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User:Dough4872

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This user has rollback rights on the English Wikipedia.
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SEMI-RETIRED
This user is no longer very active on Wikipedia.

I have been an editor on Wikipedia for over 16 years and have heavily contributed to the articles on the site. My primary editing focus has been road articles, particularly in the United States, as roads are an area I have a strong passion in and I felt I could share my passion in improving road articles on Wikipedia. I was a longtime member of WP:USRD and the larger WP:HWY community and have worked with many editors over the years to improve articles. I have contributed to 184 Good Articles, 3 A-Class Articles, and a Featured Portal, which is only a portion of the quality content the larger community of road editors has written on Wikipedia.

However, in recent times the road articles have come under attack on Wikipedia due to sourcing and notability concerns from non-road editors who are more interested in enforcing policy than improving content. These editors have attacked the sourcing practices that road articles have used for years, particularly the use of maps as sources (especially Google Maps). In order to determine whether maps could be used as sources, an RFC on using maps as sources was held and the results were mixed. In addition, these editors have also called into question the notability standards that the road articles follow. Road articles follow the WP:SNG called WP:GEOROAD, which states that international, national, and state/provincial highways are usually notable enough for individual articles. This notability guideline is based on the long-standing practice followed by road articles on Wikipedia dating back to the early days of the site. Editors have called GEOROAD into question and argue that WP:GNG should be used for determining notability despite road articles meeting the SNG for notability. Editors have also been sending articles that pass the notability standards in GEOROAD to WP:AFD and the results are increasingly leaning in favor of merging or deleting articles about notable roads. These notability attacks are not limited to road articles either; other areas of Wikipedia are being attacked as well including sports athletes, area codes, and geographic places, to name a few.

These sourcing and notability attacks on road articles have turned Wikipedia from a hobby into a stressful job. Instead of improving articles, me and the other road editors have had to divert our attention into arguing policy with other editors and defending road articles at AFD and other venues, where it is becoming apparent that it will likely be a futile effort to keep the road articles the way they are now. I do not need my hobby to be stressful as it is starting to affect my mental health in having to argue policy and worry about content that me and other editors have spent years working on be wiped off from the site. I have other real-life stuff I need to deal with including a job, family, social life, home life, and my leisure time, and I do not need to be dealing with stress from Wikipedia on top of all that.

As a result of the recent attacks on the road articles on Wikipedia and the uncertain future on whether these articles can remain, the road editors have decided to fork the content of road articles in the United States and Canada (and possibly other countries in the future) into a new wiki called the AARoads Wiki, a wiki devoted to roads that is hosted by AARoads, one of the leading roadgeek websites in the United States. Read the final issue of The Center Line for more details about the decision to fork. Therefore, I will be shifting my editing focus to improving road articles on the AARoads Wiki. I will also continue to be active on Wikimedia Commons in adding pictures of roads and other places. Going forward, I will not be making substantial edits to Wikipedia. Dough4872 22:17, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

User page

Me
Hello, I am Dough4872, a user who lives in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. I have an interest in highways and maps.

Contributions

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684
This user has created 684 of Wikipedia's 6,903,937 articles.

I have created 684 articles on Wikipedia and I have edited many other existing articles. My work on Wikipedia has focused mainly on articles about highways in Delaware, highways in Maryland, highways in New Jersey, highways in Pennsylvania, road disambiguation, and articles pertaining to the states of Delaware and Pennsylvania. [1]

Here are a few articles I created:

And many other articles similar to these...

Here are a few of the contributions I made to existing articles:

I, along with other USRD editors, helped Portal:U.S. Roads become a featured portal.

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A-class articles

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This user has written or significantly contributed to 3 A-class articles.
This user helped promote the article Atlantic City – Brigantine Connector to A-Class article status.
This user helped promote the article Baltimore–Washington Parkway to A-Class article status.
This user helped promote the article New Jersey Route 55 to A-Class article status.

Good Articles

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This user has helped promote 184 good articles on Wikipedia.


Did you know?

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Updated DYK queryDid you know... that this user has contributed 4 articles to the Did you know column?
A fact from the article Indian River Inlet Bridge, which this user created or significantly contributed to, has been featured in the Did you know... section on the Main Page.
A fact from the article Mississippi Highway 198, which this user created or significantly contributed to, has been featured in the Did you know... section on the Main Page.
A fact from the article H-13 (Michigan county highway), which this user created or significantly contributed to, has been featured in the Did you know... section on the Main Page.
A fact from the article Delaware State Route System, which this user created or significantly contributed to, has been featured in the Did you know... section on the Main Page.


Photos

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I have taken many photos of roads and places mostly in the Mid-Atlantic region along with some other areas of the United States that I have visited. See my uploads at Wikimedia Commons for photos I have taken.

Places I have been

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This user has visited 21 of the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.21
This user has visited 313 of the 3142 counties or county-equivalents in the United States.313
This user has visited Arkansas.
This user has visited Colorado.
This user has visited Connecticut.
This user has visited Delaware.
Flag of Washington, D.C.This user has visited the District of Columbia.
This user has visited Florida.
This user has visited Georgia.
This user has visited Kentucky.
This user has visited Maine.
This user has visited Maryland.
This user has visited Massachusetts.
This user has visited Missouri.
This user has visited New Hampshire.
This user has visited New Jersey.
This user has visited New York.
This user has visited North Carolina.
This user has visited Pennsylvania.
This user has visited Centralia, Pennsylvania.
This user has visited Rhode Island.
This user has visited South Carolina.
This user has visited Tennessee.
This user has visited Virginia.
This user has visited West Virginia.
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Barnstars and awards

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See User:Dough4872/Barnstars and awards.