Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Newsletter/Issues/Volume01/Issue06

The U.S. Roads WikiProject Newsletter

Introduction

Due to impending changes in structure of the newsletter, this week's issue has been reduced in size. For the first time since the start of the newsletter, there is no featured subproject. Additionally, the member news section has been removed and will be incorporated into a new section as part of the upcoming shuffle.

The past two weeks have been relatively quiet across the USRD project. The number of featured stories has been reduced accordingly.

Canada highway WikiProjects deleted

By TwinsMetsFan

Up north, WikiProjects for every Canadian provincial highway system save Saskatchewan were deleted as a result of a Miscellany for deletion discussion. The WikiProjects, all carbon copies of one another, had very little dedicated support upon creation and were later tagged for inactivity prior to their nomination for deletion. Although it was generally agreed that the projects, in their current form, were of no use to editors attempting to write articles about a provincial highway, a group of dedicated Saskatchewan editors protested, mistaking the deletion nomination of the WikiProject for one calling for the deletion of all Saskatchewan provincial highway articles. Nonetheless, the discussion was closed as "redirect", resulting in the redirecting of the WikiProjects to their parent, the Canada Roads WikiProject. The Saskatchewan project, however, was improved upon during the discussion and was moved to a subpage of CRWP instead.

The redirecting of the projects is not permanent, however, a point made by many of the users commenting in the MFD. If enough dedicated users want to revive a project, they are encouraged to do so, on the condition that the users are willing to contribute heavily to the project and its articles.

Although the MFD technically resulted in the loss of state-level WikiProjects, the MFD will likely have no bearing on USRD and its subprojects, as each state project not currently a task force is in both a much better shape and has more dedicated editors than the projects that were redirected. However, this debate serves as a reminder to all of what could happen if a WikiProject falls into utter disrepair.

Sources: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Canada highway WikiProjects, Wikipedia:WikiProject Canada Roads

Project news

• Nominations and votes are needed for May's selected article and selected picture.
• Pennsylvania Route 145 is nominated for featured article status.
• The creation of new state highway subprojects are strongly discouraged. Instead, consider helping to fix the five projects currently demoted to task forces - Kentucky, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah, and Alabama.
• Due to the lack of participation in the Article Improvement Drive, the two articles from last issue, US 40 and US 191, will remain the AID articles until there is significant improvement to the articles.

Article Improvement Drive

The current U.S. Roads Article Improvement Drive article is
Interstate 96.
Last collaboration was: Interstate 79.
Join the contest to receive a barnstar!

Deletion debates

An archive of all previous debates.

Active

Two deprecated infoboxes, Template:Infobox VACY route (TFD) and Template:Routeboxca2 (TFD), have been sent to TFD. Also at TFD is Template:ADHS, a navigation template intended for browsing the Appalachian Development Highway System.

Closed

Every USRD-related cleanup template, nominated for deletion in a massive April 4 TFD, were kept as a result of a discussion with no consensus. Also at TFD, two infoboxes once used for Kentucky routes were deleted.

There were no AFD or CFD discussions in the past two weeks.

Sources: Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 April 4#Template:CleanupMNSR, Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 April 8#Kentucky route infoboxes, Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 April 16#Template:Infobox VACY route, Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 April 20#Template:Routeboxca2, Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:ADHS

Featured member: DandyDan2007

DandyDan2007 has been a Wikipedia editor since October 16, 2006 and has 969 edits as of April 20. He is a member of WP:NESH, WP:IASH, WP:USH, WP:IH, WP:MNSH and WP:USRD. He also contributes outside of roads, as evidenced by his membership in WikiProject Nebraska. DandyDan2007 has become the leader by example at NESH, making all necessary improvements to Nebraska Highway articles. He also contributes heavily to WP:IASH and helped consolidate four pages listing routes in Iowa into a single article.

Thank you, DandyDan2007, for your continued hard work!

Know of an editor who goes the extra mile? Nominate him or her at WP:USRD/NEWS for the next issue. Editors can only be nominated once a year.

From the Editors

Be part of the turnaround... now become part of the solution! Become active in highways again. Let's save the articles from being inactive and destroyed.

On the heels of a complete restructuring of the newsletter, we want to hear from you, the reader. What do you like about the current format? What should be changed? Removed? Added? Your comments are needed.

Lastly, remember that this is your newsletter and you can be involved in the creation of the next issue released on May 6. Any and all contributions are welcome. Simply let yourself be known to any of the undersigned, or just start editing!

Contributors to this Issue

• Rschen7754 (Editor, Distributor)
• Vishwin60 (Editor, Distributor)
• TwinsMetsFan (Editor, Distributor)
• Master_son (Editor)
• JohnnyAlbert10 (Editor)