Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Newsletter/Current

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Introduction
Unfortunately, after the arbitration case closed, USRD's activity level went down, and the newsletter got ignored.

To get back onto a somewhat regular schedule, this newsletter will cover only events that happened in May and early June. The next newsletter will talk about events in late June and July.

In this issue
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 * Featured story
 * Featured story

New York Route 32 FAC sparks shield debate

 * By: County Lemonade

Following a long debate over the use of shields on New York State Route 32's FA, and the subsequent removal of the shields in the infobox and the major junctions list, there is a discussion going on at WT:USRD concerning whether the FA reviewers' concerns of the use of thumbnail shields were valid as many of the other USRD articles use these shields. The Newsletter continues to maintain its neutrality, and as a result, it will not take any specific stance in the issue.

Source: WT:USRD
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 * State and national updates
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Leaderboard
Not a whole lot has happened leaderboard-wise since the last issue. Michigan is still on top with their impossible 3.4, but Arizona is gaining on them, having actually bumped the Nutmeg State out of the number 2 spot. Everyone else has been dropping, but have held to the same positions. Oh, wait! Looks like Rschen's prediction last month that California would return to the leaderboard came true. They're back at number 10, knocking North Carolina out of the top ten. Well, I guess if Arnold Schwarzenegger is your governor, you should know when you're able to accurately say I'll be back.... But they come back tied with New Jersey, so those two projects are going to have to expand articles left and right to see which one gets to stay on the leaderboard next month! New York has gained two more featured articles this month with the passing of New York State Route 32 and New York State Route 28, bringing their grand total of FAs to four plus one featured list.

Oh, and Utah got promoted back to full project status. Big surprise!

Of note to those who like keeping track of WikiWork is that this will be our last leaderboard with the 'classic' formula. The Wikipedia community recently approved adding a new class to the assessment scale, C-Class. This class lies in between B and Start class. This means that in future issues, C-Class will be worth 4, Start-Class will be worth 5, and stubs will be worth 6.

Anyway, with that out of the way, show us the leaderboard for June 21st, 2008!

States in parentheses have no project. States listed in italics are task forces.

Here are the stats for the national projects.


 * *plus one featured list

Statistics are derived from this version of the state stats table table. As always, if your favorite state isn't listed here, you can find it at WikiProject U.S. Roads/Assessment/States. Congrats to the editors at the ten eleven states above for their hard work! Keep it up!


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Project reports
WP:USH: U.S. Route 491 has been nominated to be the featured article for April Fool's Day in 2009. The article would have to reach Featured Article status by next April to be considered. The discussion is taking place at Wikipedia talk:April Fool's Main Page. US 491, along with U.S. Route 163, were recently promoted to Good Article status.

Colorado/ New Mexico: Although currently there is no project to co-ordinate work on Colorado and New Mexico road articles, the above mentioned US 491 which passed as a Good Article on June 14, is Colorado's 2nd GA and New Mexico's 1st. Colorado's 1st road GA, Interstate 70 in Colorado, passed on May 11.

WP:MISH: Michigan State Highways Wikiproject received its first FA, M-35, passing on May 21. M-107 was recently passed as a Good Article making a total of seven current GAs and one FA.

WP:MCDH: Michigan County Designated Highways Wikiproject was created as a task force on May 19.

WP:NVSH: Interstate 80 in Nevada became the project's 2nd GA, passing on June 8.

WP:NYSR: New York State Routes has fallen to 136 stubs to go with the news of the project's first featured list coming on June 8, after 30 days on Featured list candidates. The project got its second Featured Article and the first time a project has consecutively-designated FAs with New York State Route 175 passing on May 29. The project has an A-class review after the recent expansion of the article, New York State Route 343. The project has also gained its first Featured topic nomination, produced by User:Mitchazenia about New York State Route 20N and the history/routes behind it. The FT passed with numerous support votes. New York State Route 319, New York State Route 324, New York State Route 318 and New York State Route 323 all recently passed their good article nominations. NYSR also has two Featured Article candidates, with New York State Route 28 and New York State Route 32 being nominated within an hour of each other. This is the first time NYSR has had 2 FACs at once. New York State Route 32 passed FAC on June 17 after a grueling debate on the use of shields. In addition, New York State Route 28 passed its FAC just days later.

WP:UTSH: The Utah State Highways project has been promoted from a task force to a project. Following a unanimous vote of support, the project was repromoted on May 17 following demotion that occurred on March 16, 2007, after more than a year of task force status. The project has also gained a trio of GAs. Utah State Route 279 became the project's third GA, passing on June 8, followed by U.S. Route 491 becoming UTSH's fourth GA on June 13. The project's fifth GA, Utah State Route 269, was passed on June 25.

WP:WASH: The Washington State Highways project's page has been remodeled. Also, two GA nominations and three peer reviews (Washington State Route 531, U.S. Route 101 in Washington, and List of highways in Snohomish County, Washington) for the project happened in May. During the month, the project finished creating every article in the current system excluding some state-specific U.S. route articles and one state-specific Interstate article. Washington State Route 531 passed its GA on July 12 becoming WASH's 2nd GA.
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Project news

 * Nominations and votes are needed for August's selected article and selected picture.
 * The creation of new state highway subprojects are strongly discouraged. Instead, consider helping to fix the four projects currently demoted to task forces - Alabama, Kansas, Louisiana, Nevada, South Carolina.
 * There are only 21 articles above Good Article status within the scope of WikiProject U.S. Roads. Meanwhile, there are about 6100 stubs - almost two-thirds of all assessed articles. Please help improve the articles!


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Deletion debates

 * An archive of all previous debates.


 * Articles for deletion
 * Wrong-way concurrency closed as merge (accompanying list was deleted)
 * St. Louis County Road 7 kept and subsequently merged.
 * Nebraska Spur 10A kept.


 * Templates for deletion
 * Template:WA State Roads deleted.


 * Miscellany for deletion
 * Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/New article notes deleted.


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 * News
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USRD gets showings at Hartford Road Meet

 * By Mitchazenia

On April 26, 2008, Wikipedia editors Mitchazenia and Polaron made a trip up to Hartford for a roadgeek meetup. The meet was scheduled to occur at the John Harvard's Brew House in nearby Manchester at 1487 Pleasant Valley Road. Here is the story from me, Mitchazenia's, point of view:

I got there at about 11:30 after leaving my house in New Jersey, where I met up with roadgeek Jason Illyes. Not far afterwards, Doug Kerr's car, loaded with two other roadgeeks showed up. Jason's family had left for Massachusetts by then, so at the end of the day, he loaded up with Doug and them. Once almost everyone had showed up, the 16 that were there went in the brew house. There, inside was a large brewer for drinks, visible to anyone curious. We were seated in the far back, where a table had been set up for us. About 15-25 minutes into it, Polaron shows at the brew house, joining up with us.

Polaron happened to have some maps with him, ones that he usually uses on-wiki, and I showed them around to a couple other roadgeeks. This was a treat for me, as I had never met a Wikipedian in real life before. Not everyone had showed up yet, with two roadgeeks still in Litchfield County. They arrived once the meals were done for everyone else. One of the roadgeeks I wanted to meet, as I had known him from and Internet Relay Chat channel. He gave me two scanned maps I had requested, which came to my surprise. He and I got into a good discussion afterwards.

Once everyone was done and paid, we gathered together outside the brew house and figured out who's going it what car. It was divided into three cars, Doug's (which he had 5), another Doug's (which he had 9) and my car (which had 5). We then departed, accidentally losing the one with 9 with Doug and mine driving around looking for them. Soon enough, we found them and for real, began the tour part of the meet.

We traveled around the Hartford area to various points of interest. The first stop was the Governor Street ramps off I-84 that would have become the beginning of the cancelled I-284. From there, the group went to a park at the east end of the Bulkeley Bridge, the oldest bridge on the Interstate Highway System. We got off and walked across the bridge on a pedestrian walkway watching cars go by and getting pictures. On the way back along the bridge, we saw someone's car being searched by police, adding to the already strange sight of 19 people crossing the bridge at one time.

Soon after, we went back into the park, where we had a group picture. We stayed around for a few minutes, while I went up to get some pics, including the nearby Founders Bridge. We soon left there and went to downtown Hartford, from which we left using the Whitehead Highway (originally planned to become part of cancelled I-484) heading for the Route 9/I-84 stack interchange. This interchange was originally built as part of I-291 but only half of the ramps are currently used. After a while, we returned to Manchester using Route 9 south, I-91 north, Route 3 north, Route 2 west, and I-84 east. The portion of Route 3 that we used was the only section of the cancelled I-491 that was built.

Back in Manchester, we stayed for a few more minutes showing each other some maps, and departed soon after. We had a blast that day and I am looking forward to future meets.
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Featured member: 25or6to4

 * Know of an editor who goes the extra mile? Nominate him or her at WP:USRD/NEWS for the next issue. Editors can only be nominated once a year.

25or6to4 (talk) has been a Wikipedia editor since January 8, 2005. He has over 4,000 edits and has contributed much to the Maps task force on USRD. He has made numerouse maps for GAs and FA nominees to help them become a featured article or GA. He also works with the Texas subproject to improve articles on Texas highways.

Thank you, 25or6to4, for all of your hard work!


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Record 6 Wikipedians show up at Chicago Road Meet

 * Contributors: DanTheMan474 and Imzadi1979

The Chicago Roads Meet has come and gone, and it was a blast. The weather was touch-and-go, with a few scattered rain showers popping in from time to time, but for the most part Mother Nature was cooperative

Participants gathered for a small meet-and-greet on Thursday evening right in the Downers Grove area. On Friday morning, the gathering kicked into high gear, with eight people from five states gathered for a tour of numerous areas in the Chicagoland area, including northwest Indiana. Wikipedians included Scott5114, Imzadi1979 and DanTheMan474. Some of the highlights from the tollways, highways and by-ways of the Chicago area included:


 * The I-190/O'Hare Loop
 * Thorndale Rd. & the Elgin-O'Hare Expressway (featuring a wide right-of-way for Thorndale Rd. where an Elgin-O'Hare Expwy. extension will be constructed)
 * The new I-355 extension, as well as the massive new interchange between I-355 and I-55
 * Reconstructed through 2007, the new interchange between I-80, I-94, I-294 and IL 394, along with the new single-point urban interchange (SPUI) with US 6/IL 83
 * In NW Indiana, the Borman Expressway's 8-lane cross-section...at least until a traffic backup took rerouted the cars onto Ridge Rd.
 * IN 912/Cline Ave., past the steel mills of NW Indiana

Returning to the downtown Chicago area after 4:00 PM CDT, participants checked out the re-built Dan Ryan Expressway., Upper and Lower Wacker Drives, and the historic beginning/ending of an American Classic, Route 66. Following the conclusion of the Illinois tour, dinner was at the one-and-only Ed Debevic's. The food was great, and it paid to pay using either a credit card or to have exact change.

Saturday's tour centered on the Badger State, Wisconsin. In addition to Friday's Wikipedians, the group was were joined by Master_son, Lpangelrob and Retaildesigner. After meeting up at the Wisconsin Welcome Center (off ofI-94/US 41)...and everyone who didn't get one the day before got the latest Wiconsin map...the group embarked on our tour de SE Wisconsin. Highlights of Saturday's tour included the following:


 * WI 119, the Milwaukee Airport Connector, which was unsigned until 2007, when WI 119 shields and signs started to pop up
 * WI 794/I-794
 * The amazing Marquette interchange, which may be fully opened up later this year
 * I-43 north of the Marquette interchange
 * I-894

The group returned back via US 45 and CTH-Q, getting back to the welcome center in time for a good rain shower, which carried through most of the way back to our Downers Grove, where it started to clear up. After some of the group parted ways, a smaller group headed down to Navy Pier to enjoy the semi-weekly lakefront fireworks show...and some deep-dish pizza. The weather turned out very nicely for the fireworks, and it worked out to be an awesome way to wrap up the festivities.
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Coming and going

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USRD hits 10,000 articles

 * Contributor: ComputerGuy890100

Our project has passed the 10,000 article mark on June 2, as stated by Scott5114. This makes up for 0.4% of Wikipedia in total. The discovery was made by WP 1.0 bot and later reported by Scott5114 on June 11. There is still work to improve all 10,000 articles, and out of all of them, there are 12 featured articles, 2 featured lists, 8 A-class articles, and 100 Good Articles (excluding A-class), for 122 total top articles, which makes about 8% of the 10,000 articles.


 * Source: WT:USRD


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USRD hits 1% Good article

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From the editors
The editors of the newsletter would like to hear from you, the reader. What do you like about the current format? What should be changed? Removed? Added? Your comments are needed.

Lastly, remember that this is your newsletter and you can be involved in the creation of the next issue released on July 18. Any and all contributions are welcome. Simply let yourself be known to any of the undersigned, or just start editing!
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Contributors to this issue

 * Imzadi1979 (editor)
 * Mitchazenia (editor)
 * Scott5114 (editor)
 * ComputerGuy890100 (contributor)
 * CountyLemonade (contributor)
 * DanTheMan474 (contributor)
 * Davemeistermoab (contributor)
 * }