Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Archive 13

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Contents

Start versus stub

It's been the common working practice at WP:USRD to designate articles that have only one of the "big three" sections (route desc, hist, jct list) as a stub class. However, there are some users challenging this on IRC. Any thoughts? --Rschen7754 (T C) 02:22, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, since WP:USRD/A is pretty clear that articles missing two sections are still start-class, I don't see what the issue is. -- Kéiryn talk 02:25, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Quote? --Rschen7754 (T C) 02:26, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
"If an article is missing a "Route description," "History," or junction / exit list, it goes here." Wikilink added obviously, since you seem to have trouble with the definition of that word. -- Kéiryn talk 02:29, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
But it's "a" - implying singular. --Rschen7754 (T C) 02:31, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, it would have a bit of trouble missing two route description sections, now wouldn't it? -- Kéiryn talk 02:35, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Or table for Start Class criteria
RD H JCT TRUE?
1 0 0 1
0 1 0 1
0 0 1 1

Q.E.D. Strato|sphere 02:36, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Just expand them to B-Class and it won't matter. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 02:39, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

A deliciously simple solution! Strato|sphere 02:41, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Or even so that it has two sections, which everyone agrees is a start. --Rschen7754 (T C) 02:47, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Redirects on CSD

I removed a few requested CSDs from an anon IP. There were for names like Soledad Freeway saying that the names were not official and should not be listed. A few extra eyes on the nominations for a while could be a good thing. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:33, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

That's the 75.47 IP: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/75.47.x.x --NE2 03:30, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Assessment guidance for former routes

Do we need to come up with a separate set of guidelines for assessing former state highways? Obviously, it is going to be mostly history and they wouldn't need a junction list or route description. Other than a history section, what would it need? --Holderca1 talk 19:56, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Also, do we want to add a parameter to the infobox to list what highways replaced the highway? --Holderca1 talk 19:58, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, from what I've seen, former routes can usually be written just about the same way as normal highways. Route description gives the description of the most recent routing, or the routing when it was at its peak (e.g., if you were working on U.S. Route 66, you'd want to use the route description from before the Interstate system began taking over its routing). Junction lists are kind of iffy; in some cases they're irrelevant because the former routing was interrupted by on-the-spot upgrades or destroyed bridges. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 20:09, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Wouldn't we get a tad bit redundant though? We are giving the route description in the lead, then in the history that goes into realignments and where it was replaced and when. I am looking at the Texas State Highway 1 article and can't really think of what can be said in the route description section that hasn't been stated already. --Holderca1 talk 21:06, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
On a route that's now covered by other routes, something like "routing", where you just describe it in terms of modern routes without much discussion of where it goes beyond that might be best. --NE2 21:16, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Okay, that makes sense, it is already in the TX 1 article, I just have to rearrange a bit. --Holderca1 talk 21:24, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
You can use the "history=" parameter, like "history=Created in 1926; replaced by I-40 in 1985". --NE2 20:23, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I've used the maint parameter for this purpose before. In M-92 (Michigan highway) I used maint= [[Michigan Department of Transportation|MDOT]] as [[M-52 (Michigan highway)|]] to show that M-92 is now M-52 even though the name_notes parameter says "Former state trunkline" --Imzadi1979 (talk) 16:54, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

That only works if it's still state maintained - in which case it really should be merged with the current designation if there's only one or one primary one. --NE2 16:58, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
True, but sometimes the subsumed designation has enough history of its own to warrant remaining unmerged in comparison to the new designation applied. It's a judgement call, but I only offered that as a suggestion for similar situations. --Imzadi1979 (talk) 23:24, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Sure, in rare cases (like US 66, or where there's no one article it can be merged to). But I'd say that this is one of the places where merging does improve the articles, since the history of that section of road will be the same despite the change in number. --NE2 23:52, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

But the concept I suggest also works when used as maint=[[Luce County, Michigan|]] as CR 135 as well. --Imzadi1979 (talk) 03:20, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

What about proposed highways that received a designation but were never built? There is obviously nothing that you can redirect to. There wouldn't be much to the route description other than it was suppose to go from here to there. --Holderca1 talk 15:57, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

If it's one of many in an area, an article like unconstructed freeways in the Los Angeles area might work. Otherwise you can hopefully find a planning map that shows where it would be with respect to terrain (if that is an issue with the roadway location). Be flexible; you don't need the same headers for every type of road. --NE2 17:49, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Nah, it's just a 35-mile rural highway between two towns that was never built. [1] --Holderca1 talk 18:01, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
If that's all you can find, and (as I'd assume) there are more like it, it's probably best to place it in a list of former or unconstructed (or former unconstructed) highways. --NE2 18:24, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Archiving this page

Would anyone object to having the bot archive threads after they go without a reply for only 7 days (presently it's 14)? It seems like our project moves fast enough to warrant that, and our talk page gets kind of clogged up with old discussions. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 16:14, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

No objection here. --Imzadi1979 (talk) 16:56, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Object, I think one week is a bit quick. The only reason we're having issues at present is because of the scope discussion. -- Kéiryn talk 22:14, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
No, even aside from the abnormally long scope discussion, I think that in most cases, 7–14 day old discussions aren't really relevant enough to keep from the archive. Also, the archive bot goes by date of last response, so if nobody's replied in a week, it would be archived. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:22, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Eh, I suppose you're right. (I already knew how archiving worked... I just needed to skim through the threads at the top of this page to convince me.) -- Kéiryn talk 01:26, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I went ahead and changed it to 10d to see how that does. It will be hard to judge until that massive scope section rolls over to the archive. --Holderca1 talk 13:55, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Poll - an article with only one of the "big three" should be a...

Since apparently some have misinterpreted WP:USRD/A, I'm getting a straw poll. --Rschen7754 (T C) 02:34, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Start

  • Support. What if I don't have any citable information on the history, whatsoever? Is it to remain a stub perpetually? —Rob (talk) 02:38, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
    • This is where it's missing **two** of the big three, not one. --Rschen7754 (T C) 02:40, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
      • I'd still defer to personal judgment more than any criteria. No history, absurdly complicated junction list so as to not exist (yet), but an awesome route description should not mean stub. —Rob (talk) 02:42, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
        • That's not how WP:UKRD does it... --Rschen7754 (T C) 03:10, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
          • Seeing as how I'm not a member of WP:UKRD, and none of the articles I've worked on are part of WP:UKRD, and generally don't care all that much about WP:UKRD, I'm a bit hazy on how to find that project's guidelines. Can you point me towards their assessment scale? -- Kéiryn talk 03:14, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
            • There you go: Wikipedia:UKRD#B-class drive. --Holderca1 talk 03:17, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
              • Curious how there's nothing in there about stub or start class that would be relevant to this discussion. I'm a moron, well hidden that. -- Kéiryn talk 03:19, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
              • Okay, but oddly there's nothing in there about a route description section. Lead, infobox, junction list, history, and an NPOV thing -- and there's a note saying all of them already have infoboxes. So, yes, I'd agree if you have two of those missing, it's probably a stub. -- Kéiryn talk 03:25, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Support. We shouldn't run into situations where this is a stub, but this is a start. Stub should be reserved for an article that's solely incomprehensible lead. -- Kéiryn talk 02:39, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
    • We'd have an absolute standard if we went with the other option as well. --Rschen7754 (T C) 02:41, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm not arguing for an absolute standard. I'm saying I shouldn't be able to promote an article solely by adding a section header. -- Kéiryn talk 02:43, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
But you improved the rough collection of information enough. Frequently on those sort of articles, the lead is interwoven with the RD, making it a nasty cleanup. --Rschen7754 (T C) 02:46, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I didn't improve $#*t. -- Kéiryn talk 02:50, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Why do we need an absolute standard for start vs stub?? --Holderca1 talk 02:44, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Because if we don't, then one person will assess something a start, then another will assess it a stub, and then it's time for Chuck Norris. -- Kéiryn talk 03:05, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Okay, but I don't see the problem, both need work to get to "B-Class" which is the goal (I would say GA, but the queue would take 10 years or so to get them all through). --Holderca1 talk 03:10, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Support. Example Washington State Route 9 is definitely NOT a stub, nor is Washington State Route 6 which is why I assessed it as such. I concede they are a ways from being a B, but that's not what we're debating Strato|sphere 02:40, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Okay, my official position here if I were to have one here, would be if it has a "route description" or "history" section as its only section, than it is a start. If it just has the "junction list," then it is a stub. --Holderca1 talk 03:19, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Stub

  • Support. Otherwise, we get a lead and a (frequently crappy) junction list, which is not a start. --Rschen7754 (T C) 02:35, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Who cares?

  • Support. If it has a one-sentence route description and a one-sentence history, it's a stub. If it has twenty paragraphs of description but nothing else, it's not a stub. The only reason I can see to care is for the leaderboard MMORPG. --NE2 03:28, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Trust me, I really, really, really want to support that. It just doesn't work in practice. :-( -- Kéiryn talk 03:31, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
How about treating starts and stubs the same on the leaderboard? --NE2 03:33, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
No. They're different things, they're treated differently. A start needs less work to be "finished" than a stub. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 04:08, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Comments

It depends, I consider anything more than two paragraphs of prose as a start. Emphasis on the prose. A complete junction list but only a sentence is still a stub. --Holderca1 talk 02:40, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm down with that. That's why I didn't bother reverting Washington State Route 3. That's a stub. -- Kéiryn talk 02:45, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Actually, on second glance, that's another one I could just add "==Route description==" to and get it promoted. -- Kéiryn talk 02:48, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

If the article itself is not a stub, does it make sense for the classification here to continue to list it as a stub? I would find that confusing. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:44, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

This is getting down into the weeds a bit, who cares if it is classified as a stub or start, they both need quite a bit of work before they are ready for GA. --Holderca1 talk 02:58, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Assessment system stub-class and the tradional {{stub}} are two entirely separate things. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 02:59, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Huh? --Holderca1 talk 03:01, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
That was for Vegas I think, above you. Strato|sphere 03:07, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Compromise-ish

Somewhat stolen from Holderca1 above. Basically, remove the junction list from the big three for Start-class, but not for B-class. Maybe call them the "big three" and the "huge two". A start class article has to have at least one of the "huge two", whether or not it has a junction list is irrelevant. A B-class article still has to have all three.

  • An article that has only a lead and a junction list would be a stub.
  • An article that has only a lead and a route description would be a start.

-- Kéiryn talk 03:40, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

  • I'll continue to mark articles with only a line or two of route description as stubs (unless the routes are so short that that's all that can be written). --NE2 04:00, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Good plan. Obvious exceptions are fine. -- Kéiryn talk 04:01, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Sounds good. --Rschen7754 (T C) 04:14, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Since we've got all the major players from the aforementioned IRC discussion on board (except maybe Imzadi, where are you???), I'll go ahead and re-reassess the articles I did according to this criteria. If no one objects within the next 24-48 hours, I'll adjust WP:USRD/A to reflect this too. -- Kéiryn talk 13:23, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I second the motion. --Holderca1 talk 13:47, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
no objections here (from me that is) (You beat me to it Holderca1 :P)  — master sonT - C 13:48, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

For those visual people out there:

History Route description Junction list Class
X X X B
X X Start
X -- X Start
-- X X Start
X Start
X Start
X Stub
Stub

--Holderca1 talk 18:09, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

My $0.02...I don't like the proposal one bit. This is the way I've assessed articles... sorry for the repetitive table, but it's the easiest way to show.

History Route description Junction list Class
X X X B
X X -- Start
X -- X Start
-- X X Start
X -- -- Stub
-- X -- Stub
-- -- X Stub
-- -- -- Stub

If the article has only one of the "big three" that's a stub to me. Now if it has all three, and their one sentence each, that doesn't exempt it from stub status either. But working under the basic model of what is a stub, start, etc., this is what I've worked under since I started working on road articles on Wikipedia. --Son (talk) 02:47, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

So even if it has a full route description, it would still have to be a stub? -- Kéiryn talk 03:25, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes. If it has a full route description, but no history or no junction/major intersection list, then yes, it's still a stub. The same argument can be made if the article just had a history section, then it's a stub; also the same about just having a major intersection list. --Son (talk) 07:25, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
I really don't understand that at all. The junction list is a table, something that compliments an article. That would be like requiring pictures to make it a start class. But I don't think it matters, if you want to continue to rate your states projects in this matter, then go ahead. --Holderca1 talk 10:44, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

While we are on the subject, we should say that a map is required before an article is nominated for GA. --Holderca1 talk 12:31, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Who's going to enforce that? We don't have control over GA. --NE2 14:03, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
We don't have control over what passes and when, and we can't stop people outside the project from nominating them without maps. But we can say as a project that we're not going to nominate them until they have maps. -- Kéiryn talk 14:36, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
And if someone does...we kick them out of the project? --NE2 15:00, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, exactly. </sarcasm> -- Kéiryn talk 15:02, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
It's a serious question... I got Interstate 35E (Minnesota) passed a while ago without a map, and I'd do it again. --NE2 15:06, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Depends on how you define seriously, since you know full well that we don't have the power to kick anyone out of the project. If we decide to make this a guideline, we'd politely remind them on their talk page that it's best to wait until the article has a map, the same way we do with any of our other guidelines. I'd think that as long as a map was at least requested at the MTF, it wouldn't make any difference though. -- Kéiryn talk 15:11, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
In all honesty, I have never had to wait more than a day or two for a map, so if we just check the nominations every now and then and request a map for any that may be missing one. Problem solved. --Holderca1 talk 15:29, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
We could probably get an article passed through GA without a junction list as well, so what's your point? --Holderca1 talk 15:21, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
It's not like making a map is the most difficult thing in the world. Yeah, it's not exactly easy, but it just takes a some of tinkering around in your GIS program of choice. Pictures are different because they require you to get off your butt and go to the road and take pictures of it (which, although it may take some scheduling, it isn't really hard work either — we're roadgeeks, so we do that sort of thing already. Right? Right?). But making a map is just a mildly tedious bit of computer work. It's no big deal to just make a map (or bug someone else to do so) before you submit it to GA. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 17:00, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I used AWB to find the intersection of GA or higher and needs-map, and requested maps for those articles. --NE2 16:07, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Noting the endpoints of the article route in the junction/exit list

See Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Assessment/A-Class review/New York State Route 174. To me, they're unnecessary. --TMF Let's Go Mets - Stats 21:45, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. I tend to second this.  — master sonT - C 21:58, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
Sometimes it can be useful for clarity, especially in the case of "useless concurrencies". See for example Oklahoma State Highway 45. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:43, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
I wouldn't include it. I don't even see how it is helpful in the Oklahoma example. --Holderca1 talk 15:23, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Situation at M-185 (Michigan highway)

This article has claimed for a while that it's the only state highway that motor vehicles are banned from. I just found another - Washington State Route 339 is a passenger-only ferry. I brought this up on the talk page and corrected the article, and it has been reverted to say that it's the only "motor-less" state highway, because - get this - the ferry has a motor (!). Am I the only one that finds this a bit ridiculous, adding conditions to make M-185 appear unique? --NE2 02:30, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, a ferry isn't a road, regardless of whether or not it has a state highway designation. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 02:39, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Is a transporter bridge a road? --NE2 02:40, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
A transporter Bridge is not a ferry  — master sonT - C 02:42, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
I didn't say it is...but it's closer to a ferry than to a bridge. --NE2 02:43, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
A transporter bridge isn't a road, it's a transporter bridge. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 03:49, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Seems pretty clear cut to me, both are state highways that don't allow motor vehicles. --Holderca1 talk 03:43, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Holderca1. There's pretty much no way around the fact that WA 339 is a state highway that doesn't allow motor vehicles. That being said, there's definitely got to be some way to word the M-185 article so that it can still keep its claim. Being the only "land highway" or somesuch that doesn't allow cars is still notable in my book. -- Kéiryn talk 03:57, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
I suspect WA-339 is an unsigned highway. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 05:11, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Certainly, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a state highway. Perhaps that's the distinction the M-185 article could make, that it's the only signed state highway that disallows cars. -- Kéiryn talk 14:11, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

List task force or guideline?

What is everyone's thought on creating a task force or guideline for all of our lists? Even with the leaderboard helping to improve article quality, it doesn't help out our list articles since they aren't counted in the totals. Let me know if this is a direction we want to go in and I will look at drafting something up. --Holderca1 talk 14:42, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Milepost malfunction

I'm starting down the road to improved mileposts, but when the Illinois Tollway (ISTHA) is involved, things get difficult.

They have provided mileposts in accordance with their system. IDOT has mileposts of their own (per GIS data). This makes identifying I-94 mileposts rather difficult. Should mileposts reflect the system the highway is a part of, or actual mileage from the border?

Another good example is Interstate 190 (Illinois), which happened to measured mileposts forwards and exit numbers backwards. Thanks guys. —Rob (talk) 19:59, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Archiving

After watching the bot archive the scope discussion, which ballooned Archive 11 to 300K and made it impossible (exaggeration) to load on my computer, I moved the scope discussion to its own archive, and lowered the max archive size to 250K. -- Kéiryn talk 08:48, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

US 89A

Utah State Route 11 has officially been changed to U.S. Route 89A, so now it spans two states: Arizona and Utah. Source: The Bill that was passed. I'm not sure what to do, but SR-11 either needs to be kept and changed to note that it is inexistent now, or just merged to US 89A and that would have to be changed as well. In any event, the latter needs to be updated. Excuse me if I posted this in the wrong location, but I posted it here since it spans two or more projects. Thanks 71.35.237.195 (talk) 04:16, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

UT SR 11 should probably be merged into US 89A, since it appears on cursory glance that the histories of the two routes are intertwined anyway. --TMF Let's Go Mets - Stats 04:58, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
I wish to be of some help in this process. What can an anon do to start the process of merging? 71.35.237.195 (talk) 05:14, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Never mind. I created an account and tried to do something with the article but I have no idea how merging works. CountyLemonade (talk) 16:38, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Basically, get all the content you need onto the page you're merging to first, noting that you're merging from the SR 11 page in the edit summary. Then, replace the page you're merging from with "#REDIRECT [[U.S. Route 89A]]" and save and voilà. See also Help:Merging and moving pages#Performing the merger. Welcome to Wikipedia, hope you enjoy your stay. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 16:57, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I've added some mergefrom and mergeto tags, and noted that U.S. Route 89A (Arizona) should be moved to U.S. Route 89A, but I have not listed it at Wikipedia:Requested moves yet because there might be a good reason for that page to exist, in spite of the lack of an associated disambiguation page. —Rob (talk) 16:56, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Redirect deleted and page moved to U.S. Route 89A. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 17:01, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps the easiest fix would be to move U.S. Route 89A to U.S. Route 89A in Arizona and move Utah State Route 11 to U.S. Route 89A in Utah and recreate the U.S. Route 89A article as a summary of the entire route. --Holderca1 talk 17:01, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Since the portion in Utah isn't long enough for a separate article, that doesn't seem like a good idea. --NE2 23:23, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
It already is a separate article. --Holderca1 talk 03:12, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, because it was a separate route. --NE2 04:51, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree with NE2. We shouldn't have a state-detail article for a 3-mile long segment. Now that it's formally part of the same route, it should be part of the same article. -- Kéiryn talk 12:22, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Then why did you create Interstate 44 in Texas? When do we decide to split? It's not clear to me. --Holderca1 talk 12:54, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't know where the line is drawn, but I think with the Utah portion of US 89A being only 3 miles long, that's pretty obviously going to be on the "not worthy of its own article" side of the line. I think its subjective. Even if the line were drawn at 30 miles. I'd still argue that Interstate 15 in Arizona deserves its own article for its scenic value if nothing else. Davemeistermoab (talk) 18:04, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Agreed with the comments above that a S-D (state detail) article would be overkill. There used to be a three-state requirement for S-D articles, but that was thrown out the window a while ago. Now it's beginning to seem like every route that crosses a state line has a S-D article, even if that segment doesn't deserve one. --TMF Let's Go Mets - Stats 23:30, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I've merged all needed material from SR-11 to US 89A. All that needs to be done is the merger of SR-11, but I'm waiting for consensus. CountyLemonade (talk) 16:03, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Hold on just a bit. I'm working on finding an official route log for the AZ portion. The former SR 11 article has one, if one can be found for AZ, let's build one before merging the articles. Also the SR11 article has a history section that needs to be moved to the US 89A article, some of this infor shouldn't be tossed. Davemeistermoab (talk) 16:47, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
OK I found an official milage log (although only accurate to integer mileposts. So I moved content. I think all that's left is to do the actual redirects. I think the consensus is to merge. HolderCA1 is the lone holdout. And if I understand his reasoning, its not so much he's opposed to merging. Just wants to know where is the line drawn. I don't know but I think 3 miles is on the merge side of the line. I'm going for it.Davemeistermoab (talk) 18:04, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Oh, don't count me as a holdout, I was just making a suggestion that wouldn't require an admin to merge the histories. --Holderca1 talk 22:24, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Good to see that something actually got done. That brings in the question of what to do about the browsing though. Right now, the infobox on Utah State Route 10 points to SR 9 and SR 11, but there's no way to get from US 89A to SR 12. Presumably sometime soon we'll add browsing to the bottom of the US 89A article, but would that include a row for SR 11 as well? I suppose this is discussion would be better for WT:UTSH and how they want to handle former state routes, but considering it's a multi-state page... -- Kéiryn talk 19:22, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Forget having a discussion on UTSH, last time anyone talked there was on the first of February. I'm on fixing the browsing bar on SR-10 and SR-12. CountyLemonade (talk) 19:37, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Now now, be nice. 6 months ago the project was left for dead. Then I came along then some others. Within the last month 4 editors have been working hard on the project, and it shows, the number of Utah road articles has more than doubled, with 2 pending GA class articles and one pending A class article. (You, me, User:Dan_ad_nauseam and, User:Glennfcowan). I think we should have a discussion on UTSH. If all 4 of us are planning on sticking around and working on Utah highways (as opposed to we'll work on in until we're bored and then move on) we have enough to resurrect the project to a full wikiproject.Davemeistermoab (talk) 21:45, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Last time I looked at the US 89 page, there was a browse for SR-11 included. No need to "fix" SR-10 and SR-12. Imzadi1979 (talk) 23:38, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I guess you're right. In fact, I have some pictures that I will be uploading for a few articles. Long live UTSH! CountyLemonade (talk) 00:05, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Citations in the lead of an article

Per WP:LEAD#Citations and and a comment by O on NY 174's A-Class Review, I feel that we need to address the issue of citation placement, whether or not we truly should double cite, or cite within the lead. I personally haven't cited things in the lead since they're already covered in the sections below. Keeping in mind that anything about living persons are required to be cited, what should our practice be?  — master sonT - C 23:00, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

In the past, I used citations in the lead, usually only for the length information. However, it was pointed out that the length is cited in both the infobox and the junction tables, so even that isn't necessary. I personally no longer use redundant citations since the lead is a summary of the sections below. It was mentioned in the M-28 ACR that the historical mentions in the lead could be challenged, but if that's the case (and they were summarized generally from the History section), then you'd have to challenge the cited information in the History section as well. I say if it's truly a summary of the contents of an article, then no cites are needed if the body is cited. Imzadi1979 (talk) 23:09, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
I only cite in the lead if it's something that isn't simply repeated elsewhere. --NE2 23:21, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
I do the same as NE2 and I believe is the common practice Wikipedia wide. --Holderca1 talk 23:25, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Agreed with NE2 and Holderca1. --TMF Let's Go Mets - Stats 23:54, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Agree with all of the above. -- Kéiryn talk 12:22, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I generally only apply citations to mileages (to satisfy the curiosities of someone that would ask "Now where did that number come from?") —Rob (talk) 17:07, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Concurrency color coding and Termini in Junction Lists

Per comments on NY 174's A-Class Review, where a request was followed up on to remove the colors for "concurrency" and to remove termini from the junction tables. I personally think neither one should be in there as they are redundant. This should be decided as a group though as other A-class articles still currently have these.  — master sonT - C 23:38, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

IMHO - remove all colors from them but the unbuilt colors for consistency with exit lists. The former and noaccess shading, per an earlier discussion, are already deprecated; the other three - concurrency, closed, and unbuilt - can all be expressed through other means. For the first two, it would be through notes in the notes column; for the third, it would be through the light gray shading already used in conjunction with the exit list guide. Thoughts regarding termini: article route termini should not be listed, but it should be acceptable to list intersection route termini. --TMF Let's Go Mets - Stats 23:49, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree except that intersection route termini don't seem to be useful. --NE2 00:07, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I tend to agree with NE2 on the Intersection route termini - is there a purpose behind it?  — master sonT - C 00:13, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
To be honest, the indication of intersecting route termini in New York predates my time on Wikipedia. Perhaps the practice derives from the junction lists on Gribblenation, where intersecting route termini are indicated with (WT), (ET), etc. To me, it's just as useful as indicating an overlap, as the termini note informs the reader that the route only continues in one direction from that intersection. The overlap notes are IMO essentially the same thing, except the notes inform the reader that the route continues in two directions from the intersection via part of the article route. Even if this logic is slightly flawed, which is possible when trying to balance basketball with wiki, I see no reason to limit or prohibit the use of intersecting route termini. --TMF Let's Go Mets - Stats 00:42, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I personally do not care if there are colours or not. Both have their own benefits and detriments. 哦，是吗？(О кириллицей) 00:18, 22 March 2008 (GMT)

I don't care one way or the other about the colors for concurrency, but it needs to be mentioned in the notes because not everyone can see color. --Holderca1 talk 01:08, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Considering that there are people with colour-blindness and the usage of text-based browsers… 哦，是吗？(О кириллицей) 03:22, 22 March 2008 (GMT)
Too tedious to do manually. But, you could have some automatically-inserted text that's displayed as invisible for CSS-handling browsers. Then, in Lynx (and for other people that have CSS turned off/aren't able to handle it, like people with screenreaders), the CSS would degrade and the text would be visible. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 03:26, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
see how I handle concurrency in WI articles (WIS 29 for example) keep in mind I used the colors - which if we choose such, will go away.  — master sonT - C 05:35, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I've been using "west end of [route] overlap"; it's more "direction-neutral" and seems to work better for multi-route overlaps: Interstate 82#Exit list --NE2 05:41, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

While I've personally actually grown to like the colors, it certainly wouldn't do any harm to get rid of them. (Score that as a neutral vote.) As for the wording of the notes column, I think I've always used some variation of what NE2 said above -- now I think I just copy him outright. -- Kéiryn talk 12:22, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I find the colors confusing. It is now only intuitive to me to do a mouseover to get the legend only because somebody told me to do it. Had somebody not told me that I'd still be trying to figure it out. IMO, either add a legend or get rid of the colors.Davemeistermoab (talk) 16:52, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
The MIint templates generate a legend at the bottom of the table, although we insert the code to close a table out without the legend on short trunklines without concurrencies. Imzadi1979 (talk) 17:01, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I look at the color as more a pretty highlight. "Hey, there's something special about this junction!" so you go to the notes column to see what that is. To me, the mouseover/legend is redundant to the notes column. -- Kéiryn talk 17:09, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't get it, what's the problem with adding termini on junction lists? It's still a junction of the route, albeit the first/last one. CountyLemonade (talk) 17:05, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

One way or the other, they'd still be included. The question is whether or not we specify whether or not something's a terminus. -- Kéiryn talk 17:09, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I was under the impression placing the termini on the major intersections list was useful, if nothing else it completes the milage log (for the ones that have mileposts). I also think that even if the consensus is remove them that they should be allowed in special cases, such as discontinuous routes, confusing concurrencies, etc.Davemeistermoab (talk) 18:17, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I think you're both confused. No one here is proposing eliminating lines from the junction lists. The only question is whether those lines get colored, and what needs to go in the notes column.
In other words, we're always going to put the termini on the intersection list. The question is, do we also include the words "Western terminus of NJ 28" in the notes column? -- Kéiryn talk 18:32, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, we could always reinstate the legend into {{jctbtm}} if it's an issue (it was only eliminated to save space). We could also shrink the legend smaller, to something like this... —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 18:42, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Legend
Crossing, no access Concurrency terminus
Deleted Unconstructed
Closed
I say we get rid of "deleted" and "crossing, no access." If it was deleted or there is no access, it's not a major junction, so therefore it shouldn't be included in a table. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CountyLemonade (talk • contribs) 18:47, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, in Oklahoma it's all (state highway) junctions, not just major ones, but I don't think those are used very much anyway. I think they arose from having something to do with California bridge logs...perhaps when Rschen gets back from Costa Rica he can enlighten us. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:04, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Per this discussion, both deleted and noaccess shouldn't be used. They've been completely phased out in New York; whether or not they have been in other states depends on that state's project. --TMF Let's Go Mets - Stats 00:48, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
The reason given for its removal, at least in New York, was deprecated. Seriously, just get rid of the colors and go to a notes-based table; it'll be better and simpler in the end. --TMF Let's Go Mets - Stats 00:32, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Merged standards

For some while now, I've thought the mass of subpages containing various standards and guidelines we have was a bit cumbersome and probably outright daunting to newcomers. I took the liberty of attempting to merge them together into one master standards document at Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Standards. What's everyone think? The majority of the page is just pure copy & paste of the various standards, and what little I did add was for cohesiveness and writing down conventions we follow that haven't been noted anywhere anyway. So far, I've merged in the "USRD MoS" and the INNA pages, along with summaries of other guidelines like the MTF guidelines and such. It could probably still use some refactoring and cohesiveness edits. Is it a good idea to have these all together? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:23, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

(Note that for now, all the merged pages still exist, so if nobody likes this, we can painlessly MFD it without having to "de-merge" things.) —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:25, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

"Naming conventions" and "Linking" (which currently only deals with infoboxes) should probably be combined so the difference between the article title and the standard way to refer to the route in articles is clearer. --NE2 02:43, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Makes sense. You can go ahead and do it or I'll get to it tomorrow morning. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 02:56, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Y Done. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 17:52, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm totally in favor of it, but I think that even with it, we should keep the old pages as well. -- Kéiryn talk 04:05, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't see the point in keeping the old pages as is if this new consolidated page is going to be the new guideline page. Granted, they can be turned into redirects to the appropriate section on the "superpage" instead of being deleted, but I don't see the purpose of keeping the old ones the same. The point of making this page was to consolidate the number of pages out there; keeping the old ones in tact sort of defeats that purpose. OTOH, I agree with the premise of the merge. As you (Scott5114) said in the outset, it needs work - for one, what's in the "linking" section only deals with junction lists, exit lists, and infoboxes. The only thing that exists anywhere as of this moment for linking elsewhere in the article is WP:USSH, but even that's not an end-all guide, since it doesn't cover abbreviations in prose at all. (And if anyone believes abbreviations shouldn't be used, then I suppose that opens that topic wide open - given the hostile and volatile nature of this page lately, I wouldn't be shocked if that ends up being the case.) --TMF Let's Go Mets - Stats 07:35, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I wish we could merge WP:USSH too, but that'd probably be impractical.... —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 17:52, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree with this statement: "There is no set standard for junction lists, but the de facto standard is to use the {{jcttop}}, {{jctint}}, {{jctco}}, and {{jctbtm}} system of templates to create a junction table." Perhaps reword to say these are a tool to create them? I personally find it easier to use standard table formatting than use these templates. I have never liked the section header of "Major intersections" either, seems a bit ambiguous to me. Also, Pennsylvania Route 60 is not a good example, it has three separate tables that should be combined into one. --Holderca1 talk 18:09, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, those templates are used in Oklahoma, California, Pennsylvania, Utah, Missouri, New York, Vermont, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Montana, Kansas, Guam, Washington, Tennessee, Wyoming, and in Canada, the province of Saskatchewan. I think the only major project that doesn't use them regularly is Texas. With usage that wide, I don't see what else you could call it but a de-facto standard. That said, since it's not a set standard, you can go ahead and use whatever sort of template or table system you want. As for "major intersections", I don't like that either (the Oklahoma standard is "Junction list"), but I just copied that off the existing standard (in this case WP:USRD/MOS). Of course, if your subproject disagrees with the USRD standard, they can override it on their project page, as is their prerogative. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 18:32, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
California doesn't use them at all. --NE2 19:16, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Not sure how 20 states of 50 make a majority (and what does Canada have to do with US Roads?), but anyways, not arguing whether it is widely used or not, just saying that even by saying it is a de facto standard, newcomers would think that is what they are supposed to use. I am quite surprised that it is used that much, it bloats the article size and doesn't make it easier to make the table. It would probably help to combine all of the templates into one for starters. --Holderca1 talk 19:24, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Many of the states that don't use them don't have junction lists (or very many articles) at all. I disagree that it doesn't make it easier to make the table; I'd say that they're about equal. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 20:27, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
That's exactly what "doesn't make it easier" means... --NE2 20:50, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Right, so what is the advantage of using it if is equally difficult? I would use the format that is more common Wikipedia wide. The most tedious part of the junction list is the part in the "destinations" column which {{jct}} addresses. --Holderca1 talk 21:13, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Certain things are color-coded, which the templates have encoded. (The colors actually came from California's original infobox, which led me to believe that CA used these templates as well; I see they can't due to their milepost system.) Helps keep track of the required headings too. M-35 (Michigan highway)#Major intersections shows a usage example. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:06, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
The color coding is redundant anyway since you have to mention it in the notes column as well. Also, most articles I have seen don't use a legend to tell the reader what the colors mean, and most wouldn't know to hover their mouse over the color to get the meaning. --Holderca1 talk 01:16, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
Definitely a good point there - I never really understood the color coding, I seconded Holderca1's statement. Also, If there is no intersection (in the case of a former route or no interchange) leave it out. its a Junction list. Not an overpass list. — master sonT - C 01:26, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
Eh, well, that's one way of doing it that a lot of states use, so I felt it merited mentioning. If you want to draft some formal grand unified guideline for jctlists to be included here, go for it. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

(reset) I have just always used the ELG and changed the "destinations" to a "junction" column, no need to reinvent the wheel. --Holderca1 talk 02:14, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I like the idea of having all of a project's guidelines in one place, it's like the Editing Guide I set up for MDRD. Also, just to throw in my two cents on a couple of the other things discussed here, Maryland uses "Junction list" as an alternative to "Major intersections" as well. We also have always based the table in said section on WP:ELG. Personally, I never saw the point in having separate tables in different formats for freeway and non-freeway portions; consistency is better, but I suppose that's for another discussion.-Jeff (talk) 04:51, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Would anyone object to my redirecting all standards subpages to the Standards? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 04:43, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't have any objections as long as the subpages are redirected to the appropriate section and the shortcut boxes are moved to those sections (like at WP:MOS#Punctuation). --TMF Let's Go Mets - Stats 04:47, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, here's what I've done:

  • Redirected all pages to the appropriate section of the Standards page.
  • Redirected all shortcuts to the appropriate section of the Standards page. I put a shortcut box for the what the MOS page became, but not the INNA standards, because, frankly, WP:USRD/INNA/I doesn't make much sense as a redirect anymore. (It still works, though, so people snooping in archives can click that and still be taken to it.
  • Created a shortcut for the standards page, at WP:USRD/STDS. See, "std" is a C/C++/Unix convention meaning "standard" — oh ha ha ha grow up it's not funny.
  • Moved the INNA talk pages to archive subpages of WT:USRD/STDS.
  • About to edit the USRD box to remove references to those pages and replace them

All right, so we're all merged up and centralized now, unless there's any other standards pages that I don't know about that should be merged in. What do y'all think about merging WP:USRD/NT in? I created a sort of stub section for it, but would it be overwhelming to merge the actual page in too? (We should probably retool those guidelines a bit either way...)—Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 06:24, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Do we want to kill INNA?

While we're clearing out junk, do we want to kill off INNA? It'd probably be better for actual discussion to take place either here or at the standards page, and having an actual subproject for infoboxes and navigation seems kind of baroque. Should we MFD it and move the talk page someplace or just tag it inactive and quit linking to it? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 06:24, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

List of Michigan Trunklines

Please help settle a dispute over what the article should be titled. The discussion is at Talk:List of Michigan trunklines. Thanks~ Imzadi1979 (talk) 17:15, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

"Dispute" is perhaps not quite accurate. More like a request for clarification. older ≠ wiser 17:38, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm going to have to agree with the above. Not everything USRD discusses needs to automatically be classified as a "dispute", and reposting like this is borderline uncivil. -- Kéiryn talk 17:53, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Shouldn't this be discussed at WP:MISH? --Holderca1 talk 17:58, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Originally I would have said yes, but seeing as how someone brought up a USRD guideline that I'm not sure exists, it might be worth taking up as a national project. -- Kéiryn talk 18:11, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Deletion discussion

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wrong-way concurrency --NE2 23:01, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Colorado State Highway 29

Does it really exist? It is listed on List of Colorado State Highways and also appears in my Rand McNally atlas but the Colorado Department of Transportation website claims to have no record of any state highway 29. Is this just an omission on the CDOT website? Has the highway been renumbered? My atlas is nearly ten years old so it may be out of date. Does anyone have any information about this? OlenWhitaker • talk to me or don't • ♣ ♥ ♠ ♦ 22:37, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Route 29 is gone as of October 2007. This unreliable source says that it was replaced with Route 21. That's the only source unfortunately. Hopefully that answers your problem.Mitch32contribs 22:52, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
It still shows up on Google Maps. --Holderca1 talk 23:29, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the info, folks. CDOT's website confirms that there is a SH 21 that covers much of the ground that used to be SH 29 but the routes do not appear to be identical; for one thing SH 21 is five times as long as SH 29 was said to be. That's proof enough for me to update the List of Colorado State Highways by removing SH 29 and adding a placeholder for SH 21. Only trouble is, there's no shield for SH 21. I'm going to request one. OlenWhitaker • talk to me or don't • ♣ ♥ ♠ ♦ 23:55, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
SH 29 should still be listed as a former state highway. Our coverage doesn't stop at active routes. --TMF Let's Go Mets - Stats 11:10, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Done. OlenWhitaker • talk to me or don't • ♣ ♥ ♠ ♦ 14:22, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

What point does a "list of minor state routes in XXX" serve?

There is a discussion on Talk:List of minor state routes in Utah about this. While it really only involves WP:UTSH, as the project only has a few members input from interested parties would help reach a consensus.Davemeistermoab (talk) 02:53, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Ferries

I see that NE2 has tagged a few ferry articles with the USRD template. Presumably, this is because they connect sections of state highway. I'm not sure that logic really flies with me though — road projects simply aren't going to have the sources and interested editor groups to deal with ferries. The same sort of arguments that have been bandied about against including city streets also apply to ferries, but even more so, considering ferries aren't even roads, but instead are boats. Boats have things like propellers and engines and smokestacks and other stuff that roads don't have. Including ferries in the road wikiproject is forcing a square peg into a round hole. Also, we don't include road bridges that carry numbered highways (because there's a project just for bridges), so why should we include ferries (WikiProject Ships maintains those)? Note that Keller Ferry is tagged as needing a ship infobox. What possible good could someone with a road background like those of us here, used to dealing with maps, lengths, and exit lists, do for an article about a boat? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 04:26, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually those ferries are legally part of the state highway system; the Keller Ferry was taken over by the state in 1930, and the Washington State Ferries were taken over in 1951, with the intent on phasing them out after new cross-Puget Sound bridges were built (which never happened). And we do include bridges, such as the Pulaski Skyway and Alaskan Way Viaduct. --NE2 08:58, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

By the way, Talk:Alaska Marine Highway has been tagged since December with no objections, despite two non-NE2 USRD editors assessing it. --NE2 09:00, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, it's legally part of the state highway system, but it's still more of a boat than a road. I'm guessing the majority of us here don't have any sort of us here don't have any sort of marine or naval background, so tagging them as USRD is unhelpful. As we lack the expertise for dealing with ships, there's no benefit to anyone to include them. (Bridges are sort of a tricky matter that should be discussed sometime in the future, because a line needs to be drawn, things like Pulaski Skyway and the Waldvogel Viaduct get included because they're highways in their own right, but mere connecting bridges like the Bay Bridge, Golden Gate, the Paseo and the Nance aren't, and so the bridges project can deal with those more effectively. That's a totally different discussion though.) —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 14:22, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Filing under who really cares? Like I have said in the past, work on the articles you want to work on, don't work on the articles you don't want to work on. Everyone will be happier that way. Articles are allowed to be tagged by multiple projects and just because it is tagged by USRD, doesn't mean that USRD is responsible for writing the entire article. The WikiProject tags are there to help editors of that article get help from others. Since it is part of the state highway system and an editor needs input on the state highway system, then they would come here. --Holderca1 talk 13:01, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

"Who really cares" is not a good argument. Obviously, I do, and NE2 does, and you apparently do enough to post. "Don't work on the articles you don't want to work on" is similarly a bad argument, because I could just turn it around and say if you wanted to work on it, you could do still so without it being tagged under USRD. Yes, articles are allowed to be tagged as belonging to multiple projects. But only when it makes sense. I don't think it makes any sense at all to include a boat in a road project, regardless of whether it has a state highway number assigned to it or not. And seriously, it being part of the state highway system doesn't change the fact that it's not a road, it's a ship. As I said above, tagging as part of USRD isn't really helpful to anyone, because most USRD editors lack expertise when it comes to ships. The only state highway information included in the ferry article would be to merely note that it is part of SR-whatever and possibly to note that it's part of the state highway system. I doubt any of us could add anything other than that that wouldn't just be redundant to the main SR article. In fact, I highly doubt any of us — excepting possibly yourself — could improve it at all beyond that. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 14:22, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
You'd be wrong: [2] --NE2 14:33, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Only one sentence in that paper is relevant to being part of State Route 21. The rest is about the boat itself or the route it takes. As I said, the relevance to this project is negligible. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 14:39, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
You're wrong about "I highly doubt any of us — excepting possibly yourself — could improve it at all beyond that." since there's a nice reliable source here. Note how it's listed under "highway maintenance" on [3]. --NE2 14:43, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
I have a reliable source regarding TCP/IP. That doesn't mean I should edit that article. More likely, I'd make it worse. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:25, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
No, I just remember how the last scope discussion went. But if you like discussing ad nauseum over it, have at it. I don't have any expertise in roads, my degree is something totally unrelated, but I still manage to write about roads. I find most of my sources through Google and Google News, which I believe most people are capable of. USRD editors don't have to write about the ship part, but writing about why it is a part of the state highway system is something we can write about. I am hoping that our editors are writing articles based on reliable sources and not just personal experiences. I have never been to a lot of the roads that I have written about, but it doesn't prevent me from writing about them. I also find it insulting to the editors of this project to basically have no faith in their abilities to write articles on anything but roads. --Holderca1 talk 16:57, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Please stop thinking like the editors of this wikiproject are the only people in the world. Have you not thought about the fact that it might interest other editors, new editors. It might be something for you all to consider setting up a US transport wikiproject to stop all of these pointless arguments. That way anything that doesn't conform can just be lobbed in there. I realise this isnt really a constructive argument but that never seems to get anywhere anyway. Seddon69 (talk) 14:55, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Work on the road-related information regarding the ferry, and add as your experience allows. Problem solved. See S.S. Badger (US 10). —Rob (talk) 15:35, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
But S.S. Badger is not tagged under MSHP. It's tagged under WP:WI and WP:MI. MDOT considers US 10 to end at the entrance to the parking lot for the carferry. (They even posted US 10 ENDS signage there.) For that reason, as well as the fact that the MSHP project scope doesn't recognize things not numbered by MDOT, it's outside of the MSHP scope at this time. Imzadi1979 (talk) 22:08, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
It's not exactly the most active of articles (except for a certain incident about 2 years ago.) For all intents and purposes, and to most casual observers, U.S. 10 is connected by this ferry. Is there much to say about it? Not really... but it is mentioned, and a map is included for illustration purposes. —Rob (talk) 22:21, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, but I think the point some of us want to make is simple:
Image:SSBadger050219.jpg is a boat.
Image:M-28 Trout Creek.jpg is a road.
[4] shows the "end" of US 10 under MDOT maintenance, complete with a sign and the S.S. Spartan in the background. The Spartan is the sister ship to the Badger and permanently docked in Ludington. The infobox requested for the article is {{infobox ship}}. The ferry isn't run by either state, it's a private company that operates it. For all practical purposes, US 10 is discontinuous. The Badger only connects the two segments, and at one time docked in a different port in Wisconsin other than Manitowac, and US 10 was not routed there. In fact, US 10 ended in Manitowac and the Badger docked in Kewaunee, WI Imzadi1979 (talk) 22:42, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't see any reason NOT to include ferries that connect routes (such as US 10/S.S. Badger, NC 12/multiple outer banks ferries and [U.S. Route 9|US 9]]/Cape_May-Lewes_Ferry as they do connect the routes accross water. The routes may be discontinuous, but they are one (FYI - Wisconsin has no "END US 10" sign - they just point to the ferry.) Also see the main US 10 route article.  — master sonT - C 23:49, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Because ferries ≠ roads. Nobody has even attempted to refute this argument yet. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:03, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Probably because this isn't that important of a discussion and we all wasted too much time on it last time. --Holderca1 talk 00:44, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Do we still have a list of long-distance control cities?

I think it was deleted, but if not: [5] is about 357 miles to San Francisco and 255 to Reno. --NE2 15:19, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of long-distance mileage signs in the United States -- Kéiryn talk 20:52, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
That reminds me of Streets and highways of Chicago#Driving distances. I'm going to get around to bringing that section up for deletion someday... —Rob (talk) 22:36, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Assessment criteria

I feel that the prior discussion we had on the stub vs. start issue sort of petered out before we reached a formal conclusion. I think we have changed our "working practice" to match that of the compromise, but since there were a couple of objections, we never formalized it by changing WP:USRD/A to reflect that.

I've created a list of standards at User:Kéiryn/USRD Assessment that I'd like to either work into the current chart of guidelines, or just move into the project namespace as a subpage of WP:USRD/A to supplement that chart. Any thoughts on how to tweak or expand it would be much appreciated. -- Kéiryn talk 03:56, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Only issue I have is with the stub classification - an article with only lead has serious issues and should be Stub. --Rschen7754 (T C) 04:32, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
I thought that was what I had said, but I think I made a typo. Does this fix your issue? -- Kéiryn talk 14:11, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Yeah now it's fine. --Rschen7754 (T C) 21:50, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Arbitration case is over

The arbitration case is over.

I'm hoping to bring up some of the stuff proposed in my manifesto a few months ago within the next few days, once stuff within my life settles down. (Some of you are probably going "wait... what manifesto?" :)) --Rschen7754 (T C) 04:19, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

While I'm not going "wait, what manifesto?", you posted it either right before or right around the time I came back on-wiki, so I'll have to give it a thorough reading that I didn't before. I'm looking forward to reading it, and perhaps writing my own. I think – as a project – we need to put some things behind us, and learn how to discuss things more rationally, maturely, and completely (that is, making sure we actually reach a conclusion/consensus). -- Kéiryn talk 04:32, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
User:Rschen7754/Manifesto I think. --Rschen7754 (T C) 04:37, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Jctint colors

Legend
Crossing, no access Concurrency terminus
Deleted Unconstructed
Closed

All the colors go by conventialy. Orange=noaccess, light blue=concur, gray=delete, tan=unbuilt, and pale yellow=close. Anyways I don't care that much of the colours in sense of WP:DEW just as long as they follow WP:MOS is fine. Junction list ({{Jctint}})is not exit list so those colors there is fine. Some pages like I-378 uses both junction and exit lists so is better to merge the junction list into exit list. Exit list is different anyways. Concur, and short term closure you do not add any background colors; noaccesss or intersections has not yet met the construction phase does not belong on exit list per needs reliable source. The intersection in middle of construction or long-term closure can be shade in light gray color only. Delete route should use curent name like Rosemead Blvd. the intersection coloum on note you can say like "Former SR 164" but don't include the icon, and not background color for that. If you want to eliminate those colours the you have to switch the whole thing into Exit list format. That's tough to do. --Freewayguy (Webmail) 17:34, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Anyways alot of articles from numerous states ex. SC, NJ, MI, OK, IN, OH, is using {{Jctint}}. I don't know about changing it to this template:



{| class=wikitable
!County
!Location
!Mile
![[Exit number|#]]
!Destinations
!Notes
|-
|
|
|
|
|
|
|}

California has been changing from Template:CAint to Normal exit list format like California State Route 39 because most routes have leftover segments after 1964 great number change, where the alignments is remove like SR 212 no longer exits after 1964. Most of them change to different numbers like US-91 became SR 91. Part of I-405 use to be SR 7, qnd part of I-605 use to be SR 243.--Freewayguy (Webmail) 17:49, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

The colors usually explain to most people of "Who cares?" Even I don't care that much just as long as they don't look too sloppy.--Freewayguy (Webmail) 17:51, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I think we should keep those colours. Is not like we nade so many changes in colours, escept we made cyan lighter shade and unbuilt change to green and tan because colours is not need to be that dark. The colours is fine, and nobody actually cares about colours. Is not going to harm to actually keep those colours when it draw people so little interest.--Freewayguy (Webmail) 19:49, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

We didnt change much colors; only unbuilt the most-purple to green to tan, there is nothing wrong with it.--Freewayguy (Webmail) 19:48, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/New article notes

What is this supposed to be? --NE2 08:59, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know. It seems kind of baffling, considering it's User:TOWNE 466's only edit. I'm frankly not sure what it is or what to do with it right now. Just deleting it seems a little WP:BITE-y... let's wait a bit and see what (if anything) that user has planned for it. (I am a little suspicious of someone's first edit being to make a new project space subpage, however...most new users don't know about either project space or subpages when they start off. But we'll see.) —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 14:27, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
It seems to have been in the template since it was created in September 2007. It wasn't on the previous version of WP:USRD, so it looks like Master son added it. I'll ask him to comment here. --NE2 14:41, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
I posted a message on User_talk:TOWNE 466 asking him to respond on this talk page and explain. OlenWhitaker • talk to me or don't • ♣ ♥ ♠ ♦ 17:53, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
I left that in there when I copied the template from Trains WikiProject, I never removed it because I figured it might have been useful. Didn't know it would come to this. :( I would also say that we should wait for a response, then if none, delete the page and the links to it.  — master sonT - C 21:21, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Ohhh, now I remember. Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/New article notes was created because the pages in Category:Needed-Class rail transport articles, some of which included notes, were being deleted. --NE2 03:45, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone object to removing it from the template? --NE2 11:01, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd say lose it.  — master sonT - C 11:54, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Sent to Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/New article notes. -- Kéiryn talk 21:15, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

BIA routes

Do we have any articles on the BIA routes? They are maintained by the US government, so I think they would fall under the scope of USRD. Is there enough information out there to create any articles on them? Perhaps just a list article of them? --Holderca1 talk 23:21, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

We probably should have articles or at the very least a list on them, but they all happen to be in states like Arizona and New Mexico that don't have any active editors. (Maybe Utah. Not sure ­— Dave, are you about?) I don't know very much about them (Oklahoma doesn't have any. Isn't that weird?) so I can't really comment more on the issue other than to say we should definitely cover them in some fashion. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:46, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I am actively working on Arizona, that is how I came across them. I didn't know whether to include them in junction lists or link them in articles. --Holderca1 talk 00:20, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I'd probably treat them the same way we treat CRs, meaning go ahead and link to them, we'll merge the non-notable ones to a list (with redirects) and have articles on the notable ones. Do you happen to know if the numbers are unique, if they're unique within a state but are duplicated between states, or are duplicated all the damn time? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:26, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't have a clue, I just found one instance of one keeping the same number as it crosses a state line [6]. I would think they would be unique since they are managed at the federal level and wouldn't duplicate between states, but you never know. --Holderca1 talk 00:31, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Eh, on second thought, I found this [7], I would be willing to bet they are unique by reservation though. --Holderca1 talk 00:33, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Numbers are reused: [8] We have two BIA shields, only used on US 163 and Numbered highways in the United States. --NE2 00:40, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Found an inventory! [9] --Holderca1 talk 00:41, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

This is a pretty daunting list, I think we need to set up some kind of subpage to come up with a naming convention, which ones are notable enough to have a separate article, etc... ADT is provided for some and I saw a couple with over 20K ADT, that would be notable enough in my book for an article. --Holderca1 talk 00:55, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Okay, I can laugh at myself, the inventory is a listing of all routes that go through an Indian Reservation, I was looking at the ADT of I-25 in New Mexico. --Holderca1 talk 01:07, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
How about 1 or 2 in the "CLS" field (page 2 of [10])? --NE2 03:35, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree, it appears most of the class 1 roads are state maintained routes and already have articles, but there are a few that aren't. --Holderca1 talk 12:45, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[11] is a list of reservations by number and should help decode the data. --NE2 13:26, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

First things first, we need an article written on the system. Then, once we understand how it works, it'll be easier to write on individual routes. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 14:44, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I think first we need to understand the system, then we need to write an article on it. :-P -- Kéiryn talk 14:56, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
For the record, the mile logs on UDOT's web site mention BIA routes as "Fed Aid Route XXXX", which is the same term UDOT uses for county maintained routes. Sorry for not chiming in sooner. For an example of one, look at U.S. Route 163 and the UDOT mile log used as a source for the major intersections list. Anything south of the town of Mexican Hat is on the Navajo Nation and would be BIA/Navajo roads, anything north of Mexican hat would refer to San Juan County. Davemeistermoab (talk) 18:02, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Deletion debate (Minnesota county route)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/St. Louis County Road 7 --Polaron | Talk 16:38, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Another: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nebraska Spur 10A --NE2 16:59, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Quick GA notes

Looks like U.S. Route 12 in Washington is the 100th road-transport related GA article (plus or minus an article). Congrats to all transport editors on that milestone.

Secondly, the backlog is down to 9 days and 10 articles (7 unreviewed, 1 really needs a second opinion). Ideally I'd like to review 5 articles per week, and have the maximum unreviewed time be 7 days. I encourage other editors to hold other people's articles up to established good article guidelines and comment on how to improve them. It helps your own edits to mainspace articles. Really. —Rob (talk) 18:26, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Changes to Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Assessment/States

First off, apologies for imposing a unilateral change after discussion on IRC. Gee, how many times have I yelled at other people for doing that? However, this change is relatively minor, and solely behind the scenes, so hopefully it isn't too big a deal. Secondly, apologies for waiting two days before posting this here.

Thirdly, what is the change? Basically, starting immediately, the "leaderboard" will only be updated once a week, by me. Generally this will be either Friday late afternoon or early Saturday morning (Pacific), although these first two weeks it will probably be sometime on Sunday. In my eyes, there are three reasons for this change:

  • It's a choice between 30-40 minutes of work, or a couple of minutes whenever the bot automatically updates the state pages (sometimes multiple times a day). It's debatable which way is more work, but since Rschen was getting tired of doing it the second way, I volunteered to do it the first way.
  • To the extent the leaderboard MMORPG exists (as it was cleverly referred to once), not updating the leaderboard constantly will help to reduce the focus on that.
  • To the extent it doesn't exist, it will reduce the illusion that it does.

I'm not going to get into the business of reverting people who update individual states during the week. However, I'd like to encourage people to stop doing this. Firstly, it somewhat defeats the purpose of combining all the intermediate edits into one edit at the end of the week. Secondly, while updating all the states at once at the end of the week makes the list slightly less up-to-date, it does make it so that there's a more accurate comparison – that is, it ensures that all the states are equally up-to-date. If someone from a state project wants to look at perfectly up-to-date statistics, they can instead look at their individual state page (for example: Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Alabama road transport articles by quality statistics). -- Kéiryn talk 01:18, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

What the heck is MMORPG? I see RPG and I think rocket-propelled grenade, but I couldn't figure out the first part. --Holderca1 talk 18:58, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Massive multiplayer online role-playing game. - Algorerhythms (talk) 18:59, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Not sure what this has to do with a video game, but no es importante. --Holderca1 talk 19:07, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
It's a phrase NE2 used once and I found humorous. Basically it refers to how certain editors are competing with each other, and possibly "cheating" by hiding their stubs. -- Kéiryn talk 20:47, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Competition is a good thing. --Holderca1 talk 20:59, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
A good-quality encyclopedia is a good thing. Competition is only a good thing if it helps us reach that goal. Removing stubs in ways other than improving them often doesn't do that. --NE2 22:43, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
At any rate, changing how often the leaderboard is updated isn't going to effect how editors handle their stubs. --Holderca1 talk 23:23, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
It might, it might not. Ideally, editors make editorial decisions because it's good for the encyclopedia – not just to up their project's stats. However, some editors have come right out and said that this was their reason for questionable merges or other proposals. -- Kéiryn talk 14:22, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, I didn't realize some editors would throw integrity out the window like that. That would be like me improving all the current New Mexico highway articles to B-class (which wouldn't be too hard considering there are only 47), then go around tooting my own horn for having NM at #1 despite the fact that NM would have several hundred highway articles without an article to speak of. This rating system is a bit flawed in that respect, was this created by USRD or was this created at a Wikipedia level? --Holderca1 talk 15:27, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the formulas were developed at a Wikipedia level. I mentioned the issue that you bring up at IRC (or someone else mentioned it and I agreed), but I think the problem with implementing something like that is that it's tough to tell exactly how many articles are missing. Plus, even if you could, you can't put nonexistent articles in a category for a bot to count the way we do with the various classes. -- Kéiryn talk 16:25, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

One easy way of counting how many missing articles there are is to look at how many red links there are in the list articles (under the assumption that the lists are complete). It's admittedly not perfect but should give a rough idea. I used to do the tabulation prior to the automatic bot counts at WP:USRD/SUB/STATS. --Polaron | Talk 16:49, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

That was my thought on IRC. The two problems I could see with that are (1) assuming the lists are complete might be a pretty big assumption for some states – especially if we wanted to count former routes – and (2) it doesn't take into account any non-state highway articles that are missing. Still, it could be an okay solution if it were something we wanted to implement. -- Kéiryn talk 16:56, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Another problem I could forsee is if a redirect was created and not counting it properly. I would only count the active main line routes that are missing an article for the number of unwritten articles counting towards wikiwork. Another problem I could see with implementing this is that I would imagine unwritten articles would count as a 6 towards wikiwork. The problem would be that someone may make a bunch of stubs just to lower their work a bit. To counteract that, we may just want to count unwritten articles as a 5 towards wikiwork to prevent this from happening. --Holderca1 talk 17:02, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
I'd strongly disagree with that. A stub, provided it's more than just a sentence or two (and still maybe even if it is just a sentence or two), is better than nothing, and should be treated as such. -- Kéiryn talk 17:06, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
I am okay either way, I was just throwing it out there. --Holderca1 talk 19:26, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Including missing articles in wikiwork?

What do people think of the proposal above to include missing state highway articles in a state project's wikiwork? After giving it some thought, I've realized that it wouldn't actually be terribly hard for me to implement if it gains consensus, so I figured I'd pose the question in a new section down here to see if it gains consensus... -- Kéiryn talk 18:48, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

If we can develop a good method for implementing it, sure. The problem is, how do we determine what's missing except assuming the lists are complete. For instance, Michigan has started articles/DABs/redirects on all known M-## state trunkllines. The only missing articles would be on the state-level US Highways and Interstates, most of which currently just redirect to the parent article until the article is written. Are these articles truly missing then? I see the merits of the proposal. Guam has many, many more highways than currently written, but the only one done is a B, so Guam is at 3.000. Should it be at the top of the heap on that reasoning, not quite, but I don't know that there is a simple method to use to determine missing articles. There has never been an M-2 in Michigan, odd enough, but someone could say that it's "missing". Imzadi1979 (talk) 19:17, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps we would only count the active main lines highways, which I believe all should have their own article. I think it is okay to bunch former highways into a list article and for those that have the info available, break out the separate article. A lot of the former highways will never have their own article since they currently exist as another designation and would be covered under that article. --Holderca1 talk 19:25, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
I think including unwritten articles in the statistics would get unworkably messy, because it's difficult to determine what's "needed" and what's not. In Oklahoma, lettered spur routes don't have their own articles, they're merged to the parents. Of course, if new members joined OKSH and we collectively decided that was a bad practice, then we'd suddenly have a lot more N-Class (my neologism of choice for unwritten articles) articles to tackle. Also, there's quite a few decommissioned highways from the 20th century that need to be investigated and articles written on, but that's going to be down the road once our coverage of the current system is more complete. And then there's county routes, which add a whole other order of complexity to the problem. And then city streets add another layer of possible articles. Unless we were to sit down as a project and list out every article that could possibly be written and say "okay, if it's not on this list, it's not going to get written" (which would be impossible anyway because everyone would argue over what's notable or not), the number of articles we could write is a few dozen short of infinite.
Also, I feel that the present system places more weight on expanding and improving existing articles more than writing new articles, and this is the way it should be. We have to realize that Wikipedia isn't just a fun writing club; people do use our articles, and in the process of expanding them to B-Class, we catch inaccuracies, clean up grammar, tune prose, correct MOS and USRD standard violations, and much more. If a visitor were to happen to be searching for information on some highway and happen upon an unchecked, badly written article, it reflects badly upon Wikipedia. And as they used to say at my last job, "shit rolls downhill", and so it reflects badly on Wikipedia as a whole. While some people enjoy writing articles from scratch and should not be barred from that endeavor, we have a lot of articles that need to be fixed, and those need to be higher priority than new articles. I also dispute the previous assertion that "stubs are better than nothing": a stub with wrong information is worse than nothing because it tarnishes our reliability as a project. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:41, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
That is why I said we should limit to the active primary state highways (this doesn't include spurs, business routes, etc...). I think we can all agree that they should all have their own article. There are several states that hardly have any of them created, New Mexico, Wyoming and Idaho just being a few examples. This change would probably be invisible to most states since they already have at least a stub created for every active primary state highway. I also don't think this is being proposed as part of a "game" by any stretch. I personnally think being comprehensive is just as important as the quality of the articles. I think someone searching for a particular article and not finding it at all is just as bad as finding a poorly written article. --Holderca1 talk 20:10, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
(ec) I totally agree that it would be impossible to write a list of every single "needed" article. But I think it would be exceedingly simple to write a list of the "most needed" articles – that is, current mainline (primary) state highways. Undoubtedly this would leave off some, so it still wouldn't be a 100% accurate measure of the wikiwork we have remaining, but it would still be a hell of a lot more accurate than the system we have now.
Secondary state highways, county highways, and OK's suffixed spurs (and a bunch of other categories I can't think of off the top of my head) generally don't get articles for individual routes. Therefore, they shouldn't be part of the wikiwork – they fall into the List- or Redirect-class assessment categories. There are, of course, going to be a rare few that do need their own articles, and those will be added to the wikiwork when someone writes a stub (or a start or a B...) and they get sorted into the assessment categories. In other words, saying that they're not on "this list" doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't going to get written, just that writing them isn't as high priority as it is to write the ones that do make the list – or to paraphrase something you said, we'll write them down the road sometime once our coverage of the more important highways is more complete.
Also, as you might be able to tell, I'm not quite so sure that the focus should be on expanding/perfecting existing articles instead of writing new articles. I think both aspects are equally important. Imagine Holderca's New Mexico example in the above section. Considering that New Mexico has over 400 state highways, I think 48 B-class articles and a relative wikiwork of 3.000 would be pretty sucky. Whereas if we could get articles on all 400 of them and a wikiwork of around 4.5, that would be pretty dang awesome in my book. If a visitor happens upon an unchecked, badly written article, that probably reflects pretty badly on us, but if they can't find anything at all, I think that reflects even worse on us. -- Kéiryn talk 20:18, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Finding an incorrect article is unquestionably worse than not finding one at all. If an article is missing, then the user will just look somewhere else, but if a short, badly spelled article is found, that reflects badly on Wikipedia (not USRD, Wikipedia) and the person is less likely to turn to Wikipedia for information in the future. (And if nobody's going to read these, why are we writing them?) Also, if an unchecked article is downright wrong, we're giving bad information to readers, which is obviously bad. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 20:22, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
That's a vaild point. I do agree that incorrect information is worse than none at all. However, to be perfectly honest, I've rarely found blatantly incorrect information in our project. Sometimes, sure, but not often. (I of course concede that it's entirely possible you've had a different experience.)
But really, it's kind of a moot point. The people who pay attention to the assessment statistics (i.e. you and me) aren't the type of editors who are going to add incorrect information to Wikipedia. They're the type of people who will go, "Oh, $#*t, there are that many articles missing?!?", and go and create a few. The writing might be short and imperfect, but I'm confident that the information added by these editors would be 100% correct. And while it might be a little ugly, it would be better than nothing. -- Kéiryn talk 20:30, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Right. When I notice that my projects' statistics go up due to a new stub being added, that sets my Danger Flag off, and I go check and see what was added so as to verify it. I'm concerned about people going off on a stub-writing bender, because it leads to having a bunch of new poor-quality articles rushed through just to change redlinks to blue. (This has already happened in Pennsylvania.) Also, these types of new article sprees sets us off on sort of a J-curve where we grow faster than other editors can keep up with checking. We should stick to a more regulated S-curve growth plan, so we don't have the feeling of being overwhelmed, backlogged, and biting off more than we can chew.
I don't object to coming up with a tally of how many articles are needed. However, I don't think it should be tied into WikiWork. With the present system, there is some disincentive to making new stubs. But for most projects, the same statistics give an incentive to write new articles, but improve them to B-Class before they hit the mainspace. I have no objections to people making new articles in most cases (I'm not too fond of CRs and city streets), just new stubs. To sort of steal from Stephen Colbert, if you write it good enough the first time, you don't need to go over it a second. :-) —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:18, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
It's going to be an S-curve regardless, it's just a question of when we go up, and when we start to level off. Eventually, we're going to need to create those articles if we're trying to make a thorough encyclopedia on state highways in the United States. So really, they already are a part of our wikiwork – meaning the work we have to do – just not the way we've chosen to measure it. -- Kéiryn talk 04:19, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

There's a discussion that may be related at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 April 14#Category:Needed-Class articles. --NE2 20:58, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

The weak consensus there so far seems to be keep, which is good. Although I was thinking it would be pretty easy to do without a category, and without running afoul of CSD. Basically, I'd make a list of all the redlinks off the various state highway list pages, put it on a user subpage or a subpage of this project, and once a week when I update WP:USRD/A/S, I'd see which ones have turned blue. -- Kéiryn talk 21:02, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
I tested an article in Washington and WP 1.0 bot doesn't include needed-class articles in the stats, so it would be seeing how big the category is. --NE2 21:13, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Bold text in articles and MOS:BOLD

After helping to knock down the Transportation backlog at WP:GAN to 15 days and 14 articles (as opposed to, oh, 40+ days and 33 articles), I would like to point out that the Wikipedia Manual of Style discourages bold text in any section other than the lead.

For emphasis, use italics. Otherwise, limit boldface use to table headers, definition lists, and volume numbers of journal articles, per MOS:BOLD. However, if the project members would like to vet using boldface in the History sections of articles for the names of former routes, that should be taken up both within the project, and with other members of the Wikipedia community. —Rob (talk) 20:58, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

The way I read it though, MOS:BOLD and WP:Redirect are a little contradictory. For example, there is a disambiguation page for M-111 (Michigan highway). From it, M-111 (1928 Michigan highway) and M-111 (1938 Michigan highway) branch off, the first is a redirect to the M-111 subsection of M-47 (Michigan highway) and the second is a redirect to the M-111 subsection of M-26 (Michigan highway). From WP:Redirect: "We follow the 'principle of least astonishment' — after following a redirect, the reader's first question is likely to be: 'hang on ... I wanted to read about this. Why has the link taken me to that?'. Make it clear to the reader that they have arrived in the right place." If only a small portion of the article that's not worth mentioning in the LEAD deals with the redirect, then why shouldn't the subsection have the first mention of the redirected subject in boldface? Imzadi1979 (talk) 21:14, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Actually the redirect should go directly to the section with the first mention and that should be bolded. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:03, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
In both M-47 and M-26 in the example above, there is a subheading under History for M-111. That's the section where it redirects, that's the section with the first mention and that's the section where it is bolded. 23:56, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure if it's necessary here (looking at M-47), given that the section header reads "M-111". But it would probably make more sense not to have the separate section, and instead cover M-111 in the early part of M-47's history. Right now the article talks about M-47 being extended over M-111, continues on about M-47, and then goes back to M-111 before it became part of M-47. --NE2 00:20, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
In a comprehensive lead, technically the historical routes would be mentioned in the historical section of the lead. I think it would be proper to link to the article, and then bold the historical routes when briefly mentioned in the lead. —Rob (talk) 22:37, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
I disagree. On something like US 491, it makes sense to mention that it was US 666, but in many cases the former designations really weren't that important. The Historic Columbia River Highway No. 100 was put together in 1993 from the Crown Point Highway No. 125, Cascade Locks Highway No. 283, Old Columbia River Drive No. 284, and portions of several others - should that all be bolded in the lead? --NE2 03:54, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
That's a legitimate concern. Would you argue for the routes to be bolded in the History section, then, or to not be bolded at all? —Rob (talk) 03:59, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
In this case, I'd bold them in the history at the time they were formed (when the Columbia River Highway No. 2 was realigned), which would be a different paragraph for each. --NE2 04:17, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I wouldn't mind that convention. I've posted at the MOS talk page and will wait a few days for concerns to crop up. If none appear, I'll write it into the project MOS. —Rob (talk) 17:17, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

FYI, I was told to take out the bolding for just such an instance where I had done this on Interstate 70 in Utah. The reviewer who made this comment was User:SandyGeorgia who is the assistant FA director, so I think she speaks with experience on this subject. The specific instance was State Route 4 where Utah State Route 4 redirects to I-70 in UT with the first mention of why in the history section.Dave (talk) 03:27, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd point that user to this discussion and/or the last section on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (text formatting). Like Imzadi said above, by removing the boldface we run the very real risk of leaving readers thinking "why was I redirected here". – TMF 03:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Another concern I have is that, especially in New York, some former designations (ones that are bolded in articles) have since been reused. My fear is that if they are debolded then other editors will incorrectly link these designations to their current numerical counterpart. – TMF 03:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Interstate issues again.........

So Algorhythm went ahead and ask undeletion of numerous state-name interstates from maryland. However on interstate-guide they color Maryland black, means is mostly neutral shields. I guess it can be a mix-shields state or should be pink-purple (magenta). Oklahoma should be blue becasue the state documents requires state-name-interstate shields, and California requires state-name shields on interstates per Caltrans sign drawing. However Oklahoma's DOT defies over legislation more than anywhere in the US, and sometimes US makes black background or make in blue, or purple with white text besides interstates issue. Caltrans I think is the best in the US, and they generally follows the DOT rubrics. Only in Central Valley the i-5 missing state name on interstate shields maybe becasue the Modesto districts defies more, in the later 1990s. ODOT I thought is the most defiant DOT over all U.S. --Freewayguy (talk) 00:31, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

The reason I requested undeletion of those shields is that although the map you keep citing is correct in that the Maryland State Highway Administration specifies shields without the state name, the state name shields have been used in the past and are thus of historical interest, even though they are no longer the official design. No offense was intended, and you seem to be making a mountain out of a molehill out of this. - Algorerhythms (talk) 01:39, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
→→→It does not matter whether state name shields are used or not.←←← Honestly, I'm getting quite tired of this. Maybe we should go back to using only the national (neutered) MUTCD shields so that we don't have to discuss this endlessly. It would make things more consistent, anyway. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:53, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
I would be fine with that, to be honest. - Algorerhythms (talk) 02:08, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
If a project has reached a consensus that you cannot convince that project to change, then you should respect that consensus. Also, I don't see the point in not having state-name shields for a state that no longer uses them. We have an Interstate 0 shield after all. If we can have a shield for an Interstate that never existed, then we can certainly have shields that were used in the past and in some cases can even still be seen.-Jeff (talk) 02:16, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
All of the shields in question are hosted on Commons. They are in the scope of Commons and should still be there, even though the English Wikipedia may consider them useless. 哦，是吗？(висчвын) 23:37, 19 April 2008 (GMT)
Beh, a piece of trash in Missouri is just as useless in Toledo. Where a file's hosted doesn't change its usefulness. Of course, it's not really worth the effort to delete something unless it's actively wrong or redundant, so I don't really find any pressing need to delete the non-existent interstate shields. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 02:27, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Not when one man's trash is another man's treasure. Shields for nonexistent highways aren't hosted on Wikipedia (and wouldn't be even if any shields were hosted on Wikipedia) because they wouldn't be useful in an encyclopoedic context. However, they are still hosted on Commons because they may be useful in other contexts... i.e. personal roadgeek websites. -- Kéiryn talk 04:19, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
The same logic can be applied to state-name shields. I just hope Freewayguy sees it the same way so we can finally put this silly discussion behind us.-Jeff (talk) 14:39, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Okay, just for sake of time; for other 40 states lets just use state-name specific in history only, deviod them from small icons, and infobox.--Freewayguy (talk) 19:53, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
What? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 20:19, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Why does it matter? Who cares if the shield shows the name or not? Most of the time a reader can't see them anyway, period. We don't need to delete them, but using them is kinda pointless honestly. Imzadi1979 (talk) 01:22, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

ACR issue

We have an issue and I'd like to get some input... a state highway WP has a long-determined consensus on an issue. However, ACR does not like this and threatens to fail the article if it does not go against the consensus formed at that state highway WP. What should be done here? --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:45, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I think normally little things like formatting don't matter – for example, we seem to have decided that it doesn't matter whether or not an article uses color in the junction list. But if a project's standards get in the way of the clarity of an article, then that needs to be fixed. -- Kéiryn talk 02:09, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok, here's my simple take on it. The article can be changed to satisfy the consensus at ACR. That's easy and gets it past ACR. Of course now the article violates the consensus formed at the wikiproject, at least unless/until the WP changes things. It's a no-win situation. Imzadi1979 (talk) 02:20, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree that it's an unfortunate situation when you have two conflicting consensuses. It becomes a question of which consensus is (a) more important and (b) has better rationale behind it. Also, by the looks of it, the consensus at MISH was formed right around the time WP:SRNC was closing, and before a lot of the USRD standardization occurred. It may be time for that subproject to revisit the issue to see if consensus can change to match what seems to be forming around the ACR.
I'd disagree that it's a no-win situation though. If you change the article to pass the ACR, then you get an A-Class article. (Win!) Also, as a by-product, you've started discussion to maybe change MISH standards to make the articles a little more clear, and avoid having this problem again in the future. (Win!) -- Kéiryn talk 02:38, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

As an aside, the biggest problems facing USRD have been related to editors making changes that buck consensus without discussion. Given that we just got over an ArbCom, I'm reluctant to buck consensus. Now a discussion at WT:MISH has been started, but I'm not the WP so I'm not the consensus. I personally could care less, but I'm sensitive to the idea not to go against what is currently a settled practice at one project to satisfy another. Until this issue is settled, I won't make a change myself that go against what MISH decided until MISH decides to change. When MISH makes that change, I'll run through every article and make every change necessary for compliance to any new standard. Until then, this MISH project member won't make the change, but he won't revert it if others make it. Imzadi1979 (talk) 02:55, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Last I checked, ACR qualified as a discussion. -- Kéiryn talk 03:51, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
It's a discussion about a specific article. It's not a consensus "debate" about a whole project. It's the wrong forum to have a discussion about a MISH practice that was decided on WT:MISH. MISH members interested in the results of the discussion over the practice may or may not even pay attention to or know about the ACR. Now then, like I said, a request was made at WT:MISH about this discussion here (since it does affect more than MISH) and I'm sure one might start over there. The end result is that on a known forum, a new consensus may or may not be formed. Until that time, I'm not going against a settled decision made by consensus, but nor will I revert edits made from the ACR discussion. Imzadi1979 (talk) 04:19, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Imzadi, since no one else has replied, I figured I'd ask you what your personal opinion is, since you haven't really shared it yet. Are you just following that guideline because it's a guideline? Or is it something you actually agree with? Why or why not? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kéiryn (talk • contribs)

My personal opinion is that I don't honestly care which way some things are done. I'm all about certain levels of consistency being in place. I'm also about letting each state project have a certain level of latitude on things. Having said that, ACRs IMHO are about a specific article. If that article does something new and innovative, or old and different and there's an objection, there should be a discussion about it, but somethings shouldn't be changed against consensus. That's how WP is set up.
I said it before, too many times WP:BOLD has been abused. Maybe I'm overly sensitive, but I joined WP:MISH years ago and only in the last several months have I been a member of USRD. I've seen from afar what the SRNC did. Michigan was spared that drama mostly. One day it was at Michigan State Highway 28 and the next day it was at a much better named M-28 (Michigan highway) and we never changed what we were doing except to fix links along the way to the new names.
The recent ArbCom has had me thinking about things. I try to play fair and get along. Yeah, I get stubborn sometimes. Call it Michigan-pride. Maybe it's a personal pride. I try to just edit and do the best that I can do. I try to keep things the most accurate they can be, and fix what I know is wrong. I follow the guidelines laid down until a guideline is changed. (Lots of the MOS pages read like Greek to me at times. I think someone could make a great book putting the MOS into book format for referencing on the side with detailed examples.) When a project set down a guideline though, that project should be the forum for changing it. It's all great and dandy if FAC or an ACR or even a GA reviewer makes a suggestion for a change, but those forums aren't the project. They're a discussion over the merits of a particular article. We've had drama and mini edit wars over neologisms where the issue was tossed up on an article talk page no one had on a watch list. Some of those discussions should have been initiated at a project talk page since they affected more than just that one article. Maybe that's not the same to others, but it is to me. I'd rather let the proper forum be the agent for change than start another round of drama, but I guess with this group of editors we'll always have some drama no matter what.
Tonight I expanded the last two stubs MI had left. As a member of MISH, I should be celebrating, but I'm not. My sprit and enthusiasm for editing I rekindled since January is broken. It seems like every time there's a new development there's been a new criticism somewhere. You can't edit that. Don't start that article, we have these to expand. Why are you using that word, this is better. Many of us invest a part of ourselves into our work on here. We have varying interests, varying talents. What one of us considers interesting another will find dull. We have people "inventing" issues where they don't truly exist. Some of us say we waste resources updating somethings, but does the great server farm that runs this site know the difference between a page edit to insert a missing ")" or adding several KB to an article by adding an entire section? Others say we waste time by adding a new article to the database when another need expansion. I see there's a debate about how to add in the missing articles to WW stats. So I see that we have a mixed priority to both expand what we have AND add what we are missing.
I'm doing some soul-searching about some things lately. I apologize if this reply is so long. There's been a lot of upheaval in my non-wiki life as well as on wiki lately. I'm sorry if the two got jumbled too much. I've been the closest to just completely walking away from WP I've ever been this week. The problem though is that I come to my computer and since January, I've felt like a community member. I have some people I know I will see on IRC. We'll joke, we'll talk, we'll reassess pages. I can review a page for someone and say, "I have an idea about..." Someone will look over a page and catch the period I forgot, or the one I though I typed there. Ok, so we all competed over our WW stats. Guess what though in both measures, cumulative and relative, the numbers are dropping where the editors are active. Some states are moving faster than others. It's a shame that Idaho isn't seeing as much action as New York, but some talented editors live there or are interested in the NY articles. Maybe when the ID version of a TwinsMetsFan is found we'll see that state surge in quality. I think we all respect the dedication and talents of the others on here, but let me lay down an olive branch. I'm only trying not to violate consensus as best as I know what's defined in policies, guidelines or working practices. We've gotten overly bureaucratic when simple updates are getting reverted when a state gets its first FA hours before the whole leaderboard will need a new update for the monthly newsletter. Wouldn't it look silly in the newsletter to have the newest FA mentioned, yet not appear in the leaderboard because the arbitrary chart update came hours before the good people at WP:FA closed the FAC, people who know nothing of the arcane update schedule?
I don't know what anyone will think about what I've said here tonight, but for now... Imzadi1979 (talk) 05:06, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
I will refrain from writing the leaderboard section of the newsletter until the next update. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 04:27, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure if you were waiting to put out the newsletter on my account, but I've done another nationwide update for your benefit. -- Kéiryn talk 15:18, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Truly insightful comments, and many of them reflect opinions that I myself share. I wholeheartedly agree with your entire third paragraph. I've been seriously wikibonked (and bonked in a variety of other areas as well) the past few days, hence my late reply to both my and your ACRs. I even went so far as to put {{retirement}} back on my userpage for all of a couple of minutes. And I assure you it had nothing to do with the attitude that you pulled – or the attitude that I pulled – at the M-35 ACR. We've had two Arbcom cases, one could be characterized as us vs. SPUI, the other as us vs. NE2. But yet here we are still, constantly arguing, and rarely reaching bonafide conclusions. Has it ever occurred to anyone that maybe the problem didn't necessarily lie with two individual users?
We're never going to agree on whether ACR was the correct forum to start this discussion. I'm more or less okay with that. As long as discussion starts, I don't care much where. But when you say that ACR is for a specific article, I say Exactly! ACR should be about improving a specific article, and if project standards get in the way of doing that – be they state or USRD standards – oh well. At least the article was improved, and maybe we get to think about changing that standard so that other articles can be improved too.
Regarding the last point – assessment updates – I'm actually more or less in agreement with you here. Mainly I just objected to the way it was presented on my talk page. I'm going to update the stats sometime between Friday evening and Saturday morning, which 99% of the time should be more than sufficient for a newsletter that goes out Saturday afternoons. So generally, no, I'm not going to do a special update 30 hours after I've just done one. All that being said, I totally understand that there are momentous events (like an FA or a 0 in the stubs column) that people will want properly represented in the newsletter. So yeah, I would say that definitely wasn't worth the revert. -- Kéiryn talk 13:11, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I have to agree and disagree with the part about the assessment updates. Since I am the one that did the reversion, I guess I should submit my reasoning. I have no problem with someone doing an intermediate update, but at least do it across the board. We just had the national update 24 hours prior to that update, so we were looking at 6 days of incorrect stats (and I know that some other states had changed between the two changes). If you want to update a particular state, thats fine, but you need to do a nationwide update while you are there to keep everything accurate. It really isn't that difficult to do the nationwide update either since not every state will have changes. Just run the bot on all of USRD, then look at the quality log for the changes that occurred, then run the bot on those states and update them with your update of the page. I can do it right now if it is really that big of a deal. --Holderca1 talk 13:25, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Step ahead of you. :-P Update is about to go live.
But I was thinking that in these rare cases – monumental events with really bad timing – it might be okay to only update the states where the monumental events occurred for the sake of the newsletter.
In general though, updating only select states should be cause for trout smacking. -- Kéiryn talk 13:35, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I think the problem here is, the method that WP:MISH is currently employing to show a concurrency in the infobox falls short of that goal. It may make sense to you as the person writing the article and as a member of the project who came up with that idea, but it doesn't to outsiders. At first glance, I would assume that the highway intersects itself. Not until reading further would I come to find out what exactly is going on. So perhaps something like: US-2 / US-41 concurrency from Escanaba to Gladstone? --Holderca1 talk 20:36, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

We tried something similar, maybe time to reintroduce that concept... Imzadi1979 (talk) 00:27, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Frankly, I'm not sure what the big deal is about concurrencies and why they need to be treated any differently than normal junctions. Notes about the concurrency can (and should) go in the route description and the junction list, but IMHO, they're not part of the "quick overview" that goes in the infobox. But, if Michigan wants to insist on putting them there, I'm not going to stop them, and Holderca's suggestion seems like a fine way to do it. My one concern is that it would make the junction take up two lines, which is probably less than desirable. -- Kéiryn talk 13:11, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

New England multi-state routes

There is a potential dispute in how to treat the New England Interstate Routes between myself and User:Monsieurdl. It is perhaps time to ask for wider input on how best to treat these routes. Currently some of them serve as the articles for the current routes while others serve as a historical article and merely link to the current articles. Suggestions are most welcome. --Polaron | Talk 00:11, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

It looks like the discussion has been set up at Talk:New England Interstate Route 8#RFC for these NE Interstate Route pages; there should probably be a summary of the issue there. --NE2 01:15, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Manifesto... again

I know, I said I'd start discussions related to it, and I never did. My life has been upended lately and I haven't had the time to work on that. I hope to start those soon. --Rschen7754 (T C) 05:53, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Utah promotion?

It's been proposed at WT:USRD/SUB. --Rschen7754 (T C) 06:23, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Arkansas template madness

I've been looking through the Arkansas articles merging bannered routes into their parents and adding infoboxes. Unfortunately, Arkansas has some peculiarities that our present templates aren't set up to handle.

Firstly is the issue of multi-segmented routes. Arkansas has several highways that are broken into many short discontinuous bits. I think some Arkansas highways have as many as four independent sections of roadway. Obviously, using our present {{infobox road}} is impossible to accurately include the several lengths and termini of these disjointed highways. Oklahoma has a few two-segment routes, and a fork of {{infobox road}}, {{Infobox Oklahoma Highway 2}}, is used for those routes. This template shows what I think could be added to Infobox Road to allow multi-segmented routes to be displayed. Doing so would also have the convenient benefit of obsoleting that template.

Another thing that needs to be done is support for Arkansas's strange bannered route shields. I've been using {{shban}} when merging spurs, but I'm not sure the display is right, because the shields Arkansas use have a letter appended, e.g. like AR 22 BUS using a shield like [22B], AR 59 SPUR = [59S], etc. I'm not sure whether the [BUSINESS] plate is supposed to be used or not; I've seen picture both with it or without, but the letter is consistently present. So something needs to be done there, but I'm not sure what. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:41, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Massachusetts has a similar issue with multi-segmented routes. There are currently three methods being used. The Route 2A method (treated as one route with line breaks at gaps), the Route 3A method (disambiguation page), and the Route 8A method (each segment has its own line). But we should definitely come up with a standard way to treat these more properly. --Polaron | Talk 01:06, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, those are suffixed routes, so they could all theoretically be merged into the parent route or something. But yes, something needs to be done. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:45, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I've always found that a horizontal rule works fine for multi-part routes like California State Route 190. --NE2 04:41, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, that method isn't helpful at all for displaying termini or the lengths of individual sections. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 04:56, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Termini are just before and after the line. Lengths... if they're really that different that you need separate lengths, maybe they should be separate articles? --NE2 05:31, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
And how is that clear at all to someone not familiar with it? It wasn't to me, and I'm sure that it wouldn't be to "the readers". Splitting the articles is not practical because in many cases the segments are very short resulting in unsustainable articles. Also, the Oklahoma source provides the lengths separately, so while I could add them up and provide a total length, why would I want to do that, when it would be more clear to have them displayed separately? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 14:23, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
I have just always listed the overall termini of the entire route in the infobox and not listed the section termini unless they qualify as a major junction. An example of that is Texas State Highway 211. I just used the length for the entire route in the infobox. Specifics about the discontinuity are mentioned in the prose and junction list. --Holderca1 talk 19:09, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure exactly what's unclear about the horizontal rule thing. The infobox is supposed to be just a general overview of the article, so if it's not exactly specific about discontinuities in the route, that's okay, because whatever's not clear or specific can be cleared up in the article prose. (Gee, where have I said this before? :-P) -- Kéiryn talk 19:46, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, I don't agree that it is okay, because simply stating the two endmost termini without stating the "inner" termini is misleading. You can't get from one terminus to the other using the article route. Since apparently nobody wants to change infobox road to handle this, I'll just make a separate template like OK has that can do the tricks I need. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:58, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
I use a horizontal line only when the route is in sections because of historical reasons. If the sections were never connected, I split them into sections or new articles. 哦，是吗？(висчвын) 02:40, 29 April 2008 (GMT)

What is the advantage of using {{shban}} over {{infobox road}}? It seems to me that the simple solution would be to stop using {{shban}}. --Holderca1 talk 12:47, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Highway 7 Business
Highways in Arkansas

For example, {{infobox road}} has no problem with handling the shields. --Holderca1 talk 13:14, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Because it's too big to be used for spur routes. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 14:13, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
What's too big and why? --Holderca1 talk 14:17, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
The whole box. Take a look at Arkansas Highway 7 for an example as to how it would be used. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 14:24, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
(ec) I'm not terribly convinced an infobox is totally necessary in those cases, but if it is, it shouldn't be terribly hard to add a |shield= parameter to {{shban}} to override the default display. -- Kéiryn talk 14:29, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
That might work. An {{arban}} template could be created as a wrapper to call it and switch the proper shield in automatically. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 14:31, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
That shouldn't be necessary, you already are giving a state parameter to {{shban}}. It shouldn't be too hard to code it to the correct Arkansas shield. --Holderca1 talk 14:49, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Okay, it works now. --Holderca1 talk 15:06, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, {{shban}} needs some fixes other than just calling the correct shield, it doesn't have a length parameter at all. Also, isn't the Location paramter redundant since the section title already tells you that? From that example, {{shban}} looks like an infobox with no info. --Holderca1 talk 14:26, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

It's not supposed to. It's a pared down box intended for spurs and business routes, based on the {{usban}} box we use for the U.S. bannered route lists. It intentionally leaves out some parameters so it can be smaller.—Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 14:31, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
I would think that length would be a pretty important one to have. Is its only purpose to show what the shield looks like, because that is all that it is doing. --Holderca1 talk 14:41, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Not when the length of the route isn't known, which seems to be pretty damned common on bannered routes. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 14:46, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
So make it an optional parameter. --Holderca1 talk 14:50, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Could we deprecate {{shban}} simply by adding a parameter to {{infobox road}} that would make the shield smaller? -- Kéiryn talk 18:17, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

State highway system infobox

I'm currently in a dispute over whether or not county routes belong in Template:Infobox state highway system. I personally don't believe they do because they are not state-maintained roadways. Then, in the last diff by the editor who I'm not seeing eye-to-eye with, he linked to an article on county routes in California as his reasoning. Now, I feel it's erroneous to use this template there anyway since that's not what the template was made for - it was made for the list pages or articles on state highway systems. Thoughts welcome. – TMF 20:02, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I apologize for not having monitored the CACR edits lately - stuff has been going on in there that I haven't had time to check out. --Rschen7754 (T C) 20:08, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree, but the template probably does need to be adjusted to allow for secondary systems that are maintained by the state. --Holderca1 talk 20:20, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I reverted the addition of the county route parameter again and pointed to this discussion in my summary. Per WP:3RR, I'm out of reverts for today so we'll see what happens. – TMF 22:20, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

The new parameter may be useful in cases like New Jersey's 500-series routes and other secondary systems. The parameter need not be strictly "county", but maybe "secondary", 哦，是吗？(висчвын) 02:37, 29 April 2008 (GMT)

Remind me what this template was meant to be used for? If it's just to list the naming conventions and any weird abbreviations the state might use, then it may be somewhat useful to have county routes in here (are they called County Roads or County Routes?) but not particularly so. If it's meant to navigate between various list articles, then it would definitely be useful, provided we have an article on county routes in that state. -- Kéiryn talk 20:23, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

See List of State Routes in New York for usage. It's definitely not intended for navigational purposes; in the case of New York, that's performed by another template. – TMF 21:16, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Alrighty, that's what I thought, but I wasn't sure. I think there still might be some use for including county routes, though. For example, when I created this list after the recent AFD – since I don't really do much work in Minnesota, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be calling them County Road 7 or County Route 7. Having that information in that template could be useful – but definitely not essential. -- Kéiryn talk 23:45, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Former highways and redirects

I came across the U.S. Route 491 article and noticed that it had information in it pertaining to Arizona. At first, I thought this was odd considering the highway has never been routed through Arizona, but then I noticed that it was more or less a history of US 666. I then noticed that U.S. Route 666 redirects to the US 491 article. I realize why this is so, at the time US 666 no longer existed, it was just simply renumbered to US 491. The only problem with this is that Arizona removed US 666 from its highway system about 10 years earlier (for pretty much the same reasons that NM, CO, and UT did in 2003) when it renumbered it to U.S. Route 191. So what are the possible solutions here? We could create a full article for US 666. We could create a pseudo disambiguation page simply stating that for the section of the former US 666 in Arizona, see US 191 and for the section of the former US 666 in New Mexico, Colorado and Utah, see US 491. I like the latter option myself, but if you wanted to keep all of the US 666 info in one place, a full article would have to be created. --Holderca1 talk 18:01, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm a fan of {{Redirect}} in this situation. Like so:
"U.S. Route 666" redirects here. For the former routing of U.S. Route 666 in Arizona, see U.S. Route 491.
. —Rob (talk) 19:04, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Holcerca1, I get what you are trying to do. But I disagree with this case. I disagree with having separate articles for US-666 and US-491, the two articles would be 85% redundant with each other. I think the amount of coverage of US-666 in Arizona given in the US-491 article is appropriate. Yes, technically speaking US-491 never entered Arizona, but given its connection to US-666 (and US-160, US-163 and US-191) I think some minimal explanation is appropriate.
What I propose to do instead is expand US-191 article (the Arizona section is particularly lacking). Perhaps split off US-191 into state articles (The Utah section is quite long already and I could easily double it with the info on UDOT's homepage alone). The history of "US-191 in Arizona" should also mention its connection to former US-666 and could borrow some stuff from the US-491 article. Once that is done I would support some "see also" tags at the top of the related sections on the US-191 and US-491 articles.
To take the idea of making a separate article for US-666 to its logical conclusion, we would also need articles for US-160 in Utah, US-450 in Utah, and US-164 in Arizona. All of these articles would be nearly 100% redundant with each other and the above discussed articles. Bottom line all of the routes in the Four Corners have a complicated history thanks to multiple designation reshufflings, but I don't think that merits redundant articles. That's one of the major reasons for the Article History section.
Just my $.02 take it for what its worth. Dave (talk) 20:47, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
No, I really don't want to create those articles, but I do think a dab page would be the best solution. There were about 370 miles of US 666 in Arizona (nearly 2/3 of the entire route) from 1942 until 1992. The current alignment of US 491 was the alignment of US 666 from 1992 until 2003. I changed the redirect at U.S. Route 666 for what I have in mind. If it is deemed that it is a bad idea, I will revert it back. --Holderca1 talk 20:55, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Disambiguation pages should have an absolute minimum of links and no categories; see WP:MOSDAB. I suggest putting seealso|U.S. Route 191 in Arizona in the part of the US 491 history section that talks about US 191, or using a redirect at U.S. Route 666 in Arizona. --NE2 21:07, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
I didn't see anything about an absolute minimum of links, I would think the minimum would be two, since if it was only one, a redirect would work. I didn't touch the categories, those were what was there when it was a redirect, but they can be removed easily enough. I don't think that the US 491 history should mention the history of US 666 in Arizona at all. That would be like the history of Interstate 8 in Arizona talking about the history of U.S. Route 80 in New Mexico. --Holderca1 talk 21:17, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
No, it would be like the history of U.S. Route 99 touching on the Pacific Highway to Vancouver (and linking to British Columbia Highway 15 for details). As for links, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Individual entries. --NE2 21:22, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Part of the issue is the fact that articles are about two things: the physical road and the designation. U.S. Route 491 talks about the road that was US 666 and is now US 491, the US 666 designation, and the US 491 designation. U.S. Route 191 talks about the road that was US 666 and is now US 191 and the US 191 designation. --NE2 21:26, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Why would the US 491 article talk about the US 666 designation as a whole? I haven't been writing articles that way. As an example, for an article about US 999, I would write about the history of the US 999 designation in its current form (unrelated highways that have used the same designation would get a link at the very top of the article pointing to an older designation. I would write about the actual roadway that ever carried the US 999 designation. I would write about previous designations that the road carried, but only within the confines that would become US 999. So for the US 491 article, I would talk about the history of the US 491 designation, the history of previous deginations along that same stretch of road with just a mention of that designation in other places. I wouldn't go into detail on US 666 in Arizona, I would direct them to US 191 as you mentioned above. But, in this case, if someone typed in "U.S. Route 666," where would they want to go? Odds are, they want to know about the entire route and history, not just US 491. On an another note, I am not seeing what the problem you are having with the links. In each of the individual entries, the target article is the only thing linked. --Holderca1 talk 21:37, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
US 666 is actually a better example than most, because there is a lot to write about the designation and its connotation as "the devil's highway". Unless there's a separate article about US 666, this needs a place, and US 491 is the obvious choice. There is also more mundane information such as "US 666 originally went from Foo to Bar"; this also needs a place, and that place is the US 491 article. --NE2 21:47, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Aren't historically significant designations typically given their own article? --Holderca1 talk 22:08, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Not always; when there's only a designation to write about, since the physical road now has other designations, it's probably best to find a good redirect target and cover it there. --NE2 22:13, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Okay, but all the US 666 designation info will also be in the US 191 in AZ article as well whenever I get around to writing it. --Holderca1 talk 22:30, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Why would you put the same information in two different articles? The US 191 article should summarize how it applied to the Arizona section and link to US 666/491 for details. --NE2 22:39, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, the US 491 article should just summarize its part as well. I meant just the Arizona part of US 666 anyway, but it isn't going to link to US 491 since it has nothing to do with US 491. --Holderca1 talk 22:50, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Then there's no non-summary, unless we make one of those "perma-stubs" for US 666. --NE2 22:53, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Why would it be a "perma-stub"? It would be an article about a 600-mile route with an interesting history. If it were still active we would have have state specific articles. --Holderca1 talk 23:37, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Because it would only be about the designation; any details about the physical road would be in other articles. --NE2 23:46, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

(reset) It would also have a summary of the route description and history summary of extensions, contractions, and realignments just like every other article we write. US 191 in AZ and US 491 would go into more detail on the route description and history. --Holderca1 talk 00:24, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Which really wouldn't be much. There was a one-to-one renumbering from 666 to 491 in 2003; had the renumbering not been made, we'd have the exact same situation except that the article would be at US 666 rather than US 491. --NE2 00:28, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Before this gets blown out of proportion much more. Let's put this in perspective. There are currently _3_ sentences in the US-491 article about US-666 in AZ. So there is not really any overlap between the two articles in their current state. If a 3 page long FA were written about US-191 in AZ detailing about the southern segment's former life as US-666, there would still be very little redundant content. Dave (talk) 00:38, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
My problem is actually with the redirect. --Holderca1 talk 00:44, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Which is a problem why? --NE2 00:45, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Because I think it should redirect to US 191 if it is going to redirect anywhere since the majority of the former US 666 is now US 191. Also, saying it was a 1 to 1 renumbering is a little shortsighted. AZ renumbered theirs for the same reason the rest of the route was, they just happened to take care of it 11 years sooner. --Holderca1 talk 00:58, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
If the history of US 666 is covered in US 191, that gives an 11-year gap when talking about the designation. Where do you talk about the designation post-1992? --NE2 01:03, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with NE2, US 666 only existed in Arizona for a relatively short time, and it had long gained its noteritey by the time it was extended into Arizona. I am from the 4 corners area, and could say A LOT more about US-666 than what is in the article, but as I'm hoping for GA one day, I'm sticking to what I can find a source for. Suffice it to say, Trust me, it was the New Mexico portion (the original portion) that was the infamous portion, and that portion is now US-491. I think US-666 should redirect to US-491 with a prominent mention that the AZ portion is now US-191.Dave (talk) 01:52, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Uh, thanks for taking it upon yourself to revert the page while we are discussing it. --Holderca1 talk 21:40, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Recap

Just so I have it straight from above since this is a pretty big change from how we have handled former highways. The way we have been handling them is if a former route was entirely absorbed by another route, a redirect should be used to direct the former route to the current one. For former routes that are currently made up of multiple highways, the former route would get its own article to summarize that particular route since it couldn't be done in any one single article. So, now it appears that all former routes (with the rare exception, i.e. US 66) are to be merged and redirected to the most logical current route. That current route will hold the entire history of that former route irregardless of whether or not that current route followed that particular route. Do I have it about it right? My only question is how do you decide where to redirect it to if it isn't clear cut. For example, where should Texas State Highway 1 be merged to? --Holderca1 talk 04:19, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes, like with SH 1, there isn't an obvious target. But US 666 to US 491 was a straight renumbering (the truncation out of Arizona was 11 years earlier), and it probably makes sense to keep it together. --NE2 04:29, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
So what if the Arizona portion was renumbered at the same time as the rest? --Holderca1 talk 04:42, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Then it might make sense to have it separate. --NE2 04:47, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
That just seems strange to me. We have to write articles in a historical context, not just the most recent. So according to that, the portion of US 66 in California isn't as important as the rest? We aren't talking about a small section of US 666 that only existed for a short time. We are talking about a section that accounted for 2/3 of the route's total length and existed for 50 years. Even the article here about the highway talks about the Arizona portion more than any other and makes it clear that the most dangerous portion of the highway was in Arizona. I personally think we have plenty of information to write a full article on US 666. --Holderca1 talk 13:07, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I think though we can have guidelines, the case of how to handle non-current routes should be on a case by case basis. I think it has to be, there's just too many different scenarios to have a one size fits all guideline. For example, I don't think anybody would opposed to a dedicated article about roads as prominent as US-99 or US-66. However, US-666 was formally renumbered as US-491 (that scanned copy of the AASHTO motion linked as a source in the article directly says this). I can't see the need for two articles in this case. I fully support US-191 in AZ being the primary article for the Arizona portion of former US-666 and doing whatever is deemed best, redirect, see also headings, whatever.
To open pandora's box. What I would like to see is some guidelines on how to handle decomissioned US highways in the western states. Here's the current scenario:
  1. U.S. Route 91 in California -> Redirects to California State Route 91 - I agree with this.
  2. U.S. Route 91 in Nevada -> has a stub article. I disagree, should redirect to either I-15 in NV or US-91
  3. U.S. Route 40 in California -> redirects to U.S. Route 40. I'm ok with this, would also support if redirects to Interstate 80 in California.
  4. U.S. Route 40 (Nevada) -> Redirects to U.S. Route 40. Same, I'm ok with this but maybe Interstate 80 in Nevada is a better redirect.
  5. U.S. Route 60 in California -> Redirects to California State Route 60, I support this.
  6. US-70 in CA, US-80 in CA,AZ and NM all redirect to the national articles
  7. U.S. Route 99 has its own article. However, is currently proposed to create state specific articles, even though state specific articles already exist under State Route 99 in all 3 states. I oppose this, IMO US-99 in CA should redirect to CA-99, etc.
Dave (talk) 18:25, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll toss out the examples from MI.

  1. M-4, M-111, M-144 and M-213 are all dab pages. The year disambiguating links either redirect directly to the history section of the replacement routes if they were subsumed into new trunklines or there are stand-alone articles. (M-144 has two stand-alone articles for instance.)
  2. M-120 (Michigan highway) and M-121 hold the history of the the previous M-120 and M-121 designations respectively in the history section of the articles. since the previous designations were completely decommissioned and not subsumed.
  3. M-41 redirects to its replacement with an M-41 subsection in the history.
  4. M-45, M-95 and M-212 all contain snippets of joint history. M-95 was M-45 until the designation of US 45 in MIchigan. At that time, M-45 was renumbered to M-95. M-95 was renumbered to M-212 and M-45 was retired until reused later.

Any comments or questions? Imzadi1979 (talk) 19:33, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Guide to making shields

I just started Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Shields/Guide. I felt we needed it after Freewayguy started contacting me to ask how to make shields. It might need some work, maybe some shield images to use as examples, but it's a start.-Jeff (talk) 04:28, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

We already have a page: Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Shields/Design. --Holderca1 talk 19:01, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
I didn't know about that page. Considering my page seems to cover some things that that one doesn't and vice versa, they should probably be merged. I don't really care what title the merged guide ends up at, so I'll let someone else do the merging.-Jeff (talk) 01:46, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Articles for exit ramps?

Talk:Interstate 87#NY 912Q merge proposal – TMF 02:48, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks like more than an exit ramp - not that that means it should be separate, but it doesn't help you to be misleading. --NE2 04:40, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
He's not misleading. The "connector" is nothing more than a glorified exit ramp. Like a tumpet interchange. seicer | talk | contribs 04:41, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
I count six ramps plus a two-way roadway. An exit ramp is simply that - a single ramp from one direction to the local road. A trumpet is four ramps. --NE2 04:44, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
To debate semantics overthis is to divert attention from the main point. This is a short, largely unnotable piece of pavement. I see no real qualms with the merge, except that the person who proposed it stretched the definition of a word where someone else didn't like it. If we ignore that, the article is hardly worth keeping. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 04:49, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Some scans

[12] has scans of some historical reports that led to the Interstates. --NE2 15:14, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Historic photos

Judging by the filenames, the photos at [13] are all from the FHWA or NARA and are thus public domain. --NE2 15:20, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

FAC query

I've seen several opposes at FAC based on "shields" in images. What are they, what does this refer to, what is the issue, what is the difference between a "shielded" and "non-shielded" image? And on what MoS guideline or policy is this oppose based? Please educate me. (Read the shields page, still don't know what it means, need to know what guideline governs this, not a Project page.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:15, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

The main discussion about the issue is here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_U.S._Roads/Maps_task_force#Main_image_inconsistency. The short version is that at the beginning of all things, maps made without Interstate shields (i.e., ) were adequate. Nowadays people believe that maps should have those shields. The linked discussion argues about the proper number of shields, and no guideline nor conclusion was established. (To my best knowledge) —Rob (talk) 19:38, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
OK, so the shield is that sign thingie? But if there is no guideline or policy, this isn't an issue for FAC (per WP:WIAFA), and would be an oppose based on preference rather than WIAFA. Is that a correct summary? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:41, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, completely. Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone 19:42, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
(2 ECs) Yes. It's just TonyTheTiger who's opposing FACs based on whether the maps have highway shields (). A good number of us here feel that in the majority of cases the extra shields on maps do nothing to aid in locating the road and can in fact detract from the quality of maps by cluttering them. Consensus seems to be that their use should be determined on a case by case basis by the cartographer. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:44, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Thx; until such time as there is a guideline, then, you all can politely redirect those conversations to article talk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:45, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

{{Project U.S. Roads}}

This template has fallen by the wayside, and currently USRD users have no way of knowing the latest information. I am proposing redoing this template entirely to make it more compact and to be easier to update. --Rschen7754 (T C) 06:00, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, part of the problem with it is there's no way of knowing when it's updated. Since it's modular, watchlisting the template doesn't do anything as all changes occur on the subpages. So you either have to watchlist the subpages of the projects your interested in, or set the template as your homepage or check it every day or something. And if you're going to do that, why not just watchlist the talk pages of the projects you care about? I wouldn't be sad to see this go if it were TFDed. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 06:32, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm considering redoing it with ideas from other large WikiProjects to see if it works - there are some uses where such a template might be more effective than a watchlist. --Rschen7754 (T C) 06:43, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Backlogs

GO!—Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 07:00, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

FA and USRD

Interstate 70 in Utah was recently promoted to Featured Article status, but in the process two points (that I can see) of the article are no longer in line with what literally the rest of USRD looks like. The first is the boldface in history; that discussion is contained in a section above (attempts to draw editors from the FAC to the discussion were unsuccessful). The second is the lead; currently, the lead for the majority of state-detail articles begins with "The portion of <nonboldface wikilinked national route>" or something similar while the lead on I-70 in UT uses boldface then follows it up with a link to I-70 (that is then piped to what appears to be an uncommon name for I-70).

Which way is "right" in either point (boldface/lead)? Personally, I have no opinion or idea but the point of my posting is that the inconsistencies between I-70 UT and the "rest" of USRD are undeniably present and should be rectified. – TMF 04:17, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

In my opinion, the way the first sentence is right now is poorly written and redundant. WP:LEAD specifically says not to bold the title if it is descriptive. --Holderca1 talk 04:24, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I fixed the introduction; WP:LEAD#Bold title is pretty clear on this. --NE2 04:31, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
The wording of the lead sentence was discussed ad nauseum during the FAC. Please see that discussion before changing the lead. I did cite the very section NE2 is referring to. The impression I got from the discussion was that if the lead can be reasonably worded to accommodate a bold title, it should be. The lead sentence of the article as passed at FAC was written by the FAC director, not me. So I think there were some experienced people that wrote it. I personally prefer the former wording of the lead, but please at least read the discussion before jumping in and reverting text. The FAC director did make a good defense for why she re-wrote the lead. For crying out loud it only passed an hour ago, let me at least get some enjoyment for months of hard work before you all tear it to shreds.
The other point about bolding: Everybody at FAC was pretty unanimous to the point that only in rare cases should there be bold test outside the lead. Though my opinion has changed a couple times on this point. I'm currently of the opinion that the FAC opinions were right and USRD is outside of the MOS. As has been brough up in the ACR, its not the first time that USRD has updated the MOS due to comments in FAC or ACR. I've gone back ad forth on this and reserve the right to change my mind again =-). Dave (talk) 05:52, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm not convinced that the people at FA are in the right either - both changes that I see were made by one editor (and IMO both hurt the quality of the article - so I guess I do have an opinion after all), and I honestly couldn't care less if that editor is a newbie or the appointed FA assistant or whatever. The essence of it is that, in terms of the boldface in history, a link to the discussion on this page was posted at both the FAC and on the MOS page where the boldface guideline is discussed. No one from either venue commented, which really doesn't help anyone determine 1) if it's wrong and 2) if it is, what is a suitable alternative. As I said above, leaving it unbolded opens the door for editors who are unaware of the situation to link the text, creating an erroneous link that either redirects back to that page or links to the current use of that designation, and also leaves people who follow the redirect thinking "why am I here".
I also agree with NE2's change of the lead's opening sentence - the one that's there now, for lack of a better word, sucks. (If this is the type of lead being used/forced on FAs, it doesn't leave me a good impression on the direction this site is going since it violates at least two guidelines/policies.) – TMF 06:25, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I agree that the first sentence of the lead currently really sucks. "Interstate 70 in Utah is the portion of Interstate Highway 70, commonly abbreviated I-70, that runs...across the central part of the U.S. state of Utah." Looking through the entries on Wikipedia:Featured articles, there are actually a fair number of the small number with descriptive titles that actually have bolded links. Prostitution in the People's Republic of China handles it really strangely; South Australian general election, 2006 only bolds a small portion. Axis naval activity in Australian waters, which appeared on the main page two months ago, is one of the few with no bolding at all. The main page blurb simply bolded the corresponding text, resulting in the loss of a link. I recommend we reword it naturally without regard for the title, and then if it's on the front page we can replace "Within the U.S. state of Utah, Interstate 70..." with "Within the U.S. state of Utah, Interstate 70...". Are there any objections to this beyond it not being discussed during the FAC? --NE2 08:24, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I concur, WP:LEAD even goes as far as to say not to bold the title of a descriptive article title even if it appears verbatim in the opening sentence. --Holderca1 talk 13:09, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm ok with that. If you read Sandy's logic, irronically TFA was the reason for Sandy wording it the way she did. I agree it was worded better beforeDave (talk) 13:29, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I thought Raul just rewrote the blurbs for TFA. --Rschen7754 (T C) 13:58, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Read the discussion. She was trying to make it easier on Raul.Dave (talk)
Yeah, I saw her comments and I don't agree with her reasoning. Not all FAs make it to TFA anyway and even at that, it is one day in the life of the article. It doesn't make sense to force awkward wording on an article just to make it easier on the FA director for something that might happen. A better idea is to ask to see if it can be reworded when the article is actually selected for TFA. --Holderca1 talk 15:29, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I have invited User:Juliancolton to join this discussion. He was one of the advocates of the lead as passed at FAC. I tend to agree the old lead was better, but in the interest of not making a "unilateral" decision, anybody mind if we give Julian a day or two to chime in first, to explain the reasoning?Dave (talk) 18:15, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Well, it's not the end of the world, as it was more of a comment at the FAC discussion. In WP:LEAD, it says If the topic of an article has no commonly accepted name, and the title is simply descriptive...the title does not need to appear verbatim in the main text; if it does happen to appear, it should not be boldface. In my opinion, Interstate 70 in Utah is a commonly accepted name, and is not simply a descriptive title. Again, I don't really have a strong opinion either way; it is just my preference to see the boldface in article like this. Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone 18:29, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
The road is not named "Interstate 70 in Utah"; it is named "Interstate 70", and the article describes the portion of the route within the state of Utah. Thus, it is "simply descriptive". – TMF 18:34, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
The name of the article is Interstate 70 in Utah. It is a stretch of Interstate 70 in the state of Utah. Thus, Interstate 70 in Utah is not simply descriptive, but rather the commonly recognized name. Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone 18:39, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
And yes, Interstate 70 is the name of the highway, but this article is specifically about the portion in Utah. I-70 has its own article. Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone 18:40, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
The commonly accepted name is just Interstate 70, adding in Utah is descriptive as it tells you what part. I think this statement from WP:LEAD sums it up pretty well: "This avoids needlessly awkward phrasing, repeated words, and allows for direct links to the general topics." Forcing the bolding of the title here results in an awkward and repetitive opening sentence that basically says: "Interstate 70 in Utah is the portion of Interstate 70 in the U.S. state of Utah." --Holderca1 talk 19:29, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Well this seems to be approaching an edit war, as in the last few days I have seen NE2 change the lead sentence, with Dave and Glennfcowan reverting his changes twice. I will start by saying that I am a wikifriend of Dave's. Let it also be said that before the FA review, Dave essentially had NE2's version of a lead sentence, without the bolded title as to avoid awkward phrasing... which I prefer. Yes, people expect to see the title in bold when they read the first sentence of an article, but the MOS states that it should be avoided when the title is descriptive, which this title obviously is. The road is not called "I-70 in Utah" it is called "I-70". An article titled "Plumbers in Utah" would be considered descriptive as opposed to an article simply about plumbers. Bolding the title of an article with a descriptive phrase creates an awkward lead sentence and also creates a bold wikilink (which also should be avoided) to the higher-level article. I personally have an article titled Trucking industry in the United States which is only GA-class but nevertheless, has no bolded title in the lead sentence because it is descriptive. If you ask me, this article should not have a bold sentence. According to Dave's comment, an article should have a bold title in the lead if it can be accomodated. However, there is no mention of this in the MOS... in fact it specifically says about descriptive titles "if [the title] does happen to appear, it should not be boldface". I think that should put this debate to rest (although I doubt it will), unless consensus has changed and the MOS needs to be updated to reflect the fact that bolded titles are mandatory. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 04:52, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't care how you word the lead, but please conform with WP:LEAD: "The article's subject should be mentioned at the earliest natural point in the prose in the first sentence, and should appear in boldface. Avoid links in the bold title words." Right now, you're not. The FAC version of I-70 in Utah conformed and I haven't seen a good reason not to conform in this discussion. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:49, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, I'm seeing stability discussions because you all haven't worked this out; if you think highway and roads warrant an exception at WP:LEAD, please work that out at the talk page of WP:LEAD so you can present stable articles at FAC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:53, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
Can you provide a compelling reason to violate this portion of WP:LEAD: "If the topic of an article has no commonly accepted name, and the title is simply descriptive — like Electrical characteristics of dynamic loudspeakers or Effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans — the title does not need to appear verbatim in the main text; if it does happen to appear, it should not be boldface." --Holderca1 talk 01:43, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not very familiar with your articles, and I'm having trouble seeing what the issue is. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see any other FAs from your wikiproject that have this issue. There are a bunch of GAs that have this issue; all of them seem to me to comply with WP:LEAD, although in different ways. Here are the first 6:

East 233rd Street is one of the major thoroughfares of the Bronx.

Gun Hill Road is a major thoroughfare in the New York City borough of the Bronx.

In the U.S. state of Arizona, Interstate 8 (I-8) is a 178.36-mile (287.04 km) Interstate Highway that extends from the Arizona-California border to Interstate 10 near Casa Grande, Arizona.

Interstate 35E (I-35E) is an Interstate Highway in the U.S. state of Minnesota, passing through downtown Saint Paul.

In the U.S. state of Colorado, Interstate 70 is an Interstate Highway traversing an east-west route across the center of the state.

Interstate 40 (I-40) is an east-west Interstate Highway that has a 359.11-mile (577.93 km) section in the U.S. state of Arizona connecting sections in California to New Mexico.

Is anyone saying that there's anything wrong with the first sentence in any of those GAs? Also, you're handling the "(Hwy) in (state)" two different ways; would you rather be consistent, at least at the GA and FA level? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 02:15, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

There seems to be a problem with consistency. Either we change the article to Interstate 70 (Utah) or we leave the bold title out of the lead. Thats my opinion. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 02:32, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
For clarification, I-70 in Utah is about the portion of I-70 in that state, while I-35E is an interstate highway wholly within some state, so they're not really the same thing. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 02:39, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

And I'm having an even bigger confusion over whether the articles are even being named correctly or whether WP:LEAD is being overinterpreted, if there is this issue about the names being descriptive only. To me, a road is a road is a subject is a thing; a descriptive title is something like the examples given at WP:LEAD: Electrical characteristics of dynamic loudspeakers or Effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, not "subjects". To my way of thinking, I-70 in Utah isn't descriptive; it's the entity, and WP:LEAD didn't intend for us to not bold them. If I-70 in Utah isn't the "subject" of the article, rather than a descriptive title, I'm confused about the entire naming scheme in Roads or how we distinguish between "the article's subject" and when we're merely being "descriptive". To me, WP:LEAD lays it out: "If the topic of an article has no commonly accepted name, ... " Well, isn't I-70 in Utah a commonly accepted name? To me, this discussion is over interpreting WP:LEAD. At any rate, I don't have time to follow the entire discussion, am not concerned which way the conclusion goes so long as there is one <smile>, but just don't want to see edit warring and want to see a broad consensus and a decision used across FAs. (Also Dank55 has a habit of referring to GAs as a standard, which makes no sense to me because they don't usually conform with MoS (or a lot of things) anyway, so what they do or don't do has no meaning or relevance to FAs or FAC or guidelines.) I hope someone will ping me when this is resolved so I can stay apprised and not make unreasonable demands at FAC ... there is too much for me to follow it all, and I have to rely on Tony's monthly update :-) Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:49, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

There are similar naming schemes for US Highways as well.
Having said all of that, the current name is descriptive to me. Nowhere is it officially called "Interstate 70 in Utah". The official name is still just Interstate 70. Imzadi1979 (talk) 03:03, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
In response to Scott, there is also an I-35E (Texas), so I fail to see how the "Texas" part is not descriptive. Whether an Interstate is wholly within a single state or not has no bearing on whether or not the "State" part is descriptive. People in Utah don't call it "I-70 in Utah" they call it "I-70" so I fail to see how this is the article's subject and not a descriptive title. If it were the official name then it would be called "Utah I-70" and not "I-70 in Utah". Does anyone else here feel like we're beating a dead horse? --ErgoSum88 (talk) 03:13, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
I agree, the I-70 in UT title is descriptive. I was attempting to merely clear up the fact that I-35E MN/TX thing is more disambiguation and not really the same thing as I-70 in UT, which is describing that the article is about the segment of I-70 that falls within the state of Utah. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 03:22, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
That part might be clearer to me (non-Road person :-) if you can explain why there's a difference between an Interstate (like 275) that covers 3 states and an Interstate like 70 that covers more than 3 states. They both cover more than one state, unlike the Florida and Michigan example. That might clear up the naming confusion. On the "descriptive" part, I still feel like saying the name must be "official" is (or may be) an overinterpretation of WP:LEAD. For example, if I just browse through WP:FA, and if I applied that "official name" concept, we'd have to change bolding on a lot of articles which doesn't seem to me to be in the spirit of WP:LEAD, examples: Slate industry in Wales, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens or Geology of the Grand Canyon area. Those names aren't "official" but they are the subject of the articles, and most FAs conform to that concept. I don't want you all to feel picked on, but realize that whatever you come up with, I have to apply it consistently outside of road articles, so I'm concerned that we not over-interpret the "descriptive" vs. "subject" part of LEAD in a way that doesn't make sense for other articles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:18, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
I-275 is a three-digit interstate. Three-digit interstates are shorter "child" routes which connect to a "parent" route (in this case I-75) and serves as a spur or loop route to or through an urban area. (Kurumi.com gives an excellent overview of the subject.) Since the three-digit routes are so short, and there's only 9 numbers available for offshoots of any given parent interstate, their numbers are duplicated. I-275 is one of these duplicated routes; I-275 uses the names of the three states in parenthesis for disambiguation purposes.
I-70 is an interstate that runs from Cove Fort, UT to Baltimore, MD. The I-70 in UT article covers the portion of I-70 in the state of Utah in more depth than the I-70 main article can. It's basically a sub-article of the I-70 article. Does this clear things up any? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 03:29, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
Getting better, but I have to now browse WP:FA to make sure there are no counterexamples that will trip me up on consistency. For example, sub-articles or disambiguation. You're saying the state in parentheses is a disambiguation, and that makes sense and is consistent with leads in other articles (we don't bold the part of the article title that is the disambiguation, as in If (magazine). OK, but this brings me back to the naming confusion: why isn't it I-70 (Utah) then, for consistency with other dabs? If the Utah is to distinguish it as a sub-article from all the I-70 articles, why not treat it like all the other road articles, and put the Utah in parens? See, I'm not sure if this is a WP:LEAD problem or a naming issue. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:41, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
Here's another good counterexample: History of Lithuania (1219–1295). Just like I-70 in Utah is part of the entire road, 1219 to 1295 is part of the entire History of Lithuania, but they bold it? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:44, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
If I understand the naming convention was a result of an arbcom case (or similar) and the criteria was set here WP:SRNC. However, this was long before my time. You might ask an editor whose been around longer. Regardless, I agree that if you ask somebody "what road is this?" they will say "I-70" not "I-70 in Utah" so this is a descriptive title. Now if we want to revise the consensus reached at WP:SRNC there's a LOT of articles to move =-) Dave (talk) 03:46, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
You mean road naming is a can of worms alert? :-) OK, so to be consistent, how can I make this application of "descriptive leads" work with the counterexample I gave above? Are you all going to say a lot of current practice on FA leads is wrong? <eeek> SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:56, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm trying to think of alternate ways of wording the lead that would both allow for a bolded, non-linked title without being redundant. Here's the best I can come up with:

  1. Within the U.S. state of Utah, Interstate 70 (I-70)...

Not a true bolded title, but it's the best I could some up with. Is that enough bolding to resolve your concerns?Dave (talk) 04:05, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not looking to just bold something: I'm looking for a resolution that is consistent across all articles. Still thinking. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:10, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
Wow, this is such a complicated issue for such a simple problem. The problem here is we have a problem with inconsistency across the board. If we change Interstate 70 in Utah to Interstate 70 (Utah) who's to say we shouldn't change Electrical characteristics of dynamic loudspeakers to Eletrical characteristics (dynamic louspeakers), or Trucking industry in the United States to Trucking industry (United States)? I think we've opened a can of worms we aren't prepared to deal with! Someone ask Jimbo what he thinks we should do. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 04:32, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
Ostriches are looking good. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:35, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
Sandy, is it acceptable to break the bolding into two words or phrases? Given that the title is "Interstate 70 in Utah", could the article begin "Interstate 70 runs through Utah for X miles from..."
Yes, but optimum is to do it in a way that also works in the links (to Utah and I-70), like the FAC version that no one likes. Anyway, now that I've been reminded of that ArbCom case (which seemed to go on forever and involve half of Wiki), I'm not sure dragging this out will accomplish anything. I'll go with descriptive, if that's consensus here, which means no bolding. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:00, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

As far as I know, this has nothing to do with any ArbCom case; the one several years ago was about the names of state highways, and WP:USSH specifically says it does not apply to Interstates. The following examples may clear things up, or may make it more confusing:

  1. Interstate 95 is a multi-state route.
  2. Interstate 84 is a disambiguation page, since there are two routes with that number.
  3. Interstate 295 is a disambiguation page.

WP:UKRD does it differently:

  • A1 road is a long route.
    • A1 road (London) is the portion in London. They bold A1 in London with links, so even though the article is not titled "A1 in London" that's what they use as the bolded (descriptive) name.

I'm trying and failing to think of an example outside roads where a long linear feature may be split into smaller sections that don't have their own names. Long rail lines generally have subdivision names, and I don't know of any other linear features covered in sufficient detail (rivers? (Upper Mississippi River is an actual name) canals? power lines?). This may be an almost unique situation. --NE2 08:00, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I suggest WP:Stop bolding everything, which is a nice essay recently linked from WP:MOSBOLD. It suggests that the decision at FAC wasn't right; bolding "Interstate 70 in Utah" suggests that it is something special, and it's not, it's just the part of I-70 that runs through Utah. On the other hand, I think I understand what the people at your FAC (including Sandy) were saying: we can't screw around with the bolding rules, because then people start doing strange things with it (in general...not in your wikiproject), and then things just look nasty. And the essay supports their idea that something should be bolded in the first sentence in that essay, because it's not merely a descriptive title of ordinary things: Interstate 70 is a definite thing that deserves bolding, even if you leave "Utah" out of the bolding. So, if everyone's already happy, then don't listen to me, but if you're still looking for what the style guidelines say and what other FAs do, I'd say go with something like "Interstate 70 runs through Utah (or Utah) for X miles from...".

And in response to what Sandy said about my judgment regarding GAs, I don't see how it's possible to help increase the monthly output of GAs and FAs without looking at what happens in both processes. FAC does a good job of building consensus for what articles should look like, but listening to what people want at the GAN level is essential to ramping up production. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:54, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

We're not talking about increasing output in this discussion: we're sorting out interpretation of a guideline: since GAs don't usually follow policy or guidelines anyway, what they do or don't do isn't particularly helpful info. My bottom line on this entire matter (which is more complicated than I realized initially) is that whatever you all decide, I'm not going to sweat it, but please keep the TFA blurbs in mind as you craft leads. Raul does have to bold and link something in the TFA blurb, and if you give him nothing, he has to come up with it on his own. Will you be happy with what he comes up with? He's got to find a way to bold and link to some version of "Interstate 70 in Utah", so try to assure that your lead doesn't make that difficult. I don't know how he comes up with the blurbs, but I'll be paying closer attention now to how he handles similar situations. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:08, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
Here is how he handled the TFA for Axis naval activity in Australian waters. The main problem on bolding the title on these particular articles is that we lose the ability to link the parent article and the state it is in without creating a redundant sentence that doesn't pass Criteria 1a. Since the article and TFA blurb do not need to be identical, I would imagine something similar to this would work: "Interstate 70 in Utah (I-70) runs east–west for 232.15 miles (373.61 km) across the central part of the state." The reason this works for the TFA blurb and not the article itself is that we need the links to Interstate 70 and Utah. We would either lose these links or be required to write a redundant opening sentence if we are required to bold the title. --Holderca1 talk 15:57, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
Excellent examples and explanation: OK, I'm unwatching here, since the application of WP:LEAD to FACs issue is resolved well enough for my purposes. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:05, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Participants list - finally

So I finally get some time away from AP testing to look at the changes proposed by my manifesto a few days ago. I only have time to make one change from the manifesto before I depart from Europe. To me, it seems like the most urgent change is the participant lists.

I specifically don't want to revert the project pages to the revisions with the participants list; first of all, the data should probably be put in a table on each page, and secondly, users have come and gone since then.

My idea is to create a table for each SH WP page with participants from each project on there. Editors of states without a WikiProject will remain in the table as they are now. Also, I'm proposing a separate section on the current USRD participants page for "national" editors who bounce around from state to state, so that they don't add themselves to 35 different projects. When a user does that, it adds extra clutter to the tables and is a pain to deal with.

I'm also going to propose that we spam messages to talk pages to verify that the information that we have is correct before we go splitting the tables with wrong data. Something like "Hello, our records indicate that you're part of the AL, AZ, and CA projects. Is this correct?" We could also use this to perform a roll call if we wish... --Rschen7754 (T C) 05:56, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Any thoughts? --Rschen7754 (T C) 05:53, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I think a better idea than just keeping "editors of states without a WikiProject" in the current table would be to create tables for all 50 states (plus the IH and USH projects, plus one for national editors), then transclude all of them on the current USRD participants page, and transclude the state/USH/IH ones on the subproject pages if they exist. -- Kéiryn talk 00:31, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
I like Keiryn's idea, otherwise it is impossible to sort the list with multiple states since only the first listed would sort. Man, AP testing, I am feeling old at the moment. --Holderca1 talk 16:26, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

State-specific interstate shields (again)

When I asked Dave this, he pointed me over to the discussion at archive 13. What I'm asking for is different though. I saw Oregon's shields that are now being used, and I thought they were a heck of a lot similar to the ones in use in Utah, if not the same. For example, Image:I-84 (Oregon).svg (which is the only interstate Oregon and Utah share in common). Before I ask the author of the images to make Utah interstate shields, I wanted some input. Do I need the exact Utah specifications or can I go ahead with the Oregon ones? We could ask the author of the images to make an I-15 image made with Oregon specs to see how it would work, if you'd like. Thanks, CL — 03:10, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Template:USRD Announcements

This is a new template to replace Template:Project U.S. Roads, which will no longer be maintained. Let me know if you have any feedback or if you know how to fix the full version... as I couldn't get the list into two columns. --Rschen7754 (T C) 06:15, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

The list is in two columns now, I hope that is what you had in mind. --Holderca1 talk 18:25, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Just my $0.02

Consider this sort of a mini-essay. I really don't want to be part of a project that discourages people from working on it the way they see fit. If certain people are better at writing skeleton new articles than improving what's already there, then they should have every right to do so. Personally, I can't really bring myself to write new articles most of the time, so I work on improving already written ones. And while a lot of you like that, that also means that until recently Washington had a bunch of highways that had no article yet.

People writing stubs does not create more work for the rest of us. They're doing work that had to be done at some point. That's why I've started tracking a total wikiwork statistic, although due to the controversy that's now in the last archive, I haven't advertised its location. Worst case scenario is that in some editors' eyes they're re-prioritizing the work by "forcing" (term used loosely) people to expand the new stubs first. Whatever, they all need to be expanded at some point.

Stubs are not inherently bad. That's why Wikipedia:Stub exists – to help people develop and expand them, not delete or ignore them. If you see a particular editor creating stubs that are bad – ones that are poorly written, poorly formatted, etc. – then try to explain to them what they're doing wrong and help them improve. Do not discourage them from working altogether.

Despite the recent Arbcom, IMHO this project is in much better shape than it was this time last year. But there's still a lot of work to be done (regardless of which statistic you look at :-P), so we should welcome all the help we can get.

I know that a couple of you will disagree with me, but I just felt the need to reiterate my thoughts. That's all for now... -- Kéiryn talk 03:59, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate your input, but there are some editors who do not understand what they are doing wrong, no matter how you try to explain it. --Rschen7754 (T C) 04:06, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, look at it this way. Say we have 5 poor articles in X project. Someone writes a new bad article. Now we have 6 poor articles to fix. That's more work. Of course, there's the chance that the new one will be B-Class right off the bat, but that's not what happens nine times out of ten. (For more about the early history of WikiWork and why it's set up the way it is, see User:Scott5114/A rebuttal to "The straight truth about WikiWork".) —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 21:19, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

How would that be more work than what was there before? At worst, the article is so bad that you have to start from scratch and that would equal to the amount of work you had to do before. --Holderca1 talk 21:25, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
There is a finite number of route articles in any given state. That means that the sum total of work cannot change as the ultimate goal is to have every article be of a featured standard. That means that everything counts. You cannot exclude routes that don't have articles yet. It's work to be done, just like it's work to be done on improving articles from stubs. --Son (talk) 21:36, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
I've written an essay which expands upon what I wrote above. See it here. --Son (talk) 22:08, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Look at it this way. Stubs are stubs, sure, but while it does take work to improve them up to B-class or above, a stub is better than nothing. While I don't think they should be kept in that state forever and must eventually be improved, they do provide at least some information that would not have been there had the stub not been created. So stubs, while still stubs, are not the biggest problem there is. CL — 21:39, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

This is such a perennial proposal. Do read my opinions I've written out over there, as they still apply. Anyway, I've heard they may be introducing new classes to the scale, so let's hold off on any changes until they get around to doing that. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:29, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I think that both statistics (Ω and Я) are good measures – measures of different things. I'm perfectly happy maintaining both statistics as a compromise (even if I'm doing the latter in somewhat secret). I'm curious as to what new classes could possibly be added. -- Kéiryn talk 22:37, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Kéiryn and Son on the subject of stubs. Stubs are not inherently bad; they serve a useful purpose. Poor stubs exist, but they are poor because of quality of the content, not the fact that they are stubs. When I began editing on WP:INSH, I was criticized for creating new stubs when existing articles needed to be improved -- notwithstanding the fact that the majority of my edits did indeed improve existing articles. At the same time, though, I wished to fill in the gaps in the list of Indiana highways by removing the redlinks, which improved the list itself. I'm not against competition, but I feel that avoiding and discouraging stubs primarily in the interests of competition with other projects rather misses the point of the project. Creating new stubs does not make more work for anyone; if we agree that the work ultimately needs to be done, then a stub is a starting point and is more than existed before it was created. Omnedon (talk) 01:37, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I want to come back to this and I know where Scott is coming from. Out project has a stub epidemic, no doubt. I have been looking at the numbers from when the leaderboard really came into being and how have we improved as far as stubs alone are concerned. I am using 1 January 2008 as our reference date compared to today. On 1 Jan, we had 6,555 stubs or 72.6% of our total articles. As of the last bot run, we have 6,154 stubs or 63.8%. Just by looking at the numbers, we are improving, but not at a very rapid pace. I believe the main problem for this is not due to the creation of bad articles, this isn't something we can really control anyway, telling someone they can't create an article is a bit unwiki in my opinion. Most of our stubs reside in a few states and I am going to do my best to start attacking these problem states and I encourage others to help out. You honestly don't need to have an intimate knowledge of a state to destub it; you don't even have to ever been to the state to help out. By writing a "route description" section, you are effectively destubbing an article and all you really need for that is a map. I am going to call the big problem states the "200 club" as they all have more than 200 stubs. They are Florida (418), Pennsylvania (395), Ohio (359), Texas (333), Virginia (322), Maryland (267), Georgia (241), California (221), Louisiana (210). Some of these will be easier than others, I know first hand that Texas is a pain since the state is so freakin big and there are a lot of long highways in the state. I am taking a break at getting any articles above B-class and will start attacking these stubs. Improving an article above B-class takes a considerable amount of work. If you are already working on one of these states, then help out attacking the stubs. If you are into creating new articles, don't add to the problem and create the new articles with enough substance that they aren't stubs. --Holderca1 talk 17:08, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that, Holderca, it really sums up my position quite succinctly. I'll add to that that it would be self-defeating to ban all new article creation—there are of course still a lot of articles yet to write. But we should do whatever we can do to encourage users to contribute by expanding the already-existing articles that we have. And if you must write a new article, shoot for B or at least start-class with it. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 06:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
After looking through most of the posts in this thread I find I'm still rather puzzled by some of the comments made regarding stub-class contributions. Certainly a fuller, more complete article is preferable to a shorter, less complete one, but I don't fully understand why some users prefer no article to a short one, or seek to discourage people from contributing anything other than very polished and exhaustive pages. Even if a page includes relatively little information, it's still a start — a start that presumably would need to be made sooner or later if the goal is to have articles on all the major roads within the scope of the project. As others have correctly pointed out, the amount of work in the project is fixed, which means that a task that begins with a stub doesn't entail more work than one that starts from zero, it actually entails less.
Suggestions that one "shouldn't make the problem worse" by starting off with anything other than a B-class articles, or even that "if you must write a new article" make it a B-class, sound unwelcoming. At best it presents a grudging attitude to new contributions, and at worst actively discourages them. Huwmanbeing ☀★ 20:01, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Holderca, and to an extent, Scott's most recent comment above. Ideally, any new articles would be created at Start-class rather than stub, and it is fairly easy to do so. I say start instead of B because that would depend on the state – history for some states and some routes is easier to find than others. As long as we can reach an agreement that both expanding existing stubs and writing new quality articles need to get done, then we shouldn't really have any problems here. -- Kéiryn (talk) 20:09, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Agreed, certainly both are important. In my experience, very few WP articles pop into existence fully formed; instead, you generally begin simply, collaborate with other contributors and go through a number of edits in order to mold all the appropriate information into a strong, well-formed article. This being the case, directing people to either create B or greater articles or sit on their hands seems unfortunate. Huwmanbeing ☀★ 17:09, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Category:Redirect-Class U.S. road transport articles

Assuming nobody objects, since it doesn't seem like anything anybody should really care about too much, I'll be going through this category, deleting the talk pages of redirects without possibilities (i.e., redirects which are simply rephrasings of the target page's name, and redirects created by page moves). That will leave the category much more useful, as it will only contain pages which might potentially become useful articles someday due to splits, which is what we really need to be tracking instead of just 'all redirects that point to USRD pages'. (For example, there's a lot of county roads that redirect to a list in there, and presumably they could be split back out someday.) If there is any useful discussion, I'll be sure to copy it to the current talk page. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 09:36, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, those Wisconsin redirects. Have fun. --NE2 12:46, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
I agree. Redirects from (for ex.) NJ 28 to New Jersey Route 28 shouldn't be tagged. Redirects from an individual county route article to the list article definitely should. I'm not sure about redirects from former highways to current ones – perhaps they should be tagged on a case-by-case basis. That is, if there's potential for a separate article on the former highway at some point, then it should be tagged, but if the former highway and the current one are virtually identical, then they shouldn't. -- Kéiryn (talk) 22:19, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Wait, don't we have template:R from highway for this? --NE2 21:20, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of that template's existence until just now. Well, let's pick one or the other to deprecate. I'd prefer dropping the {{R from highway}} template as it's used less. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 05:41, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
I've been using {{R from highway in region}} regularly. I can easily use AWB to make a list of all talk pages tagged as redirects and add the template to the redirect (manually ignoring ones that don't need it). --NE2 19:39, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
Do we really need both though? Something's going to get overlooked if every time we have a redirect it needs to be tagged twice, once on the page itself, once on the talk. Here's how I see it:
  • {{R from highway}}/{{R from highway in region}}
    • Pro
      • Can create more templates to allow finer categorization
      • Easier to add when creating new redirects
    • Con
      • More difficult to add to existing redirects (must force server not to redirect by manually typing in URL with action=edit or redirect=no)
      • Less discoverable (since the only way you'd see the category at the bottom of the page is by forcing the server not to redirect)
      • Requires more templates
      • Happens in mainspace so there is a marginal risk someone will propose the template(s) for deletion citing a general R from whatever would do the job (as the cleanup templates had been)
  • type=redirect param of {{USRD}}
    • Pro
      • Can be easily added to existing redirects
      • Standardized, tested, more in line with what other projects do
      • Only uses one already-created template
    • Con
      • Requires more work/edits when making new redirects
      • Can't really support fine-grained categories
      • Bulky?
I really don't have an overwhelming preference what we do, but we need to pick one system and stick with it because having two competing categories often leads to each one having articles the other doesn't. If we must keep the two methods, we need to decide what each of them is used for to prevent them from being 100% redundant with each other.—Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 21:23, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
I was saying I could help convert if we use only R from highway. I don't see how needing to go to the redirect page is a con for the R templates, since you have to go there and then to the talk page to see the USRD template. --NE2 22:57, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
I type the URLs in manually; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Foo_Route_1 is shorter than http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?redirect=no&title=Foo_Route_1 ...that's the only way to actually get to the redirect page without having to go to the page, wait for the redirect target to load, click the thing at the top, etc. Yeah, then I have to click the edit tab, but I'm unreasonable in my usage patterns like that. If you want to take the initiative in deprecating one or the other, just go for it, I guess. Nobody else really seems to give a hoot. —Scott5114↗ (not logged in) 21:06, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
The only time I've ever tagged something as Redirect-class is when I was performing a merge. -- Kéiryn (talk) 13:42, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Participants list (again)

Oops, went to archive before I had a chance to comment again.

While I like the idea of having a list of the "nationwide participants", there might be a flaw. Are we listing those members on the individual states too? I don't mean listing them on all 50 states, as that would be redundant, but I think we should list them on the states they've chosen to specify. In other words, there's no reason I shouldn't be listed on the Washington or New Jersey lists, or why Imzadi shouldn't be listed on the Michigan list?

Thoughts? If I get the green light, I'll go ahead and start helping with the process. -- Kéiryn (talk) 23:40, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the individual state-level projects should have their participants lists back. If someone only focuses on one state, then it doesn't make sense that they can only list themself on a huge list that covers all states. Editors who tend to focus on American roads in general, would be the editors who would simply join USRD. I think Rschen said something to that effect in his manifesto. I archived the Maryland list to a user subpage of mine back when the lists were merged, so I can easily restore that one if nobody objects.-Jeff (talk) 03:46, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
I agree with everything you said. I'm just saying that most "national editors" shouldn't be members of just USRD, but of one or more state projects as well. -- Kéiryn (talk) 04:12, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
That makes sense, even if someone is interested in roads throughout the U.S. as a whole, their interest could still be concentrated in one or more states. So it would certainly help the individual state projects that they tend to contribute to if they added their name to those projects' participants lists as well as USRD's.-Jeff (talk) 17:41, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Portal

In the U.S. Roads Portal, the refs need to be fixed according to the citation template. This is if you want to make this portal featured. miranda 17:30, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't know exactly what you're talking about, since nobody seems to have nominated it for "featured portal" (why do those exist anyway?), and citation templates are not mandatory. --NE2 00:14, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Just a suggestion. miranda 07:10, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Split of a road and its number?

Talk:Las Vegas Boulevard#Las Vegas Boulevard and SR 604 --NE2 13:37, 2 June 2008 (UTC)