Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Newsletter/Newsroom/Issue3-3

Issue 3 (Fall 2010)
Publication deadline: 12 PM Pacific-3 PM Eastern on October 15, 2010.

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Introduction

 * Editor:

Reviews needed at ACR

 * Editor: Dough4872

In recent months, our A-class review page at WP:USRD/ACR has been relatively inactive. The page currently has three articles awaiting reviews, U.S. Route 30 in Iowa by Fredddie, U.S. Route 113 by Viridiscalculus, and M-6 (Michigan highway) by Imzadi1979. US 30 in IA has been at ACR since July 17, US 113 has been open since September 16, and M-6 has been there since October 19. As of October 19, U.S. Route 30 in Iowa has been looked at by three editors, with no supports at this time, while U.S. Route 113 has been supported by one editor and reviewed by another and M-6 has been reviewed by one editor. These editors would appreciate their articles to be looked upon and critiqued by other USRD editors in order to be promoted to A-class. In addition, if you feel a B-class or GA-class article meets the A-class criteria, feel free to nominate it at ACR.

Featured Article, eh?

 * Editor: Imzadi1979

Congratulations are in order to our northern neighbours for the first Featured Article for the Canadian Roads WikiProject. On September 24, 2010, Don Valley Parkway was promoted by SandyGeorgia. The article was nominated by Floydian with assistance by Alaney2k throughout the FAC process.

The DVP, as it is sometimes called, is an expressway maintained by the city of Toronto that runs for 15.0 km with a maximum speed limit of 90 km/h. The parkway was proposed in 1954 and opened between August 31, 1961 and November 17, 1966. Some locals affectionately nickname the road the "Don Valley Parking Lot" because it is constantly congested with traffic.

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.

Back in March, all Delaware road articles were completely destubbed through the addition of route descriptions and major intersections tables. Since then, progress has begun on destarting Delaware road articles by improving them to B-class quality. This effort has been achieved by adding history sections to existing articles, which already contain a route description and major intersections table. As of October 19, Delaware currently has 24 start class articles remaining, which is about half the number when the destarting process began. A special thanks to Viridiscalculus for locating the DelDOT historical map archive for use in the history sections. —Dough4872
 * Delaware

The retirement of the minor routes list was accomplished at the beginning of August when all remaining highways in the list were moved to the List of state highways in Maryland shorter than one mile. While there are still about ten stubs remaining under the aegis of this project, there are no numbered state highways among those stubs, so their elimination can be considered low priority. The effort to de-start all articles is now in full swing after a lull during the summer. As a result, Maryland now has more B-class articles than C-class articles, and the B-class total is expected to surpass the Start-class total by the end of the year. The Resources section of the WikiProject front page was reorganized, with subpages created for three different sets of resources: highway location reference documents, official state highway maps, and State Roads Commission reports. With the discovery of the set of state highway maps at the Maryland State Archives website, the sections of the timeline for which there are no resources are much smaller, allowing improved history within articles. —Viridiscalculus
 * Maryland

As detailed to the left, Michigan has seen some improvement over the last quarter. The last Start-Class articles were expanded by September 15, meaning that all MI articles have each of the "Big Three" sections. M-117 (Michigan highway) was the article expansion that pushed the state to 3.000, and the passing of M-20 (Michigan highway) to GA status cracked the mythical barrier on September 30. —Imzadi1979
 * Michigan

In September, all remaining Minnesota highway stubs were expanded, except for a number of very short roads that were merged into List of Minnesota state highways serving state institutions, which covers state highways that are mostly driveways and short loops serving state hospitals, prisons, and other facilities. The effort to get Start-class articles expanded to C or beyond has begun, and in the past month the articles for highways 1 through 50 have been done. Most of the higher-numbered highways are shorter and thus easier to create junction lists for, so by the end of the year the number of Start-class articles should be quite small. Thanks goes to Imzadi1979 for finding electronic copies of official state highway maps from 1940 and earlier, which will make referencing history sections easier. —Sable232
 * Minnesota

Leaderboard and stub count

 * Editor: Fredddie

This summer, our editors continued to make great improvements to the encyclopedia. In the top ten, one state broke the mythical 3.0 barrier, while the most of the other states traded places. Let's look at the stats as of October 22, 2010!

States in italics are task forces. Unlinked states have no project.

Michigan was able to break 3.0, which means the average article in that state's project is a B-class article, by adding nine good articles and improving an A-class article, Capitol Loop, to featured article status. By reducing the number of Start-class articles, Delaware jumped ahead four spots while Maryland and Iowa jumped ahead one spot. Interestingly, Arizona, Connecticut, and Colorado were static for the quarter, yet they each dropped two spots in the top ten. Check out WP:USRD/A/S for current stats, updated daily.

Let's check out the project as a whole.

Over the summer, we improved 33 Stub-class articles, which puts us closer to our goal of eliminating 3000 stubs before December 31, 2010. Unfortunately, we still have 1909 stubs to improve to reach our goal of 2967. With only 70 days left in the year, we have to eliminate 28 stubs per day to reach our goal. It's possible to accomplish this feat, but we will need an even bigger push from everybody to get it done!

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