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)
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