AARoads:The Interchange

Debates about Scope

Bridges/tunnels

This discussion has been closed and is preserved as an archive of the decision of the community. Please do not modify it!

The vote counts come down to in 5 favor, 3 opposed, 1 neutral. There is consensus to include bridges/tunnels, but there still needs to be criteria defined as to when to include them. --Rschen7754 02:44, 20 January 2024 (EST)

• 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)
• Some bridges and tunnels are important enough to highway coverage that I think we should have articles on them, like we do for other pieces of infrastructure (e.g. interchanges), but I think most of them are out of scope. (So essentially what Fredddie said.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 00:18, 25 October 2023 (EDT)

City streets

This discussion has been closed and is preserved as an archive of the decision of the community. Please do not modify it!

The vote counts come down to 8 in favor, 4 opposed. There is consensus to include city streets, but there still needs to be criteria defined as to when to include them. --Rschen7754 02:46, 20 January 2024 (EST)

• 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)
• Big yes. Why? At least in Toronto, some very important roads simply have no number because Toronto doesn't use numbered routes. I would argue that Yonge Street in Toronto would be more important than the majority of numbered county roads in the rest of the province. Similarly, Winnipeg has a ton of numbered city routes, but I'd argue that a lot of those are rather insignificant. Andrepoiy (talk) 12:56, 3 October 2023 (EDT)
• I'm okay with having some streets, especially major arterials that are highways in all but a number designation. I think streets that are more significant for cultural reasons are better suited to Wikipedia, though, and minor streets probably aren't suitable to either place. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 00:21, 25 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)
• The more I think about this one, the more I think that we don't need articles about these topics. Instead we can work them into general articles about guardrails, traffic lights, and barriers. –Fredddie™ 20:50, 24 October 2023 (EDT)
• No. I can't really say that I am a fan about more generic articles like Traffic light either, just because they will not be deleted from enwiki and probably will be left to stagnate here. --Rschen7754 22:35, 24 October 2023 (EDT)
• Yes, though I think Fredddie's approach of covering these in the general articles makes sense in most cases. I think we can recruit some specialists to the wiki to write about these (for instance, there are a bunch of traffic light fans on the forum). TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 00:27, 25 October 2023 (EDT)
• I know this discussion is old, but maybe the Annex for the specifics? OrdinaryGiraffe (talk) 00:24, 12 June 2024 (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. [1] 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)

Implementation

So as a point of order: it seems that we've moved to majority voting in some form for many of the discussions. Is that what we will go for? And shooting down the notion of a canvassing policy as enwiki has it? --Rschen7754 01:46, 10 November 2023 (EST)

Yes, it seems that the consensus is not caring about consensus, funnily enough. We should probably create a procedure page codifying how AARoads:Approval voting works. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 17:25, 10 November 2023 (EST)

I think that we need more clarity on what "approval voting" is. Is it the default mode of making decisions, or a decision making process of last resort (i.e. ArbCom)? Most of the recent polls have allowed rationales, for example, and I would be strongly opposed to omitting those by default. --Rschen7754 14:09, 28 November 2023 (EST)

I've attempted to clarify my thoughts on that at AARoads:Approval voting. The goal of not having rationales after votes is not to disallow voters from justifying their votes, but rather to avoid a rehash of a debate that should have already happened. I think there are benefits to clearly separating the "debate" and "voting" portions of a discussion, which I've tried to outline in the link above; after all, nearly every legislature in the world does this. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 16:06, 1 December 2023 (EST)

I strongly disagree. The approval voting process seems to be predicated that every discussion, or at least a number of them, that need such a formalized process are as a result of contentious discussion. That is quite divorced from the reality that we are a wiki that is not bureaucratic and does not thrive on process, unlike English Wikipedia - and thus discussions tend to die out and need to be revived. Disallowing rationales would not be a benefit here and would disenfranchise or at least make it harder for people from giving opinions late in the process. It would require aggressive clerking which is unfriendly. It would make us more bureaucratic than English Wikipedia, which is really saying something. Not to mention that the mechanics of approval voting favor earlier proposals over later ones. The legislature argument is a red herring: they don't operate in asynchronous environments like we do.

This is also not to mention that numerous polls have already taken place on this wiki, on this very page, and have generated results. "Approval voting" as proposed is set up to be a process that nobody uses; as the initiator of many polls, I intend to keep them titled as polls to avoid invoking the bureaucracy that "approval voting" requires. --Rschen7754 21:22, 1 December 2023 (EST)

Is this something that can be closed now? Approval voting seems to have been implemented and is working well. –Fredddie™ 17:15, 2 January 2024 (EST)

Under Scott's definition, there has only been one approval vote on this wiki. Everything else has not been an "approval vote", because it has comments, among other things. --Rschen7754 20:15, 2 January 2024 (EST)

Spain

So it seems like there are interested editors for Spain. This is my understanding of Spain.

• E roads - import
• AP - motorway - autopista - import
• A - expressway - autovía - import
• R - radial motorway - import
• N - national road - import
• C - regional road - import
• Community/Provincial roads - some provinces have a higher level for expressways, a normal level, and/or a lower level (communities are collections of provinces) - are listed as tier 5 on TravelMapping. Do we import these? (This is the part I'm not 100% sure about - how the regions/provinces/autonomous communities all relate to road maintenance).
• Local roads - should not be imported.

Is this correct? Any further thoughts? --Rschen7754 18:20, 5 May 2024 (EDT)

Also - we should talk about names. We have "A-1 (autovía)", but then "Autovía A-2". Also - do we keep "Autovía" or just drop it and leave it as A-2? (But then we probably have to put something in for disambiguation so we might as well just leave it?) For the N roads we have "N-4 road (Spain)" - but there are a few M roads called "M-45 (Spain)". The E-roads have "European route E1 in Spain" which seems a little redundant. --Rschen7754 18:25, 5 May 2024 (EDT)

A-nn becomes a little murky in Andalusia, where A- is the prefix for that autonomous community. I think Autovía A-nn is enough to disambiguate, but for Andalusia A-nn (Andalusia) would be in order. Quite a few of the articles listed in w:Category:Transport in Andalusia are misnamed (they're not all autovías). –Fredddie™ 20:24, 5 May 2024 (EDT)

Expanding further, Spanish roads are sort-of color coded. I made a chart in the before times at WP:HWY/RM/R where I sort of explain it (tl;dr: blue, green, orange, and red should be included here). –Fredddie™ 20:31, 5 May 2024 (EDT)

To further complicate things, eswp uses names for motorways (I prefer to use this term for both AP and A, as there are practically no standard differences, the only one being if it is/was tolled). I'd go for "Autovía A-2" and so on. As for colors, I'd definitely add yellow as a few regions use it and it's also the standard for provincial roads. Leudimin (talk) 10:54, 7 May 2024 (CEST)

And the colour coding is more important than prefixes for what class the road is - the prefixes tell you where the road is/who looks after it, the colour is about standard/importance (though the maps my parents gave me from their recent holiday in Lanzarotte are terrible at showing the correct colours of the cartouches, which are all LZ-prefixed!)

Blue, Red, Orange (and Green E Roads) is what I included on TM. In many Autonomous Communities that's quite a decent network, but in others (eg Andulucia where it's mostly Autovia/future Autovia corridors) its pretty threadbare and the next layer down is quite important. Definitely at least listicles for Yellow, Green and Purple, but possibly full articles depending on how the AC does things. Si404 (talk) 13:07, 7 May 2024 (EDT)

1. The "regional roads" mentioned above as "C -" are extinct nowadays (not to be confused with Cataluña's road network). The list of regional roads can be imported from this Wikipedia page and, to my eyes, would work best as a separate page.

Additionally, if desired, the historic list of national roads can be taken from this blog page.

2. "AP" actually stands for Autopista de Peaje, Autopistas that were never tolled such as the A-49 bear just the letter A, which stands for both "autopista" and "autovía". These two should be imported into the same list page.

3. Autopistas and autovías owned by Spain bear names (such as A-7 being Autovía del Mediterraneo). I believe these names are relevant enough to motorways that their articles should be titled as this instead. This and my other thoughts on naming conventions, I will add in a moment to the AARoads:Naming conventions page. Shedingtonian (talk) 12:58, 7 May 2024 (CEST)

About importing from eswiki: we do have the technical capabilities to do that, though I do need to make some minor code changes. I would need a list of what is needed to be imported, though. Also, this would likely take place after everything from enwiki on Spain is imported. --Rschen7754 14:47, 7 May 2024 (EDT)

So would this work for naming conventions:

• Autopista AP-nn/A-nn
• Autovia A-nn
• A-nn (Andalusia) – for non-autovias
• pre-nn (region) – pre = regional prefix (R, B, C, M, Ma, etc.) and region = autonomous community or province
• N-nn (Spain) – national roads

I think every article should be disambiguated consistently. Enwiki would only disambiguate as necessary and it gets confusing which ones are or are not disambiguated. –Fredddie™ 16:08, 8 May 2024 (EDT)

Autovía should have the accent.

Eyeballing the proposals, the biggest differences I see:

• (Andalusia) versus (Andalusia, Spain) (also, AA:NC has a different spelling)
• Using the named motorway (in addition to? in place of?) the number. I would be opposed to in place of, as we strongly tend towards using numbers whenever possible. (Not sure what we will do with Australia where we might not have a choice). In addition to - it's not unprecedented (see China on enwiki), though it makes maintenance a bit more tricky and requires redirect creation right away. --Rschen7754 21:09, 9 May 2024 (EDT)

Andalusia is the English spelling so we should go with that. I don't think it's necessary to use ", Spain" in disambiguators more than necessary. I have two problems with naming articles by their denominación. One, AA:TITLES says we should name the article by the route number and create any pertinent redirects. Remember, we've moved some Florida articles back from their road names to their route numbers. That all being said, I don't see anything wrong with Autovía A-1 starting with "The Autovía del Norte (Spanish for 'Northern Motorway'), numbered A-1, is...". And two, even if we did use the route names, not all of the roads have them, so that would create the inconsistency we don't want. –Fredddie™ 03:29, 10 May 2024 (EDT)

Yeah, honestly what you're saying makes sense, it'll be easier to have the name of the motorway or road at the top of the article. Though I don't understand the distinction of using the accent in "autovía". If one word can retain its accent and original spelling, why cannot area names, doubtlessly more relevant, also bear their actual accents and spellings?

Also, something I just realized going off of the structure of the other listed article titles, shouldn't the structure be more like "Spain A-X Autovía", "Cantabria CA-X road", "Guadalajara GU-X road (Spain)"?
(I reckon I should've realized this before writing all of that stuff in the AA:NC page, oops-)

And also something else, the main reason for writing (region, Spain) as opposed to (region) is duplicate names, for example Guadalajara Spain versus Guadalajara México. One could mistake a highway for being in one region instead of the other if they were only going off of the article's title. Shedingtonian (talk) 12:49, 10 May 2024 (CEST)

Looking at M-x (Michigan) and K-x (Kansas) as the already decided alphanumeric article title formats (which is very different to the numeric titles' <type in words> <number> format), with reference made to global ones in the decision making, presumably the consistent format is <route number> (<jurisdiction>)? Therefore Spain would be

• AP-nn (Spain) / A-nn (Spain) / N-nn (Spain) / <city-prefix>-x (Spain) for national roads
• <relevant prefix)-nn (autonomous community) for autonomous community roads

?

This pre-existing convention also means a lot of other European countries already have their naming convention sorted, not just Spain.

'European route Enn' would need changing to 'Enn (Europe)', but given that officially the network is called the 'international E-road network' (AGR Article 1) with the routes called 'E-roads' (AGR article 4.2) and the only use of the term 'European' in the AGR is referring to the title of the Agreement "European Agreement on Main International Traffic Arteries (AGR)", keeping the wikipedia made up term 'European route' ought to go anyway! Si404 (talk) 07:34, 10 May 2024 (EDT)

Just using a couple routes in Castilla–La Mancha for example, it would be "A-40 (Spain)" and "TO-21 (Castilla–La Mancha)", right? I'm OK with that. I'm also OK with E-roads going to "E-nn (Europe)". –Fredddie™ 11:02, 10 May 2024 (EDT)

It would be "A-40 (Spain)", "TO-21 (Spain)" as a city-prefixed route that's part of the national network (it's listed here with the AP-n and the A-n and the N-n roads), "CM-40 (Castilla–La Mancha)". Si404 (talk) 13:10, 10 May 2024 (EDT)

PS: we only add states to 3dis if they aren't unique - cf Interstate 787 (whose 2di needs a state disambiguation). Due to being uniquely numbered in the country, routes like TO-21, B-20, M-40, SE-30, etc should have their page titles formatted in the same way as intercity routes like A-1, N-III, AP-8, N-634, etc. It's just a different way of doing spur/loop routes. Si404 (talk) 13:20, 10 May 2024 (EDT)

I do think the E-roads should be changed per the above.

The reason we went with the numeric titles (see /Archive 1) that we did was mostly inertia; however either way we went, something was going to be inconsistent. We had concerns about New York, where the official name is "New York State Route", which would be inconsistent with "State Route x (California)".

We should probably figure out how much we translate to English and how much we don't. To preview some of the weeks ahead, we have A2 autostrada (Poland), Voivodeship road 119, Otoyol 7. I think that will answer some of the questions above.

Also, I think we should be consistent with disambiguation, and would lean more towards using the region (we don't call it M-25 (United States)), but Guadalajara is famous enough even though it is just a city, and probably will be confusing. --Rschen7754 11:05, 10 May 2024 (EDT)

Would it be "A2 autostrada (Poland)" or just "A2 (Poland)"? Do we need to have the system description given it's in the alpha bit of the alphanumeric thing? They only exist because Wikipedia covers more than roads. Voivodeship road 119 / Bundesautobahn 100 are all numeric-only with the shield design telling you the network, and the "<system> <number>" format would be per the existing principle created for US/Canadian roads (leaving aside the stuff that arises from Voivodeship being semi-translated, road being definitely translated, but the German terms are not translated). "Otoyol 7" would be O.7 (Turkey) as alphanumeric on signs.

The Guadalajara routes memtioned are way down the pecking order - below 4-digit Autonomous Community roads - I can't imagine we'd have anything more than a listicle (and it's the province, not the city, and OSM shows no GU-roads near the city itself). Si404 (talk) 13:10, 10 May 2024 (EDT)

So on one hand, I lean more towards using the English name for place names, for ease of use (and linking back to enwiki place name articles). But then, we aren't translating out road system names consistently either. We could omit them entirely when the name isn't official, but then for some countries there are article title distinctions between motorway and highway and road. And Voivodeship Road 119 is probably not sufficient for a title either. --Rschen7754 14:25, 10 May 2024 (EDT)

Yes, for me, it's less an issue of whether we translate or not, but consistency in doing so. Si404 (talk) 14:57, 10 May 2024 (EDT)

Do we need to have the system description given it's in the alpha bit of the alphanumeric thing? Probably not in the particular case cited, and maybe where it makes sense it should be cut out. A- can mean both autovía and autopista in Spain though, so we still have that problem.

Some other thoughts about translating versus not: the countries are place names too, and I don't want to disambiguate with N-nn (España). It gets even worse for non-Latin languages. But then we have to be concerned about transliteration. --Rschen7754 20:09, 10 May 2024 (EDT)

Autopista and Autovia, while not interchangable terms, are indivisible terms. Not only does English Wikipedia put both together, inseperately, but Spanish Wikipedia does too. 'that problem' is only a problem if we go out of our way to make it one. Si404 (talk) 17:51, 15 May 2024 (EDT)

As an update, I still anticipate importing Spain this weekend while we're still hammering out the naming conventions - we can always move them later (as I suspect will happen with the E-roads pretty soon). --Rschen7754 14:21, 10 May 2024 (EDT)

Poll: naming conventions

It seems that these questions will come up with just about every country, so we might as well attempt to address them now. Ideally this would be additional Guidance under AARoads:Content policy#Article titles. There could be other proposals added. --Rschen7754 20:05, 11 May 2024 (EDT)

Didn't realize this poll was intended to be global in nature, since it's under the "Spain" section. Makes sense to do it systematically though. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 21:31, 19 May 2024 (EDT)

This discussion has been closed and is preserved as an archive of the decision of the community. Please do not modify it!

The proposal passes. --Rschen7754 12:47, 27 May 2024 (EDT)

For route numbers with alphabetic prefixes, words that are entirely redundant to the meaning of the alphabetic portion of the route, or are generic ("road", "highway") should generally be omitted.

Example: E23 (Europe), N1 (France)

• Support. --Rschen7754 20:06, 11 May 2024 (EDT)
• Support—since we're a roads wiki, the extra words would be generally assumed. That's why we moved "M-1 (Michigan highway)" to just "M-1 (Michigan)" after all. Imzadi 1979 → 20:19, 11 May 2024 (EDT)
• Support - I think this naming convention works well for routes with alphabetic prefixes. Dough4872 22:06, 11 May 2024 (EDT)
• Support - reasons already given by others. Si404 (talk) 08:52, 12 May 2024 (EDT)

This discussion has been closed and is preserved as an archive of the decision of the community. Please do not modify it!

The proposal passes, with the note that the common English name should be used rather than overtranslating names that are commonly used. --Rschen7754 02:35, 5 June 2024 (EDT)

Place names used to disambiguate (as a suffix or a prefix) should be translated to English.

Possible addendum: Where there is doubt, the title used by English Wikipedia for the locality should prevail.

• Support. Because if we don't, we run into a whole host of problems (non-Latin alphabets, multiple languages spoken in a locality, using non-English country names, etc.) --Rschen7754 20:06, 11 May 2024 (EDT)
• Support—our working language here is English. Imzadi 1979 → 20:19, 11 May 2024 (EDT)
• Support - Since this wiki is in English we should translate place names to English. Dough4872 22:06, 11 May 2024 (EDT)
• Support, with caveats - the standard English name should be used (eg Spain rather than España), but names shouldn't be translated if they aren't in common English usage (so Lower Saxony rather than Niedersachsen, but Alpes-Maritimes rather than 'Maritime Alps' for the French department). I believe this is what is being proposed anyway, but the phrasing is a little off - "Use English language place names for disambiguation" rather than "translate names into English" - the latter suggests that road in Beijing should be disambiguated with 'North Capital'! Si404 (talk) 08:52, 12 May 2024 (EDT)
  • That is my intention (and it would be covered by the addendum if we decided to go that route). --Rschen7754 19:34, 12 May 2024 (EDT)
• Support – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 21:31, 19 May 2024 (EDT)

This discussion has been closed and is preserved as an archive of the decision of the community. Please do not modify it!

Where practical, system names should be translated to English, using an agreed-upon title. Exceptions can be made for system names that are used relatively commonplace by English speakers or where there is no direct translation. --Rschen7754 02:10, 8 June 2024 (EDT)

System names should be translated to English, using an agreed-upon title.

• Support—our working language here is English, as I noted above. We should give the names in articles in their native form, but our primary usage will be in English. Imzadi 1979 → 20:19, 11 May 2024 (EDT)
• Support, with caveats I think that generally this is the principle that should be used. We should mitigate this as much as possible by omitting it when it is unnecessary, such as the Turkey example given above. Not sure what this would mean for Bundesautobahn 27 - it could just be A27 (Germany), but I am not sure what that means for the Interstate system, which is another system that has an official abbreviation that does not appear on the signs. I am not entirely sure about the autopista/autovia question above; in cases where there is not a 1:1 translation or where the foreign word is used even in English-language media, we should consider exceptions. --Rschen7754 20:35, 11 May 2024 (EDT)
• Support - We should translate system names to English unless there is no direct translation. Dough4872 22:06, 11 May 2024 (EDT)
• Support, with caveats While it is pretty obvious to translate 'Routes Nationales', 'Državne Ceste', 'Estradas Nacionais', 'Rutas Nacionales', 'Εθνικές Οδοί', 'Nationalstroossen', 'Drogi Krajowa', etc to 'National Roads', subdivisions get a big shaky - 'Drogi Wojewódzka' - would have a direct translation of 'Dutchy road' but we would probably go with Voivodeship road, which is not a full translation into English. Again my issue is more with the 'translate' wording than the principle. Rschen's point about where we use the foreign word in English (cf my similar point about place names) is also true - we do say 'autobahn', 'autoroute', etc in English. We'd even say 'Route Nationale' in conversational English (eg I didn't want to pay the autoroute toll, so I took the route nationale instead'). The same happens with railways - we tend to use local terms (no one says 'I went on the London Subway', 'I went on the Paris Underground', 'I went on the New York Metro', etc) if they are going to be understandable. Si404 (talk) 08:52, 12 May 2024 (EDT)
• Support, with caveats - I think the guiding principle here should be the accessibility of the title to a user who only speaks English. This means something like 'Državne Ceste' absolutely needs to be translated but local language terms that are easy on the native English speaker's tongue like 'Autoroute', 'Autostrada', etc. are best left alone. Duke87 (talk) 21:14, 19 May 2024 (EDT)
• Support with caveats. Sometimes English accepts loan words (with little rhyme or reason), which we can be pragmatic about. Additionally, translations from some languages can be imprecise or create their own ambiguities. The article text should provide the native name at the earliest possible opportunity (i.e., in the lede sentence and any infobox). Attested translations are preferable to ad hoc translations. In case of doubt, a more specific poll can resolve the question by country or system. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 21:31, 19 May 2024 (EDT)

Resuming the Spain discussion

@Fredddie, Leudmin, Shedingtonian, and Si404: So coming back to this once the above discussions have been closed. It seems that Autopista and Autovia are not in the proposed naming conventions [2], so there is that. It seems that we have decided to drop the words "motorway" and "road", so we will need to drop those from the proposal. Also, I have a significant issue with using official text names for what appear to be less major routes; that violates our norms on using the number instead. (There is of course the Australia question; however, here we're talking at the level of provincial highways, and provinces are a level down from territories in Spain). --Rschen7754 02:20, 8 June 2024 (EDT)

@Leudimin: (correct name this time) --Rschen7754 02:22, 8 June 2024 (EDT)

• At a larger scope, do we want to keep the motorway descriptor in the page titles for alphanumeric routes? Autovía, autopista, Autoroute, Autostrada, etc. Maybe only in cases where there might be some ambiguity that parens won't fix (A is the prefix for Andalusia, for instance)? Otherwise, yes, drop any road descriptors and just have the alphanumeric and disambiguator (C-12 highway (Spain) → C-12 (Catalonia)). –Fredddie™ 21:15, 23 June 2024 (EDT)
  • I would say no; pretty much all the Western European countries would still work, plus @Shedingtonian: didn't use the descriptors in the original proposal. --Rschen7754 00:56, 29 June 2024 (EDT)

South America

We had decided to postpone South America due to lack of interest; however, there is now an interested editor. Should we go ahead and import South America? I would suggest delaying Brazil (the lists are a mess and there are a few hundred stubs, plus the language is Portuguese and thus requires different language skills) and French Guiana (as part of wanting to import dependencies with the main country). That comes out to less than 150 articles - which is still less than just the E-roads in the last import.

This is a bit of a change of direction, but I think to maximize growth we should not delay requests to import too much longer. Spain is still the next country to import. Following South America, I think we should fulfill the remaining requests (Georgia, South Africa, one potential in Malta) before continuing on with Europe.

There will need to be some discussions for most countries about what gets imported and what does not. Suriname and Guyana don't have numbered systems and just a few primary highways, so those seem pretty obvious. Also, we will need to figure out task forces; I think there could easily be ones for all of them except maybe Suriname and Guyana, but leaving them separate wouldn't be a big deal. --Rschen7754 17:57, 11 May 2024 (EDT)

I think we should import South America (minus Brazil and the dependencies) next since there is an editor interested working on articles there. I also agree we should get the rest of the requests imported before moving on with the rest of Europe so we don’t keep editors waiting. As for the rest of South America, we can import the dependencies with their parent country and hold Brazil to a later date since it’s a mess and we should prioritize better content from other countries. As for task forces, I think we can lump most countries into one task force for South America and split out where needed for countries with more resources. Dough4872 22:13, 11 May 2024 (EDT)

If someone is interested, lets import Spanish South America (and thus complete the Spanish-speaking countries, save Equatorial Guinea). Si404 (talk) 17:33, 15 May 2024 (EDT)

Going through my notes:

To prevent a separate discussion for each country, I propose that we import national and provincial/departmental routes for the Spanish-speaking countries (plus Suriname/Guyana as above), and any lists/system description pages as appropriate. Other deviations:

• Venezuela will need some fixing to use numbered routes instead of named routes
• [3] is a trade corridor. Still import?
• [4][5] are not numbered but still notable as a freeway.
• [6] is a 1950s road, still import?
• Chile has some scenic/tourist routes, [7] and [8]
• No idea what the hell this is [9].
• [10] seems interesting enough to import.
• The following systems would not be considered notable enough at least for their own articles (if at all): Colombia tertiary highways, Ecuador local highways, Peru rural roads, Venezuela ramal routes. --Rschen7754 20:56, 15 May 2024 (EDT)

Thank you very much for informing me about this

• Venezuela uses a "troncales" system, it can be a bit tricky because the country has a federal system, but it is not as difficult as other big countries like Peru or Argentina)
• Regarding the Interoceanic Route, we can simply add information to the routes of Madre de Dios and other Peruvian departments, most of the route covers parts of Acre and Rondonia so it would be a bit more complicated to collect information.
• Costa Verde in Peru receives the code "Ruta departamental CL-100" for Callao and Lima while "Autopista Rosario-Córdoba" is a single section of Ruta Nacional 9, so both roads receive official codes, I don't know why English Wikipedia doesn't have them but the Spanish one does.
• It would be better not to import it, the infrastructure in Argentina has changed a lot and it would be a mess to try to add historic roads.
• With respect to the scenic routes in Chile it is better to avoid them since they are largely used by tourist organizations and do not really work as normal roads.
• MERCOSUR is practically a small European Union in South America, vehicles from the south of Brazil can circulate freely through Uruguay and some areas of Argentina, basically that article stipulates which roads are used for commercial routes in those countries. So it is better not to import it.
• I agree, we should not import rural roads because they are mostly unremarkable roads.--DigitalSeb01 (talk) 22:03, 15 May 2024 (EDT)
• Will begin importing soon. Just as a note, Camino de las Altas Cumbres is linked to [11], so I will go ahead and import. --Rschen7754 21:01, 22 May 2024 (EDT)

Naming conventions (South America)

So, about naming conventions. I'm inclined to just use what we have already and not reinvent the wheel. Some issues though:

• We'll have to come up with something for Venezuela since the current names are named highways.
• Ecuador Highway 5 - should this be E5 (Ecuador)?
• Peru national routes - is the official name PE-xx? And then should it be PE-xx (Peru)?
• Peru departmental routes. Should we just say PI-103 (Piura) instead of the current PI-103 Departmental Route?
• Paraguay - is it PYxx (Paraguay)? Or National Route PYxx (Paraguay)? PY is on the shield. [12]
• Chile Route xx - do we leave it as is? It would be the only South American country named that way (as opposed to Route xx (Chile)). --Rschen7754 01:07, 29 June 2024 (EDT)

@DigitalSeb01: --Rschen7754 01:07, 29 June 2024 (EDT)

Given it's highly unlikely that any other country will name a highway PE-x I'm confident in stating we don't need PE-x (Peru). Ecuador is a bit more complicated given E5 is likely to exist in other places as well. Dave (talk) 01:23, 29 June 2024 (EDT)

Prince Edward Island's postal code is PE though. It could be confusing. (Plus, the consistency). --Rschen7754 01:26, 29 June 2024 (EDT)

@Rschen7754: I generally use the standards of the Spanish Wikipedia, where Peru are called as "Ruta Departamental AN-110" (Literally AN-110 Departmental Route) and the national ones are called as "Ruta Nacional PE-1N"(Literally PE-1N National Route). Regarding Ecuador, Spanish Wikipedia tends to vary where it uses the colloquial name plus the "E" code stands for "Ruta Estatal" (State Route), see here (https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carreteras_de_Ecuador) -DigitalSeb01 (talk) 12:45, 2 July 2024 (EDT)

@DigitalSeb01: Thanks, so it does sound like we want to use PE and AN (for example). I will point out that we are not bound to what any language Wikipedia is using. AARW does have some guidance as to how to select naming conventions at AA:TITLES. --Rschen7754 14:06, 2 July 2024 (EDT)

• DigitalSeb01 posted this a few days ago: User:DigitalSeb01/Naming Conventions. I think that overall for the countries it covers, it is good, with a few additional thoughts:
  • Bolivia - we have the same problem of Bolivia Route x versus Route x (Bolivia).
  • Peru departmental routes - do we use (Peru) or do we use the region? --Rschen7754 21:09, 16 July 2024 (EDT)

Community/city/destination lists in lists

I've been converting various Canada provincial highway lists to use Template:Routelist row. Nova Scotia does have a destinations list in some of the tables, but our template does support it so I went ahead and converted it to not lose data: List of Nova Scotia provincial highways.

But then we have List of Prince Edward Island provincial highways, which has both a local names column and a destinations column, and our templates do not support adding both. Should we add support for another column? Or in order to standardize with other lists in the US, should one or both of those columns be removed entirely? I will note that International E-road network also has a destinations column. --Rschen7754 23:58, 2 June 2024 (EDT)

I think we can add support for another column since the table needs in different countries and subnational units of the world will vary. For some places, it might be more useful to list destinations served than in other places. Dough4872 00:17, 3 June 2024 (EDT)

A few more cases in point:

• List of Yukon territorial highways which has an (unsourced) Old column, plus a local name column (arguably, some of those articles should be moved to Yukon Highway X)
• List of Northwest Territories highways which has a local name column and could be moved similarly. --Rschen7754 01:45, 4 June 2024 (EDT)

United States and Canada task forces

Originally the state and provinces were created as separate task forces. However, this will conflict with the country of Georgia. Also, most countries are just getting one task force, if that. Should the task force pages for the US and Canada be moved to subpages? Example: AARoads:United States/California. --Rschen7754 01:26, 3 June 2024 (EDT)

I had originally tossed out the idea of such a scheme, but instead of using the military-derived terminology, we'd have Departments for each country, and Bureaus for major subdivisions. So yes, the states should be moved to that scheme and placed under the US, provinces should be placed under Canada, etc. Imzadi 1979 → 01:43, 3 June 2024 (EDT)

Surely a simple disambiguation in the names of the taskforces (and a note pointing people to the other one?) would deal with the Georgia 'problem'? Si404 (talk) 05:14, 3 June 2024 (EDT)

I am okay with moving the state/provincial task forces in the US and Canada to “AARoads:United States/Statename” and “AARoads:Canada/Provincename”. However, I am also okay with also leaving the current titles while moving the state of Georgia task force to AARoads:Georgia (U.S. state) and having the country of Georgia at AARoads:Georgia (country). Dough4872 09:33, 3 June 2024 (EDT)

Considering, the equivalent on WP is w:WP:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Georgia, I think we're safe to do the same here now that we're branching out. Imzadi 1979 → 22:02, 3 June 2024 (EDT)

As just a note, I will create the task force at AARoads:Georgia (country) just so we can get started, but the page can be moved. --Rschen7754 23:08, 3 June 2024 (EDT)

Manual on Uniform Road Articles

The first edition of the Manual on Uniform Road Articles (MURA) is now out. It still needs a section added on style guidelines for media formatting, but all of the basics for structuring and formatting a road article are in MURA. Imzadi 1979 → 23:58, 6 June 2024 (EDT)

Thank you for your work on this. One thing that will probably need to be addressed soon is the regional variants of English - while I think for the Americas American/Canadian English is fine, that is probably not okay for Europe. --Rschen7754 00:05, 7 June 2024 (EDT)

I've decided to be bold and make this change since there was no objection here. Please revert if you disagree. --Rschen7754 21:12, 16 July 2024 (EDT)

I'd only clarify that for topics without a clear regional connection, we're going to default to American/Canadian English. That way we avoid protracted debates on which version to use. Imzadi 1979 → 00:01, 17 July 2024 (EDT)

I would be fine with that clarification. --Rschen7754 00:48, 17 July 2024 (EDT)

A-Class and B-Class criteria

I've created the first drafts of AARoads:Assessment/A-Class criteria and AARoads:Assessment/B-Class criteria. These are to be the standards by which we judge if an article merits either of those grades. The B-Class criteria borrows heavily from Wikipedia's GA criteria, but it's been modified a bit for our circumstances. The A-Class criteria uses the same 6-item list concept, but uses the more stringent concepts from Wikipedia's FA criteria. A few criteria are the same on each list. Imzadi 1979 → 21:16, 7 June 2024 (EDT)

One thing that could be clarified is what "high-quality" is. Does that exclude self-published roadgeek sources?

Also, or line if the content is not in prose will that cause problems with RJL? --Rschen7754 21:36, 7 June 2024 (EDT)

Andorra

Since the outstanding requests are now fulfilled, I think we should continue with Europe.

We might as well do Andorra since it is right next to Spain. There are 2 articles. They are named CG-x, and I propose we keep that. The secondaries, should we include them, would be CS-x. --Rschen7754 23:28, 21 June 2024 (EDT)

I think this would be a good place to start for importing the rest of Europe. After this I say we do Portugal then continue west to east through Europe, skipping the United Kingdom for now. Could come up with some logical order of the countries that follows the west to east idea. Dough4872 23:38, 21 June 2024 (EDT)

I don't think strict e-w geography is that logical, and stuff like 'this country has a lot of articles and we've just imported a big country', and 'these countries are close knit, if we bring in one, we should do the others next' is a more logical approach. The latter is especially the case as we'll probably pick up editors when we import their country, and so importing Denmark, say, straight after Iceland would help us deal with Iceland (whereas if we're moving East, there's going to be a bit of time before we hit Denmark, having done Iceland).

I'd suggest France (and Monaco) next after finishing Iberia (though we could start anywhere), and then see if we want to do Italy+, Benelux or the Nordics next, and then after that, the same question, but now including the groups bordering the one we picked also an option, and so on.

Italy+ = ITA, SMN, VAT; Benelux = BEL, NLD, LUX; Nordics = ISL, DNK, NOR, SWE, FIN; Germanics = DEU, CHE, LIE, AUT; Visegrad = POL, CZE, SVK, HUN; Baltics = EST, LVA, LTU (and BLR?) and so forth.

We also have to remember that we've got a foothold in the east - Georgia - so we might spread out from there too if our Caucasian user base desires. Si404 (talk) 05:29, 22 June 2024 (EDT)

The biggest challenge I see is that especially in Eastern Europe, there are some active editors still on English Wikipedia. We could try reaching out to those editors, but for whatever reason there has been a really low success rate (in last year's rounds, very few responded to our emails). We don't have that problem in Western Europe. --Rschen7754 11:48, 22 June 2024 (EDT)

I imagine that there's a sort of 'hardly anyone speaks our language, but we speak English well and lots of people speak that so lets work on EnWP instead of our languages one' with smaller countries in Eastern Europe (and probably the Nordics as well), but the same doesn't apply as with France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, etc due to having wide-spoken languages and so enWP has fewer active editors covering those countries (and less good pages - a lot of the Spain ones we imported are a lot less detailed than the esWP equivalents) and most of them are US/UK editors filling in gaps/writing about stuff in the area they went on holiday to (both of which are fine in and of itself, but leaves a patchy mess when looking at the overall product if that's all that's happening). But this is partly why I'm suggesting making sure to try and grab countries in groups - to try and maximise the likelihood that we get informed editors ASAP, as we have had for Georgia. Si404 (talk) 14:43, 22 June 2024 (EDT)

I will also add that Benelux would let us finish out North America (along with France). --Rschen7754 13:11, 22 June 2024 (EDT)

You need the UK to finish North America - Anguilla, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, etc. ;) Si404 (talk) 14:43, 22 June 2024 (EDT)

Yes and no. There's no existing articles in that region, but there is the possibility of creating lists of potential roads (since few if any of those have formal highway numbering). I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it - my goals to fill in such places with lists haven't gotten very far. --Rschen7754 21:22, 22 June 2024 (EDT)

Rest of Western Europe

Privately, some users have indicated a desire to bundle up some of these discussions rather than necessarily have a discussion for each country. I've also decided that having countries imported sooner rather than later would put less of a strain on myself, and I believe that continually having to be aware of what goes on at English Wikipedia for countries that have not been imported is not a healthy thing for this site. I will be moving forward on importing the rest of the world, minus the countries that will require more work (so far: Brazil, UK, India, Malaysia, Philippines have been mentioned). There will be time to catch up on bluelinking and assessment in between rounds.

So I am looking towards a more agile approach to do this and proposing that we import the rest of the Western European countries (outside the UK). Some notes:

• For all of these I assume that we will be dropping "motorway", "road", etc. from names per previous poll.
• France: also includes French Guiana, Martinique, Reunion, numerous other places with 0 articles, for total of around 150.
  • Do we keep Route nationale x and add (France), or do we abbreviate to RN or N? Or translate to national road?
  • Do we import the departmental roads as state/provincial highways? Also, same question about RD/D. I will note that if we did not import these roads, some territories would not have any articles in our scope. Do we disambiguate with the province name or just (France)?
• Belgium: (30 articles)
• Netherlands: includes Caribbean Netherlands and some 0-article places. (115 articles)
  • The S routes are city routes. Import? Or listicle? There could be a lot of them. [13]
• Luxembourg: 15 articles
  • Do we want to include CR roads? These seem to be local roads [14], couldn't find in my European atlas.
• Ireland: 600 articles
  • The regional road articles have a lot of stubs. Continue to keep separate? Target listicles (at a later date?) Example: [15]
• Iceland: ~25 articles
  • We have "Route 1 (Iceland)" but then [16]. Keep both that way?
  • Local roads are assumed as not notable
• Norway 120 articles
  • We're using the demonym for both national and county roads. "Norwegian National Road 159" I assume we want National Road 159 (Norway)?
  • Are we considering the 4 digit county roads (the real county roads) notable? are they even signed?
  • I assume the "municipal" national roads are not worth it?
• Sweden 30 articles
  • Same issues with the demonym, except this time "national road" is not capitalized
  • Secondary (>500) and tertiary (>3000): notable?
• Denmark 15 articles
  • Same issues with the demonym
• Finland 30 articles
  • Same issues with the demonym
  • The numbers go into the 5 digits. There are articles on 3 digit roads. [17] I propose that we cut it off after 3 digits which is where TravelMapping draws the line. Thoughts?
• Germany 250 articles
  • I assume we want A, B, L (region), R. What about K (district route?) Not even on TravelMapping.
  • Keep Bundesautobahn, Bundesstraße? Or go to A/B?
  • Tourist routes? [18]
• Switzerland/Liechtenstein: 20 articles
  • Hauptstrasse 13 ->H13 (Switzerland)?
• Austria 25 articles
  • All by name rather than route number. Rename? Thankfully it looks like a 1:1 ratio.
  • I assume we want LB (provincial road with priority) though not every state signs theirs. What about LL (provincial road without priority)? Can go into the 4 digits.
• Italy: 110 articles
  • Do we just use A, RA, SS, etc.? There is also SR, SP, SC but no articles. How far down do we go?
• San Marino: 1 main road. --Rschen7754 21:46, 24 June 2024 (EDT)

• Sure, just import the lot - though it's not 'Western Europe' that you have listed here, unless it's 30 years ago...
• I think we take every numbered road that wikipedia has a page for, stuff like tourist routes if they are there, etc and then we can collapse the less important ones into listicles or just leave alone (some K roads in Germany are freeways and thus on TM, even if the whole system isn't). The whole point of this wiki is about saving roads from a notability purge, so then subjecting them to a notability check now is not only time consuming, but counter productive! Certainly I'd not make new articles about minor roads (though having 4 digits, or not being on a European Atlas, doesn't automatically mean minor), but let’s grab the existing ones! Si404 (talk) 04:50, 26 June 2024 (EDT)

• As I mentioned above, Western Europe is logically the next step after Andorra and Portugal. We can probably import everything from Wikipedia that is there for those countries and then decide what we want to have articles. Dough4872 11:39, 26 June 2024 (EDT)

Eastern Europe, part 1

We're starting to get to the end of importing Western Europe, so here's the next batch I want to propose.

• Czech Republic - about 25 articles
  • For the future: do we consider class I/II of the national highways notable (with the D/R motorways) and omit III and greater?
  • Current name is I/13 highway (Czech Republic). Do we call it I/13 (Czech Republic)?
• Slovakia - around 15 articles
  • Same questions as Czech Republic
• Slovenia - about 10 articles
  • [19] describes the system. Do we consider all of the regional roads notable (R1, R2, R3 classes?) Or only allow certain prefixes?
• Hungary - about 65 articles
  • Is it really called "Main road"? [20]
• Poland - about 105 articles
  • Current name is National road 54 (Poland) for national roads. What do we call them? I've seen the abbreviation DK, or we can keep it as is.
  • Current name is Voivodeship road 102 for the provincial roads. What do we call them? I've seen the abbreviation DW.
• Croatia - about 200 articles
  • Do we consider the Z (county?) and L roads not notable? We are including A, B, D (state road). --Rschen7754 15:51, 20 July 2024 (EDT)

Pretty sure all those Central European countries would be offended at being seen as 'Eastern' when they chose to join the west at least 20, if not 30+ years ago! ;P

Anyway, IIRC from making/reviewing/maintaining TM systems:

• Czechia - I is definitely notable, II is borderline, III is not (but if there are any articles, import them)
• Slovakia - R roads are expressways, not regional roads. Same as Czechia for the I/II/III class roads.
• Hungary - I believe the native term is 'Fout', but yes, 'Main road' is the translation
• Poland - DK/DW is the initials of the Polish terms that we translate to 'National road' and 'Voivodeship road'
• Croatia - A, B (not sure what these are!) and D definitely notable, but there's no reason why we shouldn't bring over any pages that exist for the other classes (this is a general point, applicable to all countries - this fork of WP exists because of an increasingly high bar for notability removing content and thus it is absurd that we don't import numbered highways that have WP pages)

Si404 (talk) 20:11, 20 July 2024 (EDT)

As with western Europe, I think importing these countries next makes sense to continue the eastward progression through Europe, and for now just import whatever is on Wikipedia and move to the naming conventions established here as needed. Dough4872 20:17, 20 July 2024 (EDT)

Poll: alphanumeric routes and disambiguation

This is a question that has come up a few times and should probably be addressed.

Should we always add disambiguation for alphanumerically numbered routes, even if no other systems using those letters are known at the time? Examples: CG-1 (Andorra), PE-1 (Peru), K-57 (Kansas), A1 (France). --Rschen7754 16:11, 20 July 2024 (EDT)

• Yes, I believe we always should. We don't definitely know that there won't be another system that comes up, either through discovery or a government renumbering. There can also be other abbreviations (such as Prince Edward Island for PE-) that can add confusion. Finally, we should be consistent. --Rschen7754 16:13, 20 July 2024 (EDT)
• Yes - Having the disambiguation can avoid any confusion that could arise and also provide context to where a road is. Dough4872 17:01, 20 July 2024 (EDT)
• Yes - for the same reasons that Dough4872 and Rschen7754 have stated. Chils Kemptonian (talk) 08:30, 21 July 2024 (EDT)
• Yes—dropping the "road", "motorway", "highway", etc. from the name (since we can assume on site called the AARoads Wiki that an article title is a road of some kind unless obviously not) on the alphanumeric designations helps with the principle of keeping article titles concise. That allows us to focus on the principle of being consistent with a little piece of context as well. That consistency makes the template coding easier as an added bonus. Imzadi 1979 → 13:21, 21 July 2024 (EDT)