Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Archive 12

Project scope, a discussion

USRD's project scope, at such time as the ArbCom action is finalized, should be redefined. Until the time comes that changes can be implemented, let us as a USRD community discuss this and any other proposals. I submit:

Proposal by Imzadi1979

USRD shall exist to coordinate project assessment, standards and tools between the various state-level WikiProjects and task forces devoted to editing, improving and expanding articles on highways and their systems in the United States and territories of the United States. It shall be the project in chief to coordinate with other national-level projects on highways under WP:HWY. All state- and territory-level projects and task forces retain the ability to form consensus over their individual articles, project scopes, and participation lists.

--Imzadi1979 (talk) 22:56, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good. May also want to add that USRD is, so to speak, the state highway WikiProject for states with no WikiProject. In addition to this, what do we do about streets?. --Rschen7754 (T C) 23:00, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

So, basically, this would define USRD's scope to merely be the sum of all its subprojects? I must say, that's a fine idea. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:01, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

No issues here; that was the original purpose of the USRD standards (not departments) when they were first put on the page - to serve as standards for areas without a project. How it ever got interpreted differently, I have no clue. Participant lists...IIRC Rschen's manifesto called for the demerging of that, so that's kosher. All in all this is pretty good, although the last line makes demoting a project to a task force pretty much useless IMO. Not saying that's a good or bad thing; just making an observation. --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 23:53, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I didn't notice that. Maybe we should remove the "task force" language, since task forces are basically demoted because they're not effective as an autonomous subproject, and thus USRD needs to step in to get the project on-course. It would also give an incentive to get task forces re-promoted. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 02:22, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

As for city streets, I was thinking of adding the language At-grade city streets are covered by WP:USST, not this project to the scope. This would allow city streets that happen to carry a numbered route to be transfered, while still permitting us to keep locally-maintained freeways.—Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:09, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

That kind of goes against the above proposal. If a state project wants to keep city streets, then it is up to them. City streets in those states would just belong to WP:USST and the state project. --Holderca1 ^talk 00:05, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Why was WP:USST created to begin with? A street is a road.  — master son^{T - C} 00:09, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

It was so that articles on city streets could find a home where the spotlight was on them instead of being neglected as low-importance articles at USRD. Also, USRD's infoboxes and standards for B-class aren't really compatible with city streets — making a junction list for Madison Avenue would be pretty difficult, for instance. Also, important city streets tend to have the things along them more closely associated with them (Broadway, Wall Street, Colfax Avenue) and thus the connotation of the road's name factors more in city street articles. Finally, some USRD members don't like having the assessment cats cluttered with articles that they don't have the resources or interest in doing any work on. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 02:20, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe I'm splitting hairs here, but please note my word choices. I chose the phrase: "...articles on highways and their systems" to specifically exclude articles solely on streets. Yes, a state level-project might decide it wants to keep streets, but then that wouldn't be compatible with USRD's role coordinating projects devoted to highways. By definition, a street isn't a highway, and by excluding mention of it in my proposed scope, I exclude it from the project. While the project's name might be U.S. Roads (U.S. Highways is taken by the project devoted to the likes of US 1, US 66, etc.) it's really a coordination project devoted to highways.

Also, I don't think USRD should be the state-level project for states without projects. That muddies the waters too much. USRD should be the coordination project. There should be projects or task forces that handle the articles themselves. Even if that means we have to form task forces to lump states together on a regional level. Maybe that's a little too bureaucratic, but I think keeping a clear-cut distinction between the roles is important to fend off disputes in the future.

--Imzadi1979 (talk) 00:33, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry - but I have to disagree with the scope of USRD being limited to "...articles on highways and their systems." State level wikiprojects can choose such, but in my feeling, a road is a road. What reason would we have for the limitation?  — master son^{T - C} 00:36, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Part of the issue that I've come up with is that regardless of their role in the history of state highways, auto trails are completely different animals than current state highways. The same standards -- the infobox, junction list, browsing -- just don't make sense in that regard. I know no one's brought up auto trails yet, but I knew someone would, ergo I did...

Plus, I think much of the same logic I just described also applies to the city streets. Sure, a street is a road, but they're not the types of roads that USRD was meant to deal with. -- Kéiryn 00:53, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

well, the concern that I have is the project's name WikiProject U.S. Roads will lure potential user who believe that streets, back roads, auto trails, county routes, state highways, U.S. Routes and Interstates are grouped under it. Right now, based on this proposal, that is not going to be true - and thus will be misleading. Care must be taken here  — master son^{T - C} 01:00, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Very valid point. And I'm all for there being a project that encompasses everything. But what this project is, and what the bulk of the editors here are interested in, is not that project. It's a project on numbered highways (and unnumbered freeways) in the U.S. -- Kéiryn 01:03, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah -- I concur with the scope proposal that Imzadi1979 stated - but the project name will be confusing, thus my playing Devil's Advocate.  — master son^{T - C} 01:17, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

You can't buy targets at Target, Garvin, Oklahoma is nowhere near Garvin County, there's no longer an actual wall on Wall Street. Names can outgrow their original rationales (or not have anything to do with them in the first place). We can always change the name of the project if it really becomes an issue. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 02:14, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Poor attempt at humor. -- Kéiryn 23:02, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

What is a highway anyway? There are a lot of highways that are nothing more than a city street with a number and maintained by the state. --Holderca1 ^talk 01:16, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Precisely.  — master son^{T - C} 01:17, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we need minimum scope requirements for the state projects. The requirements would be:

• state numbered highways
• named freeways that do not have a number
• toll roads
• highway related organizations such as DOT and toll road organizations

--Holderca1 ^talk 01:47, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

The point of a WikiProject is to coordinate editing of similar articles. Roads like Wacker Drive and Rock Creek Parkway have elements of a street and of a highway, so editors from both projects can help, kind of like the Pulaski Skyway is both a highway and a bridge. So far I've seen no reason for removing major streets that carry through traffic. Can somebody please explain the reasoning? I think Holderca1 said it well - "there are a lot of [state] highways that are nothing more than a city street with a number and maintained by the state." --NE2 05:14, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

NO (to everyone), this project has used the same scope for three years, and I don't like the proposal to change it. Sure new articles are a burden to other editors, it just means we gotta watch for them and/or expand them. Isn't that what Wikipedia is for? When this right-now-dead-ArbCom passes, I wanna keep the scope as is, especially for keeping the stub count down. Like Keiryn, I am all for a project that covers everything, because I like more County and local roads. One thing I've noticed that hasn't come up are County Routes. Well, anyway, if we are gonna change the scope, use the subprojects that dominate it. The national one should not be touched.

To the proposal above for keeping USST articles in subprojects. I feel that would be better for articles that were formerly part of the state, as that would one, limit the amount going in and 2, help USST get some body to it. The project is just sitting there. Anyway, please leave the scope alone, its for the better for all of us.^Mitch32^contribs 12:01, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

The problem Mitch is that right now the way things are working - WP:USRD has been looked at as the controller of the state projects. That has been met with resistance because of the lack of freedom for them to go their own way. Cases in point are Maryland and Pennsylvania. When WP:PASH was renamed from Pennsylvania State Highways to Pennsylvania Roads, there was quite a bit of resistance (both on Wiki and in IRC) to this change. I have a problem with that. By Wikipedia policy, USRD cannot control the state projects. WikiProjects are collections of Articles, not policy setters. — master son^{T - C} 12:17, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

We can't leave the scope alone, Mitch. If you look at WP:USRD, currently this project has no scope. -- Kéiryn 20:35, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

A possible criterion

So I was heating up a pretzel and something made me think about why these articles exist in the first place. Stay with me here...articles like California State Route 153 or California State Route 283 would not exist, under any name, were the roads not state highways, but an article like M-102 (Michigan highway) would still exist as 8 Mile Road even if it were never a state highway. On the other hand, something like Wall Street would probably not have an article if it had no history or stock market, but Broadway (Manhattan) or Riverside Drive (Manhattan) would even if it were only a road for traffic, since they were both major exits from the city to the north before the freeways.

So here's my general idea for a criterion: if the road were nothing but a (present or former) carrier of traffic, would we still have an article about it? I realize that this is pretty subjective, and maybe we can work it out better, but does it seem like a good starting point? Here are a few examples:

• Wacker Drive: yes, since it's an innovative roadway design
• Madison Avenue (Manhattan): no, since it's just one of many north-south streets
• Octavia Boulevard: yes, since it was specifically built to handle traffic that had used the Central Freeway

--NE2 05:49, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I assume you mean a criteria for inclusion into either USST or USRD? --Rschen7754 (T C) 06:00, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, it actually works both ways. If Snicker's Gap Turnpike never carried significant amounts of traffic, it wouldn't have an article, so it doesn't belong in USST, but Wacker Drive would still be the city's riverfront street, and so fits in both. --NE2 06:29, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

WP:USST should not be and is not a dumping ground for articles that "don't fit in WP:USRD." From what I see, that's what has been the case. USST was created for two reasons:

1. notability issues (as the examples NE2 has shown above). Solve these - don't sweep them under the rug.
2. a way to remove stubs from USRD. If you want to remove stubs from USRD, expand them!

You might be able to remove stubs from USRD - but they still exist and need to be addressed. Yeah one can argue that they are being addressed - but can you show that they are?  — master son^{T - C} 12:06, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Addendum: NE2's comments just reiterate what my comment above about names of projects.  — master son^{T - C} 12:09, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

So far I haven't really seen a good reason not to include the streets in the state road projects. I think a similar situation is the state projects have tagged most of the state highway project articles even though they don't work on them. I think this same strategy would work for the streets. The state highway projects would tag all the city streets within their respective states. WP:USST would also tag them and would be the primary project. Just because an article belongs to your project, doesn't mean you have to work on it. I think some people are getting too worked up over the leaderboard. --Holderca1 ^talk 13:58, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Copying the comment I posted above, as it seems nobody read it. USST was created so that articles on city streets could find a home where the spotlight was on them instead of being neglected as low-importance articles at USRD. Also, USRD's infoboxes and standards for B-class aren't really compatible with city streets — making a junction list for Madison Avenue would be pretty difficult, for instance. Also, important city streets tend to have the things along them more closely associated with them (Broadway, Wall Street, Colfax Avenue) and thus the connotation of the road's name factors more in city street articles. Finally, some USRD members don't like having the assessment cats cluttered with articles that they don't have the resources or interest in doing any work on. It was never intended for articles to be in both, and doing so is merely exploiting a loophole found in the language of the scope. 17:13, 4 March 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Scott5114 (talk • contribs)

I read it but disagree. --NE2 17:26, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

All articles don't require a junction list to get to B-class anyways. I think what bothers me the most about your comment though is this: "Finally, some USRD members don't like having the assessment cats cluttered with articles that they don't have the resources or interest in doing any work on." This should absolutely have no bearing on whether these articles are included or not. That would be similar to a member of the Wikiproject for the state of Florida saying that they have no resources or interest in articles about Jacksonville, so lets remove those from our project. That doesn't make much sense. Again, there is no harm in having articles in multiple projects, it happens all the time. What harm does it do to have these articles included other than they hurt my numbers on the leaderboard? I see more harm if they aren't included. --Holderca1 ^talk 17:28, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

You're blowing that out of proportion. That's a minor, fairly unimportant reason, thus why I listed it last. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 17:43, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, I don't really agree with any of the reasons you listed, the last one just struck me and it was the one I concentrated on. So where would an article like Texas State Highway 165 go? --Holderca1 ^talk 17:59, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

TX-165 goes to USRD; it's a state highway. What I mean by 'city streets' is things like Congress Avenue, which really deal more with local history and things that USRD members don't really have the time and resources to get around to. Congress Ave. appears to no longer be a numbered highway (if it ever was one in the first place), which is what USRD is built to handle. USST is built for city streets, since they have to deal local history, the neighborhoods along them, and cultural connotations. We have a separate project for these, where people can collaborate and store resources for them. I find no reason to keep them within USRD, when they'd be much more at home at USST. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 18:10, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Why keep an article that you can't fix? --Rschen7754 (T C) 18:12, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Because a project's membership is not static. --NE2 18:25, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

What article is broken? --Holderca1 ^talk 18:56, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

State highways should have that information in their articles as well. Most times the major road through a small town or city is a US Highway or state highway. Would an article on US 66 be complete without addressing the effects it had on the local history of the towns it passed through? As far as not having the time to work on them, WP:TXSH as the most wikiwork of any of the state projects and a great majority of the highway articles aren't even created yet. I have no problem with not having to worry about the workload that city streets brings, but I am not so sure that it is the best to throw them out. --Holderca1 ^talk 18:56, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

←Perhaps it would be best to just leave the city streets issue up to each state then, since there's such a split over this issue. Imzadi's federalistic plan seems to be the best route to bypass drama, that's for sure. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:05, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

All I was trying to say was that just because it has a USRD WP tag on it, doesn't mean that USRD is the primary project for the article. USST should be the primary, but there are some resources that USRD can provide, map making being one such resource. There may be some state highway articles that may make sense to tag as a USST article as well, but USRD would remain the primary on those. USST would be able to contribute quite a bit to our state highways that are nothing more than a city street with a number assigned. I don't know, I guess I just see these articles as mutually inclusive rather than exclusive. These articles would greatly benefit from a collaboration of both projects, both bring something different to the table. --Holderca1 ^talk 19:16, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

It seems to be the best way to confuse the heck out of anybody tagging articles. --NE2 19:17, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll be blunt: I'd much rather have people confused over how to tag a particular article than to have this be a constant issue. We need to move past this. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:25, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Would making WP:USST a task force under USRD be a valid compromise? Most if not all the participants of USST are members of USRD anyway. It would pull all the street articles out from under the state highway projects just as the auto trails task force does. --Holderca1 ^talk 19:33, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that would be a good idea at all. I feel that doing things by-state would definitely be best course of action. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:39, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand, USST isn't currently broken up by state. It also doesn't have to be a task force, it can be a subproject, but that is just semantics anyways. --Holderca1 ^talk 19:40, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

How USST does things is up to USST. But splitting things up by state allows each subproject to determine whether it wants to cover city streets or not. Texas apparently does, Oklahoma doesn't; under this system, everyone's a-okay with that and if there's conflicting opinions, that subproject can hash it out without all of USRD being plunged into turmoil. USRD's scope would be defined, as above, as the sum of all subprojects below it. This would also help those who complain that USRD is pushing things on subprojects that they don't want - the subprojects get to choose what USRD covers, basically. Turnabout being fair play and all. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 20:03, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

What about notable road bridges? I mean Pulaski Skyway is featured, but I am sure there are road bridges out there with articles that aren't tagged with a USRD project tag. I don't think it is right to pick and choose what articles to include just becuase an article is featured. What road bridges would fall within our scope? Just bridges that carry state highways? --Holderca1 ^talk 19:22, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Not sure...my first reaction is that we probably shouldn't cover very many of them. The Pulaski Skyway is sort of an edge case because the Skyway comprises its own highway, like a named freeway, basically. I may be misremembering something about it though. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:25, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

One possible issue is a state-level project that specifically excludes streets. WP:MSHP only includes MDOT maintained/numbered routes. This also includes the CDHs as well. You could end up with an article tagged under USRD/USST and not MSHP. Imzadi1979 (talk) 19:39, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I think you missed the point of the discussion here. If USRD retains the street articles as part of its scope, and the street is in Michigan, it would belong to MSHP. That is the nature of being a subproject. --Holderca1 ^talk 19:55, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

And I think you missed a very key point of my proposal. USRD would have a "federal" relationship with the state subprojects. USRD would not/could not force any state-level project to change its scope. This means that USRD could not make MSHP accept jurisdiction over street projects. The various state projects would be granted a high level of autonomy to run their own affairs. USRD would coordinate various aspects in common to all of them, but project scopes would not be one of them under my proposal. --Imzadi1979 (talk) 01:03, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, whatever you want to call your scope, the articles would still count towards your quality numbers just as county route articles count towards their states quality numbers. --Holderca1 ^talk 01:28, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

So in other words, a street in MI that has its own article would fall under USRD. Are you suggesting that USRD would override MSHP and tell it that it has an article that falls outside of its scope? Or even USRD would dictate to MSHP to change its project scope? If you're saying that, then make a counter-proposal, because the only proposal on the board (mine) would let MSHP decide its own scope. I'd also be the first to post at MSHP to take it completely independent, and I can imagine other state projects breaking away from USRD as well. There are states out there that don't want streets articles in their state projects and any more top-down marching orders might just push them out of the USRD fold completely. --Imzadi1979 (talk) 04:39, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

City street proposal

I felt this would get lost above, so I broke out a new subsection. My proposal for the city streets would be to make WP:USST a subproject or task force of WP:USRD. This will solve the issue with editors that believe that USRD should retain these articles. It would also allow the state wikiprojects to concentrate on just highways if they so choose. Our project banner does allow for a state to tag these in addition to the USST tag. --Holderca1 ^talk 19:52, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

What about those who don't think USRD should cover them at all, such as myself? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 20:05, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

That's why its called a compromise, each side has to give a little. If you don't want to edit the articles, don't edit them. Do you have a specific reason why you don't think it should be a subproject? --Holderca1 ^talk 20:10, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Because I think that letting each subproject decide how it wants to handle things is a better course of action, as I explained ↑ up there. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 20:18, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Then you would have some streets that are part of USRD and some that aren't. --Holderca1 ^talk 20:25, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that would be a valid compromise. That way USRD would become "the project that includes everything" that I talked about. I think it's important to point out the other part of the compromise, though. Then USST would be a task force separate from the state subprojects, and a project like NJSCR -- which stands for New Jersey State and County Routes -- would be just for state and county routes. If other states want to widen their scope, that's fine, but the sense I'm getting is that most states don't. -- Kéiryn 20:20, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Adding to my comment, since I had an edit conflict... Holderca's plan does allow each subproject to decide how it wants to handle things. It's just USRD that would be affected, being forced to take on all the streets. -- Kéiryn 20:22, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Wait, whoa, now I'm confused... Your plan at the top of this section seems to say that it would be up to the states to decide whether or not they want streets as part of their subprojects. But your last comment above before the section break seems to say the opposite... Unconfuse me please... -- Kéiryn 20:25, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

The last comment of the prior section was if USST was still a separate entity and USRD included streets as well. --Holderca1 ^talk 20:29, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, so under this plan, USST would be a subproject/task force under USRD designed to deal with city streets, and the state project would be a separate subproject meant to deal with numbered highways? -- Kéiryn 20:32, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Correct, but just as Interstate 37 is tagged to be a part of WP:IH, it is also tagged to be part of WP:TXSH. The same could be done with a city street if a state subproject is so inclined to add it to their project. --Holderca1 ^talk 20:44, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with this proposal more - I've been trying to point out that a street is a form of road, but there are some of us that tend to - for some reason or another - not think so. This is getting crazier than a definition of a planet.  — master son^{T - C} 22:21, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

No one's been arguing that a street isn't a road (I hope), just that they're not the types of roads the poorly-named project was meant to deal with. I have absolutely no problem with USST being a subproject of USRD. And if some of the state subprojects want to have overlap with USST the way they do with USH and IH, then that's cool. And if some states don't, that should be cool too. -- Kéiryn 22:57, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

My concern is that I don't want something like Van Ness Avenue (San Francisco) under WP:CASH. The article talks about its routing as a city street and throws in the fact that part of it is part of US 101, almost as an afterthought. --Rschen7754 (T C) 23:15, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

That, I'd say, is the key difference between articles that fall under USRD, USST or both. What is the essence of the article about, a highway designation or a city street. There are cases where an article is about both, or both concepts are so intimately mixed as to be inseparable. M-102 is 8 Mile Road, well except a minor piece of the routing. The portion of 8 Mile Road that makes it significant falls along the M-102 designation. There are very few social or cultural connotations to the piece of 8 Mile Road near US 23, but for complete coverage, that section is in the unified article. There's nothing especially notable about Ecorse Road not connected with its history as M-17, so the article is M-17. Mound Road or Outer Drive aren't notable on their own. Neither is/was/will be state trunklines, so they aren't under the project scope of MSHP, but they are under the scope of USST. A key point of the proposal though is to cement the idea that the state project have autonomy, which means USRD can't decide state project scopes, period. --Imzadi1979 (talk) 01:33, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

If those two roads aren't notable, then they need to be sent to WP:AFD. --Holderca1 ^talk 01:40, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

My experiences with AFD aren't so good. Anything I've proposed to be deleted has been kept, so I gave up on such things. At the very least, they do fall outside of MSHP scope and 3 attempts to enforce that scope have been reverted by a single individual. --Imzadi1979 (talk) 02:20, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Is there anyone that is strongly opposed to this idea? It would be simple to implement and wouldn't affect the state highway projects at all. --Holderca1 ^talk 04:51, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Roads vs. Streets vs. Highways

The content of street articles is just different enough, IMHO, that they will eventually have different notability and assessment criteria. They will also feature different standards for infoboxes. USST might not want to do anything akin to the USRD junction tables. Once USST grows enough, it might be a good idea for it to split out state-level or regional level subprojects of its own. Some of the current USRD subprojects might expand scopes to take on the role as a USST subproject. Maybe the USRD name needs to be for a different project to hold USST and a WikiProject: American Highways. WP:AMHWY would take on the scope/role of my proposal above. AMHWY would be the federalized "parent" for the current CASH, NJSCR, MSHP, etc. USST could the be parent for a future CAST, NJST, MSST, etc. USST would be free as a project to borrow templates developed for USRD like the UK and Canadian projects do now. USST could also develop its own {{Infobox street}} if that would serve it better. --Imzadi1979 (talk) 01:33, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

It wouldn't really make sense to create a state street project since a street is a street is a street. State highway projects serve a purpose since state highways are part of a system. --Holderca1 ^talk 01:57, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, so maybe, but that's best for USST to decide, not USRD under this idea. --Imzadi1979 (talk) 02:17, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, so do you agree with my above proposal or not. I'm not sure why you created this new section. --Holderca1 ^talk 02:31, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

His proposal involves renaming USRD, and having USST as a separate entity -- not as a subproject of USRD/AMHWY. -- Kéiryn 02:33, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, definitely no to that. --~~— Preceding unsigned comment added by Holderca1 (talk • contribs)

Definitely not in favor of this  — master son^{T - C} 03:03, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Half right, Kéiryn. Under this idea. the proposed scope above would belong to AMHWY. USRD would be a parent project to AMHWY, USST and probably even the Auto Trails project/task force. Under AMHWY would be all of the state-level highway projects, IH and US Highways. USRD would then be the US, national-level project to coordinate any resource-sharing between streets, trails and highways. AMHWY would work on resource-sharing as well, but it would help set coordinated assessment criteria, run the newsletter, etc. Maybe this is too bureaucratic for some, but there's a lot of feeling out there that the connection between streets and highway needs a nice, bright, clear line separating them on a project level. There's also some feeling out there to shoe-horn the two together into a single project someplace. the USRD name could be that, but the current USRD isn't really designed nor meant by many to be that place. --Imzadi1979 (talk) 04:22, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

So your plan is to add another level of bureaucracy? Why would we want to do that? This is the same as my proposal with the exception of creating a new project that would be over all the state highway projects, which I don't know why you feel is necessary. --Holderca1 ^talk 04:33, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Not quite... he feels that the current USRD (which would be renamed AMHWY) is the one in charge of the state highway projects -- and not in charge of city streets. The new project would be a new USRD which would be in charge of everything, highways, streets, and auto trails. -- Kéiryn 04:41, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Well at any rate, we don't need to create another level of projects. We don't need subprojects of subprojects (and in some cases, of subprojects). I am strongly opposed to this proposal. --Holderca1 ^talk 04:49, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

And some of us are strongly opposed to forcing state projects to take on streets articles. Some might even feel strongly enough to propose taking state projects out from under USRD to maintain their project scopes rejecting street articles. The question is, do we have a national project minus states to satisfy the idea that streets and highways are the same, or do we give each concept separate space where the spotlight, to borrow Scott5114's word, can be used to highlight the various articles appropriately? --Imzadi1979 (talk) 04:54, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, we all agree that state wikiprojects wouldn't be forced to take on streets. The question is if USRD is forced to take them on. -- Kéiryn ^talk 05:49, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Really depends what you mean by a street. If it's a highway that's just locally maintained, it is really a street? --NE2 07:24, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think any of the recent proposals have suggested that the state projects would be forced to take on street articles, mine certainly didn't. --Holderca1 ^talk 13:54, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Straw poll

Screw this. Between the three subsections, it's become almost impossible to figure out who believes what. I did this a while back on WT:ELG, and it helped discussion along really nicely. The results of this poll aren't going to determine consensus. They'll just remind us who thinks what, and they'll show if we're anywhere close to determining consensus. So please, as concisely as you can, answer the following two questions. -- Kéiryn ^talk 05:57, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

1. Should city streets be a part of state wikiprojects?

• No, but if a state wikiproject individually decides that they do want them, they're more than welcome. -- Kéiryn ^talk 05:57, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
• Preferably not, but they should not be forced to take them. --Rschen7754 (T C) 05:58, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
• By default no, but they can take them if they want per Kéiryn. --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 06:12, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
• Not unless they actively want them. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 06:23, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
• No. They belong under USST. If a state project wants them, it can be a subproject of USST as well as USRD. Imzadi1979 (talk) 06:37, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
• No if they're solely city streets; yes if there would be an article even if it were just a road for the movement of traffic. --NE2 07:12, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
• It should be up to the states projects to decide. --Holderca1 ^talk 13:28, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

2. Should WP:USST be a subproject of WP:USRD?

• Yes. -- Kéiryn ^talk 05:57, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
• No. However, if this is the only way to compromise, then I would consider changing my opinion.--Rschen7754 (T C) 06:02, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
• Could go either way on this one, but making it a subproject would make tagging much simpler. By default, all street articles would be tagged as street, then if a subproject wants them as well, then they can just add their state code to the template call. Otherwise, by keeping them separate, you get a situation where all streets would be under USST and some would also be under USRD because a subproject wants them as well. Making USST a subproject of USRD eliminates this issue. Just making an observation; no vote either way. (Edit: Oops...so much for concisely answering...) --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 06:14, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
• No. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 06:23, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
• Not sure. Even if we can't come up with a good definition of a highway, I don't see the point. --NE2 07:30, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
• No. Prairie Avenue is USST's lone feature article. Under the USRD criteria/MOS used to assess articles, it's supposed to fall under a stub. I realize the MOS for USRD does give subprojects the ability to change the headings around, but the differences between the USST FA and the USRD FAs are quite striking. Just some food for thought.--Imzadi1979 (talk) 10:21, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

  I disagree with that assessment. Someone made the gross oversight of leaving out a description of where in Chicago it is. Even without that, under the criteria at WP:USRD/A, the article would be at least a Start. We slap someone around a bit with a trout, the route description gets written, and it's back up to where it should be. Also, remember that Featured Articles aren't determined by WikiProjects, they're determined by Wikipedia as a whole. This article met featured article criteria, not a WikiProject's assessment criteria. If you look at the 4 B-class USST articles, 3 of those would also be B-class articles under USRD standards, and 2 are tagged as such. -- Kéiryn ^talk 10:33, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

  Victory Boulevard is a perfect example of the overlap between projects - it was a (signed) state highway, and now it's a major city street. --NE2 10:36, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

  Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Assessment is more flexible than that:

  If an article is missing a "Route description," "History," or junction / exit list, it goes here (unless the article is a former state route or falls under some other classification where one of the sections would not make sense).

  Your argument would apply just as much to articles like Caltrans. --NE2 10:33, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm only observing the fact that a GA candidate was failed on the basis that it didn't measure up to the USRD MOS. A few changes to section headings to match the MOS and some copy edits, and it passses. The USST FA, which I believe was nominated from WP:Chicago has a much different look and feel to it than the USRD-generated FAs. I'm not saying it's a bad article at all. There's clearly some different criteria at work, and I wouldn't really push for that article to be overhauled to meet USRD MOS. As for articles like Caltrans, well I can't tell you want to say there. USRD has never whipped up any assessment criteria or a MOS for the obviously related, non-road articles that fall into the projects. We'll probably get around to that at some point. --Imzadi1979 (talk) 10:42, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

USRD MOS isn't even a guideline, how could a GA reviewer possibly fail it based on that??? --Holderca1 ^talk 13:30, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Also, USRD doesn't have to make any special criteria for streets, that would be the responsibility of USST as a subproject. For example, Hurricane John (2006) is a featured article. It also falls under three completely different WikiProjects, WP:TROP, WP:TEXAS, and WP:MEXICO. Now, I am sure each of these projects have different criteria when judging quality, but the ultimate judge of quality should be the project that is closest to the ground, which would be WP:TROP. I am sure WP:TEXAS and WP:MEXICO have resources to help improve the article such as finding information on the local effects of the storm but it should ultimately have to meet WP:TROP article standards. The same would be true here, WP:USRD can provide resources to help the article, but it would be ultimately up to WP:USST to set the standards for quality. --Holderca1 ^talk 13:37, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

• What??? The USRD/MOS is only applicable to articles that don't have a subproject, it even specifically states that if there is a subproject, you should follow the guidance given there. The same would apply here. --Holderca1 ^talk 13:28, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

• Sounds like the best compromise to me to get the best collaboration between projects. If a state wants to add the article to their state projects, they can do that. If you don't want to have anything to do with streets, then you don't have to, just like if you currently don't want anything to do with highways in Missouri or auto trails, you don't have to. --Holderca1 ^talk 13:28, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

3. If WP:USRD were renamed so that it explicitly mentioned numbered highways, would that change your answer to #2?

• It would be the same. --Rschen7754 (T C) 06:40, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
• No real change there for me. --Imzadi1979 (talk) 07:02, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
• I'm not following the point of this question. If we rename USRD to explicitly mention numbered highways, that wouldn't give us a choice; it would forcibly exclude city streets. (Assuming we live by the principle that the name of the project makes a difference, which is the only way renaming the project makes sense.) -- Kéiryn ^talk 07:10, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
• I don't think this would happen, because it would exclude articles like Ridge Route and John Kilpatrick Turnpike. --NE2 07:32, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
• Eh, I screwed it up. Struck numbered - does that make a difference? --Rschen7754 (T C) 07:40, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

  No, still not following. You're proposing renaming the project with the purpose of excluding city streets. Of course WP:AMHWY would not include city streets, that's why we called it American Highways instead of U.S. Roads. -- Kéiryn ^talk 07:44, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

  I think he means, would someone support USST being a subproject under the AMHWY proposal. It wouldn't be mutually exclusive as the Auto Trails form a bit of an exception to the status quo at USRD now. --Imzadi1979 (talk) 07:54, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

  Well, since there's no consistent definition of highway, that doesn't help. --NE2 07:59, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

What if we defined "highway" for the purposes of this discussion to mean "anything with a shield, or used to have a shield, or would have a shield if the DOT got off their ass and signed the road... and just for fun we'll toss in freeways that really should have shields but for some weird reason don't"? -- Kéiryn ^talk 10:38, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Where would Snicker's Gap Turnpike fall? (It's marked with a secondary shield, as is every single rural road in the state.) What about Old Plank Road, which was never part of a signed route (since it was bypassed in 1926), but is otherwise very similar to Ridge Route? --NE2 10:44, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

In answering your question, I'm going to make the assumption that if we rename the project to exclude WP:USST, we'd also then exclude WP:USAT. Ergo, Snicker's Gap Turnpike, since it's a secondary state highway, would obviously be a highway. Old Plank Road would be an auto trail. -- Kéiryn ^talk 10:48, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

With Snicker's Gap Turnpike, you fell right into the trap :) Why should Virginia have every rural road, but Alaska only twelve (plus the duplication caused by highway names being more common)? I think one place that might be good to look at is state line crossings. With the rare exception, it seems that if the same road has an article on both sides of the state line, neither or both should be in USRD. If we concentrate on what's signed by the state, different states have drastically different policies.

Now Old Plank Road wasn't an auto trail. Some were marked along it, but the road itself was a short section of road built and maintained by the state, much like the Ridge Route, Pulaski Skyway, or Central Artery. --NE2 10:54, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

No, I didn't fall into the trap. It's a state highway in Virginia, therefore it's a state highway in Virginia, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Virginia has more state highways than Alaska because Virginia is more populous. Kentucky has thousands of state highways. Now, we're talking about secondary state highways, so not every one is notable, but they still fall under those WikiProjects, and for the most part, those WikiProjects decide which ones are notable or not.

Old Plank Road wasn't an auto trail, but it definitely is the same type of road. Maybe that's another project to look into renaming so it can cover other classifications of historical roads. -- Kéiryn ^talk 10:59, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

No, Virginia has the third-largest system of state highways in the U.S., but is the twelfth-most populated. Literally (not "fake literally", but in all actuality) every road built to certain standards outside an incorporated place, and every road in some towns, in Virginia is maintained by the state. That includes residential streets in subdivisions (which don't usually get shields, but would "if the DOT got off their ass and signed the road"). On the other hand, California is the most-populous state, but has the eleventh-largest system (less than one-fourth the size of North Carolina's!) See the table on page 14 of [1]. --NE2 12:07, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Splitting off roads like Old Plank Road and Ridge Route ignores one of the main purposes of WikiProjects - to bring together articles that use similar sources. The type of sources, and even some of the same sources, are used for the early histories of numbered state highway articles and those about portions of early state highways. --NE2 12:10, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Just because I said Virginia is more populous than Alaska doesn't mean I'm foolish enough to think that it work that way all the way down the board. It makes no difference that every single road in Virginia that meets certain conditions is a state highway. They're still state highways, and they're still part of the state highway WikiProject. That much of the scope is absolutely 100% set in stone. All it means is that WikiProject needs to be a little more judicious about which highways it actually writes articles on, since obviously not all are going to be notable. -- Kéiryn ^talk 12:18, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

But what happens if the main street of a small town is maintained by Virginia as a separate route, and is added to the National Register or something and gets an article? Personally I'm not sure whether that does belong in any USRD unless USST is in USRD. --NE2 13:00, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I never excluded the possibility of overlap between projects, and here's a case where it might come into play. The way I see it happening is this. It's a state highway, so VASH looks at it as part of their project and decides, "Eh, it's not notable as a state highway," so they don't write an article on it. Then USST comes along and decides it is notable as a street, so they write an article on it. Then maybe VASH comes along and sees the article that was written, says, "Gee, maybe we were wrong," tacks an infobox on it, and tags it as part of their project too. -- Kéiryn ^talk 19:51, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

As for the auto trails (term used loosely), I don't see it that way. Historical roads are going to need to be researched through books mainly, unless a preservation society or some other organization has a website with the information available. In almost all states, it's relatively easy to write a B-class article on a current state highway using only easily accessible online sources, and for many states, this is true of former state highways as well. -- Kéiryn ^talk 12:18, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

That seems a bit shortsighted - I would hope that we would aspire to include a full history of any road, and removing articles because we don't currently have the sources to complete other articles does not seem like a good idea. --NE2 13:00, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Obviously we aspire to a full history -- any FA that doesn't have a full history of the road should be taken straight to review. But for B-class, that history doesn't have to be nearly so complete. I'm not saying we should remove articles because we don't have sources, the sources are out there. But you were saying that we should group articles according to the resources they require, and I'm saying that state highways and auto trails require completely different types of sources. -- Kéiryn ^talk 19:51, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Well Texas has more highways than any other state, at least it's the 2nd most populous and 2nd largest state to make that many highways necessary. Not to mention they are planning to build a highway system to trump the Interstate system. At any rate, there hasn't been a minimum notability requirement set for the farm to market roads (basically a secondary highway system), but I haven't actively been going out to create them either. So basically all TxDOT maintained roads and all roads maintained by toll organizations in Texas are within the WP:TXSH scope. Which, by the way, does include some city streets under the TxDOT PASS program: "Principle Arterial Street System (PASS) - City streets included in the State Highway System under the 1988 – 1992 Urban System/PASS Program for major urbanized areas (Category 6). The purpose of the PASS is to improve mobility by developing a high level urban arterial street system to connect and serve freeways and expressways and relieve major traffic corridors." So, however this falls, WP:TXSH would still have some city streets within its scope. --Holderca1 ^talk 13:51, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

• No, this is the opposite of what we are wanting to achieve, we are wanting to let the subprojects decide, this effectively would eliminate their options. --Holderca1 ^talk 13:28, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

4. What is your primary motivation(s) in deciding scope?

• Consistency, ease of tagging, and the hope that someone with questions can find people to answer them. --NE2 07:34, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
• If the type of articles in question require WikiProject collaboration, and if the editors involved in a WikiProject are interested in collaborating on them. -- Kéiryn ^talk 07:47, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
• I complete agree with NE2's answer. I would add that it helps settle issues concerning the autonomy of the state-level projects and issues where articles get tagged by editors from other projects when the local project's scope doesn't include that article. --Imzadi1979 (talk) 07:49, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
• To ensure that all the articles get the proper attention and resources that they need. A completely separate USRD and USST would require the duplication of effort over there that can be done here. --Holderca1 ^talk 13:28, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
• A project's scope dictates its collective to-do list. Articles that are realistically not going to be worked on in USRD probably shouldn't be in our docket. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:05, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Go to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Oklahoma road transport articles by quality and sort by importance. There's your to-do list. --NE2 20:36, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Not if people tag city streets as "Oklahoma road transport articles", and those aren't what they want on their to-do list. We need to define the scope, then we define what goes in those categories, then that defines the to-do list. -- Kéiryn ^talk 20:49, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, everyone isn't required to want to work on every article that is part of a project. Is it unfathomable for someone to want to work on these articles? I don't think so. --Holderca1 ^talk 20:53, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. I think there are a healthy number of USRD editors who are also USST editors, thus willing to work on city street articles. Hence my answer to question 2. However, once you get down to the state level, I think the majority of state subprojects don't have street-willing editors, hence my answer to question 1. -- Kéiryn ^talk 20:58, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

It really depends what you call USST. If articles like Junipero Serra Boulevard are USST, then I guess I'm a USST editor. But I consider that part of USRD. --NE2 21:01, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

That's why you sort it. Roads that are primarily city streets would be low-importance. --NE2 20:56, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Right, but consensus-ish says that for WP:OKSH, they're not just low-importance, they're not important at all. -- Kéiryn ^talk 21:00, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

What consensus? Scott is the only OK editor I have seen comment. You can't have a consensus with one editor, or is that why you added "ish" to the end of that? --Holderca1 ^talk 22:00, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Consensus-ish meaning that I can't point to a consensus-building discussion -- because there isn't one -- but it's the general sense I'm getting, especially given the responses to question #1. Not just Oklahoma, but I think it would be the case for most states. It might also be important to point out that according to WP:USRD/A/S, Scott is the only OKSH editor. -- Kéiryn ^talk 23:16, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

And in Missouri too! And you guys wonder why I'm lonely all the time. :P —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:38, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Would you be okay with USST being under USRD for the sake of consensus?

I don't believe that this issue is worth splitting the project over (please excuse the pun.) I'm taking a poll to see if people would be okay with this to keep the project together. Signing this doesn't necessarily mean that you believe that this is the best option.

• Yes. Rschen7754 (T C) 23:08, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
• Yes. It would be a subproject the same way any state highway project, or USH, or IH, would be. If the state wikiprojects want to overlap with USST the way some (but IIRC, not all) overlap with USH and IH, then that's up to them. -- Kéiryn ^talk 23:18, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

The reality of the situation

See now this is our problem. you see above NE2's reference to definition of a highway? Oh so true - that's what's causing this problem with scope. We also can take a look at Definition of a road and Definition of a street and find them as equally ambiguous - but that depends on our thinking. if one looks at the street definitions - such as "Road or highway in an urban area" one can define the scope based on that. However, the ambiguity of the definitions makes it tougher to do so and hence we're in this quandry. You have some editors who flat-out refuse to include city streets in the scope "because we do not do streets" - not backing their stands with clear evidence as to why a street and a road should be segregated. Our problem is that we all have our own definitions of road, street, highway, auto trail, etc and some of us are not willing to compromise.

Perhaps reading this essay might help understand the reality of the situation. WP:USRD covers such a broad topic that it makes it more difficult for us to be able to pin it down. I'm not trying to sway any one in any particular direction (in this section called "The reality of the situation"), that's what the sections above are for. Instead - please consider that WP:USRD is way too large and as a result, its difficult to pin down a defined scope. It probably is easier for WP:UKRD to define a scope than for WP:USRD or WP:CRWP - because of the amount of ambiguity.

All aside - we already have a "Hierarchy of subprojects" The state WikiProjects/Task Forces (Including USST? - you use your judgement - I don't care whether it is for the purposes of this discussion) are under WP:USRD, which in turn is under WP:HWY which in turn is under WP:TRPT. Now, a few questions need to be answered:

• Now does WP:TRPT set policy for WP:HWY? No
• Does WP:HWY set policy for WP:USRD? No
• Does WP:USRD set policy for its child projects? In reality - it's trying to.
• Should WP:USRD set policy for its child projects? Absolutely not!
  • pages like WP:USRD/INNA, WP:USRD/MOS, etc are only guidelines - the child projects of USRD have no obligation to follow these. most choose to do so - yeah - they exist to provide uniformity for articles about roads in the U.S., but consider this:
    • Should a U.S. city street like Wacker Drive have a junction list to qualify as a good article? I realy don't think so. All it needs is enough information from reliable sources to completely describe the street and its impact on the Chicago infrastructure (and more - I'm not limiting to that). The point is some users are so stead-fast on articles following a rigid structure despite what they're describing - some things don't fit in there. but in reality - WikiProjects do not set standards by which articles must abide, Wikipedia (the entire community) does.
  • task forces like Maps and Shields exist to collaborate the images used and to provide a de facto central portal for requesting new ones be made by those having the capability and skill.
  • In reality, we set "policy" or restrict entry of articles because we think we have the right answers. In truth, there is no right answer.

Maybe USRD should go back to what it should be in the first place - a collaboration of articles about roads in the United States. The State Highway/Route/Road wikiprojects are collaborations of articles about State Highway/Route/Roads, the U.S. Street wikiproject is a collaboration of articles about city streets in the United States. Are these project children of U.S. Roads?

You decide.

 — master son^{T - C} 13:01, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you to an extent. But even if we concede that USRD is too large to have a clearly defined scope, all that does is shift the argument onto state projects instead. -- Kéiryn ^talk 19:53, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

And that's how it should be. --Son (talk) 21:22, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, we still need to settle the argument then. We might as well finish what we started here, rather than packing it up and restarting it 50 different places. -- Kéiryn ^talk 21:24, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Kéiryn's compromise

I was talking with Imzadi on IRC recently, and he expressed discomfort (for lack of a better word) with the fact that everyone's arguing, but no one's really given a formal counter-proposal to what he originally said. Ergo... a counterproposal.

WP:USRD would remain named Wikiproject U.S. Roads. Because it's name is U.S. Roads, it's scope would be all roads in the United States. Hopefully I don't need to define what the word "road" means.

WP:USST would become a subproject of USRD. It's certainly possible that we'd have to tweak our assessment criteria if we wanted to assess USST articles under the same criteria, but (1) we don't necessarily have to use identical criteria, and (2) we should be tweaking the criteria for special cases anyway.

WP:USST would be a subproject on an equal level of WP:NJSCR (for example). That means there would be no need to tag an article as USST and whatever state it happens to be in; an article only needs to be in one subproject. That being said, if a state WikiProject has a vested interest in a given article, they're more than welcome to take it on. Debate on whether to take an article on should take place on either the talk page for the subproject or the article talk page. By default, an article that is tagged as USST would not also be tagged as part of a state wikiproject. That means if an editor proposes tagging a street as part of a state project, and fails to gain consensus, they can feel free to be bold and use whatever USRD standards they want, but they should not tag it as part of the state project.

Feel free to comment, and make whatever threaded discussion you want. (I'm sure that last paragraph wasn't exactly clear.) But in addition to the threaded discussion, I'd also like to see some more straw polling so that we stay on track towards reaching a conclusion. Perhaps the options should be Preferred option meaning you fully support this plan, Support meaning it's not your preferred option, but you support it in the interest of building consensus, and Oppose meaning no-way, no-how. -- Kéiryn ^talk 23:34, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

• Preferred option. Just in case it's not clear. ;-) -- Kéiryn ^talk 23:35, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
• Support - In disputed cases, we should probably have a consensus discussion at the talk page of the article. My only concern is how to gauge consensus - if one person wants it and one person doesn't then what happens? --Rschen7754 (T C) 23:44, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I explained that in the proposal. Basically it defaults to no (that is, USST only, no state WP). -- Kéiryn ^talk 23:45, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

On second thought, the "default to no" should only apply if it's a discussion among multiple people that can't reach a conclusion. If it's 1 vs. 1 as you describe, you should be seeking a third opinion (preferably without bias as to whom you seek) either through IRC -- something similar to ringing the reassessment bell -- or on a different project's talk page. -- Kéiryn ^talk 00:56, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

• Preferred option Support - Sounds good, classified USST as a subproject of USRD, which makes sense on a literal level but allows the individual states to decide whether or not to take a USST article under its wing. Strato|sphere 00:22, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
• Support per Stratosphere. Debate on whether to take an article should always be done at the project's talk page IMO, since a discussion on an article's talk page will probably be missed. --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 00:26, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
• Wait - now we're just splitting it into 50 separate arguments again. Maybe what we need to do is keep the "state=CA" arguments but add something like "project=CASH" for those states where consensus, however we're defining that today, is to restrict the scope. --NE2 01:31, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

  I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. Why would you need a project parameter? If the state project doesn't want it, then it would just not add the state parameter. There isn't going to be state street projects. I could see the possibility of task forces in the future of USST that would concentrate on a particular city, but that is down the road and shouldn't have any effect on what we are discussing here. --Holderca1 ^talk 02:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

  The point of the project parameter would be so that we could tag articles as being in California without adding them to the project. The question you should be asking is what then would be the point of the state parameter? Just to give a geographical location for the road? That's not the point of the project tag. There aren't enough USST articles to justify subdividing them by state.

  Right now, when I see a new article created about a U.S. highway, I add it to USRD and add therelevant state parameters. If the state parameters were tied to a variable scope, I wouldn't be able to do that because each state would have its own criteria of what it accepts. This would hurt tagging and the "leaderboard" because we'd no longer have an accurate picture of how the states with no dedicated taggers are doing. --NE2 02:16, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

  Also, no we're not dividing it into 50 separate arguments again. We're actually dividing it into ~200 separate arguments, or however many USST articles there are. However, the point of the compromise is... well... to compromise. They're already part of USRD, they're already part of USST, so for the vast majority of them, there shouldn't be any need to add them to CASH (for ex.) as well. So hopefully we would get to the point where we wouldn't need arguments on 99% of those articles. And on those where we do, they'd be civil discussions instead of arguments. -- Kéiryn ^talk 02:13, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

  And so it's not a compromise, but again letting the "states" (which means Rschen7754 in the case of California) decide the scope by what he cares about. --NE2 02:16, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

  Yes, it is a compromise. Rschen doesn't want streets to be part of USRD at all, you want them to be part of state projects. Therefore putting them in USRD but not in state projects is a compromise. -- Kéiryn ^talk 02:21, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

  Not really - they'll still be "segregated" under USST rather than placed in the state projects. All that would be done is creating a meaningless parent-child relationship. --NE2 02:24, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

  Also also, the definition of consensus doesn't change. Hopefully this civil discussion and willingness to compromise is a sign that the "major players", as you called them, are finally accepting the true definition of consensus. Consensus means that the two extremes are never going to get their way; instead we find a happy medium that everyone can agree to, even if it's not their preferred option. (Just to throw it out there, the only reason this compromise is my "preferred option" is so we can all get through this and move on to bigger and better things.) -- Kéiryn ^talk 02:19, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

  I still don't see how this is a compromise. It's a victory for those who want to restrict state scopes based on what they care about. --NE2 02:24, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

  And a victory for those who want to expand USRD's scope based on what they care about. -- Kéiryn ^talk 02:26, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

  Uh... no. I don't care about city streets that aren't through highways. --NE2 02:28, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

  So you just want the entire project to cave in to what you want? --Rschen7754 (T C) 02:34, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

  Then don't edit them, what's the problem? --Holderca1 ^talk 02:37, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

  Streets that are state highways (current or former) go in the state highways wikiproject. Those projects are properly named, and up until you started distorting them, had clearly defined scopes. Streets that are so-called "through highways" are basically just streets, since "through highway" is a poorly defined term bordering on a neologism. -- Kéiryn ^talk 02:39, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

• No, you don't put a state parameter on all the auto trails do you? Interstate 5 doesn't have any state parameters. By default, articles that would fall under the subproject USST, add a type=USST or whatever, if a state wants to add that article to their project, then they would add the state parameter. --Holderca1 ^talk 02:36, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

• Preferred option. - since this is what I was basically proposing up above. --Holderca1 ^talk 02:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
• Support It's not exactly where I'd like to see things go, but it's close enough to the best workable solution we have for now. And it's pretty compatible with the original scope proposal I have floating around somewhere way up there. ↑ USRD doesn't dictate to state project how to do certain things, it just makes a coordinated set of assessment criteria, maintains the templates, etc. Each state project that is fully-functioning and operational gets to decide its own project scope (just state highways, county roads too, maybe city streets) as it sees fit. There's still this project for streets articles, which honestly have as much in common no matter where in the country they are located as all the Michigan highways have in common. --Imzadi1979 (talk) 03:08, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
• Support There doesn't even need to be a Streets project. U.S. Roads is the project that handles, well, all U.S. Roads. However, for certain roads, it should defer to its subprojects, which were created to cover a well-defined subset of U.S. roads. U.S. roads not covered by any subproject will be handled directly by the main U.S. Roads project. I don't see why every U.S. road needs to be part of a subproject but this proposal is acceptable. --Polaron | Talk 03:37, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Other discussion

You guys win by attrition. I'm getting way too many edit conflicts. I'll just create "WikiProject California roads" and the like to keep the correct assessment categories. --NE2 02:43, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Huh? --Holderca1 ^talk 02:45, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

That's gonna be way too confusing. --Rschen7754 (T C) 02:47, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Uh, no. If you create your own WikiProjects (which would probably be MFD'd), then you create your own assessment categories, and we'll keep ours. USST articles have their own assessment categories. Category:B-Class California road transport articles is for WP:CASH articles. -- Kéiryn ^talk 02:56, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Uh, no. The category is "road transport", not "state highways except the early ones Rschen7754 doesn't care about". Guess what I just got - an edit conflict! --NE2 02:58, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I forgot to mention I'm going to bed soon. When I get up, if you guys still want to pick and choose what articles belong in the state projects, I'll change the template so tagging state=CASH puts it in both "California road transport" and "California state highway" assessment categories. Then you can play your leaderboard games. --NE2 02:58, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Hell no. I call for a consensus against this potential action. --Rschen7754 (T C) 02:59, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll ignore that consensus, you'll start another ArbCom case, and we'll waste another two months. --NE2 03:02, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

You are confusing the hell out of me, first you don't want streets, then you do. Which is it? --Holderca1 ^talk 03:00, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

It's not about what I want. It's about what the project implies. --NE2 03:02, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

What about WikiProject:California State Highways implies that it covers all roads in California? --Holderca1 ^talk 03:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Category:California road transport articles by quality. --NE2 03:05, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I think that such a split would probably qualify as a POV fork. Those tend to be deleted through MFD (see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Non-Tagalog Philippines). —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 03:07, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Since a POV fork is an article fork that doesn't meet NPOV, you're wrong. --NE2 03:08, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I might as well also make "WikiProject early history of California State Highways", since Rschen7754 doesn't care about Old Plank Road. Routes that were around then and are around now would be in both. --NE2 03:14, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Making more projects is not the solution. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 03:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

You make me look the bad guy when many others desire the same for their own projects. --Rschen7754 (T C) 03:33, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

My bad. I needed a section header and it was the first thing I thought of. I just meant to imply that it was discussion that came after the proposed compromise, not that any compromise was decided on. -- Kéiryn ^talk 03:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Simple explanation of dispute?

I know I'm going to regret involving myself here, but:

Can people please present, below, a simple explanation of what's actually being debated in the morass above? Preferably with simple words and bullet points, and without making any assumptions that the reader understands the distinction among "road", "street", "route", "highway", and so forth?

Presumably there are multiple sides here, and each wants something; but I can't extract, from the above, an understanding of who actually wants what, specifically. Kirill 03:35, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Side A: Project name is "U.S. Roads" and assessment category names are "<state> road transport". The project scope (which was initially created to cover a very specific subset of U.S. Roads) should be expanded to include things that the project name and assessment categories imply.

Side B: Project was initially created to cover a specific subset of roads. The project scope should not be changed against what the majority of project members understand the project scope to be, even if the project name is misleading. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Polaron (talk • contribs) 03:41, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I think that's oversimplifying it, but given that the word "simple" was in bold italics, I'll endorse this. ;-) -- Kéiryn ^talk 03:44, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Next question, then: what's the practical effect of a dispute over the scope? I get the sense that the real issue isn't so much a matter of what the page says or what gets brought up in discussion, but rather a question of what gets included in the assessment categories and the associated statistics and such; is this at all correct, or no? Kirill 03:48, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

And the WikiProject as a whole. --Rschen7754 (T C) 03:51, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) That's not really a practical point, though; being "in a WikiProject" is just a conceptual matter. Suppose we some article X that may or may not be "included", depending on how the scope is defined; what do sides A and B actually want to happen to article X as a result of that? Inclusion/exclusion in assessment statistics? Permission/prohibition on discussion X? And so forth. Kirill 03:55, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

But the question is why does it matter what gets included in the WikiProject as a whole? From what I can tell, yes, the answer is assessment categories/statistics. -- Kéiryn ^talk 03:54, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

In that case, could simply adopting a more sophisticated tagging scheme solve the problem? Kirill 03:56, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps. While I'm sure it was proposed as WP:POINT, NE2's proposal to add additional assessment categories would be an alternative solution to keep everyone happy. I think the people who agreed to the compromise above would be happy with any compromise that kept state highways (that is, roads maintained by the state department of transportation) in a separate set of assessment categories. -- Kéiryn ^talk 04:00, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not because it creates redundant categories. --Rschen7754 (T C) 04:03, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

They're not redundant. One would include streets, the other wouldn't. -- Kéiryn ^talk 04:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

They're redundant because that distinction doesn't justify the hassle of duplicate categories. --Rschen7754 (T C) 04:16, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

That's not the definition of the word redundant. And you still haven't explained to me what this "hassle" would be. -- Kéiryn ^talk 04:27, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

(in rs) Mainly the confusion of having two categories performing nearly, if not the same, function. --Rschen7754 (T C) 04:33, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Not the same at all. One would be for roads, one would be for state highways. That's already how the structure is for regular (non-assessment) categories, see Category:Roads in California. Why can't it be the same for the assessment categories? -- Kéiryn ^talk 04:39, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Disclaimer: I have minimal knowledge of the correct terminology here, and so apologize in advance for any stupid mistakes.

How about something like this, then:

I'm assuming that "roads", in the broadest sense, can be sub-categorized into various more-or-less well-defined types or classes. For lack of more specific knowledge, I'll just make up some stuff:

• National roads
• State roads
• Local roads
• Big roads
• Medium roads
• Little roads
• ...

Further, each road may be in various states:

• California roads
• New York roads
• Texas roads
• ...

What if we were to implement a grid-like category scheme? Thus, articles would be tagged into the two sets of labels above:

{{WPUSRD |class=B |national=yes |medium=yes |CA=yes }}

This would then, via a set of meta-templates, generate intersection categories:

• B-Class national roads
• B-Class medium roads
• B-Class CA roads
• B-Class national CA roads
• B-Class medium CA roads
• ...

which would allow you to collect statistics at whatever level of inclusion/exclusion was necessary?

It would also be possible, of course, to have partial sub-sets (e.g. B-Class big and medium roads, B-Class big national roads, etc.), but this would take a bit more planning to define the desired intersections. Kirill 04:12, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

That assumes, though, that it's easy to draw a distinction between big, medium, and little roads. In real life, this isn't the case. The only category we can define definitively is numbered highways because we have records of which roads are numbered, and which aren't. Outside of that, everything's gray. An article like Victory Boulevard is mainly about a street, but it used to be a numbered highway too. That's why rather than this grid system, a parent-child relationship would work better. You have one category for all roads in California, and than a subcategory for the numbered highways. -- Kéiryn ^talk 04:35, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

That's assumed here; simply the presence of the "CA=yes" tag would generate California categories, regardless of the others. Kirill 04:37, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Right. So if we have that, then we don't need any other categories. Just two, where currently we only have the one. -- Kéiryn ^talk 04:50, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

You could do that, yes; it'd basically be a two-factor grid (CA, hwy, CA + hwy). The drawback of this is that if you wanted assessment statistics for other subsets (e.g. streets, state highways, interstate highways, etc.), you'd have no easy way of getting them; a more thorough grid could eliminate the need for additional types of tagging.

But it's really up to you guys to decide what you want to get out of the tagging system; I'm merely commenting on the technical options available to you. Kirill 14:08, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, we already have those, see Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Interstate Highway System articles by quality statistics and Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/U.S. city street articles by quality statistics. --Holderca1 ^talk 14:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see. In that case, I'm not sure what the crux of the debate here is; presumably it would be trivial to produce both the exclusive and the inclusive sets of statistics using the same principle. Kirill 14:35, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the average article quality of USST is better than that of USRD. --Holderca1 ^talk 03:57, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the issue is the wikiwork and stats. The issue is the subproject not wanting articles in their assessment categories that they're not going to maintain. -- Kéiryn ^talk 04:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I was just replying to the question above, but I do think it does to a degree. A stub street article that you don't want to work on hurts your stats. --Holderca1 ^talk 04:05, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

There are probably a lot of untagged street articles. I checked the first one I could think of - Talk:Pennsylvania Avenue - and it has no tag. --NE2 10:48, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually my proposal for keeping the assessment categories and adding new state highway project ones was not WP:POINT, though by then the discussion was already starting to degenerate. Here's the general idea: an article is tagged state=CA if it's in California - unless it's a state highway (however Rschen7754 wants to define that), in which case it gets state=CASH, or a county route, which gets state=CACR. Using hidden categories we can easily keep track of which articles are only tagged as CA as opposed to an actual project or task force. Everything marked as CASH or CACR goes in both the California road transport and California state/county highway assessment categories. It would be a pretty simple AWB run to get most articles tagged. --NE2 10:46, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

What happened? Last night we had a solution that nobody opposed to this complicated mess of creating multiple assessment cats for every project. So much for simple. --Holderca1 ^talk 12:39, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I opposed it, but it is true that I am nobody. --NE2 13:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

You said "wait" not oppose, which I took as you were abstaining from voting. --Holderca1 ^talk 13:19, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

For the record, I strongly oppose this idea as the cats would be identical for TX. --Holderca1 ^talk 13:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't need to be done for the state projects that accept including all USRD articles in the state. --NE2 13:48, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, then I have no opinion on this. --Holderca1 ^talk 13:54, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Straw poll/compromise #2

Should we rename the current "road transport articles by quality" categories to "highway articles by quality" (not necessarily through an actual rename, just have {{U.S. Roads WikiProject}} feed into a different category), then have new "road transport articles by quality" categories as parent categories, which would include all types of roads?

The term "highway" is used instead of "state highway" so as to not exclude county routes. However, the term highway should not be construed to mean anything other than "numbered highways and unnamed freeways". -- Kéiryn ^talk 15:28, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

• Weak support. Weak because I'm afraid that if we do this, we'll still be stuck where we are now trying to define the word highway, regardless of what I wrote up there. -- Kéiryn ^talk 15:28, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose - we can't redefine highway to suit our assessment games. --NE2 15:31, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Silly me, I thought I was proposing the same thing you just proposed above. What would you call the "highway" categories then? -- Kéiryn ^talk 15:38, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose - the road transport cat for Texas is accurate as it contains state highways, city streets, bridges, tunnels, etc... I oppose having multiple assessment categories for a single project. --Holderca1 ^talk 15:46, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, so you oppose it for Texas, but would you support it for other states where the category is not so accurately named? -- Kéiryn ^talk 15:48, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I oppose doing it wholesale across the board, I have no opinion with regards to other projects that I am not a member of. --Holderca1 ^talk 15:52, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Straw poll/compromise #3

Lose the leaderboard. It seems that this is the focus of the dispute about the scope.  — master son^{T - C} 16:14, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

• Neutral - Although I like it, since it motivates users to expand articles, it has also helped to kick other articles to the side (ala WP:USST) and to restrict state wikiprojects to a set standard.  — master son^{T - C} 16:14, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
• Neutral - I think as it currently is, it's a problem, but we could probably determine a better equation. Maybe we can ignore low-importance articles? Of course that may start edit wars about what's low-importance... --NE2 16:19, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose - You have to weigh the pros and cons on this one, we have had a lot of articles improved because the leaderboard has driven people to move up it. In contrast, the articles that the projects are trying to drop like dead weight since they hurt their numbers are neither better or worse quality than we started. Which arguably would be where they are with or without the leaderboard. --Holderca1 ^talk 16:28, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose per Holderca1. People don't want to drop streets from their WikiProjects just because it would hurt their stats. It's because they have no desire to work on those articles. They would get worked on the same amount whether they were part of state subprojects or not. -- Kéiryn ^talk 16:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. This really is a side issue, at the core, it has nothing to do with the scope. I wouldn't want to have city street articles in USRD, even without the leaderboard. Conversely, it does a lot of good; Michigan's nearly expanded all their stubs, and it's mainly due to the motivation provided by the satisfaction of seeing the numbers dwindle. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 17:07, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
• Comment to all then why do we have at least one user complaining above that the leaderboard is causing problems?  — master son^{T - C}

Uh... because that's one user's opinion that doesn't necessarily reflect the opinions of other users? -- Kéiryn ^talk 17:17, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I explained that in my comment above, for all the problems it may be causing, the gains far outweigh them. Bottom line, the goal is to improve articles, the leaderboard has helped do that. No article has had its quality decreased because of the leaderboard. --Holderca1 ^talk 17:19, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Unless you count New Jersey Route 157 and others that Mitchazenia redirected without merging. --NE2 17:23, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, yeah, sometimes inexperienced editors make careless mistakes. Bad call on his part. -- Kéiryn ^talk 17:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

That is an active route, why on Earth would you redirect it in the first place? --Holderca1 ^talk 17:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, it was discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject New Jersey State and County Routes#Proposals, but note that the idea was to merge, not redirect. Note the motivation: the "stub count". And what's the reason for List of minor state routes in New York? To decrease the stub count, or course! At least there I don't think anything except infobox detail was lost, but the external links are now jumbled together. --NE2 17:53, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the actual reasoning is that those routes are never going to have an article above Start-class In Someone's Humble Opinion, so it doesn't make sense for them to sit on their own forever and ever. Does it have the added benefit of making the stats look better? Well, golly gee it does! ;-) But I think moreso it protects the permastubs from deletionists. -- Kéiryn ^talk 18:00, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the short routes are the easiest to get to B-class, doesn't take a whole lot of work to include everything about the road. --Holderca1 ^talk 18:14, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

That sounds like it violates WP:NPOV, what is a minor route? Is that something determined by the state? --Holderca1 ^talk 17:59, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it's POV to say that a route that's shorter than other ones and doesn't pass through populous areas is more minor. You may be looking for WP:NEO, since it is a classification that we made up. The Pennsylvania list gets around this (to an extent) by having a clear guideline of what's minor (less than 10 miles). -- Kéiryn ^talk 18:03, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Eh, I still say POV or maybe OR, at any rate I don't think those types of lists are a good idea. --Holderca1 ^talk 18:14, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I could go either way on the concept of the lists. That's how we deal with non-notable county routes, why shouldn't we deal with state highways that aren't particularly notable the same way. On the other side of the coin, you're absolutely right that shorter routes are easier to get to B-class. Why just in the past ten minutes, I unredirected one of the NJ articles we're talking about, made a couple of tweaks, rang the reassessment bell on IRC, and lo! -- Kéiryn ^talk 18:25, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, and that's why the list in NY was made - to avoid these kind of "cheap Bs". I also doubt anyone has looked at that list's talk page, where I talk about the point of the list at length. And for the record, most of those were starts, not stubs, when they were merged in. --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 22:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Not to be rude, but how can an article with that little information be a B-class article? Yes, it has all the required sections, but the sections have very little content. Not to mention the only references are the New Jersey Department of Transportation and a road fan site. - Algorerhythms (talk) 23:55, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Well B-Class should be about 50-75% of a fully comprehensive article. Just because it is B-Class doesn't mean it is ready for GA either. If the highway is only a mile long, how much can you really put in the "route description" section? In the 100% finished product, I can't really see any more than a paragraph. The rating system is relative to the subject being written about. If you had the same amount of content for a cross-country Interstate as the NJ 324 article, then it would be a stub. I would concur with assessing that article as a B-Class. --Holderca1 ^talk 15:01, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I see what you mean there, and I see why TwinsMetsFan called it a "cheap B." So in that case, what would you rate an article like Maryland Route 936? I've been rating articles like this one as starts or stubs. - Algorerhythms (talk) 16:24, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I would say, once you merged the "Cities and towns" section with the "route description section" it would be a B-Class. Basically, how I rate them is if it is two paragraphs or less with no sections, it is a stub. If it is sectioned off and has a lead paragraph that summarizes the article but is still missing either a "history," "route description" or "junction list," I would rate as start. If it has all the sections mentioned above with at least a paragraph in each, a complete junction list, and at least a paragraph for the lead, then it gets a B. But in all honesty, there is a lot of gray area and it depends on how your project wants to rate them. I use the above criteria to help me know what an article needs just by looking at the rating. If I am looking for something to submit for GA review, I know I can go to my B-Class articles and with a little expansion and cleanup, it should be ready. Just use whatever works for your project. --Holderca1 ^talk 17:01, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Wouldn't it stand to reason that if the scope was expanded to include streets and we tagged all the articles, that editors that edit those articles would come to the project? Or are we saying that nobody on Wikipedia is interested in editing these articles? WikiProject membership isn't static. --Holderca1 ^talk 17:45, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

That is a good point. But I still think you have to consider the current members, who joined the project when it specifically dealt with state highways, and for the most part are only interested in editing state highways. (Just to be clear, I'm referring here to the state subprojects, not USRD.) -- Kéiryn ^talk 17:52, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

It depends how you define state highways. If you use Rschen7754's definition, I've worked on articles like Ridge Route and Serra Boulevard that don't qualify, but I wouldn't call myself a street editor. --NE2 17:56, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm a current member and I want streets included, does it hurt anyone that doesn't want them to include them? They aren't forced or obligated to work on them --Holderca1 ^talk 18:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

By cluttering their project's to-do list, yes. Is that a weak argument? Probably. -- Kéiryn ^talk 18:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Especially because you can sort said list by importance. --NE2 18:06, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Ditto, what I was about to say, that is why we have importance. Case in point, look at Oklahoma's stats, they only have 2 low importance articles. Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Oklahoma road transport articles by quality statistics --Holderca1 ^talk 18:10, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Those don't even seem like they should be low importance. --NE2 19:18, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Decommissioned highways = low, bannered routes = low. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:33, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

What I think is funny is all these states that don't want these and here I am editing Texas which has over 4,000 state highways and I want them included. But, I guess my thinking is, we already have 4,000, what is a couple hundred more? :) --Holderca1 ^talk 18:05, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Strong Oppose - As was pointed out, a view towards the leaderboard after the January newsletter jump-started an improvement drive in WP:MSHP. Two of the articles for which I feel some fondness were downgraded in the B-Class audit, and I wondered why. Not only did I improve the one, it's now a GA and a second was passed through its GAC as well. The second downgraded article was improved back to B, and the MI stub count was dropped from nearly 200 to a dozen or so. To say the leaderboard doesn't inspire some editing would be very false. As to other criticisms leveled, some of the articles mentioned have always fell outside of the defined scope of MSHP. Currently, our project editors have very little interest in pursuing these articles. They will languish under MSHP just as they'd languish moved out of the project. Allowing us to tag them under USST and WP:Michigan would bring them under the "care and feeding" of projects that could expand them. "Forcing" a wikiproject to take on articles it doesn't want only breeds animosity and dissent among the family of USRD editors. The original scope proposal I gave a couple of days or so ago was designed to cement the concept of the various subprojects having the autonomy to decide their scopes among other things. We get almost to a workable compromise, and one editor disrupts the whole apple-cart and we're no farther ahead than before we started, and USRD still doesn't have a project scope. --Imzadi1979 (talk) 21:47, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Well I think the scope of USRD has been defined, it is how it is divided up is what is being discussed. Again, no one is being forced to work on any articles that they don't want to work on. I am not sure why you keep saying that. Has anyone told you that you must work on an article? Also, you are not required to want to improve every article of a WikiProject. For example, lets look at WikiProject California, do you think the members there want to edit anything and everything to do with California? No, probably not. Also, it is likely, if and when a projects scope is expanded and the respective articles are tagged, new editors will come to help out that are interested in those articles. They could probably put a different perspective on the highway articles as well since most of us just look at the big picture and not how it effects local areas and such which should be in the highway articles as well. --Holderca1 ^talk 21:55, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

(ec) However, that project is named WikiProject California so its expected that they cover everything and anything to do with California. But in no way does the name WikiProject New York State routes imply that it covers city streets; instead it implies that it only covers state highways: road signed as state highways by the state and roads maintained by the state. Now, if Texas wants to cover them, go ahead - but if that's the case, their project should be renamed Texas roads or Roads in Texas because then their scope exceeds their name. And I'll also go on record of saying that for the majority of state projects that are dedicated to state highway systems, the assessment categories were poorly named in hindsight. --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 22:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay you missed the point of the analogy. The point of the analogy is that every member of a project isn't required to or want to edit every article within a project. --Holderca1 ^talk 22:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

If the analogy was geared toward USRD, then, yes, I agree. --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 22:35, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

It's geared towards all WikiProjects in general. --Holderca1 ^talk 22:37, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Then I disagree. You can make the case that streets should be in USRD based on the name, but I don't see how the same applies to a state highway project for the same reason. --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 22:50, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

You're kidding right? Lets keep this in New York for this example. Say someone from Buffalo wants to work on highway articles in and around Buffalo. He could care less about highways anywhere else. Do you force him to edit articles from Albany or not let him join the project? --Holderca1 ^talk 23:46, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

As long as he edits some state highways, he can join. In any event, I nor anyone can "let" anyone join a project - that's not anyone's decision to make other than that editor's. But I think it's obvious by this point I'm not following the analogy at all nor do I see the relevance of it to what I'm talking about. --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 23:49, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

What I am saying is that a member of a project is not required to be interested in every article of that project. --Holderca1 ^talk 23:55, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

But it's implied that someone will want to, when that isn't the case. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:34, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

You have proof that no one on Wikipedia wants to work on these articles? How could you possibly know that. If that is the case, how did they get created in the first place? --Holderca1 ^talk 22:36, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Precedent. Most city street articles seem to be created by new contributors or those not in the USRD core group of editors (i.e., nobody commenting here). Of course there are exceptions. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:41, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

But you are implying that no one will want to, are we not accepting new members? If a street isn't notable, it should be deleted. --Holderca1 ^talk 22:46, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

If only people from outside our project are creating the articles, that says to me that the set of editors that are interested in highways are not actively working on city street. Yes, we may get someone in USRD someday in the future that wants to create articles on every residential street in Des Moines, but that doesn't make it particularly likely. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:26, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think we have any editors working on Montana highways, should we remove them from our scope just because no one currently here wants to work on them? --Holderca1 ^talk 00:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

The assessment categories follow the subproject's scope. Pushing items under the assessment categories is a backdoor way to push them under the scope. That's the concern here. Also, the proposed compromise variation of the scope has been derailed at this time without complete consensus. --Imzadi1979 (talk) 22:24, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, but you still haven't explained what harm it does to expand the scope. --Holderca1 ^talk 22:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Poll

Okay, just put either Agree, Disagree, Indifferent on each item and any comments you have. I am just trying to figure out where everyone's mindset is. --Holderca1 ^talk 00:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

• USRD and the state subprojects are bigger and more important than any one editor or group of editors
  • Agree --Holderca1 ^talk 00:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Agree —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Agree --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:02, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Agree --Strato|sphere 02:06, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Indifferent. It's definitely bigger than any one editor, or any small group of editors. I'm wavering back and forth on whether a project is bigger than the group of all its editors. -- Kéiryn ^talk 22:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
• The state subprojects should get full control of their scope, effectively making USRD a shell project like WP:HWY
  • Disagree --Holderca1 ^talk 00:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Agree —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Not a shell project. Agree otherwise--Rschen7754 (T C) 01:02, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    I don't see how you can have it both ways. --Holderca1 ^talk 01:10, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    • There are other aspects to a project than a scope. --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:25, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
      • But it wouldn't have any articles. --Holderca1 ^talk 02:11, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
        • Uh, USRD isn't a shell project if it can control some aspects of a state highway WikiProject... --Rschen7754 (T C) 03:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
          • But that wasn't what was proposed in the proposal that started this whole mess. The way I took it was that the states would have full control of their articles and USRD would just provide support for stuff like map making, shield making, peer reviews and the like. It wouldn't have control of the content of the articles or the scope of the articles. --Holderca1 ^talk 13:42, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Agree --Strato|sphere 02:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

• The purpose of deciding scope should be what makes Wikipedia as a whole better and not just my project's stats
  • Agree --Holderca1 ^talk 00:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • What makes USRD better makes Wikipedia better since USRD is a part of Wikipedia thus the question is irrelevant —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    The question was regarding the scope. --Holderca1 ^talk 00:50, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

  • Agree --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:02, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Agree --Strato|sphere 02:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Disagree. Although it shouldn't be "my project's stats" either. To quote what I said on User talk:NE2, "Wikipedia isn't a job, it's a hobby." The scope of a project should be the articles its members are interested in editing. No more, no less. -- Kéiryn ^talk 22:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

• City streets would benefit from being a part of USRD
  • Agree --Holderca1 ^talk 00:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Disagree —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    How is that possible, this was a gimme question. --Holderca1 ^talk 00:50, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

  • Disagree --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:02, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    Could one of you guys explain why you disagree? I fail to see how that is possible. --Holderca1 ^talk 01:05, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    We're highway editors not road editors. Highway standards are not road standards. --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:10, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    Well, I guess we will just agree to disagree because I don't see a difference. If you can improve Texas State Highway 165, then you can improve a street article. --Holderca1 ^talk 01:13, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    Slippery slope. --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:15, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    Not following you here. --Holderca1 ^talk 01:18, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    I'm not following you there, either. --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:25, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    Are you trying to say that if you are a highway editor, it is impossible to know how to edit street articles? Otherwise, I have no idea what you are talking about. --Holderca1 ^talk 01:29, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    No. I'm saying that streets and highways are not very related in terms of article writing. It would be like a USRD editor trying to edit UKRD. --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:31, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    Okay I still don't understand your argument here and like I said we can agree to disagree. To me, a road is a road is a road. You have a history section and a route description, why would any road related article not have those? But at any rate, I still don't see how they wouldn't benefit, all it would take is one editor from USRD improving one street article or creating a map for a street article for there to be a benefit. That is why I said it was a gimme question. --Holderca1 ^talk 13:49, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

  • Agree --Strato|sphere 02:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Agree. -- Kéiryn ^talk 22:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

• City streets would benefit from being a part of the state subprojects
  • Agree --Holderca1 ^talk 00:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Disagree —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Disagree --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:02, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Agree --Strato|sphere 02:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Disagree. -- Kéiryn ^talk 22:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

• Some highways are very similar to city streets
  • Agree --Holderca1 ^talk 00:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • I don't understand the question —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    I'm not sure what you don't understand, are there some state highways out there that have little difference from a city street? --Holderca1 ^talk 00:50, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

  • Agree but not in terms of what project they should be under. --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:02, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Agree --Strato|sphere 02:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Indifferent. I'm not touching that with a 10 ½ foot pole -- unless you can define street and highway. :-P -- Kéiryn ^talk 22:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    That is more or less the point of the question, lots of gray. --Holderca1 ^talk 22:38, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

• If streets were added to the state subproject's scope, you would work on them
  • Indifferent --Holderca1 ^talk 00:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • No—Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • No --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:02, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • A select few maybe. -- Kéiryn ^talk 22:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

• If streets were added to the state subproject's scope and all the highway articles were featured, you would work on them
  • Agree --Holderca1 ^talk 00:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • No —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Impossiblility --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:02, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Don't understand the question. Featured how? -- Kéiryn ^talk 22:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    As in featured articles. --Holderca1 ^talk 22:38, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

• If a subproject claims one of a certain type of article, it should claim all of them (i.e. shouldn't pick and choose)
  • Agree --Holderca1 ^talk 00:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Depends on the specifics —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Depends on the specifics --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:02, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
    • For example, USRD may claim a biography article - does that mean it should adopt all of them? --Rschen7754 (T C) 02:14, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
      • Seriously now, let's try to retain some common sense. --Holderca1 ^talk 13:45, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Agree --Strato|sphere 02:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
    • in the context of roads, that is. Strato|sphere 02:22, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

• In addition to state highways, streets should be in the scope of state subprojects
  • Agree --Holderca1 ^talk 00:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • This was already asked —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    No it wasn't, the question above was would the streets articles benefit from being a part of USRD. --Holderca1 ^talk 00:47, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

  • No --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:02, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • 100% indifferent. -- Kéiryn ^talk 22:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

• Bridges and tunnels that pertain to roads within the scope of the subproject should be in the scope of state subprojects (i.e. Mackinac Bridge should be within the scope of WP:MISH)
  • Agree --Holderca1 ^talk 00:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Indifferent —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Be more specific - not all bridges and tunnels. --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:02, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    Well, yes obviously, just those that pertain to roads, I wasn't suggesting we pick up rail bridges. --Holderca1 ^talk 01:03, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    • Not all of them that pertain to roads - only ones related to the scope of the project. --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

      Yes, that is what I meant, I have clarified the question. --Holderca1 ^talk 01:08, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

      • Shoot. --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:10, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

        What? --Holderca1 ^talk 01:14, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

        • So now we can add bridges and tunnels to auto trails and city streets... --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:15, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
          • I'm not following you here either. --Holderca1 ^talk 01:18, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
            • Bridges are now part of the scope issues. --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:25, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
              • They are? No one has argued to remove our featured article that happens to be a bridge. --Holderca1 ^talk 01:29, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • (inrs) I assume you mean Pulaski Skyway? --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:31, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
    • • Yes. --Holderca1 ^talk 01:48, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
        • That carries a U.S. Route, so that can be in USRD. --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:52, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
        • I agree, so I don't see why bridges are an issue. --Holderca1 ^talk 02:01, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
          • Until someone puts a bridge in that has a road on it that falls under USST and not USRD... --Rschen7754 (T C) 02:13, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
            • But, you stated above that the states should get to choose their scope, so I still don't see the issue here. --Holderca1 ^talk 02:22, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Agree for those that are on a road that falls within project scope --Strato|sphere 02:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • What in holy hell happened here? How did bridges become involved? We can't decide whether or not streets and highways require different types of articles, but surely we can all agree bridges do... -- Kéiryn ^talk 22:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    This was due to some bridge articles being tagged (Pulaski Skyway) and others not (Mackinac Bridge). I totally agree that they require differnt structures and that we should follow the lead of WikiProject Bridges and not blaze a new trail. --Holderca1 ^talk 22:38, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    Or the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge which is a FA for that matter. I don't mean this as we keep one and not the other because of quality. --Holderca1 ^talk 23:40, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

• There are too many statements above
  • Agree - but in all seriousness, I seem to totally agree with Holderca1's answers. What's going on? --NE2 00:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

    I agree to, lol, didn't realize how many I had there. --Holderca1 ^talk 00:47, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

To be honest, I could care less how this turns out. We were close to a compromise up above since it is obvious we can't make everyone happy. A separate street subproject makes the most sense to me. --Holderca1 ^talk 02:57, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

• Yeah, and if this is Keiryn's compromise, I'm okay with it. Unfortunately, somebody isn't. --Rschen7754 (T C) 03:01, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Yeah, it was what I had proposed originally as well and of all the proposals, it has the most support. For the sake of keeping the project together, I think we should go with it. --Holderca1 ^talk 03:09, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
• Agree. Oh wait, was that not one of the original statements? :-P -- Kéiryn ^talk 22:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

The common sense proposal

“ USRD would remain named Wikiproject U.S. Roads. Because it's name is U.S. Roads, it's scope would be all roads in the United States. Hopefully I don't need to define what the word "road" means.

WP:USST would become a subproject of USRD. It's certainly possible that we'd have to tweak our assessment criteria if we wanted to assess USST articles under the same criteria, but (1) we don't necessarily have to use identical criteria, and (2) we should be tweaking the criteria for special cases anyway.

WP:USST would be a subproject on an equal level of WP:NJSCR (for example). That means there would be no need to tag an article as USST and whatever state it happens to be in; an article only needs to be in one subproject. That being said, if a state WikiProject has a vested interest in a given article, they're more than welcome to take it on. Debate on whether to take an article on should take place on either the talk page for the subproject or the article talk page. By default, an article that is tagged as USST would not also be tagged as part of a state wikiproject. That means if an editor proposes tagging a street as part of a state project, and fails to gain consensus, they can feel free to be bold and use whatever USRD standards they want, but they should not tag it as part of the state project.

”

As Holderca1 said above, "Keiryn's compromise" has gathered the most support. I propose that we agree to follow this and then contact the Arbitration Committee to implement it. If the lone editor opposing decides to get vehement about this, that will be unfortunate.

Why would we have to contact the Arbitration Committee? --Holderca1 ^talk 03:50, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Temporary injunction - see top of this page. --Rschen7754 (T C) 04:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah, hadn't noticed that. --Holderca1 ^talk 04:09, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah, the uncommon sense non-compromise. Sounds like an awesome plan. --NE2 05:40, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I just pasted everything on this topic into OpenOffice.org. We're at the top of the thirty-seventh page. What do you want? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 05:47, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Consistency. --NE2 05:53, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

OK then. How about following the compromise except not including the streets into any subprojects at all? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 05:58, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe if we could agree on a definition of streets that would work. But Wacker Drive is no "street". --NE2 06:05, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, we'll do that next. Would you agree to the rest of the compromise then? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 06:18, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

How is it inconsistent, it's the same way we handle auto trails. --Holderca1 ^talk 12:05, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Auto trails are generally long highways in multiple states, where the details will be in the articles about the current designations. --NE2 17:40, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, but is a street in Chicago that much different than a street in New York City? Is a street in San Francisco more similar to a street in San Diego than it is to a street in Denver? Splitting the highways up by state makes sense because they are part of a state highway system. There is no state system for city streets. At best you would be looking at grouping them by city and since we don't have any city subprojects at this time, there is no specific place to put them. It is possible down the road that USST may develop task forces for cities with a lot of street articles, but that is irrelevant to this discussion. --Holderca1 ^talk 18:46, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

In some ways, yes, at least if the street ever carried through traffic. Is a bridge in Illinois that much different from a bridge in New York? --NE2 20:24, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I understand your point and agree with you that city streets would benefit from being split geographically. For example, it would be a lot easier for someone that lives in Illinois to photograph Wacker Drive than it would for someone in Kansas. There is a lot of gray area which I think a lot of people fail to realize or refuse to realize, I am not sure which. As far as bridges, I know that bridges that carry a state highway would go in the state subproject. What happens to the notable bridges that don't? Do they go in the scope of the city street subproject? I think USRD is dangerously close to a content POV, which is why I am arguing that we can't have some states pick up streets and others not and in order to get them all in, USST looked like the best compromise. That is the biggest problem with allowing the states choose their own scope, USRD would either have to release all control of the articles or pick up the articles on its own that the states do not wish to pick up. --Holderca1 ^talk 20:39, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

(ins rs) Um, I did propose that USRD release control of articles to the states. My scope proposal is that essentially USRD would be a shell project in charge of assessment criteria, mapping, shield creation and the like. The rest would be left up to the currently fully-functioning state-level subprojects. So yes, by default, all streets articles fall under the scope of USST under USRD, and the other state projects get to decide what they want to include. It's supposed to be very "federal". As was mentioned, the difference in streets from city to city and state to state isn't that different. Well, neither are there many differences in highways, except the states have organized them into state-level systems. No such "system" exists outside of individual municipalities for streets, so the USST proposal is the best way to go, at this time. --Imzadi1979 (talk) 01:16, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

There is a small problem with that proposal though, there are a lot of states that do not have a project, are you proposing we let them go without a project? --Holderca1 ^talk 04:09, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

And in those cases, USRD will have to take on the role as much as necessary. And the defaults are in place already through the USRD MOS. Streets fall under USST and other articles in states without projects fall under USRD. It's the relationship between the federal government and stats like back in the days before all the states were created and there were territories, to use a metaphor. --Imzadi1979 (talk) 05:13, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

But we can't do that, USRD either has to retain all or release all the articles. --Holderca1 ^talk 13:35, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Why? --Imzadi1979 (talk) 17:16, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Because shell projects don't have articles. For example, WP:HWY is a shell project, it doesn't have articles or assessment categories. There are highway articles in Malaysia and India that don't have a specific WikiProject to cover them. WP:HWY doesn't pick them up since they don't have a project, they just go without a project. You can't have a partial shell project, if the scope of USRD is highways in the US, then it has to tag and claim all highways in the US. If every state had its own project then it could happen. --Holderca1 ^talk 17:46, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Uh, WP:HWY does pick them up... [2] --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 18:09, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

In that case, we need to fix our template. --Holderca1 ^talk 18:22, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Honestly folks, this is really not that important. None of the state subprojects is close to being done with their articles to where they should even be worrying about this. --Holderca1 ^talk 18:42, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, that should be for the state to decide. There is a single problem I am having with this discussion: the fact that the state projects aren't being allowed to make the decision on their own. USRD should not dictate what articles a state project can or cannot pick up. It's that simple. This question should be deferred to state projects - and for the states that don't - then it's picked up by USRD. The argument that USRD can't pick up other articles is ridiculous - by default it does because of the task forces.

And on that front of shell projects, I don't think WP:HWY dictates specifics of what nation-level projects should choose as its scope. Should USRD dictate what state-level projects should choose as its scope? I think not. The scope of USRD should be very simple - that we cover all roads in the United States, and if a state level project exists, then specifics are referred to them, working with other WikiProjects to decide what THEY want to work on in THEIR project. I'm not trying to imply ownership of a state-level project, but USRD is not here to dictate what a state-level project should or should not do. This is a big part of the reason why I've scaled back nearly entirely on Wikipedia.

This conversation should have ended long ago - just make the scope short and simple and declare that specifics of coverage fall to state WikiProjects. Part of the reason why I've grown tired of editing road articles is because of this bureaucracy that's been set up within USRD. Additionally, I don't like the USRD talk page banner. I understand why it was made, but I don't like it; I don't find it appealing, and I don't like that it's burying the state project. I prefer a banner which says that it's in the state project and not the USRD shell. Or should we just create a WP:HWY tag? Or should we create a WP:TRANSPORT tag and put it on everything under the sun?

--Son (talk) 05:29, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I just think this has been a huge waste of time. Work on the articles you want to work on, don't work on the articles you don't want to work on. I know Michigan currently doesn't want the streets, but say they get an editor that wants then they add it to their scope. The state scopes will be in flux all the time. --Holderca1 ^talk 15:36, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Letting the subprojects define the scope wouldn't make USRD a shell project. USRD would be just the same as it is now. The scope issue would merely be delegated down to the state level. Much like letting states set their speed limits IRL doesn't make the federal government a "shell project"... —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 18:59, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Bad analogy, states don't have full control, they can't designate their own Interstates. Again, this isn't a big issue, you could tell me that bicycle trails are within my projects scope. Would it change what I do here? No, I just wouldn't work on them. If the state project's scope is the sum of all the editors interest, wouldn't that mean that the scope of the project would constantly change as editors come and go? --Holderca1 ^talk 19:34, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

No, because the whole subproject would have to be on-board with it. There would be a discussion when subprojects change their scope, just like we're having a discussion here, except the discussion would involve fewer people and be tidier because the people who don't edit, say, New York, don't have to worry about it because the results of the discussion wouldn't affect them. Yeah, states can't make their own Interstates, but they can do a heck of a lot of other things — see states' rights and the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:58, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

This whole thing fully qualifies for WP:LAME and I am embarrassed to have been caught up in it. --Holderca1 ^talk 20:21, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Poll №4

Okay, well, let's see here. We've sort of gone off-track again. I think we need to find out who's in favor and who's opposed to the new amended compromise. For your consideration, here it is:

• The name "WikiProject U.S. Roads" remains. Scope expands to all roads, streets, and highways in the U.S.
• WikiProject U.S. Streets becomes a subproject of USRD, with the same status as the Interstate and U.S. Route projects that we have now.
• New standards for assessment are created for the Streets subproject. Streets are not subject to normal USRD style guidelines.
• Streets are tagged only under USST and not by-state, for reasons of consistency amongst all projects.
• If this proposal is enacted, a definition as to what constitutes a "street" versus a "highway" needs to be written.

Support

• I support this. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 21:09, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
• Support. Just support the darn thing and let's get this over with so we can edit articles again. --Rschen7754 (T C) 21:10, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
• Support. --Holderca1 ^talk 21:27, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
• Shiny That's support for you non-browncoats --Strato|sphere 23:19, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Oppose

• Oppose. Not because I actually oppose it, but because I don't see how it's at all different from the compromise above. Unless maybe it's that last bullet point? Maybe the difference is that in my proposal I actually provided a definition for highway that NE2 didn't like? -- Kéiryn ^talk 01:24, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
  • NE2 said he didn't support the above proposal because of the inconsistency of some states including SHs and other states not including them. Thus the 4th bullet point. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:27, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
    • So then Texas wouldn't be allowed to take on city streets (the special system mentioned below being the exception), even if it wanted to? Then I do actually oppose it. -- Kéiryn ^talk 01:33, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
      • Well, the only other option would be to force all states to include them. I doubt that's going to get much support. I like the "each state picks its poison" system the best as well, but we can't get NE2 on board for that one. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:38, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Comments

I think I brought this up before, but the state of Texas adds to the ambiguity by adding some city streets to the state highway system. Go to [3] and look up Principle Arterial Street System. --Holderca1 ^talk 21:27, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Exception to the rule. If it's part of the state highway system isn't it already covered? --Son (talk) 01:16, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I was just wanting to make sure. They should probably be also tagged by USST since their article structure would be similar to a street article, I suppose they would be a bit of a hybrid article somewhere between a street and a highway. --Holderca1 ^talk 03:34, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Just like most of the articles NE2 has been tagging as both USST and USRD... -- Kéiryn ^talk 03:36, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Two important questions

1. Do we want to set aside the scope discussion and define the terms "street" and "highway" first?

2. Do we need to set aside the scope discussion and define the terms "street" and "highway" first? -- Kéiryn ^talk 22:05, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

We probably should define street vs. road if everyone agrees to the proposed compromise. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 21:11, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

We need to define them no matter what the decision is. Keep in mind this dispute didn't start from NE2 tagging all streets as part of USRD, just ones that he thinks are "through highways". -- Kéiryn ^talk 01:29, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

You may notice that there's finally some more action on the proposed decision page of the arbitration case. Particularly interesting to me would be #Road-related consistency. I would think that if that one passes, that would be the outside opinion we've been looking for. If we concede that these terms are undefinable (or at least patently overlapping), we might as well pack it up, call it a day, and start letting all roads in -- to USRD and the state projects -- for better or worse. -- Kéiryn ^talk 14:45, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, then you have some state projects that have scopes that specifically exclude non state-highways, and are even named that way. WP:OKSH#Articles, for instance. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 20:28, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Even in those cases, there have been disputes over what a state highway is. Old Plank Road was a state highway from 1915 to 1926 (as part of Route 27), but that was one of the articles being fought over. --NE2 20:54, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Former state highway are within scope since Wikipedia is timeless so not sure what the issue was. Another more contemporary example would be the Good-Latimer Expressway in Dallas which is a former state highway now maintained by the city. --Holderca1 ^talk 21:02, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not completely sure either; [4] cites "per WT:USRD", but the only mention I can find in the archives is Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Archive 10#Possible project box tweak, which was after it was removed. Other discussion was at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Archive 9#Change of scope nationwide. --NE2 21:14, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Agree with NE2 there. Also, I'll add that there are a couple of articles tagged as part of OKSH that aren't state highways. Gilcrease Expressway for example. Once you get beyond current state highways, the scope of the state WikiProjects seems to be somewhat random, with some states taking very few, and some taking a whole bunch.

You'd think it would be the opposite, but the longer this discussion goes on, the more I agree with NE2. I think the easiest way to be consistent would be to include all roads -- as surely we can all agree on what the definition of "road" is. -- Kéiryn ^talk 22:56, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I back Kéiryn, and in turn NE2, in what they're pointing out. Think about the former highways. There are plenty of roads in Wisconsin that are not "highways" in a sense, but are tagged under WIH. Rustic Roads can be considered such - as is Kettle Moraine Scenic Drive. Noted, Wisconsin doesn't have many known notable streets, but if there were streets that had articles (I'm sure some exist) - and NE2 (or anyone else for that matter) were to tag them under WIH. I won't stop them. We have better things to worry about than what type of road belongs to a wikiproject.  — master son^{T - C} 23:13, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

The Gilcrease will most likely be either a state highway or a turnpike. I doubt Tulsa has the cash to build it. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:51, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

NE2, would you support the proposal outlined above? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:59, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

No, since it doesn't make sense to prohibit overlap between streets and states. I'd hope everyone would agree that M-102 belongs in USST (8 Mile...). --NE2 00:32, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, see, the way I look at it, M-102 is a highway, and 8 Mile is a city street. Thus, M-102 gets sorted into MSHP, and 8 Mile gets put in USST. The M-102 article handles the aspects of the roadway being a highway, while the 8 Mile article handles the city-street part of it. If the two articles get merged, then whatever title is merged to determines which it goes it.

NE2, we're trying to accommodate your desires and make a compromise that everyone agrees with. Unfortunately, we're not doing a very good job of it, apparently. So, could you draft a plan so that we can work from that? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:39, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I've done that: everything that's a road goes in USRD and is tagged with state(s), and if a project wants to keep track of a subset they can replace the state=CA with state=CASH and it will sort in both assessment categories. Possibly keep pure streets out of USRD, but don't deny a road/street crossover because it certainly exists. Last I remember, this got shot down. --NE2 00:53, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

What is the difference between that plan and Compromise #2? Feel free to rename the "highway" categories if you wish... -- Kéiryn ^talk 00:58, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Having multiple categories is kind of unwieldy, and I'm not sure you could get the Version 1.0 Editorial Team to go along with it. If we're going to stick with having USRD and USST separate, as it is now, I think part of the issue with the present system is people don't consider the city streets that carry numbered routes to be highways. e.g. Kearney Street in Springfield carries Route 744, but that doesn't make Kearney Street a highway. I think the present system would work better if such crossovers were kept to a minimum. I can see "strange" exceptions such as Wacker Drive being sorted in both, for example. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:02, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

God, this has become confusing. The problem with that was that we can't really define highways to mean "numbered highways and unnamed freeways", but I guess naming is a minor point that we can deal with when it comes up. --NE2 01:14, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Back to Kéiryn's compromise

“ As in many content policies, in the issues at stake - namely the taxonomy of chronicled items and the scope of WikiProjects - willingness to agree an editorial judgement and tolerance of some inconsistency is required to overcome inherent uncertainties, inconsistencies, and difficulties. Lapses in this area have led on many occasions to unhelpfully lengthy and disruptive disputes; on a number of these, the result was determined by "last person left talking" rather than consensus. These uncertainties should be recognised and not made a source of distraction, nor interminably argued in each case, for reasons explained above. ” — Arbitration Committee

I think since the only problem identified with Keiryn's compromise was inconsistency, and the above proposed ArbCom finding of fact basically says that's not really something we should be concerned with, perhaps we should revisit that proposal. Many of us agreed to it. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:15, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll be honest, I don't think Kéiryn even agrees with Kéiryn's compromise anymore. It would be nice to end this discussion here, but then, as was pointed out, we'd just have to start it up again later when we deal with those articles. Is this street a current highway? A former highway? Is enough of it a highway to merit-double tagging? The first time two people have an argument and can't reach consensus amongst themselves, we'll all be summoned over there, and we'll all just rehash the same crap (sorry) we've gone through here. I honestly think it's time to bite the bullet and just include all roads in the road-transport categories, and editors can maintain whatever subset of those articles they want. In lieu of that, some form of Compromise #2 with properly-named categories would be great. -- Kéiryn ^talk 01:58, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Let's just leave this issue alone for now

Why don't we just leave this issue alone for a week or two and come back to it? As it is, everyone's changing their positions very quickly, making discussion hard... --Rschen7754 (T C) 06:09, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

As shown by my inability to support my own compromise above, I agree with your assessment of the situation. I'd be okay with, but not necessarily in favor of, tabling the issue for now. -- Kéiryn ^talk 06:51, 11 March 2008 (UTC)