Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Newsletter/Issues/Volume02/Issue03

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Introduction
The Arbitration case is in the voting stage.

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.

In this issue
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 * Featured story
 * Featured story

Scope debate causes issues
USRD has seen marathon discussions about neologisms, exit lists and now this month it came the turn of Project Scope. As a result of the still ongoing case at ArbCom, it was suggested to discuss changing the project scope ready for when any sanctions had been finalized and finished with. The first suggestion was by Imzadi1979, which as summed up by Scott5114 was “the sum of all its subprojects.” At first this idea seemed to go down well with members but the problem of how WikiProject U.S. Streets would fit into this new scope soon became apparent. Suggestions to solve this problem included having USST become a subproject of USRD, leaving state projects decide whether they wish to include streets and having overlap between USRD and USST. Polls, compromises and not even informal mediation from User:Kirill_Lokshin, an arbitrator, managed to help the situation as people had different opinions with different issues and no common ground could be reached. In the end Rschen7754 suggested that for the mean time, this issue be left to settle and dealt with at a later date. This issue will surely come up again in the future but we shall all have to wait and see if the outcome is any better.

Sources: USRD Talk Page, Archive 12


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 * State and national updates
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Leaderboard
For the first time in a while, our leaderboard has a lot of the same states as last month. A few states have even managed to hang on to the same position for a month. Michigan, of course, is still #1 with their ridiculous Ω of 3.590, Alaska is still #5, and New Jersey is hanging onto the 8 spot. A few states have swapped places, too. Connecticut and New York flip-flopped, with New York reclaiming second place and Connecticut moving down to third. California and Oklahoma also switched places, with California falling to 10th and Oklahoma taking CA's spot at sixth.

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 March 16, 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

Starting this month, we'll also take a look at the stats for territories, commonwealths, and districts:

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
A few articles have been moved to GA. However, some starts were demoted to stubs, although the new assessment criteria will improve CA's standing nationwide.

WP:CTSH
Connecticut Route 190 became the state's first good article, which was promoted on February 27, after 38 days at WP:GAN. SVG shields have also been created and incorporated in the state highway articles thanks to Mr. Matté. Articles for all current, signed routes have now been created.

WP:KSSH
Kansas Turnpike, the project's only FA, is up for nomination as April 7's Today's Featured Article.

WP:MSHP
M-35 (Michigan highway) became the project's first good article passing on 2008-02-27 with M-28 (Michigan highway) passing hours later on 2008-02-28. M-28 passed through its A-Class Review to become Michigan's first A-Class highway article on 2008-03-02. The MSHP wikiwork has dropped from 929 to 792 since the last newsletter update. Thanks to all project editors for their continued hard work. MSHP has one article pending at ACR and only 4 stub articles remaining at press time.

WP:NJSCR
Palisades Interstate Parkway is at Good article nominees. After a recent improvement drive by Users Mitchazenia, Keiryn and Juliancolton, the project has reached 40 B-class articles.

WP:NVSH
There is one Good Article nominee for NV, U.S. Route 50 in Nevada, which, if passed, would be the state's first GA.

WP:NYSR
The NYSR Article Improvement Drive continues to deliver results as a total of nine articles have now been improved through the collaboration since its inception in late November 2007. The current collaboration at press time is New York State Route 394. In other news, New York State Route 22, the first AID collaboration, became the first A-Class article produced by NYSR after being promoted through the A-Class review process. New York State Route 174 also became A-class on March 21. Also, Vermont Route 17, which is included in NYSR since it covers unsigned NY 910L, became a Good Article on March 16.

WP:OKSH
OKSH's county-by-county drive has continued, and the first county is nearly complete: Adair County (ODOT County #1) has had all four of its existing articles expanded to B-Class, and is awaiting the creation of U.S. Route 59 in Oklahoma (which is progressing through a collaboration of Scott5114 and Mitch) for the county to be considered completed. The next county to be targeted will be Alfalfa County (#2), which currently has 2 B, 3 Start, no stubs, and one unwritten article. Also, earlier this week, Oklahoma dipped below 100 stubs for the second time in project history.

WP:TXSH
List of Interstate Highways in Texas became not just the projects first featured list, but USRD's as well on March 6. Texas State Highway 151 became the project's first Good Article passing on February 29. In addition, Interstate 37 has been nominated for Good Article status. This is part of an overall quality drive by the project to improve its articles.

WP:UTSH
Interstate 70 in Utah is at USRD's A-class review and Utah State Route 128 is at Good article nominees.

WP:VTSH
Vermont Route 17 became the project's first Good Article on March 16.

WP:WASH
Interstate 5 in Washington is at peer review after failing its Good Article nomination.


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Project news

 * Nominations and votes are needed for April'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 is proposed for demotion.
 * There are only 50 articles above Good Article status within the scope of WikiProject U.S. Roads, only 0.54% of all assessed articles. Meanwhile, there are about 6200 stubs - almost three-quarters of all assessed articles. Please help improve the articles!
 * The following articles are currently being peer-reviewed at WP:HWY/PR:
 * M-28 (Michigan highway)
 * List of numbered highways in Tennessee
 * Pennsylvania Route 73
 * Interstate 70 in Utah
 * Utah State Route 128
 * U.S. Route 491
 * The Article Improvement Drive has been shut down.


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Deletion debates

 * An archive of all previous debates.


 * Redirects for discussion
 * Riverside Drive (San Bernardino, California) → California State Route 60 was deleted. (discussion)


 * Templates for deletion
 * Template:CAFES and Template:CAScenic were both deleted.


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 * News
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A-class review sets new rule

 * By Imzadi1979

USRD's A-Class Review process has received an update. As discussed at the ACR talk page, promotion to A-Class will now require 4 net support votes. This includes the article's nominator. The idea behind the change was to require sufficient reviews of each nominated article. As before, any editor is welcome, and even encouraged, to participate in the reviews. Currently Interstate 70 in Utah and M-35 (Michigan highway) are up for review.


 * Source: ACR talk page


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Three editors get triple crown award

 * By Imzadi1979

We would like to congratulate WikiPedia and USRD's newest Triple Crown recipients. Today just before press time, TCs were bestowed on Mitchazenia, NE2 and Holderca1. A TC is awarded to an editor who is credited with a DYK, GA and and some kind of feature content like a feature article or feature list. These three editors give USRD 4 TCs in total, joining Scott5114. If a fifth editor from USRD earns one, USRD as a project will be eligible to receive a special project Triple Crown. Congratulations to all the editors on a job well done!


 * Source: WP:CROWN


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Featured member: Stratosphere
 Strato | sphere has been a Wikipedia editor since 2005-11-02. He is the founder of Michigan state highways, instrumental at the Maps Task Force and has over 3000 edits. He has been instrumental in the article-improvement drive at MSHP, most recently updating the former trunkline articles and expanding them to B-Class. He is USRD's cartographer extraordinaire creating many of the maps for the roads articles, including all of Michigan's maps. He has also participated on IRC with article reassessments in other state projects.

Thank you, Stratosphere, 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
There has not been any editors leaving the project; however, this issue's festured editor, Stratosphere, has cut back on his work for wiki for the time being. On another note, we have 5 new members. These include AKleinberg (Oregon), LochNess (California), nksports (Kansas), and Caponer (the Virginias). 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
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 April 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

 * Imzadi1979 (editor)
 * Mitchazenia (editor)
 * Scott5114 (editor)
 * TwinsMetsFan (editor)
 * Master son (contributor)
 * Polaron (contributor)
 * Rschen7754 (contributor)
 * Seddon69 (contributor)
 * Xenon54 (contributor)
 * }