Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Newsletter/Newsroom/Issue3-1

Issue 1 (04/2010)
Publication deadline: 12 PM Pacific-3 PM Eastern on April.

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Introduction

 * Editor:

US Roads Portal celebrates April Fool's Day

 * Editor: Imzadi1979

File:PUSRD-AFD.png Please format image as appropriate for newsletter.

For the third year in a row, the U.S. Roads Portal celebrated April Fool's Day with a special edition. The selected article and the photo for the day are included in this issue of the newsletter, but the other sections were included on the revamp, in case you missed it. The into section sported different route marker shields for the day, including those for I-H1 and I-H201 in Hawaii. The "state highways" featured were Guam Highway 1 and District of Columbia Route 295. Additionally, cutout US Highway shields were used for US 2 and US 102, the latter was the first US Highway designation to be retired in the US.

There were 5 special "Did you know?" selections made for the portal, some of which appeared on the portal before, in more serious forms. The News section was temporarily replace with a "On this day" section, which summarized some actual events involving highways in the US on past April Fool's Days. Alternate photos were used for the links to other portals, including an AMC Gremlin, which was introduced to the North American market 40 years ago on April 1, 1970.

In other portal-related news, a portal peer review was recently opened to gain feedback. The goal is to nominate the US Roads Portal for featured status later this year. WP:NYSR members have started Portal:New York Roads as a supplement to their project. The participation of those who helped to make this year's special edition a success is greatly appreciated. In the future, please keep nominating articles, photos and DYK hooks at the main or New York portals.

Feature 2 (if needed)

 * Editor:

Note: If you suggest a story then you are volunteering to write it, unless someone else decides to do so.

Feature 3 (if needed)

 * Editor:

Note: If you suggest a story then you are volunteering to write it, unless someone else decides to do so.

Project news

 * Editor:

Be sure to look through Article Alerts and WT:USRD.

State updates
Write the updates below. If signatures are present, remove them before adding to the newsletter.

A lot has changed since the newsletter was retired nearly a year and a half ago. Article improvement has continued, tripling the number of GAs, to 34 now. Two more FAs have been promoted and there is a net increase of one more A-Class article. On the bottom end of the assessment scale, the stubs have been expanded, the start-class has been reduced to an eighth of the count from the last newsletter. Additionally, there is a featured list and a featured topic that have been created since the last newsletter.
 * MSHP

Since the last edition of the newsletter 1 1/2 years ago, the Roads in Maryland WikiProject (MDRD) has seen its recognized content increase significantly, from a single Featured Article to three, as well as an A-class article and 17 Good Articles. On the other end of the assessment scale, Maryland still has over 200 stubs among its roads articles, but the number of stubs has decreased by 20% in the last three months. Most of the vanquished stubs have been improved into B- and C-class articles.
 * MDRD

More recent happenings include a reorganization of Maryland's route lists and establishment of a plan to retire the minor routes list. The reorganization of the lists, which was completed at the end of March, includes a new top level summary page for the overall highway system, the splitting of Interstates and U.S. Highways into separate lists, and the division of the Maryland state highways into multiple lists to cut down on file size. Retiring the minor routes list is a long-term project involving splitting out state highways that can support their own articles and combining those highways that cannot stand alone with related highways, with a goal of obviating the list to no longer raise the question "what is a minor route?"

Leaderboard and stub count

 * Editor: Scott5114

Selected article/picture from portal
Just make sure this is substituted before publication.

This month in USRD history

 * Editor: Rschen7754