this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2024
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OpenStreetMap community

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Everything #OpenStreetMap related is welcome: software releases, showing of your work, questions about how to tag something, as long as it has to do with OpenStreetMap or OpenStreetMap-related software.

OpenStreetMap is a map of the world, created by people like you and free to use under an open license.

Join OpenStreetMap and start mapping: https://www.openstreetmap.org.

There are many communication channels about OSM, many organized around a certain country or region. Discover them on https://openstreetmap.community

https://mapcomplete.org is an easy-to-use website to view, edit and add points (such as shops, restaurants and others)

https://learnosm.org/en/ has a lot of information for beginners too.

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[–] Woovie@lemmy.world 59 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I hate how this was framed by the writer, really silly. just because you create a wiki dedicated to a particular topic doesn’t mean it’s “rogue”. That’s just the nature of it. Wikipedia is not a place to host everyone’s wiki.

[–] redd@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I had the feeling the author is meaning rogue in a positive way here. At least the article sounds quite positive and impressed about that project.

[–] KeenFlame@feddit.nu 3 points 6 months ago

It's just wrong. It is not a rogue site positive or negative

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world -2 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Wikipedia is not a place to host everyone’s wiki.

Wikipedia is a place to collect factual information. If those articles about streets and roads are factually correct and backed up with citations, they belong in Wikipedia.

[–] infeeeee@lemm.ee 23 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

No. There is a notability requirement among others: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability

This is the main reason wikidata linking in osm is getting more common than wikipedia. Wikidata and osm don't have this requirement. Name Suggestion Index stopped using wikipedia tags and it only uses wikidata tags nowadays.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

No. There is a notability requirement among others: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability

And why would roads not be noteworthy? Wikipedia explicitly celebrated the millionth article about a random small Scottish railway station: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Press_release_on_English_Wikipedia_hitting_milestone_1_million_articles

I happen to know a thing or two about Wikipedia's history, including remembering when naysayers were proclaiming that a random Scottish railway station wasn't noteworthy but it turned out that traffic infrastructure used by countless of people each year is actually noteworthy even if it isn't in the news all the time.

[–] infeeeee@lemm.ee 3 points 6 months ago

I don't know I don't edit wikipedia regularly, I only fix small things if find something wrong or outdated. I just replied that your definition of wikipedia is not the same as wikipedians think, it wasn't specifically about this situation. I haven't said I agree with this definition neither.

I just read more about this project and notability wasn't their problem but citation and referencing third party sources and maps correctly:

[–] Gork@lemm.ee 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Is Wikipedia limiting itself though by having a notability requirement? It isn't like a new page takes up a lot of data storage. Why not have Wikipedia be the entire compendium of human knowledge, regardless of how notable it is?

[–] infeeeee@lemm.ee 12 points 6 months ago

Yes, just like how an encyclopedia was edited before the internet, common people didn't had an article there, just notable ones.

The same way you don't add historical data to osm, because we decided that we don't want to collect that data here. But you can add that to openhistoricalmap. There are different projects for different things.

[–] chayleaf@lemmy.ml 9 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I presume it's because creating a Wikipedia article named "Gork", summarizing your Lemmy activity, would be stupid

[–] klemptor@startrek.website 5 points 6 months ago

Damn, what a burn.

[–] KeenFlame@feddit.nu 3 points 6 months ago

I'd read it

[–] TheBat@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Good luck creating video game characters and items pages on Wikipedia instead of using a seperate wiki.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Good luck creating video game characters and items pages on Wikipedia instead of using a seperate wiki.

Like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Strife or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crono?

Seems to be possible but those are backed up by 3rd party citations.

[–] TheBat@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Nah, not like that.

Like this:

https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Sergeant_RL-3

https://minecraft.wiki/w/Amethyst_Shard

Wikipedia is indeed a place to collect factual information but their scope has limitations to it.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago

Like this:

https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Sergeant_RL-3

https://minecraft.wiki/w/Amethyst_Shard

You mean where the sole citations are the game itself and the official game guide? I wrote "backed up by 3rd party citations" for a reason.

[–] mannivu@livellosegreto.it 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

@woelkchen @Woovie as they said “The New York Times isn’t going to write an article about maintenance on highways in the middle-of-nowhere Texas or Colorado”, so it looks like they add informations that are not always backed with citations

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

as they said “The New York Times isn’t going to write an article about maintenance on highways in the middle-of-nowhere Texas or Colorado”, so it looks like they add informations that are not always backed with citations

I can't speak for US towns in particular but where I live such information is posted on websites all the time, be it the town's official newspaper or a local news website.

When English Wikipedia celebrated the millionth article, the topic was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordanhill_railway_station, "a side-platformed suburban railway station in the Jordanhill area in the West End of Glasgow, Scotland." So, that type of information is fine.

[–] mannivu@livellosegreto.it 1 points 6 months ago

@woelkchen sure, but there are some infos that don't have enough notability to be on Wikipedia: for example if a road has a minor renovation that shouldn't be mentioned on Wikipedia, but it could be mentioned on this dedicated wiki

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This is the best summary I could come up with:


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.

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.

“The New York Times isn’t going to write an article about maintenance on highways in the middle-of-nowhere Texas or Colorado,” said Ben M., a roads editor known as BMACS001 on Wikipedia, who asked to withhold their full name.

After years of permissiveness, a growing contingent of Wikipedia editors started to argue that such a scenario counts as an interpretation of the map, and therefore, it’s illegitimate original research.

Faced with a mass deletion of their hagiographies on Dragonite and Garchomp, the Pokémon editors forked their articles over to a new website, Bulbapedia, where their work continues.

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.


The original article contains 1,541 words, the summary contains 195 words. Saved 87%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] ryehypernova@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 months ago
[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 4 points 6 months ago

"Rogue editors"

[–] jlow@beehaw.org 3 points 6 months ago

This is so cool! I always love stumbling about Wikipedia articles that are about really niche stuff that will probably be deleted once a mod finds it (found a really long one about the characters in Ukranian fantasy book a few months back, amazing).

[–] klemptor@startrek.website 0 points 6 months ago

Phlash Phlelps could really contribute here!