Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Newsletter/Newsroom/Issue5-3

Issue 3 (Summer 2012)

Publication deadline: 12 PM Pacific-3 PM Eastern on July 15.

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Introduction

Editor:

Feature 1: U.S. Roads Project Goes to Wikimania

Editor(s): Mitchazenia, Daniel Case, Viridiscalculus

Wikimania 2012 occurred from July 9–July 16 in Washington, D.C.. The U.S. Roads WikiProject was represented by three members, Mitchazenia, Daniel Case and Viridiscalculus, all of whom invested time in different topics discussed at Wikimania.

Several presentations were of interest to USRD editors. Eternal December: How Awful Arguments Are Killing the Wiki, and Why not to Make Them, originally scheduled as a presentation by Oliver Keyes (better known as User:Okeyes (WMF) or Ironholds), Community Liaison for Product Development for the Foundation, became a panel discussion about the way the community treats new editors, with Oliver arguing that it must change and Protonk arguing the other side, that the community has good reason for doing so. Noted inclusionist David Goodman (User:DGG) delivered a critique of the notability policy, concluding that it is ultimately arbitrary and suggesting a "Wikipedia Two" that could be used for articles that do not meet the existing guidelines. On the technical side, other presentations discussed further integration with OpenStreetMap and building a chat feature into MediaWiki.

Benoît Evellin (User:Trizek) and Erik Möller gave presentations about building infrastructure that is more welcoming for newcomers. In Benoit's case, it was creating more welcoming introduction and help pages in the French Wikipedia, ideas that can be imitated or re-fashioned for the English Wikipedia as a whole or for individual projects so everyone's grandmother—a stereotypical example of a non-tech-savvy person—can participate. Erik argued that Wikipedia has a lousy interface compared to Facebook, and would be more welcoming if its interface was more like that of Facebook. Brandon Harris (User:Jorm) followed up on Erik's presentation by demonstrating some features of the Athena Project, many of which could make Wikipedia a less intimidating environment for newcomers and possibly more convenient for established members.

There were several breakout sessions that touched on photography and how to encourage newcomers to either take pictures or edit. Peter Ekman (User:Smallbones) presented on his project, WikiProject National Register of Historic Places, and offered tips on taking photographs and directing newcomers to the topic or labor areas where help is needed. Petr Brož (User:Chmee2) talked about drawing newcomers, in particular university students, into the Czech WikiProject Protected Areas by offering newcomers chances to go on road trips to observe and record, through pictures or video, the plants and animals of a region. Finally, Olaf Kosinsky (User:Olaf Kosinsky) described his effort in the German Wikipedia whereby he arranged professional photography sessions with members of the German state legislatures, with the stipulation that the photos be of the appropriate licenses to populate Wikipedia articles.

In summary, there were many sessions concerning overall themes that we can apply specifically to our project and more specific sessions that pronounced ideas that could serve our project well. Information about Wikimania, including the schedule of and descriptions of presentations, can be found on the conference website. In addition, video of each of the sessions has been uploaded to WikimediaDC's youtube channel. Wikimania 2013 will be held in Hong Kong, making it a long shot that any USRD folks will make it two in a row for Wikimania.

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

4M article run

Editor: Rs chen 7754

Early in the morning on July 13, 2012, similar to our attempts to create the 2 millionth Wikipedia article, Floydian and I attempted to create the 4 millionth article. While we were unsuccessful, Idaho State Highway 48 was mentioned in the press release, and our efforts were mentioned on Wikipedia:Thanks for 4 million articles.

Below is a list of articles created in this endeavor:

Michigan reaches milestone

Editor: Dough4872

In the improvement of USRD articles, many states have seen their wikiwork fall lower and lower. One of these states has been Michigan, which has the lowest wikiwork in the country. This summer, Michigan reached a new milestone. On August 9, H-58 (Michigan county highway) was promoted to A-class, bringing the state's wikiwork to the 2.000 mark. A day later, U.S. Route 41 Business (Marquette, Michigan) was promoted to FA, bringing Michigan's wikiwork below 2.0 to 1.995. This made Michigan the first state in the project to have a wikiwork below 2.000. A special thanks to Imzadi1979 for improving Michigan's articles.

Project news

Editor:

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

State and territory updates

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

Alaska

Alaska has gotten it's first two good articles, the Hope Highway, and the Portage Glacier Highway. Portage Glacier Highway failed an A-class review, and List of Interstate Highways in Alaska failed a featured list nomination due to size. Alaska's wikiwork has fallen below 5.000 to 4.935.—Awardgive

California

California is now 11th in the nation in article quality, passing up Connecticut. Recently, several California articles have been converted to templates, with the help of Happy5214 (talk · contribs) and PhATxPnOY916 (talk · contribs). Quite a few CA articles have also become good articles, including California State Route 55, California State Route 70, California State Route 188, California State Route 198, California State Route 282, and California State Route 266. CA is now at 4.166 in relative WikiWork. All California GAs now have an attached KML file. —Rschen7754

Delaware

With the 2012 June-July GAN Review Round, Delaware has seen a rapid increase in good articles. Since the last newsletter, the number of good articles has more than tripled from 14 to 53 while the wikiwork has fallen from 2.857 to 2.210. However, one of the new GAs, Delaware Route 17, was subject to a GAR and an AFD with concerns over the quality and notability of the article. It was able to survive both venues. —Dough4872

Georgia

Georgia was one of three states in the Southeast, with North Carolina and South Carolina, that saw small improvements thanks to discovery and application of GIS data for those states. Georgia's data is accessed via a Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) application called GeoTRAQS that provides a variety of data on segments of highway throughout the state in a map-like format, including running totals of mileage for particular segments of highway and the total length of a highway in a county. The GDOT website also contains a near comprehensive set of state highway maps. These resources were enough for Georgia to gain its first highway Good Article: User:Viridiscalculus worked on and nominated Georgia State Route 40 and the article passed on June 29.—Viridiscalculus

Guam

An often overlooked component of the the USRD project is the content that belongs to the various US territories in the Pacific and Caribbean. As a part of the GA by number contest sponsored by Dough4872 (talk · contribs), Guam Highway 1 was advanced to GA status on April 20, 2012. This was the first Good Article for USRD in a territory, building on work initiated by Stratosphere (talk · contribs) in 2008. Since then, all existing articles have had their junction lists transitioned to the updated MOS:RJL formatting through the use of {{GUint}}, although there are still nine redlinks on the list of highways for the island territory.—Imzadi1979

Louisiana

One of the goals being made is to create articles for the first 98 state highways created in 1921. I have a list going on, but the largest article is over at LA 1, a remnant of the Jefferson Highway. All highways that are being created are from before 1955, with their own custom shield. Any helpful photos or historical notes can be added, as I want these articles to be a true reference point for historians. Maps and route descriptions will be added, and the 98 should be completed by the end of July.—Mcdonaat

Missouri

While it's still a way down the leaderboard, Missouri is starting a long journey upward. With the discovery of MoDOT's Flex Map Viewer, we are now able to list lengths and create junction lists for every route to three decimal places. With MoDOT's extensive historic map collection, Missouri should be in the top half on USRD before long.—Fredddie

Montana

Montana recent received its first good article, Montana Highway 48. With the help of the Montana Road Log, which allows you to access route junctions up to three decimal points, and allows you to see construction and reconstruction dates for highways, Montana should be on it's way soon.—Awardgive

North Dakota

North Dakota only has 37 articles and none are above C-Class, but the state's articles have seen much improvement in the past month with many Stub-Class and Start-Class articles being upgraded in the "Big Three" sections. If a reliable source for North Dakota's articles can be found, North Dakota should see its first GA in the near future.—Thecatchernumbersevenjooooemauer

Oklahoma

During our anti-stub drive last year, many states were able to reduce their stub count all the way to zero. Oklahoma was not one of those states, however, so stub expansion continues to this day. At time of writing, Oklahoma has 28 stubs remaining. It is anticipated that the stub count will further drop to 25 or lower during September. Oklahoma tends to expand stubs slower than other states because expansions are usually done from stub to B in one fell swoop (rather than just expanding to Start as is often done elsewhere, and gradually expanding on to higher classes later). Aside from stub expansion, there's still lots to do in Oklahoma—many articles need to be updated to use more reliable sources, and ten U.S. highways that pass through the state do not yet have state-detail articles. Look for U.S. Route 60 in Oklahoma to become the newest article from this set soon.

Texas

Maple syrup report

Editor: Floydian

As Canadians head to the cottage for the summer, gradual progress has been made at keeping the project-wide stub count below 1000. The project briefly dropped below this milestone, but rose to 1002 during the 4 millionth article drive. Hogie75 has been busily creating New Brunswick secondary highway articles, filling a large gap of missing coverage. In Ontario, work has progressed to get all fourteen 400-series highway and the QEW up to a minimum threshold of a GA - only Highway 407 and the Queen Elizabeth Way remain below that standard. The project wide wikiwork sits at 5.472; Ontario leads the charge at 3.827, placing it between Iowa and Washington on the south side of the border.

Leaderboard and stub count

Editor: Fredddie

This is a list of the top ten states by average WikiWork as of August 28, 2012:

Rank	State	FA	A	GA	B	C	Start	Stub	ω	Ω
1	Michigan	11	5	176	16	5	0	0	425	1.995
2	Delaware	1	0	53	1	7	0	0	137	2.210
3	New York	12	2	164	274	170	57	1	2123	3.122
4	New Jersey	1	2	105	43	19	83	0	832	3.289
5	Maryland	4	1	50	263	72	85	0	1603	3.375
6	Utah	4	2	12	63	125	19	2	822	3.621
7	Arizona	1	0	12	18	46	21	0	367	3.745
8	Iowa	1	0	16	9	91	14	0	493	3.763
9	Washington	0	3	37	42	52	52	25	821	3.891
10	Minnesota	0	0	3	5	198	13	0	878	4.009

There was no vertical movement in the top ten since the last issue. However many states lowered their average WikiWork. For complete statistics, updated daily, check out WP:USRD/A/S. Now, here is a look at the project as a whole.

Project	FA	A	GA	B	C	Start	Stub	ω	Ω
USRD	42	21	777	1019	2349	4080	2474	49272	4.578
IH	8	4	47	39	206	227	24	2318	4.177
USH	10	2	49	34	170	291	38	2565	4.318
Auto trail	7	0	3	0	9	29	9	241	4.228

Since the last newsletter, two new featured articles – U.S. Route 41 Business (Marquette, Michigan) and California State Route 57 – and 144 new good articles were promoted.

Selected article/picture from portal

Just make sure this is substituted before publication.

U.S. Route 20 (US 20) in Indiana is a main east–west highway that is parallel to the Indiana Toll Road. The western terminus of US 20 is at the Illinois state line and the eastern terminus is at the Ohio state line. US 20 through Whiting, East Chicago, and Gary is concurrent with US 12 twice. The route varies between one-way, two-lane, and four-lane streets, in northwestern Indiana. East of Gary to Michigan City, the road is a two-lane highway. From Michigan City to west of South Bend, US 20 is a four-lane undivided highway. The route then heads around the west and south sides of South Bend and Elkhart. East of Elkhart County Road 17 (CR 17), US 20 is two-lane rural highway.

US 20 was part of the Dunes Highway from the Illinois state line to Michigan City, concurrent with US 12. The Dunes Highway started being paved in 1922. The section of the highway, that is known as Lincoln Way as part of the 1913 section of the Lincoln Highway. Indiana State Highway Commission, later renamed Indiana Deportment of Transportation, began signing US 20 in 1926. US 20 went through downtown South Bend and Elkhart before the St. Joseph Valley Parkway was built. Before the parkway was completed, the route that was open to traffic was called Bypass US 20. A small realignment in LaGrange County was done in 2005, in which the roadway was straightened. Other small realignments included the route through Michigan City, which followed US 35 from US 12 to I-94.

Recently selected: Interstate 680 • High Five Interchange • Florida State Road 404

State Route 103 (SR-103) is a 0.225-mile-long (0.362 km) urban minor arterial state highway in the U.S. state of Utah. It branches off from SR-126 in downtown Clearfield and extends east to Interstate 15 (I-15), terminating at Hill Air Force Base. The entire route is located in Davis County and was formed in 1965 coinciding with the construction of I-15. The eastern terminus has changed hands in the same location several times since its designation, and the route was eventually given the moniker of 650 North in 1979. SR-103 is one of four Utah state highways that connect to Hill Air Force Base, the others being SR-97, SR-168 and SR-232, and has the second lowest average daily traffic, higher only than SR-168.

Recently selected: U.S. Route 20 in Indiana • Interstate 680 • High Five Interchange

Guam Highway 1 (GH-1), also known as Marine Corps Drive, is one of the primary automobile routes in the United States territory of Guam. It runs in a southwest-to-northeast direction, from the main gate of Naval Base Guam in the western community of Santa Rita in a general northeasterly direction to the main gate of Andersen Air Force Base in the community of Yigo. It passes through Guam's capital, Hagåtña, as well as intersecting various other territorial highways. Along its route, the highway runs through tropical forest areas, urbanized commercial areas, and residential neighborhoods. The US Military built the road starting in 1941. Construction ceased with the Japanese invasion in December 1941 and resumed in 1944. The highway was formally dedicated to the US Marines by the territorial governor in 2004.

Recently selected: Utah State Route 103 • U.S. Route 20 in Indiana • Interstate 680