AARoads:The Interchange/Archive 2

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Archive 1 Archive 2

__ARCHIVEDTALK__

Europe: the big picture

It seems that there is interest in importing Europe. There are a lot of decisions that have to be made and I won't unpack every single one just yet. But we should probably start discussing. I firmly believe that the success of our international efforts will stand or fall on Europe.

  • Is Europe what to do next? There is some interest on Discord. I don't think South America is a good candidate as we don't have much interest, and Brazil will be a significant mess to clean up. Oceania has been suggested but I am concerned about buy-in from the Australian road editors there.
  • What are we considering Europe?
    • Are we including all the dependencies of each country, even those outside Europe? Obviously we want to finish importing the French Caribbean - however, France has territory in South America, Africa, and Oceania too.
    • The United Kingdom. It has been suggested that we defer or completely omit the UK entirely, because of SABRE. I am firmly against this. There is obviously a lengthy history of acrimony in between the US and the UK road editors on English Wikipedia. But omitting a country entirely sets a bad precedent that will lead to omitting more countries (Ireland being the obvious one, but Australia could fall into that category). Moreover, SABRE does not extend us the same courtesy [1], though their coverage of the US is not very good. I will also point out that because of the SABRE licensing terms, the UK road articles cannot be forked over to SABRE, so if they are deleted, that is that. I am also a firm believer in the strength of our leadership and our editing community and collaboration, and believe that is our competitive advantage.
      • That all being said. The UK road articles as they stand right now do have some major problems: 1) Over half of the articles are of minor city streets, road safety items, city squares, and all sorts of stuff that are out of our scope. That will have to be sorted out. 2) Unlike in the US, most of the UK road editors went along with the tightening of notability, and many minor and some major A roads got merged away, sometimes inconsistently. 3) The UK has long resisted the junction list standards that the rest of the world has followed. So on those grounds, I am okay with deferring importing of the UK until we have more European editors (and possibly some UK ones) and have the time to clean up the mess, rather than delaying importing other countries with higher quality content and more interest.
      • If we delay importing the UK, we need to determine what to do about the dependencies - Isle of Man, Jersey, Gibraltar. No other dependencies have articles.
    • How far east do we go?
      • Russia? It will be really annoying to only import part of a country.
      • Turkey? It is split between Europe and Asia.
      • Cyprus? It is close to the Middle East, but uses the euro and is Schengen.
      • Georgia/Armenia/Azerbaijan? They have E-roads, and Georgia has an outstanding request to import.
      • Turkmenistan/Kyrgyzstan/Kazakhstan/Uzbekistan/Tajikistan? They have E-roads.
  • What gets imported first?
    • Do we do E-roads first? Are there scenarios (see "How far east" discussion) where we just import the E-roads and defer the rest of the country until later?
    • Do we fulfill requests first?
    • Do we prioritize certain groups ("Western Europe", Schengen, EU, Eurozone)? What about micro-states? France and Netherlands to round out North America?
  • One task force or multiple? AARoads:Caribbean is getting pretty long.
  • What classes of road - a question that will be deferred until some of the other ones are answered. --Rschen7754 23:29, 28 April 2024 (EDT)
I do think the E-roads should be imported first. After all, even they are not immune from AfD. LilianaUwU (talk / contributions) 23:33, 28 April 2024 (EDT)
I don't have many strong opinions on non-US imports (since I've unfortunately never left the US, I feel like I probably don't know what I'm talking about), but I would suggest not getting hung up on what counts as "Europe". If the plan is to eventually import the whole world at some point anyway, it really doesn't matter in the long term whether Russia and Türkiye get imported with Europe or with Asia. So I would say if it could be considered Europe, go ahead and import it. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:40, 28 April 2024 (EDT)
I definitely think Europe should be the next continent we work on importing due to good content and editor interest. I think we can start with importing the E-roads first before we go to individual countries. In terms of what countries to do, I would be fine with doing certain groups like the EU countries first or else follow a geographical pattern through Europe (i.e. west to east). I think in terms of how far east we can go I think we can include Russia (most roads in European part of country) along with Georgia/Armenia/Azerbaijan and Cyprus, as they are small and also there is an editor request for Georgia who also wants adjacent countries imported. I think Turkey and Turkmenistan/Kyrgyzstan/Kazakhstan/Uzbekistan/Tajikistan can be held until Asia gets imported as they are mostly/entirely in Asia; however, we can import E-roads for those countries. Dependencies of European countries such as France and the Netherlands can be imported along with the main country as I imagine they would not constitute too many articles. I think it might be a good idea to hold importing the UK to either the end of Europe or else later on after other continents as the articles are a mess; however, they should eventually be imported for completeness sake. As for the task force, I think it would be a good idea to have a main Europe task force with countries with a lot of resources to list being split into their own task force. Dough4872 23:47, 28 April 2024 (EDT)
I agree that Europe should be next, and I'd suggest that we move slowly and prioritize countries that either have interested editors or are already in pretty good shape (and on the flip side, de-prioritize anything like the UK that will be a mess to sort out). I say that mostly because I want to make sure anything we import gets bluelinked and maybe some basic cleanup, and if we dump a ton of new stuff in the lap of an editor base that's mostly interested in North America, that might not happen. I'm fine with importing any of the "borderline Europe" countries as it makes sense to do so (e.g. we have a request for Georgia). TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 00:03, 29 April 2024 (EDT)
As I was the one volunteering for Georgia - I am still up for that. I am not checking in here all the time, so ping me or write a message if things get imported. Labrang (talk) 06:43, 6 May 2024 (EDT)
Taskforces - I've made these fairly big and include both actual and potential article totals (using the data from the tables, which I'm not sure is totally accurate). I've used the UNECE members (minus US/Canada) as a definition of Europe.
  • E Roads (and other Europe-wide stuff?) - 230(+10?) existing, 230(+10?) potential
  • Western Europe (AND, BEL, ESP, FRA (inc overseas), LUX, MCO, NLD (inc overseas), PRT) 559 existing, 3061 potential
  • Britain & Ireland (GBR (inc overseas), IRL) - 2861 existing, 2921 potential
  • Northern Europe (DNK (inc overseas), EST, FIN, ISL, LVA, LTU, NOR, SWE) - 257 existing, 2733 potential
  • Germany (DEU) - 275 existing, 6300 potential
  • Central Europe (AUT, CZE, HUN, ITA, LIE, MLT, POL, SMR, CHE, VAT) - 370 existing, 3355 potential
  • South Eastern Europe (ALB, BIH, BGR, HRV, GRC, KOS, MDA, MNE, MKD, ROU, SRB, SVN, UKR) - 593 existing, 1274 potential
  • Far Eastern Europe (ARM, AZE, BLR, CYP, GEO, ISR, KAZ, KGZ, RUS, TJK, TKM, TUR, UZB) - 240 existing, 939 potential
I think they are perhaps too big. Perhaps separate countries would be the best approach (with some merged).
As for ordering. The E Road system is sensible to import (in full - it's more effort to leave out the eastern edges than to bring it all across!) first. Georgia and Spain have requests, so them next. Then I don't care either way - what there's demand for, I guess. Si404 (talk) 07:00, 29 April 2024 (EDT)
Regions of Europe according to the CIA World Factbook
Most of the Far Eastern Europe category falls neatly into Asia, so I'd say we can skip them for now. I kind of like how the CIA World Factbook divides Europe into regions. If nothing else, it's at least something. We can always adjust. –Fredddie™ 02:00, 2 May 2024 (EDT)
Does it fall neatly into Asia? Only the -stans and Israel aren't a division on your map. The border is blurry. Sure, the Far Eastern Europe is stuff that people might not see as European (even Belarus) but others might, hence why I split it off from elsewhere. I would personally not have any of it as a priority, except that someone has requested Georgia - so it's at least worth importing that early on.
Those CIA regions are nonsense for our purposes - some are very large (both in reality and potential), others are very small. I tried to make my regions roughly similar sized in terms of articles (though Western Europe is rather too large and ought to be split) as much as possible - with the exception of splitting the eastern stuff in two. Then there's it being a map made for outsiders for the purpose of geopolitics. While there does seem to have been some adjustments since the fundamental change in geopolitics in the 90s (Slovenia split from the rest of Yugoslavia, the Caucasus countries split from the USSR), it reeks of the 1970s and spy networks - Free-Europe with no worries in Blues, Facist Iberia in Dark Red, German-speaking countries and the more controlled occupied countries in yellow. The 'non-aligned' and semi-autonomous commie countries in brown, the USSR in light red, the free-but-flirts-with-hard-left-government countries in green. The Baltic states have more in common with the countries over the sea than they do with other ex-Soviet nations, Greece is firmly part of the Balkans rather than some outpost of Western Europe, etc. I'll continue this discussion below. Si404 (talk) 06:25, 2 May 2024 (EDT)
Going back to the question of why "Europe" matters so much. I mean, we could just go ahead and import ROW (rest of world) so that it doesn't matter so much who gets imported first. However, there is one non-Europe request outstanding (South Africa), and there is high quality content in Japan and Australia that I don't want to defer for too much longer. --Rschen7754 15:16, 3 May 2024 (EDT)

E-roads and "meta Europe"

I don't want to distract from the larger discussion above, but it seems the first step will be importing the E-roads and other articles relating to Europe as a whole. There are some ambiguous cases, however:

I think List of highest paved roads in Europe (along with the by country list) would fit well in the annex space along with other superlative lists. I think we can cover the Pan-European corridors and Trans-European road network as they do deal with roads despite also dealing with other modes of transport. This is similar to how we have DOT articles despite the fact that they also often deal with other modes of transport besides roads. However, we can make the focus of the Pan-European corridors and Trans-European road network articles more road-centric. Dough4872 21:02, 1 May 2024 (EDT)
Agreed that the highest paved roads list is annex-worthy. I also agree that the Pan- and Trans-European articles are similar to the ADHS, so I have no problem with including them. The intermodal stuff is worth a mention, but the details are best left out. Quite a few of the city DOT articles that we imported had a lot of information about local transit that was out of scope. We just removed it and moved on. That's what we can do here. –Fredddie™ 02:00, 2 May 2024 (EDT)
Yes, that first step looks like being basically anything EU or UNECE that's relevant. One road network (the E Roads of the Agreement) and some articles about priority corridors for improvement funding. The TEM is just roads, the Pan-European Corridors are all road, save the River Danube. The EU TEN-T corridors are multimodal but they all have roads as part of them (map). As Fredddie says, we just remove the stuff that's out of scope from those articles post-importation. Si404 (talk) 05:30, 2 May 2024 (EDT)
As just a note, I plan to go ahead and create AARoads:Europe soon, and just go ahead and import all the E-roads. One thing that will have to be addressed is that some E-roads redirect to the national road since they are a 1:1 relation, and at the moment I don't plan to import those in this batch. Individual cases can be sorted out at AARoads:Cleanup or can wait until the country in question is imported. --Rschen7754 14:44, 3 May 2024 (EDT)

The following E roads are AWOL: E88 w, E89 w, E91 w, E96 w, E98 w, E115 w, E119 w, E121 w, E125 w, E201 w (redirect), E234 w (redirect), E372 w, E373 w, E391 w, E401 w, E402 w, E422 w, E441 w, E471 w, E512 w, E531 w, E533 w, E552 w, E842 w, E013 w. Si404 (talk) 07:47, 8 May 2024 (EDT)

Thanks. They can be reported at AARoads:Cleanup (I'll open a request for this one). Usually this happens when the article wasn't tagged properly on enwiki. --Rschen7754 14:26, 8 May 2024 (EDT)

Taskforces / dividing Europe

My above list tried to group countries culturally while also trying to create areas with a similar number of articles (though splitting Iberia from France/Benelux would make that easier for existing stuff) Coherent units that aren't just one country (or one with a microstate) would be: Britain and Ireland, the Nordic countries, the Baltic countries, Benelux, Western Balkans, Iberia, the Visigrad 4, German-speaking countries, etc. Like with any groupings (what states are Mid-western, for instance?) there's not really hard boundaries. The problem with these coherent units is that some are rather small (eg the Baltic nations) in terms of articles, others a bit too large (eg the Allmanophonic nations) - so I grouped them together with a similar group or split them up a bit to try and equalise numbers. My personal preference is one big project like AARoads:United_States with sub-projects for certain systems, and for each country (some could be grouped). Si404 (talk) 06:25, 2 May 2024 (EDT)

As I mentioned above, I think we can have AARoads:Europe as the main resource page for Europe with countries with a lot of resources split into their own page. Meanwhile, countries with not a lot of resources along with resources for the whole continent (such as E-roads) can be listed at AARoads:Europe. I don’t think we need a resource page for every country and I don’t like the idea of regional resource pages as there are differing definitions of regions. Dough4872 08:27, 2 May 2024 (EDT)
That makes sense. I agree fully with that. Si404 (talk) 09:17, 2 May 2024 (EDT)
I think there was some confusion with me posting the CIA World Factbook map above. It was merely an idea to discuss. Yes there are political issues with lumping Russia (for instance) in with, well, any other country, but we are not beholden to anything. Don't forget this is a wiki, we can just change it later if it doesn't work. –Fredddie™ 11:54, 2 May 2024 (EDT)
On AARoads we are one team of editors. That was one of the mistakes of English Wikipedia, we started off as teams of individual US states, and then figured out that didn't work, and had to reorganize into a national team (and went through a lot of drama in that reorg). And the non-US/Canada editors were never really integrated into that, which is one of the causes of the problems alluded to earlier.
So it comes down to where to list the resources, as well as assessment (though I am hoping that individual countries can get a statistical breakdown). --Rschen7754 14:37, 2 May 2024 (EDT)
Of course I saw the CIA map as an idea to discuss - hence why I discussed it! Looking back at what you said about the map (perhaps a mistake as it made me more annoyed), you said "If nothing else, it's at least something." - that phrasing (especially the italicising) is rather rude - and you are keeping up this idea about the CIA map was proposed as some sort of discussion starter despite there already being something to discuss! Trash my earlier proposal, by all means - I don't agree with it, but provide reasons why rather than ignore it. In fact, I wouldn't even have minded if it was ignored - if it was in a tumbleweed sense rather than a 'we have nothing, here's something' sense. As Rschen says, we need the non-US/Canadian editors integrated. I don't think that gets done by ignoring proposals by such editors talking about their home turf, in favour of low effort copied proposals by a US organisation that are only tangentially related to the topic at hand. Si404 (talk) 12:43, 3 May 2024 (EDT)
Without stepping into specifics just yet, it does seem like grouping countries could have political overtones. But on the other hand, I don't want AARoads:Vatican City. (And I don't want to import part of Russia and not all of it). --Rschen7754 14:14, 3 May 2024 (EDT)
I lean more towards Si404/Dough's latest thoughts about splitting out certain countries, but then we have to be concerned about which countries get split out. As I said above - it's not meant to carry wiki political overtones or real world political overtones, unlike English Wikipedia. This is really just a place to store the resources, and (maybe) as the line item for assessment (but I am hoping that it can just be split by country regardless of size). But if it will carry hidden meanings and we can't avoid it, then we need to factor that into the decision making process. --Rschen7754 14:54, 3 May 2024 (EDT)
Ultimately, I don't care how we divvy up the countries. One idea that has popped up in my DMs is that if a larger country shares its road network with a much smaller neighbor (San Marino, Liechtenstein come to mind), maybe we don't need separate task forces. –Fredddie™ 01:44, 4 May 2024 (EDT)
Maybe that is what we do for Monaco, San Marino, Vatican City, Liechtenstein. Andorra is the next smallest country, but has ~50 potential articles. --Rschen7754 02:21, 4 May 2024 (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)
There would still be 50 in the LA area alone. --Rschen7754 02:17, 25 October 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)
There is such thing as a clover stack. See, for example, I-85 & I-26. Ran4sh (talk) 22:40, 9 November 2023 (EST)
Ah, that's a directional interchange. –Fredddie™ 16:02, 13 March 2024 (EDT)

Poll: interchanges

Starting this poll so we can at least get a better sense of what is being included here (and maybe archive this section off the page one day). --Rschen7754 01:26, 17 February 2024 (EST)

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


This proposal passes, with the clarification that colloquial names are also valid if they are used in press coverage. --Rschen7754 01:42, 27 May 2024 (EDT)

Interchanges must be named, and the name must appear in outside sources besides the department or ministry of transportation.
  • Yes. --Rschen7754 01:27, 17 February 2024 (EST)
  • Yes. Dough4872 09:20, 17 February 2024 (EST)
  • Yes. SounderBruce 20:39, 27 February 2024 (EST)
  • No. Named by who? Are colloquial names that got major local press coverage, like the Big X, OK? –Fredddie™ 00:12, 28 February 2024 (EST)
    • I would be okay with that affirmative clarification. I don't think the El Toro Y is an official name, for example, and I don't think a lot of the California interchanges are either. --Rschen7754 00:37, 28 February 2024 (EST)
This discussion has been closed and is preserved as an archive of the decision of the community. Please do not modify it!


This proposal passes. --Rschen7754 22:01, 25 May 2024 (EDT)

There must be more that can be said about the interchange beyond ramp descriptions and content that could belong in the articles about the intersecting roads.
  • Yes. Otherwise we open ourselves up to hundreds of articles that are just descriptions of the map - and for interchanges, that is overkill. --Rschen7754 01:27, 17 February 2024 (EST)
  • Yes. Dough4872 09:20, 17 February 2024 (EST)
  • Yes. SounderBruce 20:39, 27 February 2024 (EST)
  • Yes. This is another reminder that we need to describe why things are important. –Fredddie™ 00:12, 28 February 2024 (EST)

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)
I'm okay with articles like Arroyo Seco Parkway, but in general I don't support city detail articles for the reasons above. --Rschen7754 02:40, 18 May 2024 (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)
This makes more sense, I agree. TC (Eli) 01:20, 10 November 2023 (EST)
@Fredddie: Are we at the point where someone can action this? --Rschen7754 23:58, 7 June 2024 (EDT)
To be honest, I put it in my personal css and forgot about it. But, I went ahead and implemented it. –Fredddie™ 00:54, 8 June 2024 (EDT)

Secondary/County/minor highway systems

Note: I have taken the liberty of archiving a couple of dozen short sections that formerly resided here. They were all regarding secondary/minor route systems and should system X have articles, just entries in a list or be excluded from scope. This is not me declaring the decision is final for any individual system. I made this decision at a combined level that these discussions were bloating this page, and all more or less said the same thing. Most of these only had one or two votes summarized as "probably not notable enough for dedicated articles, listical is probably the best option. However, if someone can create a quality article for such a highway, go for it! We don't need the listicles to save articles from the notability police here!" If anyone feels any of these systems needs additional discussion or disagrees my summary statement applies to a specific system, feel free to restore or re-open the discussion for that system. Dave (talk) 01:52, 16 November 2023 (EST)

I strongly disagree with the mass archiving as there was significant discussion and disagreement on several of them. I will begin restoring them shortly. --Rschen7754 03:12, 16 November 2023 (EST)

Nevada

Nevada urban routes 500-699
This discussion has been closed and is preserved as an archive of the decision of the community. Please do not modify it!


These will be done by table unless there is enough for standalone articles. --Rschen7754 14:18, 2 January 2024 (EST)

  • 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)
  • Per VC but listicle instead of table. --Rschen7754 14:07, 27 November 2023 (EST)
  • The current content policy says articles should be titled alike with others in the same system; we did not import the Use Common Names policy from enwp, given that here all of our articles derive their notability from the system they're a part of. So they should be titled as their SR number rather than their local name (though the latter should of course be a redirect). Otherwise, yes, standalone articles for the interesting ones and everything else can be tableified. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:21, 31 December 2023 (EST)
Nevada secondary 700-895
This discussion has been closed and is preserved as an archive of the decision of the community. Please do not modify it!


These articles will be in listicles. --Rschen7754 23:26, 12 December 2023 (EST)

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

  • Per Dave. --Rschen7754 14:07, 27 November 2023 (EST)
Nevada county roads
This discussion has been closed and is preserved as an archive of the decision of the community. Please do not modify it!


The only consensus is that outside of CC-215, there should not be separate articles for each route. What county-wide articles look like will be decided on a case-by-case basis. --Rschen7754 17:19, 8 June 2024 (EDT)

I think that's too harsh. Most road lists of county routes came from a scraping a government created existing list or map. This was just a more direct scraping than most. However, why re-type such a list if one is already available? IMHO, the only problem with that article is it needs to be more explicit that the table was generated by the Elko County commission, above and beyond a footnote. I did something similar with the table of mountain passes in the route description for U.S. Route 50 in Nevada. I might play with this table to do something similar.Dave (talk) 15:37, 28 November 2023 (EST)
For clarity, my vote is table at most, though I could even say no coverage. --Rschen7754 01:22, 17 February 2024 (EST)
I would vote for a capstone article for the state plus CC-215. –Fredddie™ 16:33, 13 March 2024 (EDT)

Malta

I propose that we go ahead and import Malta. That would just be [3], however I suspect that pages would eventually be created for each route. I propose that we include the 1, 2, and 3 digit routes. Thoughts? --Rschen7754 18:52, 25 May 2024 (EDT)

@Sariastuff: --Rschen7754 18:52, 25 May 2024 (EDT)
I think Malta would be good to import next since there is an interested editor and for now only one article to import, which would set the base for additional articles to be created. Dough4872 21:59, 25 May 2024 (EDT)
Go for it! (3-digit routes are probably a listicle - I don't remember them being signed - but if detail can be written, I'm always for articles. But this is all by-the-by as it has nothing to do with the importation of the country). Si404 (talk) 04:07, 26 May 2024 (EDT)

Georgia

To fulfill the remaining Europe requests, I propose that we import the country of Georgia. There are only ~15 articles [4], most of them S articles (that should be renamed to be S-X (Georgia), removing "highway").

As for the future, I would consider the S and Sh (secondary) articles to be notable, but the A (local/municipal roads) might not be. --Rschen7754 12:46, 27 May 2024 (EDT)

@Labrang: --Rschen7754 12:46, 27 May 2024 (EDT)
I think importing Georgia is logical since there is interest and it won’t be too many articles to import. Dough4872 23:35, 27 May 2024 (EDT)
read - and yes, i am available to guide this from the content part. Note on notability: A-roads are not notable indeed. These are all local roads that are administered and governed through the municipal bodies - henceforth every municipality distributes numbers (ie there are 50+ A-XX roads - and it runs into the hundreds depending the municipality). Also most Sh-roads are not notable. There are up to a few dozen out of the 209 that have a certain degree of notability, ie a few long distance interregional roads or access roads to (remote) mountain valleys that are well known - such as to Svaneti (Mestia), Shatili or Tusheti. Labrang (talk) 04:54, 30 May 2024 (EDT)
There are other options as well for intermediate cases, such as what are called listicles (AA:RCS). --Rschen7754 14:43, 30 May 2024 (EDT)
That could be an option for a selection of Sh-roads. Not a first priority, but further "down the road", so to speak. Labrang (talk) 02:59, 31 May 2024 (EDT)
@Labrang: Could you verify that I have AA:NC right for Georgia? I didn't use a hyphen when I renamed just now. I also see the infobox on S1 (Georgia) has A 1 listed, which seems confusing given that there are other A roads. --Rschen7754 22:05, 5 June 2024 (EDT)
well noted - somehow I missed that in the infobox. That should be S1. In official documents the hyphen is used, but on corresponding road signs and other communications the hyphen is absent. I am not sure what should be the practice in that case here. Labrang (talk) 03:19, 6 June 2024 (EDT)
My personal opinion is that we should go with the hyphen then (similar to Michigan which is in a similar boat), however others might disagree so I want to give room for comment. --Rschen7754 20:05, 6 June 2024 (EDT)
Please correct me if I have it wrong: official documentation uses the scheme S-<route number>, while informal documents and signs use the scheme S<route number>. I ask, which is more likely to change? Based on my experience in the US, informal documents are never consistent, and change frequently. Signs can change over time as well, however the pace is usually a slow change. However the official documents tend to be constant and consistent. For that reason I would support the official practice S-<route number>. However, I don't have strong feelings either way, and if someone can make an argument that the situation is different here and the S<route number> is more likely to be stable and last for the long term, I could be convinced to change my opinion.Dave (talk) 22:37, 7 June 2024 (EDT)
In response to your question on "likely to change": the dash has been used in the early 2000s on road signs (see this 2004 photo in Commons). However, before 2010 they have already been phased out, replaced by the indication without a dash. None of the new road signs (be it replaced or in newly opened road sections) have a dash. To my recollection, having driven thousands of miles across the country spanning many years. But that is still a more or less anecdotal observation - which can be corroborated by the dozens of photos in Commons. However, the latest officially updated road list of 2022 (the list is confirmed by government/parliament every 5 years) maintains the dash. I don't have a strong preference. There's something to say for the officially documented format/convention, while at the same time the practice on the ground also has a value. We can stick to the official format, and then make a short remark on it - either at the individual road or at the general (Georgian road) system page Labrang (talk) 06:47, 8 June 2024 (EDT)
I will go ahead and move to use the dash. --Rschen7754 13:01, 15 June 2024 (EDT)

Assessment and Preliminary WikiWork

Thanks to @Fredddie:, we have initial assessments applied to our articles based on their Wikipedia assessments, as translated to our assessment scale. Articles on Wikipedia that were Featured Articles or A-Class are A-Class (blue) here. Good Articles there are B-Class (dark green) here. B- or C-Class there are C-Class (yellow-green) here. Start-Class there is D-Class (orange) here, and Stub-Class there is E-Class (red) here. Each class has a color assignment as previously noted, and article titles will appear in that color with the assessment spelled out in the tagline below it.

On Wikipedia, USRD pioneered the use of a statistic called WikiWork. Now that initial article assessments have been added, we have some initial stats, we can start computing WW values for the project. Once we enable regional tagging in the assessments, we can break out the stats by regions.

As of May 27, 2024:

Class Count ω ω Factor
A 115 0 0
B 1,306 1,306 1
C 5,490 10,980 2
D 4,953 14,859 3
E 3,285 13,140 4
Total 15,149 40,285 N/A

The Ω, or average WikiWork is 2.659, meaning our average article is currently between a C- and a D-Class in terms of quality.

In the future, Lists will be assessed on a similar scale and can be factored into WW stats. Featured Lists (FL-Class) on Wikipedia are AL-Class, aka A-Class lists. There are BL-, CL-, DL- and EL-Classes in the scheme, and List-Class will eventually be retired as lists are assessed into the appropriate classes. Accounting for the AL- and List-Class counts of 11 and 1,091, and putting List-Class as equal to EL-Class, we get an overall total ω of 44,649 and a Ω of 2.747. Imzadi 1979 → 14:35, 27 May 2024 (EDT)

WikiConference North America 2024

Hi, I know many of you have also edited on Wikipedia & other Wikimedia projects. I would like to invite anyone who edits here & who plan to attend this year's WikiConference North America (WCNA), (4-6 October 2024) to consider submitting a proposal for a session there. It would be great to have a session on AARoads!

Appropriately, the theme for WCNA 2024 is Crossroads, inspired by this year's location in Indianapolis.

You can find session types described here & program tracks described here. You can create a submission from here.

I hope to see you there! Peaceray (talk) 01:27, 20 May 2024 (EDT)

South Africa

I propose that we fulfill the remaining outstanding request and import South Africa. It is about 500 articles. South Africa has been an AFD target over the last several months as well.

That would be:

  • N - national route
  • R - provincial route - 2 digit
  • R - regional route - 3 digit
  • (theoretically there could be D - district roads, but no articles)
  • M - metro routes - by city. They are on the borderline of what enwiki would tolerate - some are freeways, but as they were city routes they were not automatically notable. This is probably something that merits discussion here.

The existing naming follows the new standard of Axx (disambiguator) so I suppose we just leave it as is.

There are various other ring roads and other roads; nothing stuck out to me as being entirely out of scope. --Rschen7754 20:41, 9 June 2024 (EDT)

I agree on importing South Africa next because there is an interested editor and the articles were recently targeted on Wikipedia. I think we can look into making RCS lists for the metro routes as some of them may not be notable enough for individual articles, as evidenced by the merges and deletion discussions involving them on Wikipedia. Dough4872 21:13, 9 June 2024 (EDT)
I think Metropolitan Routes deserve only list articles at the moment, kind-of-like the article currently named List of Metropolitan Routes in South Africa on Wikipedia. Only for a few of them do I endorse having articles, like M1 (Johannesburg), M2 (Johannesburg), M3 (Cape Town), M4 (Durban), M4 (Pretoria), M5 (Cape Town) & M13 (Durban), as they are important freeway routes in the municipalities that they serve. So, yeah, I suggest we mainly focus on the articles that are part of the National Routes, Provincial Routes & Regional Routes categories. Chils Kemptonian (talk) 14:44, 11 June 2024 (EDT)
I will import, but I am holding off a day or two to let the dust settle with the assessment first (to reduce server load). --Rschen7754 02:05, 16 June 2024 (EDT)
While I'm still waiting for the dust to settle down for the main import, I did create AARoads:South Africa just now. --Rschen7754 22:28, 17 June 2024 (EDT)
Looking at the way "Category:South Africa" is looking at the moment, wouldn't it be better if we removed all "numbered routes" from there since they are already in "sub-categories"? Chils Kemptonian (talk) 17:27, 25 June 2024 (EDT)
@Fredddie: so the question doesn't get lost --Rschen7754 21:35, 28 June 2024 (EDT)
It's a good question. Comparing Category:United States and Category:South Africa, the only articles in the main USA category are national in scope. I just cleared out a few in the ZAF category and yeah I agree that there shouldn't be any numbered routes in that category. –Fredddie™ 23:35, 28 June 2024 (EDT)
I just went ahead and took care of it. Platinum Highway was the only article that I wasn't 100% sure from context what category it should go into. That being said, there are Provincial and Regional road categories for each province and ideally, each National route should be tagged by the province and city or metro area that it enters. –Fredddie™ 23:50, 28 June 2024 (EDT)

Assessment

I'd like to formally introduce article assessments to the AARoads Wiki. I went back and forth on how we should do a project banner and I think this is the most efficient way for us. Those of us who were or still are Wikipedians will recognize the system used as Template:WPBS. For any topic that we want to assess, there needs to be a small banner template that uses {{#invoke:WikiProject banner|main}}. Then, these small banners are placed within the first unnamed parameter |1= of {{Talk header}}. For instance, a state highway in Iowa falls under AA:US, AA:Iowa, and AA:US/SH, so we place three banners {{Banner/USA}}, {{Banner/Iowa}}, and {{Banner/USSH}}, respectively, within the talk header like so: 

{{talk header|class=C|
{{Banner/USA}}
{{Banner/Iowa}}
{{Banner/USSH}}
}}

Talk:Iowa Highway 1 demonstrates how it looks. If you notice, the class parameter in the talk header is inherited by the banners automatically. Slick! Any article flags, such as |needs-map= or |attention-rjl=, are placed in the talk header {{talk header|class=C|needs-map=yes|.... The Talk header doc page has more information on all of the article flags.

Category:Project banners with quality assessment has the list of all available banners for use, which is all of the countries in North America, South America, and Europe. All of them are in the format Template:Banner/<place name>. I've only created a handful of road type banners, so I would request them at AARoads:Cleanup#Requested templates so all requests are in one place.

I should note that there are a couple cosmetic things that I need to fix yet, but those are minor and won't get in the way of tagging articles.

What do you think? –Fredddie™ 16:33, 14 June 2024 (EDT)

State tagging

In the before times, if an article had state detail pages (i.e. Interstate 80 and Interstate 80 in Iowa), the national I-80 article would not be tagged for states that had S/D articles. Is this a practice we want to continue? Why or why not? –Fredddie™ 12:56, 23 June 2024 (EDT)

I would say yes. If the purpose is to track the quality the state as a topic has produced, then the I-80 in IA article in your example is directly related to Iowa's quality metrics. The sections of the I-80 parent article for CA, NV, UT, etc. would contribute to the I-80 article's individual rating, but they don't really apply to IA. The alternative would be some messy calculation that the CA content in the article is X-Class, the NV content is Y-Class, etc. and the overall content is Z-Class. Imzadi 1979 → 14:57, 23 June 2024 (EDT)
I think we should continue the practice and not tag national articles for states if they are split into state-detail pages. Imzadi1979 summed it up pretty well. Dough4872 17:24, 23 June 2024 (EDT)
I ask because the idea was that when you created a state-detail article, you were supposed fix up the national article, but historically that didn't happen. Tagging national articles for states with S/D articles would incentivize fixing up everything. –Fredddie™ 21:29, 23 June 2024 (EDT)
The problem with national articles is that, ideally, they're a summary of all of the state-detail articles. However, when the s/d articles aren't up to snuff to the point where basically anyone can do a competent summary, a number of editors have to collaborate by each doing the state(s) they're familiar with, or else you basically need to be an expert on every state the route passes through. I don't think it's really fair to have California's assessment be influenced by how good the Montana section of the I-15 article is, especially since they can't depend on the Montana editors to do their part since there aren't any. Although we'd like people to cross state lines to fix things like that, historically they don't, which is mostly due to the learning curve of finding sources in a new jurisdiction. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 04:22, 29 June 2024 (EDT)

CheckUser

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


Not a controversial discussion at all. Seems pretty clear we should have checkuser, should ensure a minimum of 2 people with the tool, unanimous agreement on its uses and restrictions, should be available to admins upon request, and lastly a 2/3rds vote is the threshold for removal of access to the tool. While I didn't vote and won't to remain uninvolved as I'm closing this, I would inject my personal view that 2/3rds seems too high. We don't have nearly the number of editors with axes to grind as Wikipedia does (fingers crossed it stays that way), so I have to imagine that if 50%+1 agree the access to the tool should be revoked for a user, there was a good reason to vote this way. But 2/3rds it is. Dave (talk) 11:49, 7 July 2024 (EDT)

This is a formal request to install mw:Extension:CheckUser. The last few days have shown me that the tools would be useful. –Fredddie™ 21:06, 24 May 2024 (EDT)

So I think the big thing that we need to discuss is expectations around use. CheckUsering (CUing) spambots is one thing, but CUing real people is another. Plus, we don't want to run afoul of California or the EU, which both have specific privacy regulations.
The current status quo of having to look at server logs (which Scott, Alex, and I can do since we have server access) is not sustainable and provides no filter (in other words, everyone's addresses can be seen). Unfortunately we can't get away from that entirely as CU does not work for the misbehaving web crawlers that impact server performance. But having the tool would help.
But we should work out the following:
  1. who should have access (all admins? all crats? or require a separate discussion?)
  2. when can it be used
    1. anti-spam
    2. to determine abuse of multiple accounts (what level of proof would be required?)
  3. what can be done with the information
    1. I assume we do not want to allow explicit statements about real user = IP onwiki.
    2. Do we have to worry about the same admin blocking the IP right after the named account, implying a connection?
    3. Can the information be given to AARoads Forum admins in certain cases?
  4. do admins who are not CUs have the ability to overturn blocks made by a CU, using CU information? (and maybe the admin policy needs to be further developed)
All big questions that should be addressed. --Rschen7754 21:18, 24 May 2024 (EDT)
Can bureaucrats place a block that administrators cannot undo? –Fredddie™ 21:31, 24 May 2024 (EDT)
I think the issue on enwiki has been that non-admin CUs don't have the ability to review the technical CU information, and with over 1000 admins the chances of one of them making a poor decision were pretty high. Maybe we don't need a formal prohibition as a smaller wiki. --Rschen7754 21:36, 24 May 2024 (EDT)
I get that, but that wasn't the question I asked. I meant it from a technical aspect, similar to the ability to lock a page by permissions level. –Fredddie™ 21:38, 24 May 2024 (EDT)
Not without a code change, no. --Rschen7754 21:38, 24 May 2024 (EDT)
I support the installation of the extension. As an initial grant, I'd add CU to the 'crat rights, but also make it a user right that could be granted to others to fill out a corp of CUs.
CU should be used for anti-spam and socking situations. I wouldn't not support on-wiki disclosure of CU details. I'd say that we could share details between AARW and AARF as needed if there were specific situations that warranted it. Imzadi 1979 → 22:12, 27 May 2024 (EDT)
For full transparency: Scott and I as the active server admins do have the full access to the server logs, which includes IP information (not user agents). Are we doing anything with the information, except for that one investigation, and dealing with read-only web crawlers, no. We're struggling to keep the server in a performant state as it is. We are the only bureaucrats (besides Alex). Will crats be granted full access to the server? It depends on skillset really.
Would I support giving it to all admins? I hesitate a bit because there are a few that are mostly inactive, and because CU does require a certain level of technical expertise. There is also a higher bar of trust, plus the legal issues given below. But I don't know that as a community we are large enough to support another round of rights discussions. --Rschen7754 22:40, 27 May 2024 (EDT)
All the more reason to enlist some aid where needed and appropriate. Imzadi 1979 → 23:38, 27 May 2024 (EDT)
We also should address how to handle removal of the tools. If adminship is removed for any reason, then CU should be removed; also, there should be a voting process if the community loses trust. --Rschen7754 14:10, 28 May 2024 (EDT)
Also, for legal reasons I believe we should ask candidates to affirm they are over 18 and over the age of majority in country of residence, and ask that they disclose their country of residence (there are significant issues with giving CU access in places like Iran or even China). --Rschen7754 02:07, 27 May 2024 (EDT)

Poll: CheckUser

Since the discussion has died off, I think we need a poll to get things going again. --Rschen7754 21:26, 23 June 2024 (EDT)

Should the CheckUser extension be enabled on this wiki?

  • Yes, while I was hoping to not go down this route, there was socking a few weeks ago plus anti-spam would help. --Rschen7754 21:28, 23 June 2024 (EDT)
  • Yes—the tool would be useful. Imzadi 1979 → 21:43, 23 June 2024 (EDT)
  • Yes. It would be very useful in case someone decides to sock like what happened earlier. LilianaUwU (talk / contributions) 21:44, 23 June 2024 (EDT)
  • Yes. - This tool would be useful to combat sockpuppets and spam. Dough4872 22:05, 23 June 2024 (EDT)
  • Yes for the reasons already listed above. Ideally these tools will be used sparingly. –Fredddie™ 01:16, 29 June 2024 (EDT)
  • Yes. I assume (and hope) that it would be used sparingly. TC (Eli) 02:35, 29 June 2024 (EDT)

Who should have access to the tool?

Please choose all options that you could support (similar to an AARoads:Approval poll). Note that as owner, Alex may also request access to the tool.

  • A: Only those who have passed a voting process (TBD) may have access to the tool.
  • B: Bureaucrats will have access on request. Admins must pass a voting process to have access to the tool.
  • C: All admins will have access on request.

Should there be a minimum number of users with access to the tool?

  • At least 2, similar to Wikimedia, for auditing purposes. --Rschen7754 21:28, 23 June 2024 (EDT)
  • At least 2—preferably more should have it at any given time. Imzadi 1979 → 21:43, 23 June 2024 (EDT)
  • At least 2 - But more should have access in reality. Dough4872 22:05, 23 June 2024 (EDT)
  • At least 3 lest one of the two CUs do any funny business. –Fredddie™ 01:16, 29 June 2024 (EDT)
  • At least 3 - The two non-Alex crats should always have it and at least one non-crat admin should also always have it. (Alex, of course, can also just give it to himself at will.) TC (Eli) 02:35, 29 June 2024 (EDT)

When can the tool be used?

Proposal: the tool can be used to prevent disruption of the AARoads Wiki. This includes anti-spam measures, credible investigations of abusing multiple accounts, investigating potentially compromised accounts.

  • Yes. --Rschen7754 21:28, 23 June 2024 (EDT)
  • Yes—all of these are appropriate uses. Imzadi 1979 → 21:43, 23 June 2024 (EDT)
  • Yes. - These would be good uses. Dough4872 22:05, 23 June 2024 (EDT)
  • Yes. Specific and targeted uses only. –Fredddie™ 01:16, 29 June 2024 (EDT)
  • Yes. "Anti-spam measures" is kind of vague but I trust anyone reasonably expected to be entrusted with the tool to follow the spirit of the law. TC (Eli) 02:35, 29 June 2024 (EDT)

What can be done with the information?

Proposal: disclosure of IP addresses or other information provided by the tool of users (as opposed to spambots) should not be done onwiki or be provided to other parties without the tool, unless required to protect the wiki; in such scenarios, the minimum amount of disclosure required to prevent the disruption should be used. Limited disclosure to AARoads Forum admins, internet service providers (for abuse reporting) or law enforcement can be considered if there is a legitimate purpose for the disclosure.

Removal

Proposal: the tool should be removed on loss of adminship for any reason, or with 2/3 of users at a rights removal discussion supporting removal.

  • Yes, it is malpractice to have a right with no way it can be removed. --Rschen7754 21:28, 23 June 2024 (EDT)
    • I will also post that if proposals B or C pass above - that should there be a rights removal discussion, my understanding is that a new voting process would be needed to re-grant the right and that it should not be re-granted automatically just because the user remains an admin or crat. --Rschen7754 14:16, 24 June 2024 (EDT)
  • Yes—makes sense as well. Imzadi 1979 → 21:43, 23 June 2024 (EDT)
  • Yes - agree with these removal procedures. Dough4872 22:05, 23 June 2024 (EDT)
  • Yes. I would also support electing people to terms (say 6 months) so the ability to use the tools would fall away unless specifically renewed. –Fredddie™ 01:16, 29 June 2024 (EDT)
  • Yes with the same caveat as Rschen. TC (Eli) 02:35, 29 June 2024 (EDT)

Portugal

I propose that we import Portugal (15 articles).

  • A - Motorway / autoestrada
    • These comprise most of the existing articles. The current name is Ax motorway (Portugal) but would be changed to Ax (Portugal).
  • IP - itinero principal
  • IC - itinero complementar
  • N/EN - National road - <400 - have different classes 1st 2nd 3rd
    • Not sure if we go with N or EN for a potential naming convention (similar question with next one)
  • R/ER - Regional road - integrated with national roads but divided by region
  • L - local road - >400 - but might not appear on maps. Probably out of scope.
  • CM - minor road, probably out of scope
  • VE on Madeira
  • Per the past discussions on Speed limits in X articles, [5] would not be imported. --Rschen7754 12:05, 22 June 2024 (EDT)
Strong agree with this as well as Andorra. Si404 (talk) 14:50, 22 June 2024 (EDT)

It does seem that the original authors have left comments preferring N as opposed to EN. --Rschen7754 17:02, 29 June 2024 (EDT)


User:Gspfan

I really think that User:Gspfan needs to "be sat down" and given a stern talking to. This user is making so many horrible edits across the wiki. NewGirl4U (Morriswa on Wikipedia) 12:12, 9 July 2024 (EDT)

This user has been at it again on U.S. Route 17 in South Carolina. NewGirl4U (Morriswa on Wikipedia) 11:42, 10 July 2024 (EDT)
the article was a stub.
That may very well be, but spelling errors, bad grammar, and citing unreliable sources is very bad practice. NewGirl4U (Morriswa on Wikipedia) 15:47, 10 July 2024 (EDT)

The accounts will be blocked shortly. --Rschen7754 01:16, 14 July 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)

Poll: alphanumeric routes and disambiguation

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


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)
  • Yes - the above reasoning is all solid. Si404 (talk) 03:28, 31 July 2024 (EDT)

Redirect to Wikipedia instead of directly linking?

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

The result of the discussion was a withdraw due to the technical limitations of redirects/links and to prevent needing to overwrite a lot of redirect articles on import. — Preceding unsigned comment added by OrdinaryGiraffe (talk • contribs) 00:17, August 12, 2024 (EDT) (UTC)


I propose that instead of directly linking to Wikipedia when an article inside AA:Road's scope hasn't been imported yet (to my knowledge, current behavior of the Bluelinker), a link to the page on AA:Roads, which would then link to an article on Wikipedia is done instead, so the links, which could potentially take years to notice wouldn't have to be manually reversed once the road article is imported. (Proposal example: If article X links to road article Y, which hasn't been imported yet, road article Y would redirect to w:road article Y until road article Y is imported.) OrdinaryGiraffe (talk) 23:17, 11 August 2024 (EDT)

Discuss

How would this be technically implemented? If I'm reading this correctly this would require modifying code to Mediawiki itself. If so, I don't know if any of us even have that technical savvy to do so.Dave (talk) 23:41, 11 August 2024 (EDT)

  • This isn't technically possible. You'd have to use {{soft redirect enwiki}}, and you would get a blue link by linking to that redirect, but clicking such a link won't take you to enwiki. It will take you to a page on our wiki that then has a link to enwiki, forcing a reader to make two clicks. See OCLC (identifier) for a specific example. (That was done because all of the citation templates have links, and it was easier to do that than hack the templates.)

    Continuing the current practice of interwikilinking, as the Bluelinker does, is the best option since then a link will go directly to the intended target. Also, trying to pre-create all sorts of soft redirects would probably complicate the importation efforts with the bot. Thus, I suggest that this proposal be withdrawn. Imzadi 1979 → 23:43, 11 August 2024 (EDT)

    @Imzadi1979: I was thinking the Bluelinker could create or pop-up something to create the redirect when it links to the Wikipedia page, instead of pre-creating redirects. Withdrawing if a pop-up isn't possible. OrdinaryGiraffe (talk) 23:56, 11 August 2024 (EDT)
    See below. Even if we asked the creator of the Bluelinker do to what you want, it won't do anything actually useful in the long run. Also, you'd be asking us to create a page that the importer bot might have to overwrite, and I'm not sure that's a good idea either. Because of the technical limitations, I suggest withdrawing this proposal. Imzadi 1979 → 00:06, 12 August 2024 (EDT)

Support

Oppose

  1. I believe the proposal is asking to do something that isn't possible. If we want to link to enwiki we can either use the Bluelinker to point links there or we can use {{soft redirect enwiki}} which gives us a local blue link. We can't make our regular local links point to enwiki out of the box. –Fredddie™ 23:34, 11 August 2024 (EDT)
    @Fredddie: Turns out it's possible. See User:OrdinaryGiraffe/Sandbox/2, which redirects to a Wikipedia page. OrdinaryGiraffe (talk) 23:51, 11 August 2024 (EDT)
    That's a soft redirect. This simply adds a step more than what we're doing now. –Fredddie™ 23:55, 11 August 2024 (EDT)
    @OrdinaryGiraffe:: if you click the link to that page here, it does not take you to enwiki. It takes you to that page. Full stop. From there, you'd have to click the link to get to enwiki, which is not actually better than our current situation. It's worse. Imzadi 1979 → 00:06, 12 August 2024 (EDT)
  2. Too much work for a problem that will go away shortly. --Rschen7754 23:37, 11 August 2024 (EDT)

Other

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
  • [6] is a trade corridor. Still import?
  • [7][8] are not numbered but still notable as a freeway.
  • [9] is a 1950s road, still import?
  • Chile has some scenic/tourist routes, [10] and [11]
  • No idea what the hell this is [12].
  • [13] 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 [14], 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. [15]
  • 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)

Scandinavia article titles

Now that we have nearly all of Scandinavia imported, the bulk of the article titles that came in leave something to be desired in their titles:

Scandinavian existing titles
Country Article title Translation
Norway Norwegian National Road x (Riksvei x)
Norway Norwegian County Road x (Fylkesvei x)
Sweden Swedish national road x (Riksväg x)
Sweden Swedish county road x (Länsväg x)
Finland Finnish national road x (Valtatie x)
Finland Finnish regional road x (Seututie x)
Denmark Danish national road x (Primærrute x)
Denmark <no title> (Sekundærrute x)
Iceland Route x (Iceland) (Þjóðvegur x)

We've discussed on Discord that the demonym form sucks and needs to change, but to what?. For convenience, I included the road names in the appropriate language. Norway, Sweden, and Finland are fairly true to their translated names. Denmark translates to Primary and Secondary Route x. Iceland translates to National Road. By and large, ring roads in each country are titled Ring x (place), so there's nothing to fix there.

What I'm getting to is, what should these articles be titled? I present two options for discussion that I think we could all agree on. Those who were around for SRNC will recognize the formats. Vote for your favorite below. –Fredddie™ 03:05, 27 July 2024 (EDT)

Scandinavian title examples
Country Country first Country dab
Norway Norway National Road x National Road x (Norway)
Norway Norway County Road x County Road x (Norway)
Sweden Sweden National Road x National Road x (Sweden)
Sweden Sweden County Road x County Road x (Sweden)
Finland Finland National Road x National Road x (Finland)
Finland Finland Regional Road x Regional Road x (Finland)
Denmark Denmark Primary Route x Primary Route x (Denmark)
Denmark Denmark Secondary Route x Secondary Route x (Denmark)
Iceland Iceland National Road x National Road x (Iceland)
Agree with these proposals, would add 'Ring x (city)', which is what we have anyway.
A related question - currently we have E-road subpages in the form 'Ex in country' - is that right? (it does fit the interstate equivalent). It's more important in Denmark, Norway and Sweden because they form part of the national numbering system and so won't just be pointing at other routes but big detailed articles (though en:wiki didn't seem to bother, given the lack of such pages) - is it 'E20 in Denmark', or should it be 'E20 (Denmark)'? Si404 (talk) 04:00, 27 July 2024 (EDT)
The way the American titles are structured is that "X in Y" is the section of X within the boundaries of Y, whereas "X (Y)" is "the instance of X (of which there are multiple) in Y". So if the aim is consistency with those, it'd be "E20 in Denmark" (unless there are multiple E20s and Denmark has one of them, which is when "E20 (Denmark)" would be appropriate). —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 13:02, 27 July 2024 (EDT)
Just seen Finland there - you've missed off the Kantatie category of main roads (which includes the Valtatie)
I propose the following terms be used - the connecting roads won't have pages
Finland
Finnish Name Swedish Name English Name Page name format
Valtatie x (x=1 to 39) Riksväg x National Road x National Road x (Finland)
Kantatie x (x=40 to 99) Stamväg x Trunk Road x Trunk Road x (Finland)
Seututiet x (x=100 to 999) Regionalväg x Regional Road x Regional Road x (Finland)
Yhdystiet x (x=1000 to 9999) Förbindelseväg x Connecting Road x Connecting Road x (Finland)
Si404 (talk) 04:31, 27 July 2024 (EDT)

Do we know if the official name includes the country? As far as I am aware, states like NY (?) where New York is part of the official title are the only reason we have not shifted the US to use a similar format. --Rschen7754 13:49, 28 July 2024 (EDT)

I don't believe any of them do - the country is only a disambiguation used to be specific on hobbyist sites - within the nation they are simply 'national routes', etc as there's no need to qualify what nation/region from within it. Si404 (talk) 03:20, 29 July 2024 (EDT)

So it seems the Country dab format I mentioned and the Page name format Si404 mentioned are the same, so are we all in agreement that this is what we want to do? –Fredddie™ 15:01, 1 August 2024 (EDT)

Mine acknowledges Kantatie, which wasn't explicit in yours - but if they are the same, then excellent. As the imported page titles used 'national road xx' for Kantatie, it wasn't clear whether these would be continue to be treated the same as Valtatie despite being a different class that are signed differently. Si404 (talk) 16:02, 1 August 2024 (EDT)
Yeah, I'm in agreement with your table, I just didn't add the other two classes to mine. –Fredddie™ 17:20, 1 August 2024 (EDT)

As a note, this appears to have been done. --Rschen7754 14:10, 19 August 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. [16]
  • Luxembourg: 15 articles
    • Do we want to include CR roads? These seem to be local roads [17], 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: [18]
  • Iceland: ~25 articles
    • We have "Route 1 (Iceland)" but then [19]. 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. [20] 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? [21]
  • 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
    • [22] 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"? [23]
  • 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)

United States and Canada task forces

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


I'm reading this as three explicit supports and no explicit opposition, so this proposal passes. --Rschen7754 14:05, 6 September 2024 (EDT)

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)
I might have said it on Discord, but I support AARoads:United States/Iowa et cetera. –Fredddie™ 22:33, 20 August 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)
Change was made. --Rschen7754 14:04, 6 September 2024 (EDT)

African and Asian Highways

I am out on vacation pretty soon, which will have impacts on the import schedule. I think we should go ahead and import the African [24] and Asian [25] highways next, after Europe, and prioritize those international networks. We could look at Mashreq [26] and SADC [27] as well. Then we can look at Central Asia. Thoughts? --Rschen7754 19:15, 25 August 2024 (EDT)

I think doing the international African and Asian highways is the logical first place to start with importing articles for these continents. Then I think it makes sense to import Central Asia since there’s few articles and it would complete the E-road network countries. Dough4872 19:20, 25 August 2024 (EDT)


Asia and Oceania: the big picture

I think that we should go ahead and import most of what remains on English Wikipedia - Asia and Oceania. However, there are a few countries that will require significantly more cleanup that should be saved until the end:

  • India: a number of low quality articles, and a number of highway renumberings that left a mess (some states, as well as the national level).
  • Malaysia: hundreds of stub articles named "Jalang *" that are disorganized and that have unclear relevance, as well as neon-colored junction tables.
  • Philippines: recent highway renumberings have left a mess, and some questionably notable articles.
  • Australia: a number of things need to be figured out.
    • A number of out of scope articles on bridges/tunnels and city streets. We need to firm up our guidelines on such articles before undertaking such an import.
    • Uses Template:Infobox Australian road, so we will need to figure out what to do there.
    • AA:TITLES says to use the numbered designation, but almost all the Australia articles are titled by name, and not always in a 1:1 ratio to the numbered designation. Australia tends to focus on names more than numbers, but is it to an extent that we make an exception to the policy?

Brazil and the UK are also on that list. It is possible more countries could be added, but not likely.

Thoughts? I hope to have all of this (outside of the 6 countries) done by the end of 2024, and the rest done by end of 2025. --Rschen7754 20:50, 17 September 2024 (EDT)

Postscript: Hong Kong could be under consideration for this list as well, just because it has 200 city street articles tagged and will require some weeding. --Rschen7754 02:19, 18 September 2024 (EDT)
I think this is a good plan to have all but the problem countries imported by the end of the year. Dough4872 21:35, 17 September 2024 (EDT)

Oceania

  • Marshall Islands: 0 articles
  • Micronesia: 0 articles
  • Northern Mariana Islands: already imported
  • Guam: already imported
  • Palau: 0 articles
  • Nauru: 0 articles
  • Kiribati: 0 articles
  • Papua New Guinea: 3 articles. No numbered system, all are named
  • Solomon Islands: 0 articles
  • New Caledonia: 0 articles
  • Vanuatu: 0 articles
  • Tonga: 0 articles
  • Fiji: 0 articles
  • Samoa: 0 articles
  • American Samoa: already imported
  • Cook Islands: 0 articles
  • French Polynesia: 0 articles
  • Niue: 0 articles
  • Pitcairn Island: 0 articles
  • Tokelau: 0 articles
  • Tuvalu: 0 articles
  • Wallis and Futuna: 0 articles
  • Australia: skipped for now
  • New Zealand: 127 articles. Named motorways, State highway (but really national), Urban route (city)
  • Antarctica: there are 2 named ice roads. --Rschen7754 02:03, 26 September 2024 (EDT)
I hope you didn't strain yourself typing all those zeroes. I'm guessing you will import PNG and NZL on the same day? –Fredddie™ 02:08, 10 October 2024 (EDT)

Eastern Europe, part 2

Might as well get the next group of countries ready to go.

  • Bosnia and Herzegovina (8 articles)
    • A (motorway), M (main road), R (regional road). Omit L (local road)?
  • Kosovo (13 articles)
    • R (motorway), N (main road). Omit 3 digit R (local road)?
  • Montenegro (50 articles)
    • A (motorway), M (main road), R (regional road).
  • Serbia (83 articles)
  • Albania (12 articles)
    • A - motorway, SH - national road.
    • RR - district road, K - municipal road. Omit?
  • North Macedonia (5 articles)
    • A - main road.
    • My notes have P1 - National road, P2 - regional road, P29 - Local road. But the signage has it as R [28]. P29 might be outside our scope anyway.
  • Greece (100 articles)
  • A - motorway, EO - National road.
  • Provincial roads might be on paper only. This might be one case where the state/provincial highways are not notable. --Rschen7754 23:28, 30 July 2024 (EDT)
As always grab everything you can, and worry about notability after import.
Re Serbia - there's been a 2024 renumbering, and there's a new set of M roads doing something different. See TM for more details.
Re Bosnia - its two countries in a trench coat and both proposed a renumbering (and Sprska may have implemented it) so make sure we try and get Republic Sprska and Federation of Bosnia and Hertzegovina roads as well, if they exist.
Re Macedonia - the roads are signed with the Latin letter R, but appear on paper in Macedonian with the Cyrillic letter Р (which transliterates to R). We're looking over the alphabet line here (I know Georgia doesn't use Latin either so we've already crossed it) - things are going to get a little more difficult with the non-Latin alphabet used by the local lingo, but the Р ≠ P thing is the one to watch out for the most. Si404 (talk) 03:23, 31 July 2024 (EDT)
As far as Serbia, since M appears to be in between IA and IB, those should be in scope as well. --Rschen7754 23:36, 6 August 2024 (EDT)

Greece

Regarding Category:National roads in Greece, do we want to do "National Road nn (Greece)" or "EOnn (Greece)"? –Fredddie™ 23:28, 23 August 2024 (EDT)
Do a lot of sources call it EOnn? Or Εθνική Οδός nn? --Rschen7754 01:51, 24 August 2024 (EDT)
I did some scoping out on elwiki and their junction list analogues are inconsistent. Go figure. –Fredddie™ 17:38, 24 August 2024 (EDT)
Given the conversations we are having for China, I would say National Road nn (Greece). --Rschen7754 00:30, 10 October 2024 (EDT)

British dependencies

It will probably be a while before we import the United Kingdom. However, it would make things a lot simpler on my end (with tracking the remaining articles on enwiki) if we could go ahead and import the dependencies below:

  • Falkland Islands - Transport in the Falkland Islands and remove the non-road content
  • Isle of Man - 1 article plus a list. The A road articles were merged away wrongly on enwiki and could be reversed.
  • Gibraltar - Winston Churchill Avenue, Gibraltar, the main road in and out. The rest are city streets [29] that I don’t believe are worth importing. (Several years ago there was a lot of mass creation of barely notable articles, and many did not get deleted).
  • Jersey - 4 A road articles plus a list. --Rschen7754 00:24, 10 October 2024 (EDT)
Sounds good to me. –Fredddie™ 02:06, 10 October 2024 (EDT)

Northern Ireland

Firm agree from me. Guessing there's nothing for other BOTs. Does Northern Ireland have the problem stopping GB from being imported, or is it a whole UK issue? Having that would be good given Ireland (the island) is one road network and not having them makes the many Republic roads that go to the border not great. Si404 (talk) 15:00, 10 October 2024 (EDT)
I have been separately thinking about splitting the UK into the 4 countries for import purposes, just so we're not importing 2000 articles all at once. The problems that have been cited are 1) questions on whether and what city streets and bridges/tunnels get imported - given the high number of low quality and out of scope articles such as [30], we would need to resolve the first two discussions that are still on this page. 2) a lot of quality issues, and in some cases, one particular editor who couldn't understand what plagiarism was 3) a lot of good articles on A roads got merged away and determinations on whether and how those should be reversed - and on whether all A roads should get their own article or not, and if that extends to B (which historically has almost always been merged away on enwiki). As far as whether those affect Northern Ireland, my initial impression is no, but I would have to look. A lot of the country-wide system stuff wouldn't be imported yet though, and that might be weird. --Rschen7754 15:13, 10 October 2024 (EDT)
When it comes to roads, NI is like Jersey, Man, etc - totally separate numbering system and other than a handful of UK-wide articles (signage, etc) should have its own system stuff anyway (and mostly does - 1, 2, 3). That's why I brought it up. GB is hard to split (Scotland a little easier to remove semi-cleanly), and England is the vast majority (TM has 445 routes in Wales, 991 in Scotland, 4062 in England), I suggest breaking A/B roads up by first digit (which is mostly a geographical split, though doesn't tally with administrative boundaries), having bought in motorways first, and then doing the other stuff afterwards. Si404 (talk) 18:44, 10 October 2024 (EDT)
I've taken a preliminary look. It comes out to 47 articles. The only ambiguity is I see 9 articles on city streets/named roads. If we imported in every road that had an A or B designation for at least part of it, that would be 5, not too bad. (The problem with the rest of the UK is that there are hundreds of these to sort through). The breakdown I have is:
Import:
Crumlin Road
Falls Road, Belfast
Ormeau Road
Shankill Road
Shore Road, Belfast

Don't import:
Lisburn Road
Malone Road
Donegall Road
Donegall Square

Rschen7754 21:05, 10 October 2024 (EDT)

Central Asia

As requested, a proposal for Central Asia:

  • There are some regional highways that go across country lines. Similar to Central America, we will need to set that up.
  • Tajikistan: 4 articles. M road (Central Asia), RB - main road, RCH - minor road.
  • Kyrgyzstan: just a list. EM - international highway, M - state highway
  • Kazakhstan: 5 articles. A roads
  • Uzbekistan: just a list. M, A roads
  • Turkmenistan: just a list. M, A, P/R roads. --Rschen7754 17:29, 2 September 2024 (EDT)
    • Also: go ahead and create task forces for each? --Rschen7754 17:39, 2 September 2024 (EDT)
  • I think this is the next logical region to import as this would finish the countries on the E-road system. However, I don’t think we need a task force for each country; rather, I think we can lump them into a task force covering Asia or perhaps only Central Asia. Dough4872 17:44, 2 September 2024 (EDT)

@Rschen7754: are the Tajikistan M roads a coordinated international road network? –Fredddie™ 14:42, 16 October 2024 (EDT)

I don't know how much "coordination" is there per se, but it is supposed to be one network. --Rschen7754 14:52, 16 October 2024 (EDT)

North Africa (Africa, part 1)

Why Africa? There are only ~450 articles left to import, and we are trying to get everything imported, plus there is an Africa editor already.

  • Do we have a separate task force for each country or leave it all as one or multiple pages? We would leave South Africa separate.
  • Algeria - 3 articles. A - Motorway, R - Bypass, RN (N?) - national route, CW - provincial highway, C - local road (omit)
  • Egypt - 4 articles, but this is the first example of what I call GNG syndrome. People go through news articles and look for references to “the A-B road” and write articles based on that, regardless of how that road fits into any actual system or if it was constructed as one cohesive road. I am not sure that Egypt is worth importing and wonder if it would be better off started over. [31]
  • Libya - 6 articles. Unclear if they number their roads. OSM does have an A1 and a NR1. Probably just import it all for now. Not sure what to do with this [32], at first I thought it was pre-car, but maybe not.
  • Mauritania - 0 articles
  • Morocco - 25 articles. A - motorway, N - national road, R - regional road, P - local/provincial road. Not sure where we might draw a future line re notability, will leave that decision to later. Note that the A roads are currently created as named roads and some mergers may need to take place (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabat%E2%80%93Fes_expressway, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fes%E2%80%93Oujda_expressway)
  • Tunisia - 3 articles. A - motorway, N - national highway, R - regional road, L - local road (omit)--Rschen7754 21:04, 3 September 2024 (EDT)
  • I think this is a good place to start for Africa. As for the task force, I think one task force for all of Africa would be enough to list resources, with South Africa remaining separate. Dough4872 21:18, 3 September 2024 (EDT)

West Africa (Africa, part 2)

  • Benin - 7 articles. RNIE - international road, RN - national road
  • Burkina Faso - 0 articles
  • Cape Verde - 4 articles. EN - national road (EN1 - first class, EN2 - second class, EN3 - third class), ER - rural road (but a subclass of national), EM - municipal road (might not be notable?)
  • The Gambia - 1 article. Named highways and no numbering system.
  • Ghana - 40 articles. N - national roads, IR - interregional roads, R - regional roads - above 100 enwiki considers them feeder roads (might not be notable). Also will need some review of the interchanges for notability.
  • Guinea - 1 article. N - national roads
  • Guinea-Bissau - 0 articles
  • Ivory Coast - 0 articles
  • Liberia - 0 articles
  • Mali - 0 articles
  • Niger - 1 article. RN (N?) - national road.
  • Nigeria - 60 articles. E - expressway, A - federal main trunk road, F - other federal trunk road, B - state road, C - local road (not notable). We will need to be careful when importing the F roads, some were written by a sock and contain copyvios.
  • Senegal - 8 articles. A - motorway, N - national road, R - regional road, D - departmental road (might not be notable)
  • Sierra Leone - 0 articles
  • Togo - 0 articles

Rschen7754 22:06, 4 September 2024 (EDT)

Central Africa (Africa, part 3)

  • Burundi - 0 articles
  • Cameroon - 0 articles
  • Central African Republic - 11 articles. RN (N?) - national road, RR (R?) - regional road
  • Chad - 0 articles
  • Equatorial Guinea - 0 articles
  • Gabon - 7 articles. A - motorway, N - national road, R - regional road, L - local road (not notable?)
  • Democratic Republic of the Congo - 12 articles. A - motorway, N - national road, R - regional road.
  • Republic of the Congo - 1 article. N - national roads, P - regional roads
  • São Tomé and Principe - 0 articles. --Rschen7754 14:00, 6 September 2024 (EDT)

Middle East, part 1 (Asia, part 2)

  • Yemen: 0 articles.
  • Oman: 6 articles. N - National highway, S - Secondary highway, A - arterial roads, D - distributor roads, L - local roads.
    • Some of the lower classes probably shouldn’t be imported
    • The current articles are named Route 1 (Oman). Keep that way and ignore the N, which doesn’t seem to be referenced in the articles at all?
  • United Arab Emirates: 22 articles. E - Emirates road, Local road - each emirate has its own system - D in Dubai.
  • Qatar: 1 article. Q - National road, D - Doha road
  • Bahrain: only has this which I am not sure is even worth importing. It doesn’t even mention the roads that it connects.
  • Saudi Arabia: 6 articles. National - can go up to 4 digits - some of the higher ones might not be notable; some cities have local roads - probably subject to notability
  • Kuwait: 2 articles. Has national roads, but only this named article. Import and sort out later? --Rschen7754 21:38, 18 September 2024 (EDT)

Middle East, part 2 (Asia, part 3)

  • Lebanon: 0 articles.
  • Syria: 2 articles. M - Motorway, Main road, N - national road.
  • Iraq: 15 articles. Expressway, National road.
  • Israel/Palestine: 100 articles. the road system is the same. F - freeways, H - highways, R - regional roads, Jerusalem roads - might not be signed, many are also national roads. No indication that the letters are used in abbreviations so leave names where they are.
  • Jordan: 15 articles. Primary - 1di, 2di; Secondary - 3di.
  • Iran: 136 artuicles. F - Motorway, National highway. Also a number of named expressways. No indication that the letters are used in abbreviations so leave names where they are. --Rschen7754 20:42, 19 September 2024 (EDT)

Imports from other language Wikipedias

It's been asked on my talkpage [33] about imports from other language Wikipedias. I do have concerns about importing non-English content directly into mainspace, since it might take a while to translate and might not ever be translated. Perhaps we should start a Translate: namespace as a holding area for such imports? Or a Draft: namespace for imports where we just want part of the article? --Rschen7754 22:04, 21 October 2024 (EDT)

I would support either a general Draft: or a Translate: namespace as a holding area for this content. I wouldn't have a strict policy on deleting content, but I would say that if something has been totally abandoned that we should remove it. Additionally, I'd suggest that the whole namespace be noindex-ed. Imzadi 1979 → 22:22, 21 October 2024 (EDT)
I like the idea of a Translate: namespace for articles imported from other language Wikipedias that need to be translated to English before being moved to mainspace. I also like the idea of a Draft: namespace to work on articles. Dough4872 22:35, 21 October 2024 (EDT)
Yeah, I too like the idea of a Translate: namespace. We can probably reuse the Portal namespace slot? I don't think we need a Draft: NS at this point. –Fredddie™ 00:09, 22 October 2024 (EDT)
If you need help translating an article from Spanish, you can count on me, but honestly I'd like to have a sort of ‘Draft’ page, because eswiki articles vary a lot in quality, so they will need a few tweaks before they are published in mainspace. -DigitalSeb01 (talk) 15:15, 27 October 2024 (EDT)
Both Draft and Translate are now live. --Rschen7754 11:58, 2 November 2024 (EDT)
I can volunteer to import any articles from other Wikipedias into AARW's Translate: space. Imzadi 1979 → 12:22, 2 November 2024 (EDT)

Route categories

I suppose we've never had a policy about this before because it would have led to some random dipshit shrieking about botanical architecture, but perhaps we should come up with some sort of standard for what goes in numbered-route categories such as Category:U.S. Route 71. There have been a number of instances in which I've seen a number of categories added to an article and been entirely baffled what connection the article had with the numbered route categories it was in. In many cases it seems the route intersects with or at one point was renumbered to/from the route named in the category, which I'm not entirely sure is a strong enough connection to merit being in the same category (especially if the route contains other unrelated segments).

If I had my druthers, I'd limit numbered-route categories to just be parent articles, state detail articles, bannered (special) routes, and maybe child routes in systems that have such things. A category stuffed to the gills with articles you have to read to make the connection as to why they appear in that category unfortunately does not make a very intuitive finding aid. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 10:13, 12 September 2024 (EDT)

@NewGirl4U: since this seems to be a topic she's interested in. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 10:29, 12 September 2024 (EDT)
I've been doing this with routes where systems overlay - some of the E Road categories existed in the other place like 'Category:Constituent routes of European Route E30', but mostly didn't - and I've also done (somewhat) the other way around - so E11 (Europe) is in Category:A71 (France). I agree that the article needs to be directly part of the route - be it a feature (bridge/tunnel/interchange), detail article, or constituent part/uses it as a constituent part.
Child routes are surely their own subcategory eg Category:Auxiliary routes of Interstate 10? Si404 (talk) 14:05, 12 September 2024 (EDT)
I believe all highways that became the road in question or that road became should be in said category. NewGirl4U (Morriswa on Wikipedia) 15:16, 12 September 2024 (EDT)
I agree with Scott that we should limit these categories to only include the main article, detail pages, special routes, and child routes. I think we don’t need to include other roads that were a former alignment in the category. Dough4872 20:16, 12 September 2024 (EDT)
I just had to remove some errant categories. For example, @NewGirl4U: added the US 131 category to two highways in Michigan that were once a part of M-131, but they were never part of US 131. Yes, M-131 mostly became part of US 131, but M-119 is a section of M-131 that was never part of US 131. M-186 was part of M-131, but when US 131 was extended to replace much of M-131, M-186 was not used for US 131.
In short, because of the problematic nature of this, I support Scott's proposal and would suggest that tagging like the ones I just described should not be made, and where they have been made, they should be reversed forthwith. Imzadi 1979 → 21:03, 12 September 2024 (EDT)
Shouldn't all of the highways that became part of the category's subject (or vice-versa) be included in the category so any users can locate those that provide more thorough historical information about the roadway?
I misunderstood whether those Michigan state highways were actually part of US 131's path and/or M-131's and/or one or more other highways. NewGirl4U (Morriswa on Wikipedia) 23:05, 12 September 2024 (EDT)
I'm in agreement with Scott here also. I do think there's some redundant categorizing going on as well. Only one of U.S. Route 71 and Category:U.S. Route 71 need be in Category:United States Numbered Highway System, for instance. –Fredddie™ 01:18, 13 September 2024 (EDT)

Southern Africa (Africa, part 4)

  • Angola: 4 articles. EN/N - national road
  • Botswana: 10 articles. A - national road, B - secondary road
  • Eswatini: 3 articles. MR - national road, D - district road
  • Lesotho: 1 article. A - main road, B - regional road, C - local road - questionable notability, D - minor road - questionable notability
  • Malawi: 19 articles. M - main road, S - secondary road, D - district road, T - tertiary road, Quarternary road - 3xx - not many, B - minor road - not many
  • Mozambique: 0 articles
  • Namibia: 47 articles. A - motorway, B - major route, C - trunk road, Main road - being phased out in favor of C road, D - district road - goes into the 4 digits, but assigned geographically (there are an awful lot of them, might not be notable or notable only for RCS/list), P - farm road, might be obsolete
  • South Africa: already imported
  • Zambia: 21 articles. T - trunk road, M - main road, D - regional road
  • Zimbabwe: 23 articles. R - regional road (but really more important), P - primary road
    • However - there is also A - old numbering system (but a lot of articles exist for this) - and Google Maps, MapStudio (2011) still show this, OSM shows a mix of A and R, Wegenwiki fully uses R. So there is definitely some ambiguity here.
  • St. Helena: 0 articles

@Chils Kemptonian: re Zambia. —Rschen7754 23:34, 6 September 2024 (EDT)

    • For Zambia, I recommend importing the articles that currently exist on Wikipedia.
    • For Zimbabwean articles, we will need to decide if we are titling articles by the R-designation or by the A-designation or a little bit of both depending on the article (e.g. the "A6" and the "A8" together form the "R9"; the "A5" and the "A7" together form the "R2" and all 3 have articles; the "R1" is also known as the "A4"). Also, I do not like the way Zimbabwean road articles look at present & I may need to find a way to cleanse those articles. Otherwise, I recommend importing the "numbered route" articles that currently exist.
    • For Namibian articles, I like how the A roads, B roads & most of the C roads are structured currently and I recommend importing the articles that currently exist. Chils Kemptonian (talk) 17:30, 7 September 2024 (EDT)

Hong Kong

I would like to propose that we import Hong Kong. There are over 350 articles, however the majority are city streets. It seems that there is a consensus forming against importing most city street articles. Therefore, I would like to propose importing:

  • All articles on the 11 numbered routes
  • All articles on streets that are part of those routes
  • All articles on motorways and (near)-freeways
  • The usual articles on in-scope topics such as electronic toll collection, government agencies, etc.
  • A few borderline cases:

It comes out to around 80 articles total. --Rschen7754 10:46, 6 November 2024 (EST)

  • I support this proposal including importing all of the borderline ones. They seem to have enough uniqueness in and of themselves. Markkos1992 (talk) 12:23, 6 November 2024 (EST)
  • I too like this entire proposal. –Fredddie™ 21:06, 6 November 2024 (EST)
  • I think this is good for importing Hong Kong. Dough4872 21:36, 6 November 2024 (EST)

Indian subcontinent (Asia, part 4)

  • Pakistan: 114 articles. M - motorway, N - national highway, E - expressway, S - strategic route, L - loop (Lahore), Provincial highways, Municipal highways
  • Bangladesh: 55 articles. N - 1 digit or 3 digits, R - regional highway, Z - Zila (district) road - can go up to 4 numbers - notable?
  • Nepal: 77 articles. H - national highway, F - feeder road (but signs say NH - leave National Highway x (Nepal) as is?
  • Bhutan: 1 article. PNH - primary, SNH - secondary, Dzongkhag roads - DR, Lower classes - farm roads, access roads, thromde roads (not notable).
  • India: excluded for now per above
  • Maldives: 0 articles
  • Sri Lanka: 44 articles. E - expressway, A - national road - usually AA (signed as A), AB, AC, B - regional road - there are a lot of them, might not be notable? --Rschen7754 21:32, 20 September 2024 (EDT)

Eastern Europe, part 3

Don't think I'll get everything into this proposal, so there will be one more.

  • Bulgaria (65 articles) - A roads, I and II roads. The A roads are currently at the named titles so they will need fixing. I and II roads will need "road" removed.
  • Romania (35 articles) - A - motorway, DEx - expressways (x is part of the abbreviation), DN - National road, DJ - County road (but counties are states in Romania), DC - Communal road (probably not notable). Appears that none of the abbreviations have any spaces or punctuation in between them and the number.
  • Moldova (10 articles) - M - Main road, R - Regional road, G - local road, L - lower than that, way too many to be notable
  • Ukraine (70 articles) - M - international road, H - national road, P - regional road, T - territorial road - can go up to 4 digits, O - oblast road - can go up to 5 digits, R - raion road (county), S - village road. T and beyond may not be notable, but no articles exist past P.
  • Belarus (10 articles) - M - main road, R - regional (but signed as P in Cyrillic), N - local road, P - access road. Past N might not be notable, but no articles.
  • Lithuania (20 articles) - A - main road, K (KK?) - land road - 3 digit, R - regional road - 4 digit, Municipal road. There is a KK article, I suggest it gets imported for now. Past that might not be notable.
  • Latvia (15 articles) - A - main road, P - first class road, V - second class road.
  • Estonia (25 articles) - national road, community road. enwiki says the abbreviation for national roads is T, but that's not how the articles are named [34]. There are 1785 community roads, that might be a bit much. --Rschen7754 00:37, 14 August 2024 (EDT)

Romania naming convention

For articles like DN1, do we go to DN1 (Romania)? Or National Road 1 (Romania)? --Rschen7754 20:54, 15 October 2024 (EDT)

I would lean towards the latter since DN is not on signs. --Rschen7754 22:53, 15 October 2024 (EDT)
I agree with "National/County/Communal Road nn (Romania)". If anything, it's consistent with U.S. Highways. –Fredddie™ 14:40, 16 October 2024 (EDT)
As a note, this was done a while back. --Rschen7754 01:26, 16 November 2024 (EST)

KK143

What about this one? It stands for Krašto kelias, but Google Translate says "country road". --Rschen7754 00:16, 24 October 2024 (EDT)

Looks like a second order system, probably about as dense as the average U.S. state routes. NE2 (talk) 03:25, 16 November 2024 (EST)
I'm more referring to what those articles should be titled. --Rschen7754 12:52, 16 November 2024 (EST)

Southeast Asia (Asia, part 5)

  • Myanmar: 13 articles. National highways.
  • Thailand: 49 articles. Motorways might be considered a separate class; National highway - can go up to 4 digits, but importance is not strictly defined by number of digits; Concession highway - toll?
  • Cambodia: 15 articles. E - expressway (should be named Ex (Cambodia)), RN - National road, RD - Provincial road, but leave names where they are (National Highway x (Cambodia), National Road x (Cambodia)).
  • Singapore: 19 articles. All named highways
  • Malaysia: postponing per above
  • Laos: 5 articles. Numbered national roads.
  • Vietnam: 36 articles. CT - motorway, National road - quoc lo, Provincial road - tinh lo, Communal road - huong lo - notability issues likely. Leave National Route x (Vietnam) articles at that name.
  • Philippines: postponing per above
  • Brunei: 10 articles, all named highways
  • Indonesia: 97 articles. National route, provincial route. Names use the demonym (Indonesian National Route) - change? --Rschen7754 13:18, 21 September 2024 (EDT)

Thailand has the following systems of numbering:

  • Motorways: Motorway 6 (Thailand), abbreviated M6 (the Thai name seems to translate to special intercity highway)
  • National Highways: National Highway 1 (Thailand), no evidence of any abbreviation in English. Thai sources use ทล. (transliteration Thl) as an abbreviation for ทางหลวง (highway).
  • Rural Roads: Rural Road Samut Songkhram 2021, numbered by province (but a route named for one province can go far outside that province's borders). Signs show the Department of Rural Roads logo (including English), Thai text that reads rural highway, then (as the designation) a two-character abbreviation for the province and a four-digit number. So the above link is สส.2021, which can be transliterated as Ss. 2021. These transliterations are not unique; for example both Nakhon Pathom (นฐ) and Narathiwat (นธ) become Nth. These are roughly equivalent to Texas Farm to Market Roads.
  • Local Roads: Older signs usually show the logo of the agency that maintains them, an abbreviation for the agency, the abbreviation for the province, and a four-digit number. Thai Wikipedia has a good description of the newer signs, which have completely different numbers. The example shown is Songkhla 1-0052, with the top text reading Skh.Th and the bottom text reading Songkhla Provincial Administrative Organization. These routes are probably not notable in general.

There are also unnumbered toll freeways in Bangkok. NE2 (talk) 18:49, 27 October 2024 (EDT)

Quebec > Québec?

Asking about this here since I don't want to move hundreds of articles without consensus. This would mean all articles about Québec roads would get their accent aigu (e.g. Quebec Route 138 > Québec Route 138). LilianaUwU (talk / contributions) 22:50, 21 September 2024 (EDT)

I’m fine if you wanna add the accent mark for the Quebec article titles. Dough4872 22:51, 21 September 2024 (EDT)
Is this in accord with AA:TITLES? "Place names used to disambiguate (as a suffix or a prefix) should generally be translated to English; however, a common English name should be used rather than overtranslating names that are commonly used." --Rschen7754 23:03, 21 September 2024 (EDT)
If this is done, make sure redirects are made (for those that don't currently exist). NewGirl4U (Morriswa on Wikipedia) 23:37, 21 September 2024 (EDT)
Québec can also be viewed as a stylized form of the English name. Plenty of cities in the U.S. with French- or Spanish-derived names keep their accent marks in high-quality or traditional typesetting, such as Belpré, Ohio. Mostly, this practice is considered outdated, but in a few cases, the accented form has seen something of a revival, as in San José, California. The stylized form would definitely be relevant to a rail wiki, but for a roads wiki, I can't say. – Minh Nguyễn 💬 17:02, 8 October 2024 (EDT)
As francophone as I am, I want to ask before things are moved: what do English-language sources do about the name of la belle province? If they are not using the accent mark, well, then we shouldn't either. What does the provincial government do in English-language publications? If even they aren't including the accent in English, then again we shouldn't either. Imzadi 1979 → 01:03, 9 November 2024 (EST)
@Imzadi1979: wikt:Québec#English says the Canadian government officially recommends “Québec” in English for the city but “Quebec” for the province. [35] But I’m pretty sure the provincial government has standardized on “Québec” in its limited amount of English material. As for private publishing, I’d reiterate that it’s a matter of typographical quality: you won’t see a wire service or general-interest news outlet bother with the accent mark, but academic and touristic publications often opt for it. In other words, as with the periods in “U.S.”, there are multiple right answers. – Minh Nguyễn 💬 23:44, 9 November 2024 (EST)

Relevant side question to wrap this up, @Dough4872, Rschen7754, and Mxn: should we move to Route xx (Québec) or keep it at Québec Route xx? –Fredddie™ 18:39, 8 November 2024 (EST)

re pinging @LilianaUwU: because I misspelled. –Fredddie™ 18:40, 8 November 2024 (EST)
@Fredddie:, what was the consensus on the second road article name RfC? I'd personally just move to "Québec Route nnn". LilianaUwU (talk / contributions) 19:34, 8 November 2024 (EST)
I say based on the earlier SRNC 2.0 discussion we keep the titles at Québec Route X. Dough4872 19:50, 8 November 2024 (EST)
Then let's do that. LilianaUwU (talk / contributions) 20:53, 8 November 2024 (EST)

United Kingdom

Our original plan was to import United Kingdom well into next year. However, for the past few months there has been some low-level deletionist actions taking place on English Wikipedia [36]. Some articles have been getting trashed as well, and while we do have backups and the capability to restore to previous versions, the longer we delay importing the UK, the worse the mess will be to clean up when we do get around to it. So as with this whole process, things have been unpredictable and I think we should go ahead and import at least part of the United Kingdom.

So here is what I am proposing that we start with:

  • E roads
  • M roads
  • A roads
    • Do we consider all A roads notable?
  • The necessary lists for those

Everything else (city streets in scope, B roads?, service areas, etc.) will be postponed. I’m not sure whether we will do it right after E/M/A are imported or if we move on to other countries and come back.

I do also want to set expectations and say that this alone could take us into 2025. The delay is because I will need to sweep for articles that got redirected away. There was also a serious copyright violator who edited the articles on English Wikipedia, and I don’t want to import that either and will need to check articles. --Rschen7754 11:24, 9 November 2024 (EST)

Yeah I think we should bring the E, M, and A road articles in the United Kingdom over here soon in order to protect them from whatever happens on Wikipedia. And I think we should allow most if not all A roads to have individual articles on AARW, regardless of what merging/deleting is taking place on Wikipedia. I think the rest of the United Kingdom such as B roads and city streets can wait possibly until after the rest of the world is imported as there is not as much urgency to bring these articles over and we might need more time to discuss what to do with these articles in terms of bringing them over to AARW. Dough4872 12:11, 9 November 2024 (EST)
I say bring in the Ms and As. The List of E-roads in Great Britain is already here, so unless we need need sub articles for unsigned designations, that's covered, right? In any case, start importing the UK in the next free bot cycles. Imzadi 1979 → 13:55, 9 November 2024 (EST)
Bring in the E-road articles - we already have most of them, but the remaining two: w:European route E1 in the United Kingdom (which should have been brought over with Northern Ireland, and I'll merge into an E1 in Ireland article) and w:European route E5 in the United Kingdom are worth bringing over as we have redlinks for them, and I'm planning on making many similar Exx in <country> pages down the line similar to how we have Interstate xx in <state> articles. Si404 (talk) 14:23, 9 November 2024 (EST)
Certainly AA:Scope would see all A roads as notable (though with some perhaps getting listicles like how state roads under a mile do). B roads too (as listicles with some stand-alone articles for roads with more to write about?). And while seeing all of them as notable will mean a lot of crappy articles to begin with, the low-quality of the article doesn't mean that the road itself is not notable enough (see rant below)! There's few city streets that would be in scope, but when WP has pulled nonsense like 'w:Slug Road' instead of having it by it's number, that means that a lot of stuff is not going to be going by its road number. Good luck trying to deal with that mess, and thank you for bravely choosing to do so! Si404 (talk) 14:23, 9 November 2024 (EST)
I'll plan on importing all the A roads as separate articles, and if we need to merge into listicles we can do that later (the current lists are tables). There are a number of city streets that also happen to be A or B roads. The recently partly concluded city streets discussion says they are in scope, but merges with the numbered routes should be considered. That will be a project in itself. --Rschen7754 14:38, 9 November 2024 (EST)
I agree with bringing in the E, M, and A roads, and I'm in favor of bringing in the B roads too (either now or later, depending on if we're worried about deletions). TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 17:34, 9 November 2024 (EST)
(Rant kept separate from main discussion) That A412 merge (removing from WP some content in the process) just reeks of ideology and spite. Yes, the article wasn't very good, but that doesn't mean that the road is not notable! It was literally the western part of the Orbital Road for London from the 20s (when they classified A roads) to the 70s (when they built the M25)! It passes through a magic roundabout, has a short but extravagant grade-separated section in Watford, and has recently had the UK's longest rail viaduct built over it - as gloriously captured by the streetview car mid-construction. It's notable beyond WP:GEOROAD (erroneously used by the vandal 'Veganitics' as an excuse to move crap content to a place where it will stay unimproved, instead of requesting improvement) saying that national/provincial/state roads are generally notable. At least the roads 10mmsocket is proposing merge into the listicle are less notable than the A412 with the existing articles stubs (even if its with such excited glee that I can't help but worry at the sanity there) even if falling into the same fallacy that crap articles mean that the subject isn't worthy of its own page. Si404 (talk) 14:23, 9 November 2024 (EST)

Names

So I assume that it will always be M1 (X), A1 (X), B1 (X).

What should we use to disambiguate? Is it always going to be (United Kingdom), or should we break it down to England/Scotland/Wales? There are a few cases where roads cross over too. --Rschen7754 23:36, 12 November 2024 (EST)

I'd go with "Great Britain" for the geographic disambiguator on everything for consistency. The UK includes Northern Ireland, and there's duplication between the numbering schemes between GB and NI, so you'd have to do something more specific.
One last thing to discuss is how to handle the A1(M). Will that be "A1(M) (Great Britain)" or something else? Imzadi 1979 → 01:50, 13 November 2024 (EST)
Great Britain makes sense to me. As to Imzadi's question, I merged A8(M) motorway (Northern Ireland) into A8 (Northern Ireland) so I don't see why we couldn't also do that with the British A(M)s. –Fredddie™ 02:47, 13 November 2024 (EST)
I have not bothered with redirects here because I was unsure with this question, but I think it is safe to go with Great Britain after looking at this. Markkos1992 (talk) 07:21, 16 November 2024 (EST)
A8(M) Northern Ireland) is basically a short part of the mainline of A8 (Northern Ireland). Other Ax(M) are not necessarily the same. Personally I wouldn't merge any in, but I'm fine with A8(NI) and the handful of situations like that. Others I'd want to resplit. Si404 (talk) 14:59, 16 November 2024 (EST)

Lists

I've started the A roads, but it is taking a long time. I'm also trying to put together a package of imports related to the system, leaving the more ambiguous cases for later. But we seem to have three lists that all do similar things:

Which one(s) should be imported? --Rschen7754 03:21, 16 November 2024 (EST)

they are all not good (I knew there was a reason I hated WP beyond the busy bodies and their bureaucracy), but the middle one (UK) is the least intolerable. Si404 (talk) 15:03, 16 November 2024 (EST)

Service areas

I know we said the companies that run service areas are out of scope. But what about the service areas themselves? Main list: [37] --Rschen7754 18:48, 16 November 2024 (EST)

Personally, I think service areas should be covered in the articles about the roads they are on and not in individual articles. I think we can import that list and make sure these service areas are mentioned in the road articles, but I don’t know if we need articles for each individual service area. Dough4872 19:19, 16 November 2024 (EST)
They should be handled as part of a Services section in the article on the road, in much the same way Kansas Turnpike handles them. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:24, 22 November 2024 (EST)
I agree with Scott. –Fredddie™ 14:38, 26 November 2024 (EST)
I somewhat disagree with this US-centric approach to UK roads as many service areas are on more than one road and we need to work out how to handle that without too much duplication, rather than repeat ourselves on several pages. I propose short articles (perhaps arranged in a listicle format) with an infobox/map, and a short paragraph saying that it's a service area, rough layout in relation to roads (eg Beaconsfield is a single site off a pre-existing junction off the motorway, Cobham is a single site served by its own junction off the motorway, Leicester Forest East is a single site focussed on an overbridge with separate carparks for each carriageway, Newport Pagnell is two sites opposite each other, Hamilton is a single site northbound only) and a brief history (opened in xxxx, renamed in yyyy, etc), and then some links to external sites. Si404 (talk) 10:00, 28 November 2024 (EST)
I could be convinced to support a listicle but not more than that. --Rschen7754 12:18, 28 November 2024 (EST)
Perhaps we could import into draft space and then use that to construct listicles? --Rschen7754 22:10, 28 November 2024 (EST)
These were imported into draft. --Rschen7754 01:49, 7 December 2024 (EST)

Congestion charges

What about congestion charges? The main one being w:London congestion charge, though New York City now has one. I will note that w:Electronic Road Pricing could be another. --Rschen7754 20:33, 22 November 2024 (EST)

I think these can be within scope since they deal with a type of tolling system. Dough4872 20:39, 22 November 2024 (EST)
I thought Electronic Road Pricing was imported already. It's not, but I'd support any of them. –Fredddie™ 02:52, 23 November 2024 (EST)
To my eyes this is just another form of a toll road and can be handled with the same policies and guildelines. That usually means we mention a toll is charged, and how it is collected (electronically, booth, whatever) but do not mention rates as they are subject to change and will date the article. Dave (talk) 10:32, 24 November 2024 (EST)
Agree - but importing the article and then adapting the to our purposes seems easier than writing from scratch, plus gives the relevant accreditation to the people who've written it. With something like the London Congestion Charge, it's not really a toll road, as much as a toll area, and would need its own article. Si404 (talk) 09:46, 28 November 2024 (EST)
I think these were all done. --Rschen7754 15:17, 29 November 2024 (EST)

Ring roads

I think all members of [38] should be imported, whether they fall into other categories or not. --Rschen7754 14:28, 25 November 2024 (EST)

Of these, having bluelinked them, they are all relevant. Except Great Victorian Way which (while very interesting) is out of scope. Si404 (talk) 09:43, 28 November 2024 (EST)

B roads

I assume we import the lists. Do we import the existing articles? What about the ones that have been redirected away? And do we merge (most/all) of them to listicles, or leave them separate? --Rschen7754 14:04, 26 November 2024 (EST)

  • Definitely import the lists. We could probably use TM to make them complete. I counted about 45 active B-road articles last night, though I didn't go through them to see if any were worth keeping. –Fredddie™ 14:35, 26 November 2024 (EST)
  • I think we can import the lists and whatever articles currently exist or formerly existed and were merged away on Wikipedia. As for whether B roads should be in a listicle or separate article, maybe allow for articles when there is enough to warrant for a separate article but otherwise cover in a listicle. Dough4872 18:29, 27 November 2024 (EST)
Import the articles. If they are worth keeping as separate, we keep as separate. If not we remove/put the information in a listicle. Si404 (talk) 09:41, 28 November 2024 (EST)
I would suggest what we did with Sao Paulo - import all existing articles, and articles that were redirected away and that contain something of substance. --Rschen7754 22:09, 28 November 2024 (EST)
Bs were imported. There weren't a lot. --Rschen7754 00:10, 30 November 2024 (EST)

UK city streets

Do we import city streets that are partially A or B roads, even if the article exists? Or do a brief mention? There are around 250 articles in question. I assume that we are going to not import the 750 articles on city streets that are quite often residential and where the content is mostly about buildings and people. --Rschen7754 14:04, 26 November 2024 (EST)

  • I said on Discord that if it's part of a road we've already imported, we should skip it and make sure there's a mention in the relevant articles. –Fredddie™ 14:36, 26 November 2024 (EST)
  • I think we should import whatever streets we determined are within our scope in the earlier streets discussion, which would include streets that are currently or formerly were part of a numbered route. Dough4872 18:30, 27 November 2024 (EST)
    • I think we should strike a middle ground here. If we imported the article, would the text add anything? If it would add useful details, then yes. If it would add stuff about buildings or people, or other off-topic details, then no. [39] is a good example of an article that should not be imported. --Rschen7754 19:26, 30 November 2024 (EST)

Junctions

  • There is an extensive set of tables covering mostly non-notable junctions: w:List of road junctions in the United Kingdom. Do we import this? Do we try and slim it down?
  • There are a bunch of other junction articles. The motorway ones are probably notable, the A and lower ones may not be, and some have off-topic content like w:Jolly Farmer. --Rschen7754 14:25, 26 November 2024 (EST)
    @Si404: --Rschen7754 14:25, 26 November 2024 (EST)
    • Thinking the A-road junctions are going to have to be a case-by-case basis. I probably would not import Jolly Farmer as the roundabout part of it is kind of an afterthought articlewise. –Fredddie™ 14:30, 26 November 2024 (EST)
Off-topic/unnotable content shouldn't mean throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Import the list, which can be trimmed. Import the pages for junctions where they exist and are about the junction rather than what it's named after (eg Jolly Farmer is primarily about the pub). Si404 (talk) 09:39, 28 November 2024 (EST)
Though, there is only so much that can be said for two at-grade two-lane roads meeting. --Rschen7754 22:26, 28 November 2024 (EST)

System/terminology

Some borderline cases:

Rschen7754 23:12, 26 November 2024 (EST)

Just a note that I believe everything should be imported now. If there are things that got missed, they can be requested at AARoads:Cleanup. --Rschen7754 19:45, 7 December 2024 (EST)

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