Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Newsletter/Issues/Volume01/Issue08

The U.S. Roads WikiProject Newsletter

Introduction

This newsletter has more information on the various happenings at USRD than ever. There were not as many project-wide developments this week as there were in the last issue, however.

Enjoy.

USRD members assist Canada project

By Rschen7754

In 2006, Wikipedia:WikiProject Canada Roads was founded. With much enthusiasm, all of the provinces had provincial highway WikiProjects created for them—even one for Nunavut, with only one major highway, according to Lonely Planet. Unfortunately, many of these were copied and pasted from the same project; sometimes the editor forgot to change all the occurrences of the province names! These projects laid dormant until a few weeks ago.

A few weeks ago, the subprojects were nominated for deletion. Most expressed sentiment to merge these projects into the Canada Roads project. The final consensus was to redirect all the projects to the Canada project, with the exception of Saskatchewan, which was demoted to a task force.

However, within the last week, a few USRD editors have taken time to assist Canada in getting some of the groundwork laid for a better structure. Shields are being worked on, and an assessment system has been added. Thus, this de facto system of adoption is currently being studied for the less active WikiProjects at USRD.

Sources: Wikipedia:WikiProject Canada Roads, Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Canada highway WikiProjects, Lonely Planet: Canada (published 2005)

Project news

• Nominations and votes are needed for June's selected article and selected picture.
• 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. These articles have been relatively inactive for the last few weeks and no substantial improvements have been made.

Article Improvement Drive

The current U.S. Roads Article Improvement Drive articles are
Interstate 96 (improvement) and ' (expansion).
Last collaborations were: Interstate 79 and '.
NOMINATE the next articles

Deletion debates

An archive of all previous debates.

Active

There have been no deletion debates in the last two weeks.

Two debates at USRD

By Rschen7754

Two debates have erupted at USRD over the past two weeks.

A small revert war over the alleged rejection of Wikipedia:Notability (highways) erupted when a user began a tag war. The page is now protected.

Also, at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/State Route 1002 (Lehigh County, Pennsylvania), a dispute occurred over the name of the article. Due to stability concerns, it is not likely that this FAC will pass.

Sources: Wikipedia:Notability (highways), Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/State Route 1002 (Lehigh County, Pennsylvania)

Featured member: TwinsMetsFan

TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} joined Wikipedia on March 23, 2006. He has over 19,000 edits and has been a main contributor to the U.S. Roads Project. On May 11, 2007, he became an administrator.

TwinsMetsFan has been a valuable USRD editor since his arrival at Wikipedia. He is a major WP:NYSR contributor, and was influential in reviving the WP:KYSH project. He is also an avid shields contributor, and he has assisted greatly with INNA, ELG, and MTF, as well as the Canada projects.

Thank you, TwinsMetsFan, 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.

A new GA

By JohnnyAlbert10 and Rschen7754

This week U.S. Route 9 in New York became a good article. Currently, there are eleven Good Articles at USRD.

At 325 miles (523 km), U.S. Route 9's New York segment accounts for more than half the highway's total length. It runs from the New Jersey state line in the middle of the George Washington Bridge to a cul-de-sac just south of the Canadian border north of Champlain. It is the longest north-south U.S. highway in the state.

Sources: U.S. Route 9 in New York

State updates

WP:CASH

Shield conversions have taken place, and there are 99 routeboxes left to be fixed.

WP:ILSR

All of the routeboxes have been fixed to the {{Infobox road}} format.

WP:OKSH

While the ODOT history archive has been known about for a while, for the first time it has been converted to a list in project space, available at WP:OKSH/H. Much work needs to be done to add history to articles that have accessible history pages; only two have been done (SH-3 and SH-51).

The newest articles include Oklahoma State Highway 109 and Oklahoma State Highway 115. OKSH is now missing only 15 articles.

WP:WASH

The project page at WP:WASH has undergone minor cleanup, and several of the articles have been cleaned up as well. The project has been completely switched over to a normal sequential browsing due to silence after changes were proposed at WT:WASH and WT:USRD.

Take a look at the to-do list at Talk:Washington State Route 522 to see what you can do to help there and on articles throughout the state!

WP:PASH

Not much has happened, but State Route 1002 is up for FAC and Pennsylvania Route 31 is being expanded to serve as a future GA/FA. Much information has been found on the history, route, and the attractions on the route.

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 June 2. 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)
• TwinsMetsFan (Editor)
• Vishwin60 (Editor, distributor)
• JohnnyAlbert10 (Editor)