Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Newsletter/Issues/Volume01/Issue07

{| width="100%"  The U.S. Roads WikiProject  Newsletter
 * colspan=4 style="background-color: #008B00; color:cyan; border: 1px black solid; padding: 0.5em; text-align:center;" |
 * colspan=4 style="background-color: #008B00; color:cyan; border: 1px black solid; padding: 0.5em; text-align:center;" |
 * width=33% style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" align="left" | Volume 1, Issue 7 || width=33% style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em;  vertical-align: top;" align ="center" | 5 May 2007 || width=33% style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em;  vertical-align: top;" align="right" | About the Newsletter
 * colspan=3 style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" |
 * colspan=3 style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" |
 * colspan=3 style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" |

Introduction
The activity in the past two weeks has picked up again. Changes to AID have been proposed, a guideline about notability on highways has been proposed, and another IRC meeting has been held.

As part of the newsletter restructuring, and the existance of more activity in USRD, more content and effort has been put into this issue. We hope you enjoy it.


 * colspan=3 style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" |
 * colspan=3 style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" |

April 27 IRC meeting

 * By JohnnyAlbert10 & Rschen7754

On Friday April 27, 2007, USRD members had a meeting at the IRC U.S. Roads channel of the English Wikipedia. The meeting was divided into topics and the first topic was about county and secondary state routes. The notability and importance of county/secondary routes was discussed through the first part of the meeting. It was decided that a notability guideline should be started at Notability (highways). Later, the editors started to talk about overstandardization and how some users were not pleased with WP:USRD setting its own standards on subprojects. When this concluded, the editors then discussed cleanup template and ways to improve them; a streamlined solution was put into place. The AID for the article improvement drive was another hot topic at the meeting, and AID was drastically restructured. The end of the meeting discussed some of the problems with the newsletter. Unfortunately, the newsletter issue resulted in a disagreement that ended the meeting.


 * Sources: WikiProject U.S. Roads/Internet Relay Chat/Logs, WikiProject U.S. Roads/Internet Relay Chat/Logs/2007-04-27


 * colspan=3 style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" |
 * colspan=3 style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" |

Project news

 * Nominations and votes are needed for June's selected article and selected picture.
 * The creation of new state highway subprojects are strongly discouraged. Instead, consider helping to fix the five projects currently demoted to task forces - Kentucky, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah, and Alabama.
 * Due to the lack of participation in the Article Improvement Drive, the two articles from last issue, US 40 and US 191, will remain the AID articles until there is significant improvement to the articles.


 * Article Improvement Drive

 The current U.S. Roads Article Improvement Drive articles are ' (improvement) and ' (expansion). Last collaborations were: ' and '. NOMINATE the next articles
 * colspan=3 style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" |
 * colspan=3 style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" |

Deletion debates

 * An archive of all previous debates.

There have been no deletion debates in the last two weeks.
 * Active

Two deprecated infoboxes, Template:Infobox VACY route (TFD) and Template:Routeboxca2 (TFD), have been deleted. Also at TFD is Template:ADHS, a navigation template intended for browsing the Appalachian Development Highway System, which has since been kept.
 * Closed

For AFD, State Route 1002 (Lehigh County, Pennsylvania) has been closed as a speedy keep, due to its notability and the user nominating the article had his first edit on the AFD.

There were no CFD discussions in the past two weeks.


 * Sources: Templates for deletion/Log/2007 April 16, Templates for deletion/Log/2007 April 20, Templates for deletion, Articles for deletion/State Route 1002 (Lehigh County, Pennsylvania)


 * colspan=3 style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" |
 * colspan=3 style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" |

MacArthur Maze Fire

 * By Vishwin60

In real life, a tanker truck carrying approx. 8600 gallons of gasoline caught fire on the I-80 westbound connector to I-880 south. This happened at about 3:42 AM on April 29, 2007. When the fire broke out, the scorching heat weakened the steel structure, and eventually resulted in a collapse of at least two sections of bridges there, including one that carries I-580. The California Highway Patrol initially reported that the truck had been speeding and bounced off a guardrail, leading to the overturn. The driver that caused this has an extensive criminal record since 1980.

Caltrans immediately speculated that repair work on the damaged sections would take weeks to clear debris and rebuild the sections. The I-580 connector alone would cost $10 million.

Historically, Caltrans successfully repaired an upper-deck panel of the Bay Bridge (after the Loma Prieta Earthquake), and the collapsed portion of the Santa Monica Freeway (after the Northridge Earthquake).

Because of this, commuters from the East Bay area cannot easily go from San Francisco back to the East Bay area by crossing the Bay Bridge. Public transportation in the Bay Area will be increased and bus routes that use the damaged route will be rerouted.


 * Sources: MacArthur Maze, Tanker truck fire causes collapse on Oakland freeway


 * colspan=3 style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" |
 * colspan=3 style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" |

Featured member: JohnnyAlbert10
 JA 10  T · C joined Wikipedia on February 5, 2007. Already, he has made over 1600 edits and has become an important contibutor to many USRD projects, especially WP:PASH. His drive to improve articles to GA and FA is also commended.

Thank you, JohnnyAlbert10, for your continued hard work!


 * 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.


 * colspan=3 style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" |
 * colspan=3 style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" |

Circular route shields

 * By Vishwin60

Although this has passed about a month ago, the resolution of the circular route shield discussion have changed many states' shield conventions. Before, there were many redundant sets of circular route shields lying around on Commons, but after this discussion, the following changes were made:

The states that will be using the Circle sign set will be New Jersey, West Virginia secondary, and Mississippi.

The states that will be using the Elongated circle set will be Delaware and Kentucky.

Iowa will keep its own set, due to the fact that its circular route shields are different than the other states. Virginia secondary routes will also be using this set.


 * Sources: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Archive 5


 * colspan=3 style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" |
 * colspan=3 style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" |

CASH updates

 * By Rschen7754 & Vishwin60

Routeboxes continue to be converted to the new Infobox road format. There are still 105 routeboxes to be fixed at User:Rschen7754/Routeboxca2.

ILSR updates

 * By Vishwin60

After the recent change to the Infobox road structure, routeboxes need to be fixed to match the new structure. The bad routeboxes (59) are at User:TwinsMetsFan/IL.

PASH updates

 * By Vishwin60 & JohnnyAlbert10

Not many PASH stubs have improved over the last month; however, PASH gave birth to two Good Articles in the first week on April. The project is expected to have its first newsletter soon.


 * colspan=3 style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" |
 * colspan=3 style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" |

From the Editors
'''Be part of the turnaround... now become part of the solution! Become active in highways again. Let's save the articles from being inactive and destroyed.'''

On the heels of a complete restructuring of the newsletter, we want 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 May 19. Any and all contributions are welcome. Simply let yourself be known to any of the undersigned, or just start editing!
 * colspan=3 style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" |
 * colspan=3 style="border: 1px gray solid; padding: 0.5em; vertical-align: top;" |

Contributors to this Issue

 * Rschen7754 (Editor)
 * TwinsMetsFan (Editor)
 * Vishwin60 (Editor, distributor)
 * JohnnyAlbert10 (Editor)
 * }
 * Want to help on the next newsletter? Don't want to receive these in future? Don't want it subst'd next time? – It's all here.