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File:Fork in the road - geograph.org.uk - 1355424.jpg
Jonathan Billinger
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In the media

"For me it’s the autism": AARoad editors on the fork more traveled

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By Bri, sawyer-mcdonell, HaeB, and JPxG


  • AARoads, take me home: A long-running conflict over Wikipedia's articles about US roads led to the forking of many roads articles back in September. Gizmodo recently interviewed a number of AARoads editors and Wikipedians (Imzadi1979, BMACS1002, and onel5969) about the split, calling it "a promised land where the editors hope, at last, that they can find peace". See also previous Signpost coverage: "A fork in the Roads WikiProject" ("News and notes", September 16, 2023)
Wikipedia is useful for flying, apparently. Alternatively, you could print out Wikipedia articles and make your own planes :-)
  • Covering Pakistan's elections on Wikipedia: The Friday Times covers how Pakistan's turbulent politics and recent general election has caused problems for Wikipedians; accusations of political bias fly as editors try to figure out who to list as the leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, whether to list the party on election maps at all, and perhaps most importantly, who won the election.
  • French Wikipedia discusses transgender names: Le Monde (in English, paywalled) reports that "Wikipedia's French-speaking community is torn apart over 'deadnaming' trans people": "The source of the conflict lies in a debate over the 'deadnames' – or morinoms in French – of trans people. Should these names that are no longer in use, such as birthnames, be mentioned on Wikipedia? If so, in which cases and under what conditions? On the English-language version, contributors settled the matter back in 2015, without too much controversy: They agreed to only mention the deadnames of people who became famous under that name. However, among French-speaking Wikipedians, the question has remained unanswered, and even resurfaces regularly."
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  • "AARoard" in the title, real yurkey moment. Pretzelles (talk) 23:48, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    And it should be BMACS1002. LilianaUwU (talk / contributions) 23:52, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Also, the image's caption is "CAPTION". Reconrabbit 00:15, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Reconrabbit @LilianaUwU @Pretzelles must've gotten lost when the WJC report story was split off. fixed all three checkY ... sawyer * he/they * talk 01:05, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also... what's with the quote in the title? "For me, it's the autism"? It feels wrong to use that quote. LilianaUwU (talk / contributions) 23:52, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I am autistic, and it doesn't particularly bother me. I think for some people who are autistic, contributing to Wikipedia really could be something that appeals; it certainly has been to me. Seraphimblade Talk to me 04:03, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    i'm also autistic, and wikipedia is my primary way to engage with my special interests - based on the context in the interview, it seems the same is true of autistic AARoads editors, per their own words. the full quote is

    “For me it’s the autism. You settle on a thing and then you’re like, ‘well, this is my thing now,’” Ben said. “But people get really into all kinds of stuff, and just because it’s not the thing you’re into doesn’t mean it’s not important. We do it because we love it and we can create community around it.”

    seems pretty indicative of the somewhat personal nature of the dispute here - if my special interest were US roads, i'd also be pretty upset about the articles going to AfD constantly; hence, the forking. ... sawyer * he/they * talk 19:34, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Re: "my ultimate goal is to fork back [AARoads content]", it seems to me we really could use a Wikimedia project that provides almanac-like info, covering all the deets of roads, public transportation, radio/TV stations, agriculture data, and more. We could keep the Wikipedia an encyclopedia, with that level of coverage, and its articles can link to the WikiAlmanac page on that or related subjects. Every so often in an AfD discussion, I feel like "this topic of community concern isn't notable for our purposes but coverage of it still seems useful." Stefen Towers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 01:26, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Roughly like the CIA Factbook, only bigger and going down to details on cities. You may recall that our Wikivoyage affiliate was once an independent, commercial wiki but the Admins and other heavy hitters got fed up with its commercial policies and begged admission as an autonomous wiki to our little empire, with relaxed standards appropriate to tourism. Similarly a Wikiroads, or Wikialamanac site, with looseness appropriate there but not to an encyclopedia that needs more tightness, might be welcome. Jim.henderson (talk) 15:05, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Definitely the right principle to pursue. I've seen it happen with other kinds of content as well. It was extremely useful content for certain purposes but got removed from Wikipedia simply because Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia and a general encyclopedia isn't quite the appropriate place for it. More ought to be done with this concept than has been done with it to date. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:24, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    This is definitely something that shouldn't be forgotten. Just because something is not in scope for Wikipedia does not mean it's without value; it just means it doesn't fit here. Wikipedia, for example, lists recipes as out of scope (and, in my view, correctly so), but there are some very good ones on Wikibooks. Similarly, I've found plenty of how-to guides and tutorials to be of substantial value; they just don't belong here. Unfortunately, with fictional content, that was farmed off to a for-profit endeavor that I know some people are less than happy with, but if we can fit material that is out of scope here but nonetheless useful into Wikimedia sister projects (existing or newly created), I think that we should. An almanac/gazetteer type sister project might be a great way to resolve the issue of permastubs on "populated places", roads, and so on. Seraphimblade Talk to me 23:52, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    completely agree with all of the above. i'm envisioning something like wikidata but user-friendly, which i'd definitely be interested in contributing to :) ... sawyer * he/they * talk 05:06, 31 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • The first pillar says: Wikipedia combines many features of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers. Even though we primarily describe ourselves as an encyclopedia, it is reasonable to discuss what almanac information is within our scope. However, I don't think forks should be considered a failure. Many Fandom wikis are huge successes. We are part of a wider movement to make information freely available: it doesn't matter what domain it's hosted at as long as readers can find it, and we should be happy to collaborate across sites. — Bilorv (talk) 10:13, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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