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

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.
Featured story In this issue 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 Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Interstate_355 Interstate_355
State and national updates
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! Rank State FA A GA B Start Stub ω Ω 1 Michigan 0 0 0 51 139 44 930 3.970 2 Connecticut 0 0 0 11 128 16 625 4.032 3 New York 0 0 9 180 209 255 2669 4.087 4 (D.C.) 0 0 0 4 7 6 70 4.118 5 (Alaska) 0 0 0 0 18 4 92 4.182 6 California 1 1 2 44 172 159 1620 4.274 7 Utah 0 0 0 6 24 25 241 4.304 8 New Jersey 1 0 3 39 93 164 1315 4.383 9 North Carolina 0 0 0 6 91 70 732 4.383 10 Oklahoma 0 0 2 23 59 102 819 4.403 States in parenthesis have no project. States listed in italics are task forces. Here are the stats for the national projects. Project FA A GA B Start Stub ω Ω USRD 4 4 31 533 2206 6243 41704 4.623 IH 2 1 9 88 267 219 2446 4.174 US 0 0 3 55 246 218 2245 4.301 Auto trails 0 0 0 3 26 20 213 4.347 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 Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Assessment/States. Congrats to the editors at the ten states above for their hard work! Keep it up!	Project reports 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.
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 York State Route 18 New York State Route 22 WP:USRD/AID is proposed to be changed, see the talk page for info. Article Improvement Drive The current U.S. Roads Article Improvement Drive article is Interstate 96. Last collaboration was: Interstate 79. Join the contest to receive a barnstar!	Deletion debates An archive of all previous debates. Closed At Articles for deletion: 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)
News
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, even though some logically flawed answers were presented in response to USRD users' premises. 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: Wikipedia: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	January 26, 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 Stub end of New York State Route 135 taken by Mitch. 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!
Featured member: Edit Centric Edit Centric (talk) has been a Wikipedia editor since June 11 2006. With nearly 2,000 edits, he has been an important editor in the WP:CASH project, as well as in giving input in various discussions related to USRD, on and off wiki. This editor is enthusiastic about what he does at Wikipedia. Thank you, Edit Centric, 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.	Coming and going This month, we bid a fond farewell to JohnnyAlbert10, who announced on IRC that he will, at least temporarily, be retiring from Wikipedia in order to focus on his studies and new job. Johnny was a frequent contributor to WP:PASH and his contributions will be missed. However, an old hand to USRD, Northenglish, has returned to edit again. Northenglish has already contributed to several discussions throughout the project since his return. North's states of interest were Washington and New Jersey. Other users new to the project this month include sf46, Alexfusco5, ClarkCT, Rocketmaniac, Taliesin Duomo, thomprod, Trulystand700, Standard Writer, Taraden Roads, Panicaddiction, and Juliancolton. We would like to extend a warm welcome to these new users and encourage older users to take the time out to offer help should they need it.
From the editors We expect that the next issue will be more of a normal issue; this issue was written to prevent too long of an interval from going by between newsletters. 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!	Contributors to this issue Mitchazenia (editor, distributor) Rschen7754 (editor) Master son (contributor) NASCAR Fan24 (contributor) Scott5114 (contributor)

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