Wikipedia:State route naming conventions poll/Account

This is an account of WP:SRNC.

Purpose

It is hoped that through this experience, the road editors have realized why cooperativity and compromise are important in the editing of roads articles. Also, this will serve to inform newcomers of what happened.

Before February 2006

During the months before SRNC, the main users at WP:USRD, the U.S. Roads WikiProject, were Rschen7754, SPUI, PHenry, JohnnyBGood, Atanamir, Freakofnurture, Northenglish, Gateman1997, Engleman, and Locke Cole. USRD was the project that Rschen7754 founded to connect the state highway WikiProjects that existed.

In late 2005, SPUI moved many articles in Florida from the convention "Florida State Road xx" to "State Road xx (Florida)". He did this in a few other states on the East Coast as well. However, nobody objected to these "mass moves."

A Wikipedia:WikiProject Highways/U.S. state highway naming conventions was also started.

February 2006

In early February, SPUI began WP:NC/NH, presenting his proposal to use parentheses for disambiguation in the names of state highway articles. Consensus was mixed in regards to this proposal. A poll during the first couple days of March, just as SRNC began occurring, revealed that the highway editors were split as to their opinion regarding the matter.

During the final days of February, a debate erupted at Talk:I-95 exit list between SPUI and a few others, including Rschen7754 and MPD01605. The debate was regarding SPUI's redirecting of the article to prevent content forking.

February 28, 2006 marked the beginning of the SRNC war. SPUI made two major changes to California State Route 15. He removed {{routeboxca}}, claiming that it was redundant. In addition to this, he moved this article to State Route 15 (California). Rschen7754 reverted this, citing that there was no consensus for such a move. Thus, SRNC began.

March 2006

On March 1, SPUI moved California State Route 15 back to State Route 15 (California). He also moved California State Highway 17 to State Route 17 (California). The latter was a special case, as a few months earlier, it had been moved to California State Highway 17 after a lengthy discussion with User:Nohat, who wanted to use common and inconsistent names for road articles. Due to there being no consensus, a compromise was enacted, and the article was moved to California State Highway 17.

This move was quickly reverted by Nohat. After SPUI reverted this move, a WP:RPP request was filed by Nohat, and a WP:RM request was filed by SPUI. On the same day, a WP:RM request was filed on California State Route 85 to move it to California Highway 85. This would fail six days later.

On March 2, SPUI reverted the edits and moves on California State Route 15. A talk page discussion began but soon fell apart. Seeing as Rschen7754 insisted on having {{routeboxca}} on the page, he proceeded to edit Template:Routeboxca2, restructuring the entire template. User:Zzyzx11 reverted this, and a revert war began. Seeing that this was failing, SPUI proceeded to WP:TFD it here. That same day, he created his own version of the infobox, {{Infobox CA Route}}. Still that same day, he introduced it on a few pages, including Interstate 605 and California State Route 1. He was reverted and reverted back several times.

On March 3, after more edit warring to begin the day, Rschen7754 started Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive81#User:SPUI. Some administrators defended SPUI. However, others, including User:Alai, tried to reason with him. Revert warring continued for the rest of the day.

On March 4, SPUI performed a few reverts on I-95 exit list. During March 5 and 6, discussions continued, along with some reverts.

On March 7, SRNC began to escalate. SPUI began infobox reverts on California State Route 15 and Interstate 605, converting {{routeboxca2}} to {{Infobox CA Route}}, despite WP:CASH. also spreading the war to California State Route 283. User:JohnnyBGood reverted SPUI and was blocked for WP:3RR. A discussion ensued at WT:CASH regarding the infoboxes but soon came to a stalemate.

March 8 saw the massive move wars begin. SPUI began by moving the articles that he had move warred over before. However, he also moved about 10 more articles as well, mostly from California. However, he did move Washington State Route 99. He was reverted by many, including Rschen7754, but he reverted those reverts.

On March 9, the TFD for {{routeboxca}} closed as keep. Also, User:David Gerard made the accusation of JohnnyBGood and Gateman1997 being sockpuppets of each other. However, although evidence was later presented, this was circumstantial, and Rschen7754 unblocked both users. However, SPUI mass moved over 60 California road articles, and due to the sheer volume of the moves, they were not reverted.

On March 10, a few California road articles got moved. However, the wars then spread to New York, when several articles from there were moved. User:Daniel Case reverted many of these. On March 11, seeing SPUI move more pages and unable to do anything, Rschen7754 started Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-03-12 U.S. Roads‎. On the 12th, SPUI was briefly blocked by a page move vandalism prevention bot; the page moves, infobox changes, and revert wars continued over the next few days.

On March 19, SPUI was briefly blocked after Rschen7754 notified WP:AIV; however, this was lifted after another admin disagreed with the block. At the end of this block, SPUI used a sockpuppet to notify WP:3RR for Rschen7754's allegedly breaking the 3RR rule for reverting what he termed vandalism (which was adding {{fact}} to one of Rschen7754's comments). Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive83 and Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive82 have threads relating to this.

The next few days saw an escalation in the move and revert wars. Yet another ANI post at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive84 began on March 26. The mediation cabal case was not resulting in a peaceful conclusion either. Also, a temporary injunction was put in place banning move wars, at WP:ANI. During the next week, life at USRD returned to normalcy. This was until March 29, when a RFC against SPUI was filed.

On March 30, the Delaware pages were mass moved. Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive86 came into being, with the temporary injunction falling apart.

On March 31, Rschen7754 blocked User:Locke Cole after the latter moved many Washington pages. After the user agreed to not move more pages, the block was lifted.

April 2006

During the first few days of April, the RFC developed. Some supported SPUI; some did not, and leveled charges against Rschen7754 and those on his side. On April 2, the Rhode Island pages were mass moved by SPUI.

During early April, edits were made to List of Maine State Routes and List of Washington State Routes suggesting that SPUI would soon move the Washington and Maine pages. Rschen7754 proceeded to revert these edits.

In early April, the reverts continued. Seeing as that SPUI continued to move pages despite the ANI injunction, users PHenry and Rschen7754 decided to move the pages back. Rschen7754 moved several pages back on April 26. However, he had limited access to the Internet, beginning in late April, and could only access Wikipedia infrequently until August.

The reverts continued until May. SPUI moved many Washington pages in late April, as well as all of the Texas pages, a few more California pages, and a few Oklahoma pages.

May 2006

On May 1, SPUI moved an Arkansas and a Michigan article, in addition to several other California articles. On May 3, SPUI moved some Kansas articles, as well as most of the Michigan articles. Administrators started a discussion at WT:CASH; however, it was evident that this would fail. Therefore, on May 4, a WP:RFAR request was filed. In early May, Scott5114 moved the OK articles to match SPUI's moves. The initial arguments were quickly made at RFAR. On May 7, SPUI moved more NY, AR, PA, UT, and ME pages. On May 13, Freakofnurture moved many WA pages. On May 18, SPUI moved several TN pages.

Towards late May, Rschen7754 proposed Wikipedia:State route naming conventions poll/Old, but this was rejected by SPUI.

On May 31, the final arbitrators voted to accept the arbitration case.

June 2006

On June 1, WP:RFAR/HWY began. For the principles passed, refer to that page; this account will summarize the workshop and evidence pages and talk pages.

Locke Cole was left out of the case, presumably because he had left Wikipedia due to another unrelated arbitration case.

Those on Rschen7754 / JohnnyBGood's side of the issue presented evidence that mass moves had been performed without consensus, as well as that of SPUI's incivility before and during the Arbirtration case. Fred Bauder wrote many of the principles that were against SPUI; however, many of them were rewritten to apply equally to all sides. Those on SPUI's side presented evidence that they were correct. Originally, principles citing Rschen7754 and Freakofnurture's controversial block activity were written, but left out of the case.

Among the final principles passed were that Rschen7754, PHenry, JohnnyBGood, and SPUI were to be placed on probation. In addition, no articles were to be moved from one convention to another. The community was encouraged to come up with a formal naming convention.

July 2006

The Arbitration case closed on July 5, 2006. After this case closed, there was no edit warring, even though states were still at inconsistent conventions. This was presumably because editors were exhausted after the arbitration case.

On July 23, Elkman moved Minnesota State Highway 33 to Pink fuzzy bunnies in frustration. SPUI reverted this.

August 2006

On August 3, SPUI was blocked for 31 hours for edits to Nevada State Route 28.

On August 5, Rschen7754 proposed a solution to the conflict: WP:SRNC. He wrote the timeline and sent out the messages inviting editors.

On August 6, Rschen7754 was blocked for 31 hours for edits to many articles in relation to article leads.

The first step in the SRNC process was to obtain a panel of unbiased administrators to watch over the process. Six were picked: Syrthiss, Nightstallion, Lar, Ashibaka, CBD, and CambridgeBayWeather.

Some objected to the voting, but many realized that this was the only way to solve the issue. SPUI proposed a list of his own names, assuming that he would win this poll.

On August 10, the first part of the poll opened. Here, the general convention was to be discussed but not voted on. TwinsMetsFan presented the argument for the <StateName> <Type> xx convention first, and SPUI presented his argument second. This led to the arguments being referred to as P1 and P2, and the supporters being referred to as P1 and P2 supporters. This account will follow that convention. P3, a state by state convention, was proposed but gained little support. A P0 section was started to unify editors, but this failed. On the evening of August 17, it was not evident which position would win.

On August 18, voting started. Voters were asked to put their name in a section, with no comments. However, many ignoredthis rule. Finally, Ashibaka removed the comments. Rory096 reverted this several times before striking his vote in protest.

On August 31, voting closed. The outcome was 45 for P1 to 31 for P2. P3 received 3 votes. The judging admins eventually considered this to mean that P1 had the consensus. However, SPUI almost immediately protested, claiming that 59% was not consensus.

September 2006

The complaints from SPUI and Rory096 continued at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive133 and at the SRNC talk page. While Part 2 was opened early due to Tony Sideaway's misphrased ban on all highway article editing, many supporters of Principle 2 protested the outcome, although some went along with it. SPUI was blocked for 24 hours on September 1 for disruption related to this, but this block was shortened to 5 hours. SPUI was also blocked for 15 minutes on September 1.

Tensions were high on September 3, when TwinsMetsFan temporarily left Wikipedia due to the madness. In order to resolve the concerns of some P2 supporters, pipe trick links (basically P2 links) were decided to be used instead of P1 links. This resolved things until September 5, when Alansohn began a protest in regards to the scope of the poll. Many protested the outcome of the poll, but many supported Rschen7754's resolution to the problem. Finally, on September 10, the judging administrators edited the outcome to be as follows: "Every state (except MI and KS) must follow P1 at some point in the future (that point varies depending on the situation in the state). States that will temporarily remain at P2 (NJ, CT, WI, TX, and OK) can be moved once someone is willing to do the work -- even if that person is from outside the project, and even if the project objects." However, editors agreed to perform the work, making this unnecessary.

On September 12, voting began on Part 2, which was individual state naming conventions. Voting closed on the 12th, and the administrators judged the outcome by the 14th.

The third part of the poll began shortly after this, which was simply approving WP:USSH. The support for this was nearly unanimous, even including a few P2 supporters; however, Freakofnurture opposed with "Oppose in the name of all that's fucking holy."

And thus SRNC was over.

October 2006

Page moves began and continued through October.

On October 24, SPUI was blocked for 8 hours for using a SQUIDWARD edit summary. SQUIDWARD was a phrase used by a vandal in edit summaries with vandalism, making it disruption.

On October 26, JohnnyBGood, Rschen7754, and PHenry appealed their probations, but this request was denied by the ArbCom.

Conclusion

The page moves continued through December. However, by this time, a new era had begun at USRD.

The California infoboxes were eventually converted to {{Infobox road}}, which was essentially the same as SPUI's conversions. However, the junction list data was saved for use in WP:ELG and junctions lists.

I-95 exit list was split among state detail articles and redirected to Interstate 95.

Fred Bauder moved to ban SPUI on November 9, 2006, but this was quickly voted down. However, SPUI left of his own accord, coming back to give his input on a few situations that would crop up later at USRD.

Rschen7754 and PHenry's probations ended on March 26, 2007, when ArbCom revoked them. JohnnyBGood's probation ended on April 3, and on that date a time limit was placed on SPUI's probation, ending one year after his last probation block. Thus, his probation ended on October 24, 2007. However, he still remains on probation from the pedophilia userbox arbitration.

Today, former P1 and P2 supporters are able to work together, even though many P2 supporters left in the wake of SRNC. Many editors contribute in IRC, in a dedicated roads channel, since January and have mostly been able to get along despite the former P1 and P2 lines.

Atanamir and Freakofnurture continue as Wikipedia editors but rarely edit roads articles. PHenry left Wikipedia after his probation but came back to edit sporadically after it was lifted. Northenglish left Wikipedia after a dispute in March 2007. JohnnyBGood edits occasionally. Locke Cole has returned after his month-long ban from an unrelated arbitration ruling, but does not edit roads articles.

At the time this account was written, the main editors in USRD were Rschen7754, TwinsMetsFan, Scott5114, Master son, O, NE2, Polaron, MPD01605, Son and JohnnyAlbert10. Today, only Rschen7754, TwinsMetsFan, and Scott5114 remain active.

One of Lar's final comments was "The lame thing, if any, is that it all came to this. If I had my druthers it never would have. Casting aspersions isn't going to make it less lame though. Not that anyone is. :P ++Lar: t/c 02:42, 15 September 2006 (UTC)" This edit war subsequently made WP:LAME. In the future, we must work together with compromise and consensus to prevent another SRNC from occurring again.

Drafting editors

• Rschen7754 (T C), the primary P1 supporter
• Son - Supported P1