An anonymous reader cites Gizmodo's report. For 20 years, a loosely organized group of Wikipedia editors worked diligently to collect 15,000 articles on one topic: U.S. roads and highways. Despite minor disagreements, the US Roads Project has generally functioned in harmony, but recently a long-simmering debate over website rules has brought the community to the brink. Efforts at compromise failed. A split occurred, and in the fall of 2023, the editors consolidated the articles and transitioned to a website dedicated solely to roads and roads. It's called AARoads, and it's a promised land where editors hope they can finally find peace. “Roads are part of the background. People drive on them every day, but they don't get much attention,” said editor Michael Gronseth. He is active on Wikipedia as his Imzadi1979 and is especially dedicated to Michigan's highways. But if you look beyond the asphalt, the road has a lot to offer. It's a nexus of history, geography, travel, and government, which seems like the perfect theme for someone overly obsessed with Wikipedia. “But about a year ago there was a change,” Gronseth said. “More editors are saying what we're doing isn't that important and we should be working on more important topics.” […]
The road project had many opponents, but the main rival was a group known as the New Page Patrol, or NPP for short. Nuclear power plants have a unique mission. When new pages are published on Wikipedia, they are reviewed by the NPP. Patrol has special editorial privileges, and if a new article doesn't meet the website's standards, NPP will remove it. “There's a faction of people who think basically anything is legitimate to put on Wikipedia. They say, 'Hey, just throw it out there! Whatever.'” That's not where I get off. . ” said Bill Zeleny, a former NPP member who goes by onel5969 on Wikipedia, referring to the unusual spelling of his first name. At its peak, Zeleny reviewed more than 100,000 articles a year, and at the time rejected many articles about roads, he said. Mr. Zeleny has been frustrated for years, but he felt there were too many new road-related articles that didn't follow the rules – the entire article he cited didn't cite anything other than Google Maps. That's what it means. Enough was enough. Zeleny decided it was time to bring the issue to council.
Zeleny raised the issue in an NPP discussion forum, sparking months of intense debate. Eventually, the problem became so serious that some editors proposed changes to official policy regarding the use of maps as information sources. Any rule change requires a process called a “request for comment,” in which everyone is asked to share their thoughts on the issue. In one month, a Wikipedia user wrote over 56,000 words on this subject. For reference, this is about twice as long as Ernest Hemingway's novel The Old Man and the Sea. In the end, the road project was a success. The vote was decisive, and Wikipedia updated its “no independent research” policy to make it clear that it's okay to cite maps and other visual sources. But in the end, this was a victory without a winner. “Some people felt like they were being attacked,” Gronseth said. Another discussion was brewing on the US Roads Project Discord channel. I felt the website was no longer safe. What happens the next time you're asked to comment? The community has decided it's time to branch out. “We didn't want the article to be removed. We didn't feel we had a choice,” he said.
The Wikipedia platform is designed with interoperability in mind. If you want to start your own Wiki, you can take Wikipedia's work and take it home with you. This is a process known as “forking.” […] For several months, the U.S. Highway Project did something similar. Leaving Wikipedia was painful, but the battle that drove away the road editors was just as difficult for those on the other side. Some of the editors involved in the street fights have deleted their accounts, but none of the former Wikipedian editors responded to Gizmodo's requests for comment. Bill Zeleny was among the victims. After almost his six years of hard work with the New Post Patrol, he reached a breaking point. The controversy took Zeleny too far and he resigned from the NPP. […] AARoads is actually older than Wikipedia, dating back to the prehistoric internet age of 2000, with a collection of articles, maps, forums, and over 10,000 photos of highway signs and markers. When the U.S. Roads Project needed a new home, AARoads was happy to work with them. It's a beautiful resource. There are also backlinks to related non-road articles on regular Wikipedia. But for some, it's not home. “There are members who disagree with me, but my ultimate goal is to fork back,” Gronseth said. “We've made the article license-compatible, so if that becomes an option, I can export it back to Wikipedia one day. I don't want to remain isolated. I want to be part of the Wikipedia community. But we don't know where it's going to go. Things will be worked out, and for now we're on our own.”