Wikipedia:WikiProject Roads in Maryland/Editing guide
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Here is a guide to contributing to numbered highway articles in the project. To find out how to contribute to other articles in this project, you can refer to other WikiProjects (such as WikiProject Bridges for bridge articles). If you think the standards and guidelines given below can be improved, please discuss your proposal with the project's members on the project's talk page.
Contents |
[edit] Checking for existing articles
Before creating an article for Route X, you should check the route list to see if someone created an article on the same route but with a different name, you should also note that the agreed-upon naming convention for state highway articles is Maryland Route X, so not only is that where you should create your article, but if you see an article residing at another convention, you should move or merge it into the agreed-upon convention. More information on naming is given below at #Article names and terminology
[edit] Article names and terminology
[edit] State highways
- Articles on individual state highways of Maryland are to be named Maryland Route X where X is replaced with the route number.
- In article titles, the term state highway should be used to refer to Maryland's state highways (as opposed to terms such as state route, state road, etc.). If disambiguation is necessary use Maryland state highway. For example: List of Maryland state highways.
- Examples of this convention used in article text:
-
- State highways in Baltimore, Maryland are maintained by the city. (it is implied that these are Maryland state highways)
-
- Maryland Route 2 is longer than many other Maryland state highways. (without "Maryland" to disambiguate, this sentence would imply that MD 2 is longer than many state highways in all states, thus undesirably changing the meaning of the sentence)
- Other terms used by the state government and the general public are also acceptable in article text (but for conformity only the aforementioned convention should be used in article titles). (examples: MD X, Maryland X, even Route X as long as it's not used in an ambiguous way)
[edit] Interstate highways and U.S. highways
- Maryland-specific Interstate highway articles should be named Interstate X in Maryland (ex: Interstate 95 in Maryland)
- Maryland-specific U.S. highway articles should be named U.S. Route X in Maryland (ex: U.S. Route 50 in Maryland)
[edit] General
- When naming an article, use common names. If a subject has a name that is more common than its official name, use the common name, and supply a redirect from the official name. (ex: Chesapeake Bay Bridge, not William Preston Lane, Jr. Memorial Bridge)
- When naming an article, use unambiguous names. For example, Bay Bridge can refer to a number of bridges, and therefore shouldn't be the name of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge article. If the name of something needs to be disambiguated, disambiguate using the commonly used convention, this follows from "use common names" (ex: Chesapeake Bay Bridge, not Bay Bridge (Maryland)). If a name doesn't have a widely used way to disambiguate it, use parentheses (ex: Gay Street (Baltimore)).
- Terms used to identify an individual entity are proper nouns and are capitalized (Maryland Route 2, Gay Street, Chesapeake Bay Bridge (when referring to the bridge with this name)), while terms that are not used to identify an individual entity are common nouns, and only proper nouns within them are capitalized (business route, Maryland state highway, Chesapeake Bay bridge (when referring to any bridge crossing the Chesapeake Bay)).
- Adjectives derived from proper nouns are also capitalized. For example, when Interstate is used as an adjective that refers to the Interstate Highway System it should be capitalized, therefore a highway that traverses multiple states is an interstate highway, while a highway on the Interstate Highway System is an Interstate highway.
[edit] What makes a full article?
Numbered highway articles that fall under this project should meet the requirements below to be considered full articles, for an example of a numbered highway article that meets these requirements, see Maryland Route 8. For other articles that fall under this project, such as streets, and bridges, just make sure the article covers a decent amount of information about the subject, and is well organized, for it to be considered a full article.
[edit] Routebox
Articles should contain an infobox containing info about the route (also known as a routebox). For state highways {{Infobox Maryland highway}} should be used, for U.S. highways, {{Infobox U.S. Route}}, should be used, and for interstates {{Infobox Interstate}} or {{Infobox Interstate/Intrastate}} should be used. See the template pages for instructions on how to use them, and see existing articles for examples of usage.
[edit] Structure
Sections below marked with "required" must appear in the article, likewise, sections that are conditionally required (such as the first two) must appear in the article if their conditions for inclusion are met. Other sections (marked with "optional") may or may not appear in the article. The sections should be listed in the following order:
- (Introduction) (required, no heading)
- An overview of the route.
- Counties traversed (omitted if the route only traverses one county, required otherwise)
- Lists counties traversed by the road and if available, the length of the sections of the road through each county.
- Cities and towns (omitted if the route only passes through one city or town, required otherwise)
- Major cities and towns that the road passes through. Only include towns that are incorporated or are outside the corporate limits of another town (i.e. don't include individual neighborhoods of cities in this section).
- Route description (required)
- A description of the route; where it goes and other notes about various parts of the road. The route should be described west-to-east or north-to-south.
- Points of interest (optional)
- Interesting/important places along the road.
- Junction list or Exit list (required)
- Lists major intersections and interchanges along the road, including all junctions with signed numbered routes. See #Formatting junction list for how this section should be formatted.
- History (optional)
- The history of this route.
- (other sections) (optional)
- As needed, to contain additional info.
- Related routes (optional)
- A list of routes that are related to this one. (A spur or former alignment, letter-suffixed route, etc.)
- See also, References/Sources, External links, etc.
- Per usual usage, as needed.
Note: All lists (counties, cities, etc.), including routes junctioned in the route box, should list their items west-to-east or north-to-south, except for related routes, which lists the routes in numerical order. The rationale behind ordering north to south is that this ordering is more intuitive to the casual user, however, mile posts should still be measured from the southern terminus as usual (see below). The only exception is for North/South Interstate highways, which should have lists listed south to north per the Interstate project's guidelines.
[edit] Formatting junction list
- Note: A proposal has been made in the past to change this standard but no consensus was reached. This is the standard that was already in place, and is still used by articles in this project.
- Major junctions should be placed in a table based off of the Guide to writing Interstate highway exit lists. If you don't know how to create tables, see Help:Table. The table should include the following columns, from left to right:
- County
- The county the junction is in, since several adjacent entries will obviously be in the same county, use rowspan to merge the county cells for adjacent junctions in the same county.
- Location
- City/town/location near the junction, again use rowspan to merge cells that contain the same location.
- Mile
- Mile number (distance from southern or western terminus)
- #
- (written and linking to exit number as shown) The exit number for the junction, if the junction is not a numbered exit, leave it blank. If the route has no numbered exits, this column may be omitted entirely.
- Destinations
- The route junctioned and its destinations (see #Destinations below)
- Notes
- Any other note about the junction (ex: southern terminus, only signaled junction, etc.)
[edit] What if it's not a full article?
Don't worry if you feel your article is too short, just tag it as a stub using an appropriate stub template (see below). If your article is long, but does not meet the standards given above, you should tag it for cleanup using {{cleanup-mdrd}}. If you do one of these then other project members will be able to easily find your article and improve it if they can. If the route you plan on writing on isn't very notable and has very little information worth putting in its own article, consider listing it under List of minor Maryland state highways instead, but make sure you supply a redirect to the list from that route's name. Similarly, if the route has been decommissioned, it should be listed under List of decommissioned Maryland state highways, and a redirect from the route name should be created.
[edit] Stub and cleanup templates
Here are the stub types used for this project
- For stubs about Maryland's state highways use {{Maryland-State-Highway-stub}}, this looks like this:
 |
This article relating to state highways in Maryland is a stub. You can help Wikipedia and the Roads in Maryland WikiProject by expanding it. |
- For Interstate X in Maryland stubs, use {{Interstate-stub}}, this looks like this:
 |
This article relating to the Interstate Highway System is a stub. Please help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
- For U.S. Route X in Maryland stubs, use {{UShighway-stub}}, this looks like this:
 |
This article relating to U.S. Highways is a stub. You can help Wikipedia and the U.S. Highways project by expanding it. |
- For other articles, use {{US-road-stub}} and/or {{Maryland-stub}} where appropriate. They look like this:
-
This United States road or road transport-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
 |
This Maryland-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
- The project's cleanup template is {{cleanup-mdrd}}. It looks like this:
 |
This article relating to roads in Maryland needs to be cleaned up, to conform to a higher standard of article quality and/or the design standards outlined in the editing guide of the Roads in Maryland WikiProject. You can help by editing the article or by discussing the issue on the talk page. After this page is cleaned up, you may remove this message. For help, you can refer to How to Edit a Page and Category:Wikipedia help, as well as the WikiProject's project page and editing guide. |
 Please provide rationale, including an explanation of what work needs to be done. |
|
[edit] Other notes
- Letter-suffixed routes should be merged with their parent article (under its route descrption section), redirects may be supplied to the main route from the letter-suffixed names. An example of such a merging is Maryland Route 648. An exception to this is if the letter-suffixed route is notable enough to have its own article, for example Interstate 895B (which redirects to the common designation: Interstate 895 Spur).
- {{Roads in Maryland WikiProject}} should be placed in the talk pages of all articles covered by the project. It looks like this:
 |
This article is part of the Roads in Maryland WikiProject, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to roads, particularly numbered routes, in the U.S. state of Maryland. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. |
| NA | This page is not an article and does not require a rating on the quality scale. |
[edit] Need more info?
If you still have a question, don't hesitate to ask it at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Roads in Maryland.
