 | This is an essay which contains the advice or opinions of one or more members of the U.S. Roads WikiProject. While it is not a part of the standards the project promotes, it provides some recommendations and ideas for members to consider. |
There need to be more road articles on Wikipedia, not less. Without apology.
From WP:GEOROAD: International road networks (such as the International E-road network), Interstate, national, state and provincial highways are typically notable.
This means... that the typical state highway (and higher) is notable enough for its own article. Without apology.
- The guidelines say so. WP:NEXIST exists, and the guideline tells you how to apply it to state highways - assume that there are sources.
- Now that many newspaper databases are coming online, at least in the US, we can truly perform a more thorough search on these state highways.
Sure, in the United States I see a slight reduction in the short-term[1]:
- County highways are not state highways and do not fall under that presumption.
- Secondary state highways are not the "typical" state highway. In many scenarios (depending on how the system works) they have been merged into WP:USRD/RCS lists or just lists.
- Very short (<1 mile) state highways are not the "typical" state highway.
However, worldwide I see thousands more articles in the long-term:
- The United States and Canada have a few states/provinces left that are missing state highways. And many U.S. Routes are missing state detail articles describing the routing in each state.
- At present we have comparatively few articles in Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia, where billions of people reside.
- If you look through Wikidata, you find that most large Wikipedias - German, Spanish, French, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, and more - have thousands of articles on similar roads that do not exist yet on the English Wikipedia. Sure, there is a language barrier, but nowhere is that written into our notability guidelines. And rightly so, lest we conduct systemic bias.
Will they be stubs? Hopefully not forever. Ten years ago I could not have foreseen what we could do with sourcing in the United States today including through the Wikipedia library. It will be a while for other countries, especially in the developing world, but hopefully one day they will be available. In the meantime, WP:NEXIST exists.
- Disclaimer: Not every country has a system that has state or provincial highways. For the United Kingdom, I am in full agreement with Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/B roads in the United Kingdom, however I am not making a public statement about A roads at this time. This is not intended to be a statement on other countries.
- ^ And in fact, from mid-2021 to early 2023 there has been a net reduction of about ~125 articles in the United States.