catchy monograms with disambiguation as necessary, but that doesn't need to affect the rest of the country. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 03:05, 26 September 2023 (EDT)

Canada and US territories

Just to touch on it, I would support using this scheme for Canada as well, going with <type> <number> (<province>) and <type> <number> (<territory>) as appropriate for consistency. Further, I'd use that last formulation for the US territories for consistency. Imzadi 1979 → 11:49, 3 July 2023 (EDT)

I agree. It seems like the Quebec–Ontario border is the highway/route border, generally speaking. –Fredddie™ 16:26, 3 July 2023 (EDT)

I suggest Québec Autoroutes have no disambiguator (unless we plan on adding French Autoroutes). LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 22:34, 5 July 2023 (EDT)

Personally I would suggest future proofing so we don't have to do a bunch of moves later. (That being said, the current enwiki convention in France is Axx road). --Rschen7754 14:17, 6 July 2023 (EDT)

Pretty sure the official nomenclature for French Autoroutes is "Autoroute A(X)" anyways, though I could be wrong. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 17:50, 6 July 2023 (EDT)

State highways where state is part of name

I don't think disambiguating would necessarily work for Iowa. We're a "highway" state, so Highway 100 (Iowa) would be correct-ish, but it wouldn't feel right. I'd be more inclined to just be Iowa 100 and leave the word highway out entirely. –Fredddie™ 19:22, 1 July 2023 (EDT)

can you explain what you mean by "it" in "it is not obvious"? You have Iowa as an example, but I'm not sure what other states would apply without clarification on "it".Dave (talk) 00:44, 2 July 2023 (EDT)

Sorry about that. I originally had my first comment in the section above this one. I mean states where the state name is an integral part of the highway name. Hopefully the new header clears that up. –Fredddie™ 01:45, 2 July 2023 (EDT)

Can you go into more detail about the state name being an integral part of the highway name, both in general and specifically for Iowa? I am thinking of those states where the routes are referred to in print as ST X (where ST is the postal abbreviation). I used passive voice because I am not sure how we are going to factor common usage versus how someone at the DOT would speak the route designation. VC 12:46, 2 July 2023 (EDT)

I guess it's one of those things that makes perfect sense in my head, but falls apart when I try to explain it. My mind keeps going to places like Iowa or Illinois that use 'Highway' or 'Route' for all highways or routes regardless of classification. Iowans call US 30 "Highway 30" and Illinoisans "Route 30" but it's the same road. –Fredddie™ 16:27, 2 July 2023 (EDT)

County roads

For the US, I don't think we should change how county roads are titled. (County|Parish) (Road|Route|State-Aid Highway|Trunk Highway) \s?\d+\s? \(<name> (County|Parish), <state>\) seems to work for us. This takes into account the Michigan CDH proposal above.

But what about Canadian county roads? I think Ontario is the only province that has any coverage. Should we use the same format as U.S. county roads? Should we add Ontario to the end of the disambiguator? Here's a list showing what that would be like.

Extended content

Municipal Road x (Chatham-Kent, Ontario) Municipal Road x (Greater Sudbury, Ontario) Municipal Road x (Hamilton, Ontario) Municipal Road x (Kawartha Lakes, Ontario) [CKL Road X] Municipal Road x (Ottawa) Municipal Road x (Prince Edward County, Ontario) Municipal Road x (Toronto) Regional Road x (Durham Region, Ontario) Regional Road x (Halton Region, Ontario) Regional Road x (Niagara Region, Ontario) Regional Road x (Peel Region, Ontario) Regional Road x (Waterloo Region, Ontario) Regional Road x (York Region, Ontario) County Road x (Brant County, Ontario) County Road x (Bruce County, Ontario) County Road x (Dufferin County, Ontario) County Road x (Elgin County, Ontario) County Road x (Essex County, Ontario) County Road x (Frontenac County, Ontario) County Road x (Grey County, Ontario) County Road x (Haldimand County, Ontario) County Road x (Halliburton County, Ontario) County Road x (Hastings County, Ontario) County Road x (Huron County, Ontario) County Road x (Lambton County, Ontario) County Road x (United Counties of Leeds and Grenville, Ontario) County Road x (Lennox and Addington County, Ontario) County Road x (Middlesex County, Ontario) County Road x (Norfolk County, Ontario) County Road x (Northumberland County, Ontario) County Road x (Oxford County, Ontario) County Road x (Perth County, Ontario) County Road x (Peterborough County, Ontario) County Road x (United Counties of Prescott and Russell, Ontario) County Road x (Renfrew County, Ontario) County Road x (Simcoe County, Ontario) County Road x (United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, Ontario) County Road x (Wellington County, Ontario) District Road x (Algoma District, Ontario) District Road x (Cochrane District, Ontario) District Road x (Kenora District, Ontario) District Road x (Manitoulin District, Ontario) District Road x (Muskoka District, Ontario) District Road x (Nipissing District, Ontario) District Road x (Parry Sound District, Ontario) District Road x (Rainy River District, Ontario) District Road x (Sudbury District, Ontario) District Road x (Thunder Bay District, Ontario) District Road x (Timiskaming District, Ontario)

I added Toronto for completeness, but I don't think the city has municipal numbered roads. –Fredddie™ 22:52, 5 July 2023 (EDT)

I agree we should keep the same article titles for US county routes and use the same format for county routes in Canada as well. Dough4872 06:39, 6 July 2023 (EDT)

This works well with my idea that we generally title articles as "<type> <number> (<place>)" where place could be more or less specific as appropriate based on the type involved. Imzadi 1979 → 13:02, 10 July 2023 (EDT)

To that point, I was thinking about how disambiguators are rare for placenames outside the U.S. Since this isn't Wikipedia, we could require disambiguators for sub-provincial divisions. –Fredddie™ 15:12, 10 July 2023 (EDT)

Proposal summary

Following the format of WP:USSH, this is a summary of the proposals thus far. –Fredddie™ 20:36, 5 July 2023 (EDT)

NB: if someone could spot check the Canadian abbreviations, that would be great. I took a guess at what I thought they were. –Fredddie™ 02:34, 5 July 2023 (EDT)

State/Territory/District	Official name	Article title	Abbreviation
Alabama	State Route X	State Route X (Alabama)	SR X
Alaska	Alaska Route X	Route X (Alaska)	AK-X
American Samoa	American Samoa Highway X	Highway X (American Samoa)	ASXXXX
Arizona	State Route X	State Route X (Arizona)	SR X
Arkansas	Highway X	Highway X (Arkansas)	AR X
California	State Route X	State Route X (California)	SR X
Colorado	State Highway X	State Highway X (Colorado)	SH X
Connecticut	Route X	Route X (Connecticut)	Route X
County roads	County Road X County Route X	County Road X (*county* County, *state*) County Route X (*county* County, *state*)	CR X
Delaware	Delaware Route X	Route X (Delaware)	DE X
District of Columbia	District of Columbia Route X	Route X (District of Columbia)	DC X
Florida	State Road X	State Road X (Florida)	SR X
Georgia	State Route X	State Route X (Georgia)	SR X
Guam	Guam Highway X	Highway X (Guam)	GH-X
Hawaii	Route X	Route X (Hawaii)	Route X
Idaho	State Highway X	State Highway X (Idaho)	SH-X
Illinois	Illinois Route X	Illinois Route X	IL X
Indiana	State Road X	State Road X (Indiana)	SR X
Iowa	Iowa Highway X	Iowa Highway X	Iowa X
Kansas	K-X	K-X (Kansas)	K-X
Kentucky	Kentucky Route X	Route X (Kentucky)	KY X
Louisiana	Louisiana Highway X	Highway X (Louisiana)	LA X
Louisiana parish roads	Parish Road X	Parish Road X (*parish* Parish, Louisiana)	PR X
Maine	State Route X	State Route X (Maine)	SR X
Maryland	Maryland Route X	Route X (Maryland)	MD X
Massachusetts	Route X	Route X (Massachusetts)	Route X
Michigan	M-X	M-X (Michigan)	M-X
Michigan CDHs and county roads	A-X County Road X	A-2 (Michigan) County Road X (*county* County, Michigan)	A-X CR X
Minnesota	Minnesota State Highway X	Trunk Highway X (Minnesota)	MN X
Minnesota county roads	County State-Aid Highway X County Road X	County State-Aid Highway X (*county* County, Minnesota) County Road X (*county* County, Minnesota)	CSAH X CR X
Mississippi	Mississippi Highway X	Highway X (Mississippi)	MS X
Missouri	Route X	Route X (Missouri)	Route X
Montana	Montana Highway X	Highway X (Montana)	MT X
Montana (secondary)	Secondary Highway X	Highway X (Montana)	S-X
Nebraska	Nebraska Highway X	N-X (Nebraska)	N-X
Nevada	State Route X	State Route X (Nevada)	SR X
New Hampshire	New Hampshire Route X	Route X (New Hampshire)	NH X
New Jersey	Route X	Route X (New Jersey)	Route X
New Mexico	State Road X	State Road X (New Mexico)	NM X
New York	New York State Route X	New York State Route X	NY X
North Carolina	NC X	Highway X (North Carolina)	NC X
North Dakota	North Dakota Highway X	Highway X (North Dakota)	ND X
Northern Mariana Islands	Northern Mariana Islands Highway X	Highway X (Northern Mariana Islands)	Hwy. X
Ohio	State Route X	State Route X (Ohio)	SR X
Oklahoma	State Highway X	State Highway X (Oklahoma)	SH-X
Oregon	Oregon Route X	Route X (Oregon)	OR X
Pennsylvania	Pennsylvania Route X	Route X (Pennsylvania)	PA X
Pennsylvania Quadrant	State Route X	State Route X (Y County, Pennsylvania)	SR X
Puerto Rico	PR-X	Highway X (Puerto Rico)	PR-X
Rhode Island	Route X	Route X (Rhode Island)	Route X
South Carolina	South Carolina Highway X	Highway X (South Carolina)	SC X
South Dakota	Highway X	Highway X (South Dakota)	SD X
Tennessee	State Route X	State Route X (Tennessee)	SR X
Texas	State Highway X	State Highway X (Texas)	SH X
U.S. Virgin Islands	U.S. Virgin Islands Highway X	Highway X (U.S. Virgin Islands)	Hwy X
Utah	State Route X	State Route X (Utah)	SR-X
Vermont	Vermont Route X	Route X (Vermont)	VT X
Virginia	State Route X	State Route X (Virginia)	SR X
Washington	State Route X	State Route X (Washington)	SR X
West Virginia	West Virginia Route X	Route X (West Virginia)	WV X
Wisconsin	State Trunk Highway X	State Trunk Highway X (Wisconsin)	WIS X
Wisconsin county roads	County Trunk Highway X	County Trunk Highway X (*county* County, Wisconsin)	CTH-X
Wyoming	Wyoming Highway X	Highway X (Wyoming)	WYO X
Province	Official name	Article title	Abbreviation
Alberta	Highway x	Highway x (Alberta)	Hwy x
British Columbia	Highway x	Highway x (British Columbia)	Hwy x
Manitoba	Highway x Provincial Road x	Highway x (Manitoba) Provincial Road x (Manitoba)	PTH x PR x
Winnipeg city routes	Route x	Route x (Winnipeg)	Route x
New Brunswick	Route x	Route x (New Brunswick)	Route x
Newfoundland and Labrador	Route x	Route x (Newfoundland and Labrador)	Route x
Northwest Territories	Highway x	Highway x (Northwest Territories)	Highway x
Nova Scotia	Trunk x (1-2 digit) Highway x (100-series) Route x (200 and up)	Trunk x (Nova Scotia) Highway x (Nova Scotia) Route x (Nova Scotia)	Trunk x Highway x Route x
Nunavut	no numbered routes
Ontario	King's Highway x	Highway X (Ontario)	Highway x
Ontario county roads	<County Name> County Road x	County Road x (<County Name>)	CR x
Quebec	Route x Autoroute x	Route x (Quebec) Autoroute x (Quebec)	Route x A-x
Prince Edward Island	Route x	Route x (Prince Edward Island)	Route x
Saskatchewan	Highway x	Highway X (Saskatchewan)	Hwy x
Yukon	Highway x	Highway X (Yukon)	Hwy x

Comments

This looks good to me to start, especially on the article title column. We probably should do a quick survey to make sure that all of the official names are correct, that we don't have assumptions from 2005 repeated again. Per the Guam Dept. of Public Works, it appears that they have Routes, not Highways, and they refer to them as "Route x" in short form. I think that merits an update.

As for the abbreviation column, I'd switch Minnesota to "TH x", and I'd switch Wisconsin to "STH-x". I don't think ArDOT uses "AR x", so that one probably should be switched to "Hwy. x". Then we should look at harmonizing the rest of the column and standardizing spaces vs. hyphens and "Hwy." vs. "Highway" because this is forming part of our AARW style guide and not mimicking the internal style guides of government agencies or the news media. It appears that "SH x" and "SR x" are the more common, so "SH-x" and "SR-x" should be switched for consistency. Highway is abbreviated more than it isn't, so should be abbreviated in those few places it isn't now. As an abbreviated word, it should have a period at the end, while initialisms don't get periods anymore.

Lest someone complain that we aren't following their favorite state DOT's format, when I was transcribing the AASHTO documents, they called everything "S.R. x" for several years, regardless of how the individual departments actually named and abbreviated their highways. Various news sources insert or drop periods and go with spaces or hyphens based on their style guides. We get to set our style guide, and this is part of that. Imzadi 1979 → 00:43, 6 July 2023 (EDT)

In my experience/opinion, public-facing MnDOT sources (and common parlance) dictate that the Minnesota abbreviation should remain "MN". TCN7JM 06:42, 31 August 2023 (EDT)

Minnesota can't seem to decide whether "State-Aid" is hyphenated or not. Feels like it logically should be ("County" and "State-Aid" are both adjectives describing the "Highway") but quite a few official sources at both the state and county level do not use the hyphen. Thoughts? TCN7JM 06:37, 31 August 2023 (EDT)

I would hyphenate it. The general rule is that if you drop either word and the result makes no sense, it's a compound modifier that needs to a hyphen. An "aid highway" doesn't make sense while a "state-aid highway" does. Since this is a matter of styling, we aren't totally beholden to how official sources style it. Imzadi 1979 → 05:41, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

ArDOT does use AR XX, especially on signs like this one, which are common across the state. I think the prose should use "Highway XX", and the abbreviations should be AR XX. Hwy. XX and Ark. XX are seen rarely, but I believe these are being phased out in favor of AR XX. Brandonrush Woo pig sooie! 10:08, 1 October 2023 (EDT)

AWB/JWB access

If you are interested in AA:JWB access, please sign up below. Admins and above have it by default. Presumably AWB works, but I have yet to try it since JS has been turned on. –Fredddie™ 18:42, 11 July 2023 (EDT)

User rights discussion

I think before launch we should consider the following two changes to user rights:

• Restrict uploading to administrators and those with a special right only, to encourage people to upload to Commons.
• Add rollback to the patrollers group to more quickly deal with vandalism.

Thoughts? --Rschen7754 22:12, 16 July 2023 (EDT)

Sounds good to me. We should also probably create a AARoads:User rights requests page to allow people to request patroller, uploader, and admin rights. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:14, 16 July 2023 (EDT)

Agreed with both of the above. Imzadi 1979 → 22:20, 16 July 2023 (EDT)

I agree with both points made by Rschen and Scott. Dough4872 22:21, 16 July 2023 (EDT)

Yeah, sounds good. (Is this a consensus forming? On AARoads Wiki?!) LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 22:24, 16 July 2023 (EDT)

This has now been done. --Rschen7754 12:07, 22 July 2023 (EDT)

Should we fold permissions into this page as well? I was thinking the AWB/JWB rights request could be here as well. It'd be one less forum and there's a thin line between permissions and rights. –Fredddie™ 14:54, 30 August 2023 (EDT)

I added the permission to the request page. along with a few clarifications. Imzadi 1979 → 05:35, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

For those who haven't yet commented, there are now some user rights requests that have been opened at AARoads:User rights requests. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:49, 14 September 2023 (EDT)

AASHTO Spring 2023

The meeting notes have been posted, [11]. Because this is AARW we can cite directly. --Rschen7754 14:14, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

{{AASHTO minutes|year=2023S}}: Special Committee on U.S. Route Numbering (June 9, 2023). "2023 Spring Meeting Report to the Council on Highways and Streets" (PDF) (Report). Washington, DC: American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Imzadi 1979 → 02:08, 16 September 2023 (EDT)

Navboxes vs categories

Just wondering what everyone thinks about getting rid of navboxes (like Template:Newfoundland and Labrador highways) in favor of the adjacent categories (Category:Newfoundland and Labrador provincial highways). I'll try to compile a list, but I wanted to get a generic conversation going. –Fredddie™ 20:33, 13 September 2023 (EDT)

I've long hated navboxes that are redundant to categories.Dave (talk) 21:48, 13 September 2023 (EDT)

I’m fine with getting rid of the navboxes in favor of categories as they both serve the same function of linking together common articles. The categories are better because they don’t pollute the “what links here” feature like the navboxes do. Dough4872 22:31, 13 September 2023 (EDT)

I'd drop the navboxes in favor of the categories. Imzadi 1979 → 02:15, 16 September 2023 (EDT)

Way, way back in the day the navboxes were laid out in a grid, so that the top row would be 1-9, second row would be 10-19, then 20-29, and so on. The cells where numbers were skipped were left blank. In the US and Interstate systems, all the primaries end up the same columns. I like this layout since it gives you a better idea of what numbers are and aren't used. (In fact, I replicated it at what is now AARoads:Oklahoma for my own use, so head on over there if you can't visualize what I'm talking about.) But you can't do that on enwp because it's "unencyclopedic". Would anyone feel differently about the navboxes if they were laid out like this? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:20, 13 September 2023 (EDT)

I might be okay with that for primary Interstate and US routes, but it would not be a good idea for state highways because there would be too many routes on there. Overall I favor the categories better. Dough4872 15:40, 14 September 2023 (EDT)

I think this works best for project pages and would take up too much room on articles. Imzadi 1979 → 02:15, 16 September 2023 (EDT)

Tracking files used on Commons

Wikimedia Commons user Rschen7754 suggested to me over there that my Usage Bot could usefully track the usage of Commons' files on this wiki. It would do this by fetching a list of the Commons files used on this wiki using the MediaWiki API and maintaining a collection of galleries on Commons so that "Commons:Files used on the AARoads Wiki" would appear in the "File usage on Commons" section of those files' pages on Commons. This would alert anyone proposing to delete or otherwise mess with those files to the effect that might have here. Does this seem like a good idea? --bjh21 (talk) 17:48, 14 September 2023 (EDT)

That would definitely be useful and appreciated! —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:50, 14 September 2023 (EDT)

I concur. This would be useful. Imzadi 1979 → 00:38, 15 September 2023 (EDT)

I also agree that this would be a great idea. Dough4872 20:28, 15 September 2023 (EDT)

Agreed, it would be useful especially if we start adding many more photos exclusively for AAroads wiki use. JJBers (talk) 14:46, 16 September 2023 (EDT)

I've now added the AARoads Wiki to Usage Bot's configuration, so if everything goes right it should populate c:Commons:Files used on the AARoads Wiki on Monday. --bjh21 (talk) 17:31, 23 September 2023 (EDT)

Adminship requirements

I do want to start this discussion since there are already requests for becoming an admin. What support percentage (support/support+oppose) are we looking for? Who is eligible to vote? And how long should requests last? Rschen7754 23:57, 14 September 2023 (EDT)

• I would suggest 2 weeks, 75%. Maybe we introduce eligibility requirements later, but not now. --Rschen7754 00:00, 15 September 2023 (EDT)
• If we want to return to the principle of "adminship is no big deal", then 50% + 1 vote should be sufficient. Experience on Wikipedia RFA (and the U.S. Senate!) shows that setting the bar much higher than that favors the status quo (and thus favors not promoting new admins). —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:04, 15 September 2023 (EDT)
  • I'm not sure about that. If someone doesn't have the trust of the vast majority of the community, they should not be admin. Ditto for the discussion below, I would say the threshold of support should be lower to remove an admin. --Rschen7754 00:10, 15 September 2023 (EDT)
    • That's a valid argument to make, but then if you look at most of the collectively-selected leadership roles that exist outside of the wiki world, very seldom do they require such a high bar. (By all accounts the governor of my state aligns pretty well with the majority political view here, and even he couldn't get all that much over 55%.) —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:23, 15 September 2023 (EDT)
      • It could be lower than 75%, after all one of our current admins passed enwiki with only 68%. --Rschen7754 00:32, 15 September 2023 (EDT)
• I see two trains of thought here. The first is that adminship is no big deal and, thus, if more than 25% of voters don't trust you with such a meaningless bit, then you probably shouldn't get it. The other, of course, is that a significant contingent of people don't actually view adminship that way, whether they realize it or not, so having such a high threshold is just going to turn this into enwiki RfA, which has been broken for years. I land on the side of train #2. I'd say 50%+1 is plenty. TCN7JM 03:04, 15 September 2023 (EDT)
  • Regarding timeframe, I'd say it should be a minimum of seven days and a maximum of 14. If there's an obvious consensus (to be determined by closing crat) after seven days, close it. If the discussion is still ongoing, allow it to continue until the 14-day mark at the latest, at which point the closing crat calls time and interprets the results themself. TCN7JM 03:10, 15 September 2023 (EDT)
• If I had my druthers, we'd save the high scrutiny for 'crats and hire more of them. That way they can give out rights (up to and including admin) at will. If an at-will admin screws up, they can be desysopped and the 'crat can get scolded for poor judgment on a drama board. I'm in the "adminship is NBD" camp. –Fredddie™ 19:53, 15 September 2023 (EDT)
  • So maybe we split the difference and say simple majority for admin, three-fourths majority for a bureaucrat? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 12:05, 18 September 2023 (EDT)

I say split the difference and make the percentage a 2/3 majority; that way, you won't get any admins who half the community doesn't support, but you also don't have quite as high a bar as RfA. (In practice, the bar for RfA is close to 2/3 when you factor in the discretionary range, but I'd rather not do crat chats here for a number of reasons.) I suspect a lot of the toxicity of RfA has less to do with the threshold and more to do with editors using it as a proxy battleground for every long-running Wikipedia culture war, and I'm hoping that us having a fresh start will cut out a lot of that. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 16:04, 19 September 2023 (EDT)

• I would support 2/3. --Rschen7754 01:40, 20 September 2023 (EDT)

Deadminship requirements

Unlike English Wikipedia, we should have a desysop process. What would be required? --Rschen7754 23:57, 14 September 2023 (EDT)

• Unlike with granting adminship, removing admin rights carries the risk that users that have had administrative actions carried out against them may gang up on them and call for blood. So a higher threshold for taking the mop away than granting it makes sense. I would say that a two-thirds majority would be a good place to put it. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:06, 15 September 2023 (EDT)
• I think 50%+1 would be more appropriate here - if half the community doesn't trust you, you shouldn't be an admin. But some wikis like Commons require that a discussion take place somewhere else as a first step, which could be a safeguard against removal. --Rschen7754 00:23, 15 September 2023 (EDT)
• I agree with Scott here. It might not be an issue now, but if we get large enough that an angry mob could theoretically be sent to desysop you, the bar should be higher than a simple majority. However, I also understand Rschen's POV and could be persuaded to rethink this if we have some sort of common-sense protection against pile-ons. TCN7JM 03:04, 15 September 2023 (EDT)
• Part of me thinks that desysopping should be by a majority vote of other sysops, while the vote of the rest of users could be counted as a single vote. –Fredddie™ 19:53, 15 September 2023 (EDT)
  • My concern with this is perception/closing ranks and a reluctance to let admins be held accountable for their own actions. --Rschen7754 23:51, 15 September 2023 (EDT)
    • That was my concern as well, but I was thinking of it coming from the other direction. –Fredddie™ 19:35, 19 September 2023 (EDT)
• I've been going back and forth on this, and I think I agree with Scott, if only because we don't know how this community will evolve yet or what sort of controversies we'll have to deal with. I think 50%+1 would work if the community continues to look like what it is now - a pretty close-knit group of people collaborating to write about roads - but if we get big enough that the community starts to factionalize (like enwiki has several times over) I wouldn't want one faction of editors to control a desysop vote. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 16:42, 19 September 2023 (EDT)

Closing

We only have 2 bureaucrats. Is the expectation still going to be that bureaucrats have to recuse in requests they have voted on? --Rschen7754 14:09, 15 September 2023 (EDT)

Until we have more 'crats, I would suggest that 'crats just don't vote or comment on requests unless there is a procedural question. –Fredddie™ 19:53, 15 September 2023 (EDT)

If we are doing the decision on straight vote count, theoretically it shouldn't matter whether crats vote or not, because everyone will be able to count for themselves that the vote was 17-3 or whatever and thus that the promotion was appropriate. The enwp-style "closer gets to decide based on the vibe of the conversation after they throw out whatever votes they want to throw out" never sat well with me, so I'm loath to employ it here, even if I do get to play Chief Vibemaster here. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 14:39, 16 September 2023 (EDT)

Interwiki link colors

There was some talk somewhere about changing the color of interwiki links (such as the "bluelinks" to enwiki) to differentiate from other external links. I'd like to propose the following colors:

• #0000cc for unvisited links
• #800080 for visited links.

According to mw:Design/Link colors, both of these colors are different than any of the default skin colors so there shouldn't be any issue there.

Any thoughts? –Fredddie™ 22:31, 19 September 2023 (EDT)

I like this idea for a color change for interwiki links. Dough4872 23:47, 21 September 2023 (EDT)

No gripes here. TC (Eli) 05:06, 22 September 2023 (EDT)

A typical paragraph will have several interwiki links to Wikipedia. Will the #0000cc be distracting compared to the current color? The Chinese Wikipedia developed a w:zh:Template:Internal link helper for linking to other Wikipedias and Wikidata within article text. It highlights the link in #007a5e (and turns #d73333 on hover). I find the green to have just the right amount of contrast, but I haven't checked how it fares with color blindness. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 03:12, 24 September 2023 (EDT)

I think it might make more sense for the more saturated colors (i.e. the two proposed ones) to be used to internal links and the less saturated for external. For one, that underscores the "this is on the same topic" vs. "this is on a different topic" distinction, so it seems like it would be more intuitive to make the most relevant links more noticeable. Secondly, since there will be more external links than internal links, it makes more sense for those to blend in more to keep from overwhelming the user. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:00, 30 September 2023 (EDT)

Customize the wiki?

Is it a good idea to customize the wiki? If so, I have some suggestions.

Thanks! --Dwightland (talk) 12:52, 1 October 2023 (EDT)

You are free to edit your Special:Mypage/common.css as you see fit without it affecting other users. –Fredddie™ 14:12, 1 October 2023 (EDT)

Some changes to the theme are on our to-do list. However, we're still in the process of cleaning up the initial article import, so that's been higher priority. As Fredddie recommends, perhaps the best way to make a suggestion is to make the changes you want to see on your common.css, then show off what you've changed, and whatever the community likes we can move over to the site-wide CSS. Welcome to the AARoads Wiki! —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 17:41, 1 October 2023 (EDT)