Efforts at compromise fell apart.
Its calledAARoads, a promised land where the editors hope, at last, that they can find peace.
Roads are a background piece.
Illustration: Vicky Leta
But a road has so much to offer if you look beyond the asphalt.
But there was a shift about a year ago, Gronseth said.
The dispute came down to some of Wikipedias most sacred tenets.
For one, a subject has to be notable.
Your grandmas famous cookie recipe cant have an article unless its actually famous.
The site isnt a place for personal opinions, either.
Original research is forbidden.
Primary sources, where a person or an organization talks about themselves, are viewed with skepticism.
Secondary sources, written by someone unrelated to the topic, are the gold standard.
For some roads, these rules get complicated.
Sometimes a primary source is all you have.
Wikipedia is a fragile ecosystem.
Wikipedia is a democracy, a self-governing experiment built on decades of arguing, compromise, and rabbinical debate.
That communal decision-making is what binds Wikipedia together, but here, its what drove it apart.
But you may have trouble finding secondary sources about the Cherokee Hills Scenic Byway in Oklahoma.
And without secondary sources, maybe the Byway isnt notable enough for a dedicated article in the first place.
Theres an irony to disagreements about what is and isnt noteworthy on a website like Wikipedia.
In some respects, thats the point.
For me its the autism.
We do it because we love it and we can create community around it.
The NPP has a singular mission.
When a new page goes up on Wikipedia, it gets reviewed by the NPP.
Theres a faction of people who feel that basically anything is valid to be published on Wikipedia.
They say, Hey, just throw it out there!
Thats not where I come down.
Zeleny decided it was time to bring the subject to the council.
I dont have a problem with roads, Zeleny said.
There are lots of obscure subjects on Wikipedia, but you have to follow the guidelines.
People see Wikipedia as a joke.
They think its not serious.
Ive taken great, great pains to confirm articles are well written, well researched, and well cited.
Zeleny brought up the problem on the NPP discussion forum, sparking months of heated debate.
Over the course of a month, Wikipedia users had written more than56,000 wordson the subject.
For reference, thats about twice as long as Ernest Hemingways novelThe Old Man and the Sea.
In the end, the roads project was successful.
But this, ultimately, was a victory with no winners.
Some of us felt attacked, Gronseth said.
On the US Roads Projects Discord channel, a different debate was brewing.
The website didnt feel safe anymore.
What would happen at the next request for comment?
The community decided it was time to fork.
We dont want our articles deleted.
It didnt feel like we had a choice, he said.
The Wikipedia platform is designed for interoperability.
Its happened before for similar reasons.
One of the more significant forks was a Pokemon battle.
Pikachu and Squirtle are culture icons, and they get their own pages.
Over the course of several months, the US Roads Project did the same.
Bil Zeleny was among the casualties.
After almost six years of hard work on the New Post Patrol, he reached the breaking point.
The controversy had pushed him too far, and Zeleny resigned from the NPP.
I just got tired of it.
He thought about leaving Wikipedia altogether, but his son convinced him to keep working.
When the US Roads Project needed a new home, AARoads was happy to oblige.
Its a beautiful resource.
It even has backlinks to relevant non-roads articles on the regular Wikipedia.
But for some, it isnt home.
There are members who disagree with me, but my ultimate goal is to fork back, said Gronseth.
I dont want to stay separate.
I want to be part of the Wikipedia community.
But we dont know where things will land, and for now, weve struck out on our own.
News from the future, delivered to your present.
