Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Blog/August-October 2009

U.S. Highway Ends page has moved
To prepare for the pending shutdown of geocities. Dale Sanderson has moved his "U.S. Highway ends page to http://www.usends.com/, the version on Geocities has aready been replaced with a generic re-direct. Please check your articles that use this resource as a source and update the URL. Dave (talk) 20:01, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Change for junction lists
The standards for junction lists have changed, see WikiProject U.S. Roads/Standards. Dough4872 (talk) 15:27, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Scope poll
There is a poll regarding the formal definition of the USRD scope at WT:USRD. --Rschen7754 (T C) 23:45, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Latest USRD scoreboard
Wow! Times have sure changed – does anyone follow this anymore? Turns out New York and Michigan are three-thousandths of a point apart (3.623 and 3.626), while we have good ol' Utah trailing around fifteen-hundreths a point back (3.767). Then five-tenths of a point at 4.255 we have Arizona, then Connecticut at 4.662. CL (T · C) — 18:19, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Three years since WP:SRNC
It has been three years since the debates of WP:SRNC. Wow, how time sure passes! --Rschen7754 (T C) 21:57, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Alternate text for images
FYI, a new section to the Manual of Style has been added, coinciding with a new feature to the mediawiki software: Alternate text for images. This actually happened a few months ago, but I recently learned of it. One more thing to remember as we are working on improving articles. Dave (talk) 09:25, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * So does this include shields? --Rschen7754 (T C) 09:40, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * In a brief read of the page, I surmised that shields (as used in the infobox and junction lists) would not require alt text, as these are somewhat decorative in nature and would likely repeat adjacent text. They might be necessary on maps though.
 * Note also that "brief and useful alt text, when feasible" has been added to the images criterion at WP:FACR. This has been brought up already on Interstate 70 in Colorado's FAC page. So you'll want to make sure appropriate alt text is included on all thumbnails prior to submitting an article to FAC. --LJ (talk) 09:59, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Which means it'll be a new criteria for ACR (nominators beware :P).
 * As for the shields, we're learning that we have to kill the image links on all the shields (using "link=", which I'm not particularly fond of for accessibility reasons) and provide alt text for the 88x70px shields at the top of the infobox to be compliant with the guideline. –  T M F 04:13, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

(od) Here is a sample page with the Alt text tool that is used at FAC to check for compliance Dave (talk) 22:53, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, this compliance checker tool does not refresh to reflect recent changes. So it's not useful for updating articles, except to see the starting point. Anybody found a tool that can check the page in real time?Dave (talk) 06:26, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Major cities box
After a discussion at WT:USRD it was decided to remove the major cities box from all articles. This was because it was difficult to source, and there was no way to standardize the lists of cities. --Rschen7754 (T C) 07:49, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Returning editors
Wow, it's been a long time since we've had a blog entry.

In recent news, User:Admrboltz and User:JohnnyAlbert10 have both returned from a long absence from Wikipedia. They have edited Utah and Pennsylvania (respectively) but have been involved with other states as well.

Welcome back! --Rschen7754 (T C) 06:05, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Also User:DeFaultRyan, has made a re-appearance, by improving Utah State Route 143 to GA status. Welcome back to all three, hope you can stick around a while.Dave (talk) 06:27, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Huh, thanks. Guess I'd gone inactive for a couple months. Surprised anybody noticed. :) DeFaultRyan 22:30, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Article promotions
The following articles have been promoted to GA, GT, A, FL, FA or GT status in August, September and October. Please take the time to read these newly-promoted quality articles and congratulate those that worked to improve the article: