Wikipedia:WikiProject Australian Roads/News/August 2013

=August 2013= Welcome to the first edition of The U Turn, the new newsletter of WikiProject Australian Roads. Every few months, or thereabout, a new edition will be published, written by project members like you! It's a chance to take a look back at recent developments, in case you missed any, as well as celebrate achievements such as the A-class article and DYK fact below. The U Turn will also serve as a historical record, and allow us to track our progress in improving the coverage of Australian roads.

For this first issue, all project members listed on the project page have been notified through a "mention" notification. If you want to continue to receive these notifications when a new issue is published (which will only be a few times a year), please signup to the subscription list. If you would prefer not to be notified, then there is no need to do anything.

Finally, a big thank you to all our project members. Please keep on editing, and keep on discussing - there would be no project without you!
 * – Evad37 (talk), 4 August 2013
 * August 2013 Edition Editor

New and improved
This is just a taste of some of our newest recognised content – find more recognised content at the Recognised content section of the main project page. Thank you to all the Wikipedians who have contributed to these articles!

Mitchell Freeway, nominated by, was promoted to A-Class on 26 May 2013‎, having passed an extensive A-Class review

Old Windsor Road, created by &, nominated by , appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 25 July 2013.

In the pipeline
 * The following articles are in the process of being reviewed for a higher article rating
 * Good article nominees: Majura Parkway nominated by on 1 July 2013; Tonkin Highway nominated by  on 1 August 2013
 * A-Class candidates: Kwinana Freeway nominated by on 11 May 2013}}

Wikipedia goes Visual


The VisualEditor extension, designed to allow WYSIWYG editing of Wikipedia articles, was made the default editor for logged-in users on 1 July 2013, and for anonymous IP users later that month. The move was controversial, at least partly due to the number and severity of bugs in the beta-software. A number of changes were made in August (see: August 2013 update) including making the "Edit source" tab [previously "Edit"] the primary (first) edit tab across all namespaces, and VisualEditor, labeled as "Edit beta", the second edit tab. The section editing animation has been disabled ["Edit source" was hidden until mouseover], which many users found annoying and confusing.

There are various methods to completely opt out of VisualEditor (at least while it is in beta), detailed at VisualEditor/Opt-out. There are also custom CSS and Javascript code that can make VisualEditor less prominent and obnoxious (in this editor's opinion), such as removing the VisualEditor section edit links (which actually load the whole page), and renaming all instances of "Edit source" to "Edit", and "Edit beta" to "VE". See User:Evad37/rename editors for a script that does both, or ask at the Technical Village Pump if you want a script to make different changes to the interface.

At this stage the VisualEditor doesn't seemed to have had too much impact at WikiProject Australian Roads. TemplateData has been deployed to some templates used by this project (and others), as it makes editing templates with the VisualEditor less difficult.

Lua Conversions
Lua is the new standard for creating templates on Wikipedia, and works much faster than the existing system. I would like to explore converting some of the AU specific templates to Lua, though most of the cross-project templates are being converted or are already converted (due to WP:USRD efforts). Lua code is relatively easily discerned and all modules should be documented with explanatory notes. It would be good to keep our own templates up-to-date in a similar fashion.

See also: Discussion at WT:AURD

Departments report
For those who aren't aware, we have a number of departments here at WP:AURD. Here is a brief description of each. Remember, ask both what the departments can do for you, and what you can do for the departments!

Assessment
The Assessment department details how to tag articles of interest to the project, and specifies our quality and importance guidelines. Anyone may assess article quality and importance in accordance with this guideline (with the exception of the featured classes, A-class, and GA-class, as these can only be applied after a successful review at the relevant forum). The assessment department also tracks quality and importance ratings, both at a project-wide level, and broken down in a state-by-state(/territory) comparison.

The assessment table shown here is as of 1 August 2013 (see the assessment department page for the live table).


 * How you can help
 * If you create a new article, please place on the article's talk page, and list the new article on the project noticeboard (at the top of the project talk page). Other project members will take a look, assess the article*, and may make minor (or major!) edits to improve it.
 * (* or you can assess the article yourself, per the assessment guidelines)
 * If you substantially improve an article, please reassess it in accordance with the guidelines, or, if you are unsure or want an uninvolved opinion, leave a message on the project talk page.
 * If you want to help out and are looking for articles to assess, please look in Category:Unassessed Australian road transport articles and Category:Unknown-importance Australian road transport articles. These are listed on the main project page ("Assessment" section), along with progress bars and an indication of the remaining work

Shields


Route markers, colloquially known as shields, are those funny little numbers you see on various road signs, as well as Wikipedia infoboxes and road junction lists. Thanks to our shield-smiths, Nbound and Fredddie (of WP:USRD), we have several new sets of bright, shiny, new, ready-to-use shields. The easiest way to add one of these route marker images is to use the template, which will auto-sizes and formats images. Two important notes:
 * 1) The route also needs to be included in text beside or near the shield, for accessibility reasons. Use formatting like , which renders as " Victoria Highway (National Highway 1)"
 * 2) Shields shouldn't be used within article prose, per MOS:ICON – basically, the images are only needed in infoboxes and junction lists. Do not use a shield like this within the main article text. Instead, use the route type and number, such as National Route 1.

If you find a route marker you need to use is missing, make a request at the shield department page. The department also keeps it's own archives of past discussions regarding shields.

Notice: Shields moving to Wikipedia
We will be moving all shields to Wikipedia from Commons in the near future. As it has been found they may not be PD in Australia (simplicity of imagery doesnt mean much, with even the Aboriginal Flag being copyrighted within Australia). They will be tagged with Template:PD-ineligible-USonly. We do not expect too many issues as AUshielded imagery will be automatically redirected to the correct imagery. A small number of directly linked images may be affected, and will need to be changed by hand (if not, they will be removed by the commons-delinker bot anyway). There are no plans to move the previous imagery sets at this stage.

Resources
The resources department oversees templates, maps, images, and other useful things for the WikiProject. This is designed to be a one-stop-shop for creating, expanding, and improving articles. You can find: Plus there's fun stuff for user pages: the project userbox (so you can tell the whole world you're part of this wikiproject), and the project barnstar, which can be awarded to anyone by any project member (though try to make sure its for a good reason!).
 * templates (including navboxes)
 * links to find images and maps (and to detailed guide on map creation)
 * external resources to use as or help in the search for sources (such as government gazeetes)
 * relevant guidelines and essays for advice and "best practice"
 * tools for making scrip assisted edits (such as adding details to bare URL references)

Discussions Library
The WikiProject Australian Roads Library maintains direct links to the discussions which have formed parts of our current Australian Roads procedures and guidelines. Here are some of the discussion that have occurred recently: WP:AURD and WP:HWY-project members endeavour to provide notification of important and relevant discussions - everyone is encouraged to participate.
 * Infoboxes
 * Infobox road conversion (No Consensus/Abandoned)
 * Infobox Australian road upgrade (multiple discussions)
 * Infobox guidelines
 * Road naming discussion (led to new guideline WP:AURDNAME)
 * MOS:RJL related discussions – new colour key for route transition, template changes so that only relevant colour keys are shown

Advanced Permissions
The Advanced Permissions is more of a list than a department. If you need to find a friendly person with a mop or other handy items, take a look here. The Wikipedians listed here are AURD or members of other roads projects, and will usually lend a hand or offer advice

Miscellaneous
It may not be known to many of our members but there is a Wikiproject Highways chat room on IRC, details on how to get into the chat room can be found at HWY/IRC. Come pay a visit, there are usually quite a few editors there and I am the only AURD member who frequents the room. It can be a good place to find someone to check over an article, or even just to gain a different perspective on something.

Credits

 * Editor: Evad37
 * Contributors: Nbound (Lua, Shields Notice, IRC information)