Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Roads

Project members are invited to participate in the Destubathon of the Americas, a contest/editathon which will run from May 1 to May 31. The goal is to destub as many of our 475,000+ stubs for the Americas (from Alaska down to Chile) as possible. A good chance to have fun in expanding many of our old stale stubs and win up to $2680 in Amazon vouchers for expanding stub articles. Sign up in the Contestants/participants section on the contest page if interested. Even if not interested in prizes you are still warmly welcome to participate in it as an editathon! Hopefully we can achieve something significant in the month of May together! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:05, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

Good day, everyone!

I'm reaching out because there is debate over the content and quality of the US 101 in California article that I only recently rewrote. Someone told me in the Talk Page that the article's tone is unencyclopedic and contains too much original research. They are saying that we are describing the highway as if it were a sentient being (which is not, of course) and made edits to the section that honestly made the text body very bland. Is it possible that any project manager can join the discussion? Nebulous2357 (talk) 15:44, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

@Nebulous2357: there are no "project managers" in wikiprojects. Also, there are very few active members here anymore. Most of them decamped to https://wiki.aaroads.com/ in 2023. You'll find a few people still active, but it's not like it was before 2023. Imzadi 1979 → 16:26, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

Based on a quick scan, I would say Wikipedia is a general audience encyclopedia, things like legislative and unsigned designations are of little to no value to the general public. They are useful to roadgeeks and history researchers and therefor occasionally needed, but that's a very small percentage of Wikipedia's readership. As such when I'm working on road articles, I confine such technical details to the history section, and even then only give them minimal coverage. I certainly try to keep such technical details out of the lead. IMHO, that's a guaranteed way to have a non-roadgeek reader of the article go "boring, next!" Just my $.02 Dave (talk) 16:36, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

To cite a more specific example. I've noticed a relatively new trend with California road articles of people wanting to quote the entire legislative description in the first paragraph of the route description. That now includes this article. This is a trend, so I'm not accusing anybody who says "hey article A has it, so why not put it in article B!" of doing anything wrong. I am saying I don't understand what value that adds to a general audience. Those details are already covered multiple places, making it redundant. What's more, a well written route description will state those same details in a more interesting, less legalese format. Last, the legal designation will certainly be used as a source, and therefore available as a footnote in the article somewhere anyways for the readership who wants it to easily find. Again, not trying to be harsh, this article is following the trends of roadgeeks writing Wikipedia articles. However, you asked for feedback and my feedback is to remember the typical reader of our articles are not roadgeeks, they come to this article to plan a roadtrip to a winery, or because they read a news article that mentioned US-101 and wanted to confirm some detail that seemed odd to them. Dave (talk) 17:00, 26 April 2026 (UTC)