Rogue Editors Started a Competing Wikipedia That's Only About Roads (gizmodo.com) 57
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: For 20 years, a loosely organized group of Wikipedia editors toiled away curating a collection of 15,000 articles on a single subject: the roads and highways of the United States. Despite minor disagreements, the US Roads Project mostly worked in harmony, but recently, a long-simmering debate over the website's rules drove this community to the brink. Efforts at compromise fell apart. There was a schism, and in the fall of 2023, the editors packed up their articles and moved over to a website dedicated to roads and roads alone. It's called AARoads, a promised land where the editors hope, at last, that they can find peace. "Roads are a background piece. People drive on them every day, but they don't give them much attention," said editor Michael Gronseth, who goes by Imzadi1979 on Wikipedia, where he dedicated his work to Michigan highways, specifically. But a road has so much to offer if you look beyond the asphalt. It's the nexus of history, geography, travel, and government, a seemingly perfect subject for the hyper-fixations of Wikipedia. "But there was a shift about a year ago," Gronseth said. "More editors started telling us that what we're doing isn't important enough, and we should go work on more significant topics." [...]
The Roads Project had a number of adversaries, but the chief rival is a group known as the New Page Patrol, or the NPP for short. The NPP has a singular mission. When a new page goes up on Wikipedia, it gets reviewed by the NPP. The Patrol has special editing privileges and if a new article doesn't meet the website's standards, the NPP takes it down. "There's a faction of people who feel that basically anything is valid to be published on Wikipedia. They say, 'Hey, just throw it out there! Anything goes.' That's not where I come down." said Bil Zeleny, a former member of the NPP who goes by onel5969 on Wikipedia, a reference to the unusual spelling of his first name. At his peak, Zeleny said he was reviewing upwards of 100,000 articles a year, and he rejected a lot of articles about roads during his time. After years of frustration, Zeleny felt he was seeing too many new road articles that weren't following the rules -- entire articles that cited nothing other than Google Maps, he said. Enough was enough. Zeleny decided it was time to bring the subject to the council.
Zeleny brought up the problem on the NPP discussion forum, sparking months of heated debate. Eventually, the issue became so serious that some editors proposed an official policy change on the use of maps as a source. Rule changes require a process called "Request for Comment," where everyone is invited to share their thoughts on the issue. Over the course of a month, Wikipedia users had written more than 56,000 words on the subject. For reference, that's about twice as long as Ernest Hemingway's novel The Old Man and the Sea. In the end, the roads project was successful. The vote was decisive, and Wikipedia updated its "No Original Research" policy to clarify that it's ok to cite maps and other visual sources. But this, ultimately, was a victory with no winners. "Some of us felt attacked," Gronseth said. On the US Roads Project's Discord channel, a different debate was brewing. The website didn't feel safe anymore. What would happen at the next request for comment? The community decided it was time to fork. "We don't want our articles deleted. It didn't feel like we had a choice," he said.
The Wikipedia platform is designed for interoperability. If you want to start your own Wiki, you can split off and take your Wikipedia work with you, a process known as "forking." [...] Over the course of several months, the US Roads Project did the same. Leaving Wikipedia was painful, but the fight that drove the roads editors away was just as difficult for people on the other side. Some editors embroiled in the roads fights deleted their accounts, though none of these ex-Wikipedian's responded to Gizmodo's requests for comment. Bil Zeleny was among the casualties. After almost six years of hard work on the New Post Patrol, he reached the breaking point. The controversy had pushed him too far, and Zeleny resigned from the NPP. [...] AARoads actually predates Wikipedia, tracing its origins all the way back to the prehistoric internet days of the year 2000, complete with articles, maps, forums, and a collection of over 10,000 photos of highway signs and markers. When the US Roads Project needed a new home, AARoads was happy to oblige. It's a beautiful resource. It even has backlinks to relevant non-roads articles on the regular Wikipedia. But for some, it isn't home. "There are members who disagree with me, but my ultimate goal is to fork back," said Gronseth. "We made our articles license-compatible, so they can be exported back to Wikipedia someday if that becomes an option. I don't want to stay separate. I want to be part of the Wikipedia community. But we don't know where things will land, and for now, we've struck out on our own."
The Roads Project had a number of adversaries, but the chief rival is a group known as the New Page Patrol, or the NPP for short. The NPP has a singular mission. When a new page goes up on Wikipedia, it gets reviewed by the NPP. The Patrol has special editing privileges and if a new article doesn't meet the website's standards, the NPP takes it down. "There's a faction of people who feel that basically anything is valid to be published on Wikipedia. They say, 'Hey, just throw it out there! Anything goes.' That's not where I come down." said Bil Zeleny, a former member of the NPP who goes by onel5969 on Wikipedia, a reference to the unusual spelling of his first name. At his peak, Zeleny said he was reviewing upwards of 100,000 articles a year, and he rejected a lot of articles about roads during his time. After years of frustration, Zeleny felt he was seeing too many new road articles that weren't following the rules -- entire articles that cited nothing other than Google Maps, he said. Enough was enough. Zeleny decided it was time to bring the subject to the council.
Zeleny brought up the problem on the NPP discussion forum, sparking months of heated debate. Eventually, the issue became so serious that some editors proposed an official policy change on the use of maps as a source. Rule changes require a process called "Request for Comment," where everyone is invited to share their thoughts on the issue. Over the course of a month, Wikipedia users had written more than 56,000 words on the subject. For reference, that's about twice as long as Ernest Hemingway's novel The Old Man and the Sea. In the end, the roads project was successful. The vote was decisive, and Wikipedia updated its "No Original Research" policy to clarify that it's ok to cite maps and other visual sources. But this, ultimately, was a victory with no winners. "Some of us felt attacked," Gronseth said. On the US Roads Project's Discord channel, a different debate was brewing. The website didn't feel safe anymore. What would happen at the next request for comment? The community decided it was time to fork. "We don't want our articles deleted. It didn't feel like we had a choice," he said.
The Wikipedia platform is designed for interoperability. If you want to start your own Wiki, you can split off and take your Wikipedia work with you, a process known as "forking." [...] Over the course of several months, the US Roads Project did the same. Leaving Wikipedia was painful, but the fight that drove the roads editors away was just as difficult for people on the other side. Some editors embroiled in the roads fights deleted their accounts, though none of these ex-Wikipedian's responded to Gizmodo's requests for comment. Bil Zeleny was among the casualties. After almost six years of hard work on the New Post Patrol, he reached the breaking point. The controversy had pushed him too far, and Zeleny resigned from the NPP. [...] AARoads actually predates Wikipedia, tracing its origins all the way back to the prehistoric internet days of the year 2000, complete with articles, maps, forums, and a collection of over 10,000 photos of highway signs and markers. When the US Roads Project needed a new home, AARoads was happy to oblige. It's a beautiful resource. It even has backlinks to relevant non-roads articles on the regular Wikipedia. But for some, it isn't home. "There are members who disagree with me, but my ultimate goal is to fork back," said Gronseth. "We made our articles license-compatible, so they can be exported back to Wikipedia someday if that becomes an option. I don't want to stay separate. I want to be part of the Wikipedia community. But we don't know where things will land, and for now, we've struck out on our own."
Missed opportunity (Score:3)
Should've named it Wikiroadia.
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*sigh*, replying to undo accidental moderation, sorry
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Moderaticide.
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Yes! So anyway I was wondering if would fly on Klingon Wikipedia*, or one of the more obscure language Wikipedias. Maybe Tolkein's Elvish language. Seems Elvish was never seriously considered as a Wikipedia language, but Klingon was kicked out and went to Fandom/Wikia. AARoads didn't need Fandom since AARoads started pre-Wikipedia. And than led to...
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sorry for the typos
On this episode ... (Score:5, Funny)
But in all seriousness, all sides are assholes because all sides are right. There probably needs to be some sort of sub-wiki (not a fork) setup that allows for 'specialized' or 'focused' communities, and their topics, to exist within the realm of Wikipedia without crossing into the realm of overall Wikipedia gatekeepers who serve a quality control purpose. Obviously controls would need to be in place to ensure right wing garbage like anti-semitism (whitewashing or promoting Nazis [wired.com], etc) doesn't have a home there.
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I do sometimes wonder how long a road I'm on has been there, and when it was paved, and when it was widened. I would love to time travel and see the natural earth and have it to myself for a while.
Info about roads is useful to some. (Score:2, Troll)
I do sometimes wonder how long a road I'm on has been there, and when it was paved, and when it was widened
I use Wikipedia regularly, and donate in appreciation. I recognize that for controversial (esp political) topics it has limitations, but roads should surely not be one of these. If they want to be an encyclopedia of all human knowledge, then integrating information from other topically focused references should be part of it. Sounds like NPP needs to chill a bit. Nobody likes zealots.
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The NPP definitely needs to chill.
The purpose is to remove spam articles that don't provide anything useful from WP, such as people trying to write an article about themself or their one-person business or youtube channel for vanity purposes or to advertise. Not to purge pieces of geography.
Not every subject needs to start as a finished article with sources, either. Wikipedia has whole categorizations of topics needing work such as Stub articles.
Re: Info about roads is useful to some. (Score:5, Informative)
I just don't get the point of deleting curated information- it's not like the internet is static. Much of the information I gathered is simply gone, unless you happened to save an archive of pages like I did. Are they running out of data storage space? Are they worried that a few inaccuracies in pages next to nobody will ever see will somehow indict their overall project? Thank God they have an entry for such things as the Battle of Hastings- if it weren't for Wikipedia I'm sure we'd have all forgotten it happened, especially in view of there being no other source for it.
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"I just don't get the point of deleting curated information"
There is a point, though I don't know that it's a point that NPP actually subscribes to. The limiting factor is not space but attention. A low-notoriety page allows an editor to put in what would otherwise be obvious bullshit and later piggyback on the over-all credibility of Wikipedia as a whole.
Even for the attentive Wikipedia reader, how often do you really look at who last edited the sentence you are currently reading unless it is something you
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there is a cost also.
Many people (myself included) consider wikipedia to now be a very biased and slanted source of information. Specifically because they constantly delete articles and edits that go against their particular worldview, even when scientific papers are cited, etc.
They could have taken a much different tack.
If an article covers something controversial, label it as such, and let both (or each) side present its view, perhaps as a sub-article.
This would treat the reader as a sentient entity abl
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If an article covers something controversial, label it as such, and let both (or each) side present its view, perhaps as a sub-article.
This is exactly Wikipedia's policy. Neutral Point of View. All notable positions as identified by coverage from 2 reliable sources are to be included in the article on a subject. Actually Notable controversies are to go into the main article, as Hiding the negative information, controversy or sequestering the controversy regarding a subject to a Sub-Article is A Typ
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Not all knowledge is equal, but even the most useless knowledge can still be useful. Maybe they could just have a wikitrivia and a wikidatadump, and kick all the less useful articles to there. It would still be immensely useful as long as it's not outright spam, but you don't show up to them if you click "go to random page".
Re: On this episode ... (Score:2)
Agreed. Just like you have regular Ted, and then Ted x. You have tears of reliable in-depth information like World Book, followed by reference info like every road and every anime character. Still filter out all the garbage, misinformation, and joke articles about someone's next door neighbor.
Re: On this episode ... (Score:2)
Tiers for Fiers.
(Autocorrect)
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I don't understand why wikipedia has such a high standard for relevancy. Yes, the more articles, the more work you have to put in moderating them all, and yes, a lot of stuff isn't relevant, but there are quite a few subjects that I've been searching for on wikipedia, only to find that it once had a good article that has since been deleted by the NPP.
Current items up for deletion in wikipedia right now are Battle of Dubsari - because the transnistria war was too small a war to be notable and so this wasn't
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As mean as this is is as true as this is. [citation needed]
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There probably needs to be some sort of sub-wiki setup that allows for 'specialized' or 'focused' communities
Wikipedia already has portals for collecting related articles under a topic.
I don't see why they cannot have a roads portal.
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But in all seriousness, all sides are assholes because all sides are right. There probably needs to be some sort of sub-wiki (not a fork) setup that allows for 'specialized' or 'focused' communities
But why not a fork?
Anyway one side is not right here. And that's the side that was telling these people not to work on these articles, without paying them to work on something else. If you're getting volunteer editing then complaining when they choose to edit things you don't care about is bullshit. They can take some of the money they spend on multimedia projects nobody gives a fuck about and spend it hiring editors to work on what they're told to work on.
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In my experience, wikipedia gatekeepers serve more of a censorship and bias-preservation role than anything to do with "quality".
They make sure that wikipedia articles conform to their view of the world, and no one elses.
That's fine I guess. But I hope some alt-wikipedia fork gains traction that is more open and inclusive of other opinions.
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Obviously controls would need to be in place to ensure right wing garbage like anti-semitism (whitewashing or promoting Nazis [wired.com], etc) doesn't have a home there.
Wikipedia doesn't have functional controls for that anyways. Antisemitism and anti-LGBT bigotry run rampant, from their various "Arbcom" members down through the incestuous relationships between the "top tier" admins and on down. When the likes of known, proud-of-being-antisemitic trolls like Beeblebrox are allowed on Arbcom, you know th
No (Score:3)
People drive on them every day, but they don't give them much attention,
I can assure you, as bad as the roads are in my area and most of my state, I pay very close attention to roads to avoid the potholes and deteriorating surfaces.
Wikipedia is a mess (Score:1)
Re:Wikipedia is a mess (Score:4, Insightful)
Tinpot dictators, indeed. You have real-life historical figures with "notability" warnings, but full bios of every anime character. You have people going through articles changing the spelling from American English to British English (like "artifact" and "artefact"), try to change it back, reverted instantly. Even blatant spelling and grammar errors are usually immediately reverted for one of any one of the myriad of obscure reasons. I have put up photos I took myself, granted copyright, years later someone comes along and deletes it for copyright violations. "Autistic" is the right word for it.
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These folks are what keep me from editing wikipedia very often. I'm sure the NPP guys complain about how few people are interested in editing or creating articles all the time.
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That, and the fact that *legitimate experts" on a topic are specifically excluded. I am (arguably) one of the world's experts on several topics, yet, when I see something that is obviously and demonstrably false, I can try to fix it, but it will almost always be instantly reverted due to "lack of cites" or "original research". Even if it is a basic and unequivocal math mistake, conceptual error, whatever. I now a lot of other legitimate world's experts on a topic they have the same experience. The effect is
Re: Wikipedia perpetuates ignorance (Score:1)
I get this. I've been editing for two decades. Wikipedia needs to heal from the trauma it constantly inflicts on itself.
I'm among a handful of people trusted by a group Indigenous knowledge keepers to document their culture and traditions. NPP hates learning about organizations that have been traditionally under-represented in the western literature, let alone new concepts or ideas. Western focused editors hate when a non-Western community affirms their own right to determine how their traditional names are
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English and American English should probably listed as separete languages.
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Seems like a lot of extra work to please a minority of people who really need to find something more important to care about since both are easily understood by both people.
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If nothing else, it would keep them busy.
Gatekeepers usually suck (Score:3)
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The NPP seemed a bit trigger happy in my experience editing Wikipedia, but the site can't be a free-for-all, if you consider, say, spam. The contributors are called editors, not writers. It's worked out OK, but the complexity of managing Wikipedia can be tedious, as are the layers and layers of macros, not all in active development. I had no special role in managing it, but voted on a couple of things, and reverted obviously bad edits when I saw them. On NPP in particular, every added page does mean you nee
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Caveat emptor applies here (Score:3)
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As someone who is on AAroads, and has had a road site since at least 1996 [www.cahighways.org] (when I was posting road information to misc.transport.roads and ca.highways on USENET), I'm going to disagree. I see relatively few civil engineers on AAroads, in both senses of the word. There are folks there who don't understand the road acquisition process, EIRs, costs and budgets, and so forth -- all of which are part of engineering. They are also, at times, decidedly un-civil.
As for me, I'm not a civil engin
In other words ... (Score:3)
Rogue Editors Started a Competing Wikipedia That's Only About Roads
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Rogue Editors Started a Competing Wikipedia That's Only About Roads
Nah, they just came to a fork in the road...
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Holy Jesus Fucking Christ on a Stick! (Score:3)
I can't be the only one who got part way through this summary and was like, "are you fucking kidding me? These people had a political fight and a split over a wiki about roads?"
Tbh, I couldn't get more than about 1/3rd through before I shut down.
wtf is wrong with some people?
I love road information. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Isle of Road information (Score:2)
As for Wikipedia
I can see the need for "standards" to adhere to, but surely hiding lesser articles behind quality levels is better than the NPP deleting articles/edits outright that people have spent hours/weeks creating, that non-NPP readers ma
At 868 words... (Score:1)
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My account got banned for “harassment”, for going to the talk page and asking why my inserting the date of birth of a deceased person was a violation of privacy. Yet weeks later, a power user posted the exact same thing.
What's the answer? (Score:2)
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The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. The answer is blowing in the wind.
(ducks and runs, taking a guitar with him).
And that's how the internet should work (Score:1)
And how it did work, broadly, until the governments and the cool kids decided they should control what you read.
So cool. Fork it. If the fork is better, more people will end up using it.
Power tripping neckbeards (Score:1)
Hmmm... (Score:2)
Text doesn't take up much space, surely it is better to have information that only a few care about than waste effort deleting it?