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Wikipedia:WikiProject United States/Newsletter/July 2011

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The WikiProject United States Newsletter
July 2011

Scope and Mission of WikiProject United States

Welcome to WikiProject United States on the English Wikipedia! We are a project dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of topics related to the United States, with an emphasis on subjects with regional and national significance. This project was formed to coordinate the development of United States related articles and help maintain the United States Portal. Some project goals are to help list and categorize United States related articles, develop quality standards for articles and build templates that help users browse the articles that fall under this project. This project also provides a place for Wikipedians to share information and resources regarding improvements to United States related articles. Here, editors can ask for help with certain articles and bring otherwise overlooked articles and problems, to the attention of other editors. For more information of the role of WikiProjects, check out WikiProject guidelines.

Articles of note

This section highlights US related content that has been promoted to Featured Status in the last month:
Note:Articles pertain to one or more of the WikiProjects relating to United States topics but not necessarily WikiProject United States.

New featured articles:

New featured lists:

Project article statistics for June 30, 2011

Current statistics

Golden Gate Bridge at night
Project news

Its been another very busy month and the momentum of the project continues to move us forward.

  • Two more projects have joined the group. WikiProject U.S. Presidents brings more than 350 key articles, approximately 34 of which being GA or better. WikiProject US State Legislatures also joined with 398 articles of which 10 are GA or better.
  • Discussions continue to include several more WikiProjects to the family of supported projects. Some of the current discussions are:
  1. WikiProject Asian Americans - This has been finalized and will be added to the Template and the family in the next few weeks
  2. WikiProject Franco-Americans - This has been finalized and will be added to the Template and the family in the next few weeks
  3. WikiProject American Old West - The discussion is located here.
  4. WikiProject South Carolina - The discussion is located here.
  5. WikiProject West Virginia - The discussion is located here.
  6. WikiProject FBI - The discussion is located here.
  7. WikiProject United States History - The discussion is located here. This has been open for a while and some members of the History project are opposed to it so this one probably will not be added to the supported projects list.
  8. WikiProject presidential elections - The discussion is located here. This has been open for a while and some members of the presidential elections project are opposed to it so this one probably will not be added to the supported projects list.
  • WikiProject Library of Congress was moved from its location on subpages under WikiProject United States to its own location to help increase its visibility. We also merged WikiProject Library of Congress country studies into WikiProject Library of Congress in order to better utilize the information on both projects. The country studies project is currently linked to the Library of Congress project but over the next few weeks the projects will be fully merged.
  • It has been suggested that WikiProject United States start using a B class assessment checklist to better identify which articles need what kind of work. That discussion can be found here
  • As of July 1 2011 WikiProject United States has Exceeded 100, 000 pieces of content. This includes 9 projects, 624+ Featured items, 61,000+ articles and 20+ portals.
Portals and portal related content
Collaboration
The collaboration for July 2011 is the United States dollar

Last month we had a very successful improvement to the United States Bill of Rights article. Although we didn't achieve our goal of getting the article to meet GA requirements we made a lot of improvements to the articles.

The goal for July is to improve the article for the United States dollar. This article needs a lot of work including expansion, citations, structure, grammar and general cleanup.

There are currently three collaboration candidates for August:

  1. Historiography of the United States (if not selected it will be removed for August so this is its last chance)
  2. Democratic Party (United States) - Currently has four votes so if things stay the way they are it will be the next collaboration.
  3. Hope Diamond - Currently only has 2 votes.

Some other possibilities for future collaborations are: Camp David, White House, The Star-Spangled Banner, Space Shuttle program, Charles Lindbergh, United States Postal Service, Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Great Depression in the United States.

If one of these sounds like a good candidate feel free to add it to the list of candidates.

Future improvements
  • Adding infoboxes to the articles that need them
  • Assessing the articles that need it
  • Adding the articles that are still missing
  • A major redesign of the newsletter which will make it easier to update, make it more attractive and leave a smaller footprint on the talk pages

If any of these sound interesting to you please feel free to help out.

Got a suggestion? A correction? Something you'd like to see included in a future issue? Drop a note at the Tip Line with your ideas!

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