Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Newsletter/Issues/Volume02/Issue02

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Introduction
Unfortunately, the arbitration case has been largely ignored by the Arbitration Committee so far.

As this newsletter aims to stay neutral, there is no story about it in this newsletter. If you are interested, you may read about it for yourself without a potentially biased editor trying to sway you to one side.

However, at USRD, many have decided to keep the project running and to maintain some sense of normalcy. After two major editors taking wikibreaks, this has largely occurred, with some major accomplishments occurring during this difficult time. Of course, we long for the day when the case will finally be over.

In this issue
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 * Featured story
 * Featured story

Interstate 355 becomes USRD's newest Featured Article

 * By Master son

The Interstate 355 article was promoted to featured article status on 28 January 2008. This makes the article the fourth American road article to accomplish this milestone, behind Kansas Turnpike, Pulaski Skyway, and Ridge Route, and the first about a numbered highway. A southern expansion opened on the route on 11 November, and the route was renamed from North-South Tollway to Veterans Memorial Tollway. Major expansion began on the article on 1 November with Lpangelrob contributing the majority of the information. The article was nominated as a featured article candidate by JohnnyAlbert10 on 16 December 2007. Featured Articles are expected to be the very best of the pack and must adhere to strict standards. While some critical items were present, the reviewers gave it a general thumbs up and helped out in shaping the article to meet the requirements. Congratulations to Lpangelrob, JohnnyAlbert10 and all the editors and reviewers to contributed to making this milestone a success.

Sources:
 * Revision history of Interstate 355
 * Featured_article_candidates/Interstate_355
 * Interstate_355


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 * State and national updates
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Leaderboard
The leaderboard has yet another new face this month as some of the more neglected projects have gotten some new life; Michigan has had new life breathed into it by Imzadi1979 and Stratosphere, and Utah has seen some serious work by Davemeistermoab. This is partly due to a sort-of race going on in the IRC channel to see who would be the first to break the 4.000 Ω barrier. And the winner was Michigan, which shot up from position 21 last month to number one this month with a record-breaking Ω of 3.970!

Michigan's main competitor in the race to 4 was Connecticut, and as a result that project moved up from 5th place to second. New York has managed to hold onto the #3 spot. Newcomers to the board this month are the aforementioned Michigan and Utah. The established New Jersey project, which was #10 in December's recap and dropped off the following month, has returned, rising back up to the eighth position.

If you're unfamiliar with the WikiWork statistics, you can find more information about them at WP:USRD/A/WW. So ladies and gentlemen, here it comes! Your USRD Leaderboard for February 16, 2008!

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

Here are the stats for the national projects.

Also, big news for USRD as a whole: at press time, USRD is only seven classes away from matching Wikipedia's Ω of 4.622! Great job, everyone!

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 states above for their hard work! Keep it up!


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WP:CASH
The California County Routes project was demoted to a task force over the month. Also, California State Route 3 became a Good Article as part of the increasing condition of California articles as they are slowly expanded to B-class.

WP:MSHP
M-28 (Michigan highway) and M-35 (Michigan highway) have both been nominated for Good Article status. If passed either of these would be the project's first. Since the B-class audit, MSHP has been active destubbing and improving articles. All the business route articles have been merged together into consolidated articles or merged into their parent articles where appropriate. Our stub count has been dropped from 198 on 2008-01-17 to 46 at last count on 2008-02-13. Thank you to all project editors for the hard work!

WP:NJSCR
New Jersey has cut its stub count by over 60 articles over a stretch of 10 days from February 6, 2008 to February 15, 2008. There are also plans to work on county routes and an Article Improvement Drive. New Jersey Route 18 is at A-class review.

WP:NYSR
New York State Route 174 became the project's 9th Good Article. Also, New York State Route 22, along with NY 174 are at Wikiproject Highways' Peer review. There is a discussion ongoing to revive the folded up project, NY County Routes, into a task force.

WP:UTSH
Utah got its first Good Article, with Interstate 70 in Utah passing on February 9, 2008.


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Project news

 * Nominations and votes are needed for March'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 - Alabama, Louisiana, Nevada, South Carolina, and Utah.
 * California County Routes has been demoted.
 * There are only 39 articles above Good Article status within the scope of WikiProject U.S. Roads, only 0.42% of all assessed articles. Meanwhile, there are about 6250 stubs - almost seven-tenths of all assessed articles. Please help improve the articles!
 * The following articles are currently being peer-reviewed at WP:HWY/PR:
 * Chickasaw Turnpike
 * New York State Route 174
 * New York State Route 22
 * Interstate 5 in Washington
 * Atlantic City–Brigantine Connector
 * Texas State Highway 151
 * M-28 (Michigan highway)
 * List of numbered highways in Tennessee
 * Pennsylvania Route 73
 * Interstate 70 in Utah
 * The following articles are currently being reviewed for A-class at WP:USRD/A/ACR:
 * New Jersey Route 18
 * New York State Route 22
 * WP:USRD/AID is proposed to be changed, see the talk page for info.

The current U.S. Roads Article Improvement Drive article is Interstate 96. Last collaboration was: Interstate 79. Join the contest to receive a barnstar!
 * Article Improvement Drive


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Deletion debates

 * An archive of all previous debates.

At Articles for deletion:
 * Closed
 * Anaheim Boulevard (closed as Delete)

Others:
 * Category:Roads in the Susquehanna Valley area (closed as Delete)
 * A proposed renaming to "Category:U.S. Highways in Georgia" for Category:U.S. Highways in Georgia (U.S. state) (closed as no consensus)
 * A proposed renaming of Category:U.S. Highways in Washington, D.C. to "Category:U.S. Highways in Washington, D.C." (closed as no consensus)
 * Template:Susquehanna Valley Transportaion (closed as Delete)
 * Image:Map-WA-605.png (closed as Delete)


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 * News
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Commons refuses to delete superseded shields

 * By Rschen7754

Last week, a deletion request was filed at the Wikimedia Commons to delete superseded Texas highway shields. Although many from USRD voted for the deletion of these shields and were in the majority, Commons kept the shields because of their superseded images policy. A discussion ensued at the talk page, but a consensus was not reached.

Michigan project breaks the 4.000 barrier

 * By Rschen7754

The Michigan project broke the 4.000 barrier in terms of relative WikiWork last week, and it is the first and only project to do so. This is largely due to Imzadi1979's productivity drive in Michigan, with much assistance from Stratosphere. This drive brought Michigan from rank #21 to rank #1 within the last month. Congratulations to the Michigan project!

The New York and Connecticut projects are close to breaking the 4.000 barrier as well.

Sources:
 * WikiProject U.S. Roads/Assessment/States

USRD relative WW comes close to surpassing Wikipedia relative WW

 * By Rschen7754

Right now, only a few more improvements of articles need to be performed until our article quality is around the same as that of the rest of Wikipedia. This is a landmark in the history of USRD because from now on, with each improved article that we write, we will be climbing higher and higher above Wikipedia article quality in general, and will work to pull that quality up as we go. This could help USRD be a project that is looked up to for its good article quality. Congratulations all around!

Sources:
 * WP:USRD/A/WW

The newest neologism issue

 * By Mitchazenia

On February 3, User:Mapsax wrote on the talk page of Bannered highway claiming it is a possible neologism. Three days later, after no reply, he moved everything related to bannered routes including Bannered routes of U.S. Route 17 to Auxiliary routes of U.S. Route 17 and the main page, bannered highway, to Auxillary U.S. Route. Once the edits were noticed, Mapsax was reverted on several articles. A discussion quickly ensued and late on February 6, User:Rschen7754 reverted all of the edits with an edit summary on User:Rschen7754/Bannered. The discussion soon died out.

Sources:
 * Talk:Bannered highway, User:Rschen7754/Bannered


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26 January 2008 - Meetup

 * By Mitchazenia

Wikipedian goes to roadgeek meetup
User:Mitchazenia went to a roadgeek meetup on Long Island on January 26, 2008. Being the first Wikipedia member to go a meetup, Mitch went to Bethpage and met road enthusiasts such as Doug Kerr and C.C. Slater. Now here is Mitch's point of view of the meetup.

First location: B.K. Sweeney's Parkside Tavern
After driving around with my father, we pulled into the parking lot behind the tavern on Broadway in Bethpage. There I saw road enthusiasts Doug Kerr, C.C. Slater and Mike Tantillo waiting in the parking lot for everyone else. When we pulled in, I walked up and introduced myself. Doug and they introduced themselves and I was given several items by Doug, which was to the least my expectation. After a few others arrived, we went inside and got seated. The table sat 8 people, enough to fit everyone. Just as we sat down, the final arrival came, a worker from NYSDOT. Everyone instantly got into different discussions with enthusiasts. I, personally, got into discussing New York with C.C. Slater. After about 30 minutes, the meals came. Everyone began to eat and the discussion continued along. After all was said and done, the bill cost $107. Afterwards, we began our progress to our cars and we ended up using 2 cars, mine and Doug's.

Second location: The trip around Nassau and Suffolk Counties
Doug, who had the whole trip planned out, took the lead, with 4 passengers. My dad's SUV had 3 people in it. We drove around to the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway, where we parked and got pictures of the stub end north of NY 135. We then got over to the Long Island Expressway, where we got off at New York State Route 110, where we got off towards the remaining bit of the Long Island Motor Parkway. At the historic site, I took out my camera and grabbed photos of the original bridge, the remains, a historical sign put up in 2004 and the remains of the road. We soon got back in our cars and drove off towards the parkways of Long Island. We took the LIE back to the Meadowbrook State Parkway and traveled that southward to the Ocean Parkway. We then travelled the Jones Beach shore before parking near the Robert Moses Causeway. There we got pictures of the Causeway. We got back in our cars and headed over to the Causeway and traveled to Fire Island and the Robert Moses Memorial. We took the Robert Moses north, ending up at the Southern State Parkway and headed westward to the Bethpage Parkway, which was closed due to a water main break.

We got off at a nearby exit and got back over to the Bethpage to the Seaford-Oyster Bay and pulled back off at the Powell Street exit, where our journey came to an end at the parking lot for B.K. Sweeney's. We said our goodbyes and headed off.

Conclusion
All in all, it was a good day, for the trip there and the trip home, I gathered over 60 pictures and have several here on Wiki. I plan on going to future meetups and I hope other Wikipedians do!


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Featured member: Imzadi1979
Imzadi1979 (talk) has been a Wikipedia editor since Oct 10 2005. He has immediately made an impact on USRD and Michigan state highways upon joining, and has over 3000 edits. Recently Imzadi1979 has contributed greatly to Michigan highways with a thorough examination and expansion of all of the articles, consolidation of minor and business routes, and major clean-up to help bring the project's average assessment rating below 4.00. He also has been helping elsewhere in the USRD project family.

Thank you, Imzadi1979, for all of your 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.


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Coming and going
A newer editor of the project, Edit Centric has moved on from the U.S. Roads WikiProject this month. Edit Centric was last month's featured editor well-known to those in the IRC channel. Edit Centric has moved on to become involved in dispute resolution processes on Wikipedia. We wish luck to Edit Centric on these and any other endeavors he may partake in on Wikipedia in the future.

On a happier note, Stratosphere is back! He was listed as "intermittently active" for many months, but no longer! Stratosphere is probably best known for his work on the project's maps, which prompted him to found the Maps Task Force. He's most active on Michigan and helped towards Michigan's record-setting drive to become #1 in the past month. Welcome back, Stratosphere!

Other users new to the project this month include TheBigFish, Socal gal at heart, Coredesat (a Wikipedia veteran and occasional poster to MTR), Duncan1800, User:Ngs61, and User:Jj137. We would like to extend a warm welcome to these new users and encourage the established USRD editors to take the time out to offer help should they need it.
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From the editors
This edition turned out larger than we expected. The next issue should be around the normal size. 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 March 15. 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

 * O (distributor)
 * Rschen7754 (editor)
 * Master son (editor)
 * Mitchazenia (editor)
 * Scott5114 (editor)
 * Imzadi1979 (contributor)
 * Xenon54 (contributor)
 * }