Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Newsletter/Newsroom/Issue13

Issue 13 (09/15/2007)
Publication deadline: 12 PM Pacific-3 PM Eastern on September 15.

Feature 1
Project Page Redesign -  master son T - C 21:02, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Feature 2
2Mth article attempt --Rschen7754 (T C) 20:24, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Feature 3
Bannered article merges --Rschen7754 (T C) 02:50, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Polaron

 * The following is an archived roads featured member nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page, on WT:USRD, or another applicable discussion page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the featured member nomination was pretty obvious. —O (说 • 喝) 02:58, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Great user, has helped out with assessment backlogs and NY historical info. --Rschen7754 (T C) 20:31, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
 * 110% support. -- T M F Let's Go Mets - Stats 18:16, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
 * support --  J A 10  Talk • Contribs 23:19, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
 * The above is an archived roads featured member nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page, on WT:USRD, or another applicable discussion page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

Quality first: WikiWork, stubs, and improvement of the project

 * Personal essay by User:Scott5114

As Wikipedia passes the two million mark, there has been sitewide reflection on what this milestone really means to Wikipedia. Many people have realized that Wikipedia shouldn't necessarily be proud of that achievement; Wikipedia is composed of a great deal of stubs, poorly written articles, unreferenced articles, and other chaff. An analysis by User:Eagle 101 shows that only 3% of Wikipedia articles exceed the simple criteria of ten sentences and three references. This has led to a period of deletionism: fix it up or get it out. Unfortunately, USRD is a frequent target of such attempts, due to the fact that we have such a broad number of articles and that many simply don't consider having articles on all state highways the best course of action (which is a gross understatement).

Fortunately, USRD has been developing assessment tools to see how the project is faring compared to the rest of Wikipedia. Called the WikiWork statistics, these stats break down the data from the WP:1.0 class system used by most WikiProjects. The first statistic listed there is the WikiWork statistic itself, also referred to as ω. ω is obtained through a spreadsheet of the quality data combined with a formula shown on the WikiWork page. What it tells us is the number of classes we are off from the ideal status: that is, all articles being featured. At the time of writing, ω is somewhere around 42,100 (an exact measurement isn't available at the moment because of the delay between WP:1.0 bot updates).

ω gives a good idea of the magnitude of the work that's out there to be done, but it isn't terribly helpful because there are simply articles that cannot be brought up to featured article status, i.e. permastubs that can't be expanded no matter how you try. Also, if a new article is added that isn't a featured article, the number will inevitably go up. This means that we will never see $$\omega=0$$. What the metric does help with is seeing where we are in general. The relative ω statistic, or Ω, is ω divided by the number of articles. Ω is important because it can be directly compared with the Ω of other projects. USRD has many more articles than, say, the hurricane WikiProject, and its ω will be correspondingly bigger, but Ω is directly comparable for both projects. Ω is also important because it gives us an idea of the average article's status. If $$\Omega=5$$, the average article is a stub; if $$\Omega=4$$ then the average article is start-class, and so on up to the mythical 0, where all articles are featured and we can redirect our efforts into something else, like signing up for AARP and getting those sweet sweet Social Security checks.

So let's take a look at the current Ω. At the time of writing, $$\Omega_{usrd}=4.68$$. That means, more or less, that the average article is somewhere between stub and start class. Doesn't look too good for USRD! However, if we take a look at Wikipedia as a whole, we see that $$\Omega_{wikipedia}=4.62$$ - not that much better than us. That doesn't mean we should be satisfied, however. We have the resources to bring that value closer to 4, and maybe beyond. Let's take a look at WikiProject Tropical cyclones and their statistics, where we find that they have 53 featured articles(!) and a corresponding figure of $$\Omega_{trop}=3.50$$! Their average article is halfway between start and B class - a range a whole class higher than ours!

Can we bring our statistics up to match WP:TROP? In theory, it's possible. We do have a large number of sparse states still missing most of their articles. Unfortunately, the tendency is to "write an article" consisting of "Montana State Route 0 runs from Thereville to Here City and is a hundred miles long" and slap an infobox on and call it good. Especially for routes longer than about thirty miles, the potential is there for a great article! And for editors who care about the general state of the project, adding such articles is detrimental, especially if someone from outside the project runs across it and thinks wow, those highway articles are crappy.

Now is a time in the evolution of our project that we need to stop writing new articles, but rather back up and work on expanding and improving the articles we already have. If WP:TROP can write fifty-three featured articles, why can't we?