User talk:Loebd

Welcome, roadfan!
Hello, Loebd, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like this place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
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Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically produce your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place  on your talk page and ask your question there. If you are interested, there is already a community of users who are roadfans or who edit articles about roads, just like you! Stop by any of these WikiProjects &mdash; WP:HWY (worldwide), WP:CRWP (Canada), WP:INR (India), WP:UKRD (United Kingdom), or WP:USRD (United States) &mdash; and contribute. For those in the United States, there is an excellent new user's guide. There is a wealth of information and resources for creating a great article. If you have questions about any of these WikiProjects, you can ask on each project's talk page, or you can ask me! If you like communicating through IRC, feel free to ask questions at as well. Here, there are several editors who are willing to answer your questions. For more information, see WP:HWY/IRC. Again, welcome!  Imzadi 1979  →   19:42, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Can I suggest that you add all of your proposed additions to the Interstate 70 in Colorado article to its talk page, Talk:Interstate 70 in Colorado first? This is a Featured Article, which means it has been reviewed and rated as part of Wikipedia's best work. While I'm not opposing the insertion of additional material, we should copy edit it to conform to Wikipedia's Manual of Style (MOS) and the U.S. Roads WikiProject's standards. Also of concern is how much coverage to apply to certain information to avoid undue weight. All content added (text or images) needs to be appropriately attributed to sources, free of copyright infringement, and free of plagiarism concerns.

Compliance with the MOS is required of Featured Articles, and if the consistency and quality of an article is allowed to degrade so that it no longer complies with the MOS, the article can be delisted as Featured. The level of writing needs to be of a "professional, even brilliant level", and it needs to be consistent in tone and usage with the rest of the text. (You've used a different convention for the abbreviation of US Highways in your additions compared to the rest of the test, which is minor, but an example of how consistency is important. I'm going to move your additions to the talk page now so that they may be discussed, edited and refined before they are inserted into the article.  Imzadi 1979  →   19:42, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Agreed, I also am not opposed to the addition of the material that you have added. However, as this article has been ranked "Featured Article" it is important for any additions to be consistent with wikipedia's style guide and other guidelines in order for the article to keep that featured status. Please join the discussion at the talk page that Imzadi listed above. We are more than happy to work with you to ensure that this content is added, but added in such a way keep the formatting consistent with Wikipedia's featured article standards. Dave (talk) 22:54, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I am doing this for a class assignment. I am not sure how to add it to the talk page only.  Is there a way I could add this in a different area of Wikipedia? Loebd (talk) 00:09, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, here's where things get sticky. We don't want to mess up your assignment, but at the same time, this is a Featured Article, and its quality needs to be maintained. That's why I moved all of your additions over to the section at Talk:Interstate 70 in Colorado. I see that you found that section. Unfortunately, no one editor can control the content of the article; the community owns the articles. Moabdave put a lot of hard work into the article to get it to this level, and I watch all of the U.S. Roads Wikiproject FAs to help maintain the level of quality. I don't know if your instructor will accept the text on the talk page, or he/she requires it to be in the actual article. Before anything gets moved over to the article, Dave and I will work with you to make sure it meets the quality requirements so that the article will retain its Featured status. Any text added though needs to be well integrated into the writing style/tone/abbreviations of the existing article.  Imzadi 1979  →   00:26, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I will revise it on the talk page. They understand that things get changed quickly.  I will finish my edits tonight.  You all can change them as you want.  How is that? Loebd (talk) 00:37, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * That works, but depending on what happens, your text could be radically different when it's moved over into the article.  Imzadi 1979  →   00:46, 30 November 2011 (UTC)