Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Archive 19

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IRC

I tried to join IRC and I got a notification that said "This channel requires that you have registered and identified yourself with the network's nickname registration services (e.g. NickServ). Please see the documentation of this network's nickname registration services that should be found in the MOTD (/motd to display it)." What am I supposed to do about it? Dough4872 00:25, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Did you register your nickname with the server? I just checked the channel modes, and nothing's changed that would/should prevent you from getting in. Imzadi 1979 → 00:37, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Resolved now. On a side note, User:Master son's registration got dropped, and as alternate owner, I am apparently now the owner. :/ --Rschen7754 21:58, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

National Bridge Inventory

A few months ago, I had an idea to create a template to handle references to the National Bridge Inventory, a Federal Highway Administration database that includes information about every bridge in the United States. The information in the database is conveniently arranged with search capabilities at nationalbridges.com. I am ready to start moving forward with this project, but first I wanted to get some feedback on several issues.

1. The specific data files accessed from search results appear in a pop-up window that only has the data. Example: Golden Gate Bridge. These pop-up windows have a URL that leads only to the data. I know my preference, if I were viewing the data, would be to have the capability to do more searches. There is currently no way to do that with current setup without altering the links. I have played around with the URLs to access a mode that shows the data and the structure of the database access site. The URLs can be cut down to half their full size and be more useful. My question is, should we stay true to the form and only link the URLs of the pop-up boxes, or alter the URLs to make the result more user friendly?
2. How should each individual reference be titled? To me, using the NBI # would seem to be the best way to title them. Using other methods like bridge name or highway intersection seems too subjective and subject to wide variation in the wild. However, not all states seem to use the 15-digit NBI #; some states uses a much shorter number that is a subset of the 15-digit number. There is a pattern to the first several digits, but should we bother trying to apply it for the sake of all references having the 15-digit number?
3. From my investigation, I have not found a correlation between NBI # and the entry number in the nationalbridges.com database. It would make no sense to state the database number in a reference, but it could be helpful to use the entry number in the template.

There are probably other issues to discuss, but I am drawing a blank right now.  VC  17:13, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

I had issues with this when I nominated 2 articles for FA status using nationalbridges.com as a source. Keep in mind this was 2007-8ish and the situation may have changed, however, for the record I'll state the problems I had and you can do whatever.

1. I was criticized as nationalbridges.com is/was accused of being a self published source. My attempts to defend them as taking the official NBI data (which is available from the FWHA's website, but only in raw, cryptic form) and repackaging that data in a more human readable format fell on deaf ears. I was able to get around this by citing the raw NBI data as the first source and having nationalbridges.com mentioned in the reference data as "also available at" with a link to their site. [1] is a sample of where I did this.
2. When nationalbridges.com updated their site with (IIRC) the 2009 NBI data, the data import for many western states failed and the site ceased to work for many western states (Nevada, Utah and Colorado to name 3) and I had to stop using this (otherwise excellent) site for articles in those states. Hopefully that has since been fixed with 2010 and 2011 data imports. (Update, those states appear to be working now with the 2011 data import, however the URL scheme has changed, and the links I put to this site in articles using 2008 data are now broken links)

However to opine on your specific questions, IMO the link should use the official NBI inventory number, not colloquial name, that's what I did. Plus, sticking to the official NBI number as the query guarantees you will get the entry for the correct bridge. It is always theoretically possible that with the 2012 update that the name "Golden Gate" is omitted from the upload of the bridge we all think of as the Golden Gate Bridge and for that year searching for Golden Gate bridge now points to some unnotable bridge over Golden Gate creek in rural Nebraska. However, the NBI inventory number will not likely change. Dave (talk) 19:03, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Thinking more about this I think this is a great idea. Seeing how many times I've used nationalbridges.com as a source, and how many of those links are now broken. Having a template generate the specific URL could reduce article maintenance significantly. As if done right we'd have one template to update when the site updates for the new years NBI data, instead of hundreds of articles to police.

On a personal note, I'm glad to see this site working again for western US states. After the I-35 bridge collapse in Minnesota, most non-roadgeeks learned about the NBI for the first time as this database got significant coverage in the news. I wanted to revise articles to state the post bridge collapse inspections revealed the Colorado river bridge on US-191 was deemed the most endangered bridge in Utah (replaced in 2010, thanks to you generous taxpayers and the stimulus bills) and the Virginia Street Bridge was the most endangered in Nevada (and still is). I had sources for this, but with nationalbridges.com not working for those states, no way to link to the specifics. Now we do. Here's the entry for the Virginia Street Bridge, doesn't this make you want to just park your car on it. =-) [2] Dave (talk) 20:14, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't think Dave's experience is/should be indicative of future results. However, the benefit is that if we have future issues, the template can provide a dual link somehow so that the purists can see the raw NBI files from FHWA or the pretty version. A template also means that if the website is reconfigured again, we can update the URLs to fix links that become broken.

That said, I'd prefer that we title the pages based on the NBI numbers. If there's an official scheme and some states are truncating digits, I say we can either use the full numbers or the shortened numbers as appropriate. For citation purposes, we should be pointing to the exact page/record. It's only when we can't link to a specific result that we don't. (I can't link to a search on the MDOT Physical Reference Finder Application mapping service nor to a results page on the Traffic Management Information Service, so I have to dump people to the main or search page for each site.) our readers and the reviewers at GAN/FAC won't care if the link allows them to search; they will care though if we force them to search for the data because we didn't link to the specific record. Imzadi 1979 → 20:37, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

GAN growth

During 2011, we sent over 120 articles to GAN. During the first six months of 2012, we have sent over 110 articles to GAN. Keep up the good work! --Rschen7754 08:30, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Three more from Michigan this morning, and I know we had another from Delaware get promoted in between them, so we may be close to equallying the 2011 total before the halfway point of 2012. Imzadi 1979 → 17:47, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Spam desired in articles?

Apparently we want to put WP:SPAM in road articles? So if a turnpike plaza has a McDonald's, that should be stated? This is not done elsewhere in Wikipedia, BWTH. Ignore all rules, right? Student7 (talk) 21:59, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

WP:Sofixit Dave (talk) 22:09, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

P.S. Yes it's a problem. However, contrary to your assertion, it's a wikipedia wide problem, not unique to road articles. I don't know how many articles I've read on small towns hoping to learn about the culture and/or history only to read the bulk of the wikipedia article is how excited the town is that with their new shopping center they have a McDonalds/Wall-Mart/whatever, see User:Kelapstick/Kelapstick's Law for some absurd examples that have come along. Dave (talk) 22:09, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

To a degree though, turnpikes/tollways/toll roads are the exception to the rule. No other freeways in the US have direct access from the main lanes to commercial establishments. All others have them off the main highway on adjacent roadways. The level of detail may be debatable, but the omission that the service plazas offer direct turnpike access to certain amenities isn't acceptable either. Imzadi 1979 → 22:37, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. I think its entirely appropriate to mention that service area X has staffed amenities verses service area y which only has vending machines or nothing at all. That is useful information for a long distance traveler. However, listing specific restaurants for individual service plazas has numerous problems, not the least of which is it ensures the article will be obsolete within a matter of a few years. The amenities are concessioned out, and the winning bidder will surely change from time to time. I'm even ok with the article for the Pennsylvania Turnpike mentioning that Sunoco has exclusive contracts for the service area filling stations on the entire turnpike (which the article does mention), although I'd be ok with removing it, for the same reasons. Dave (talk) 22:57, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

The fact that there are services is more important than what companies provide them. –Fredddie™ 23:19, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

And if the article section stated, "The service plazas include fast-food restaurants, such as Subway and S'barro, in addition to gas stations and ..." then that's fine; we don't need an exhaustive list of restaurants. In most cases, mentioning gas stations without brand names still imparts the key information, but omitting restaurant chain names also omits the types of food options. (Gas is gas, but food choices vary based on the provider.) Imzadi 1979 → 23:22, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

But is the type of food served relevant to the article? I'd say no. –Fredddie™ 00:13, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

The problem I see with the sample statement, "The service plazas include fast-food restaurants, such as Subway and S'barro, in addition to gas stations and ..." is it will surely lead to someone putting in a complete list, under the though process of "hey you forgot about xxx". IMO, it's an all or nothing scenario, and I don't see any encyclopedic value in the all. I'll admit there is some value for those following a specific diet for health, religious, moral, etc. reasons; however, that is not the case for a general purpose encyclopedia (i.e. this isn't veganpedia). I initially said that I was ok with mentioning a "system wide" contract; however, the key there is "system wide" contracts. I.E. if you choose to do business with the Pennsylvania Turnpike commission for a trip of longer duration than the capacity of your gas tank, you will be de-facto forced to also do business with Sunoco. Given that logic, I'd prefer the sample statement read something like, "food concessions along the Pennsylvania Turnpike are operated by HMS Host Corporation, which operates a number of franchised chain restaurants along the turnpike." without mentioning specific restaurants. Dave (talk) 00:58, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, on US toll roads, that approach is probably much better. It covers the basics without violating WP:NOTTRAVEL. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:42, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You don't even have to mention they are chain restaurants; franchised should be enough. –Fredddie™ 01:43, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) But if there isn't a single concessionaire, that doesn't work. My point wasn't to be too specific (a list of every option at every plaza is overkill), but a simple listing that gives some detail is appropriate. You get people insisting on too much detail, you remove it and {{trout}} them. There's something nice, linguistically speaking, of giving three examples with a "such as A, B or C" and omitting the rest. The reader's curiosity is satisfied, but they aren't overwhelmed. That said, if it's brand names that's an issue, "A, B or C" becomes "pizza, Chinese and sandwiches". Imzadi 1979 → 01:51, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

In that case how about, "The food and gas suppliers vary from service plaza to service plaza. The single largest food supplier along Imzadi's Turnpike is Fredddie's Chicken Joint, which as operations at 37 service plazas" (Or if you prefer the 3 largest food suppliers) I think its important to specify why anything was singled out was singled out, e.g. volume, historical value, political conflict of interest with the owner, whatever. What I want to avoid is somebody, thinking their hometown has been neglected, to add "But at the Hickville service plaza they have a Quiznos." =-) Dave (talk) 15:41, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Overall, I do not think we need to mention which specific restaurants and gas stations are at a specific service plaza per WP:NOTDIR. The overview of the service plaza section can list a sampling of what specific restaurants and gas stations can be found at service plazas, but do not need to list out every restaurant and every gas station at every service plaza. Dough4872 16:59, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

How about external links? IMO most toll road websites have a page dedicated to plaza services. If we did that, the responsibility for upkeep would be on them, not us, plus we'd get around the problem of listing company names. Mapsax (talk) 13:48, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

If the relevant turnpike authority indeed maintains such a list, that's a great idea. Dave (talk) 00:58, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Just checked IL/IN/OH/PA/NY; they vary between lists for all plazas, individual pages for each plaza, and a mixture of both. Linking to individual pages is probably best from an informational standpoint, but it also sets up a lot of potential linkrot.... Mapsax (talk) 12:03, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Summer 2012 Newsletter

This is a call for submissions to the next issue of the newsletter. Please add anything you want included in the Newsroom.

As a special reminder, to whomever does the leaderboard update for this issue, there is a lag in between the actual counts of articles for each assessment and what is being displayed on the tables. These statistics should probably be double-checked by hand and update manually for the newsletter submission. Imzadi 1979 → 09:14, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Pennsylvania Route 276

Should it have its own page or be a redirect somewhere? I created it just for fun. Tinton5 (talk) 20:55, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Generally, you should not create an article "just for fun". I've been told that this is a hoax; see [3]. --Rschen7754 21:27, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

This kind of hoax wouldn't even be funny on April Fool's Day. :( –Fredddie™ 22:31, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

So, what should we do about it? Tinton5 (talk) 22:44, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

The article will be speedy deleted as blatant hoax, because the dual replacement designations of SR 0994 and SR 0747 makes it impossible to redirect. Mitch32^{(There is a destiny that makes us... family.)} 22:48, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

DOT articles and USRD scope

Did we ever come to any sort of agreement on whether or not the articles on the state departments of transportation, or their equivalents, fall within our scope? I seem to think we had about three possible options:

1. Since DOTs handle multiple modes of transportation in addition to highways, they're better suited for WP:WikiProject Transport and should be retagged;
2. Since they primarily were created by merging additional functions into an existing highway agency, they're still under our scope;
3. Some states have highway-only agencies or toll road authorities that would still be within a highways-only scope, even if other departments are not.

Dealing with Michigan as an example, the Michigan State Highway Department was created in 1905 (Michigan Department of State Highways after 1965), and had the various aviation, marine, rail, public transit and non-motorized transportations functions merged into it in 1973. The new agency was called the Michigan Department of State Highways and Transportation until the name was simplified to its current form in 1978. MDOT celebrated its centennial in 2005, based on the 1905 creation date of its highways-only predecessor. I guess at least in Michigan's case, Michigan State Trunkline Highway System (and its subordinate lists and articles) and List of County-Designated Highways in Michigan (and its subordinate articles) would function as the USRD-specific subarticles to the department. The MDOT article would deal with a summary of those topics in addition to the State Transportation Commission, the Michigan Aeronautics Commission, the Bureau of Aeronautics and Freight Services, the state's Amtrak services, etc. While the largest and most visible function of MDOT is probably the highway system, the article will be touching on planes, trains, boats, and buses too. Especially since we have articles that deal with the highway system itself as a topic, the DOT's history and highway functions are really a summary of the those articles. I'd untag MDOT on the basis that just because Michigan discusses transportation in the state in general as well as listing some highways, we wouldn't tag the state article too. My opinion is that for many states, the same logical would hold as well, especially if there's an article on the highway system, or a main list article that covers it in sufficient detail.

Looking at Category:State departments of transportation of the United States, Maryland State Highway Administration, Massachusetts Highway Department (unless merged into Massachusetts Department of Transportation), and Nebraska Department of Roads; and agencies like the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority in Category:Expressway authorities wouldn't necessarily fall outside of our scope because they're all limited to highway-only functions.

Thoughts? Imzadi 1979 → 11:03, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

My first impression is that they would still come under our scope, because DOTs, even those which handle more than roads, still tend to expend the vast majority of their budget on the highway system. It is certainly possible that the article on Michigan DOT could fall under WikiProject Michigan, MISH/USRD, Transport, and Aerospace or whatever else that DOT handles, and carry all of those tags. I might be persuaded otherwise, though.

If we do end up keeping them under USRD we need to hash out a standard of some kind for what should be in these articles. Oklahoma Department of Transportation needs expansion but I'm not entirely certain what I should put in the article or where to go for sources. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 11:19, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

That's part of the dilemma: we don't have some kind of "formula" or set of expectations and standards on what to cover in a DOT article. Of course, it doesn't help that no two DOTs are that much alike on an organizational of functional level. When it comes to our typical highway articles, we have a pretty well-tested and logical system for covering the panoply of various kinds of roadways from things like M-185, Brockway Mountain Drive, and Maryland Route 36 to Interstate 355 or Interstate 70 in Colorado. The fact that a roadway is only used by bicycles, tourists or it has some mixture of freeway and at-grade designs hasn't necessitated many variations on our "Big Three" formula. Imzadi 1979 → 11:47, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

IIRC, Ohio Department of Transportation was a GA at one point in time - we could take a look there. --Rschen7754 19:59, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

It was, but it has NPOV issues (sanitized against any criticism of the department), gaps in the history, issues of undue coverage, MOS issues, and outdated information. I would not recommend using it as a model article, even if it had GA status at one time. Imzadi 1979 → 23:01, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

I do not think Departments of Transportation should be within the USRD scope as they often cover more than roads. Many DOTs around here, such as DelDOT and PennDOT, also deal with airports, railroads, marine transport, and driver's licenses. WP:TRANSPORT is more suitable for DOTs. Dough4872 00:14, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Of the projects I most work with, this is the only one that has strict limits on what is not in scope for the project. The others tend to have a more laze-fair attitude of, "if it's remotely related to trains/ghost towns/bacon/whatever, we'll take it." By way of comparison, WP:TRAINS accepts articles about train routes, companies, rolling stock, locomotives, depots, tunnels, bridges, mountain passes important to railroads, and towns founded by railroads. In other words, much more liberal scope than this project. I don't agree with how exclusive this project is; but don't dispute that it's the project's prerogative to be exclusive if it so chooses. With that said, given that every article in our project has a link to the DOT in the infobox, IMO it's obvious that the DOT should be in scope. IMO the DOT articles should be a high or top importance article to the project. Dave (talk) 16:56, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

"With that said, given that every article in our project has a link to the DOT in the infobox" except all of the various county roads that fall under our scope aren't maintained by a state DOT and don't link that way. Imzadi 1979 → 17:16, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I still disagree that DOTs should be in our scope just because they have links from road articles. As I mentioned above, DOTs often cover more than just roads. If a DOT was tagged for USRD, it mind as well also be tagged for WP:TRAINS, WP:AIRPORTS, and WP:BUSES. As such, I feel that WP:TRANSPORT is the most appropriate for DOTs as they cover all forms of transportation. Dough4872 17:42, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Attempt at the 4Mth article

Floydian (talk · contribs) and I tried to get the 4Mth article. While unfortunately, that went to another article, Idaho State Highway 48 got mentioned in the press release: [4] --Rschen7754 00:47, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

That is so incredibly nerdy. Well done! –Fredddie™ 03:22, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Talk:M-22 (Michigan highway)

There is a discussion regarding whether the mention of M-22 merchandise is external promotion. Comments would be appreciated. --Rschen7754 08:09, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

A highway with three termini

M-114 had three termini at the time it was decommissioned in the 1940s. Any ideas on how best to display this in the infobox? I'd use the sections, except that the leg along 3 Mile Road was signed the same way as the other two legs along East Beltline Avenue north and south of that intersection when the highway was decommissioned. I'm thinking a simple third terminus, or |terminus_c= with the accompanying |direction_c=West would work. Imzadi 1979 → 04:43, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm aware of a a few other instances where a similar solution could come in handy. Unfortunately the wikipedia articles for these roads are inconsistent in how they handle that scenario. However, I'll throw them out there for possible ideas for a solution.

• Utah State Route 36 - It has 2 southern termini that form a wye connection with each leg of the triangle being ~3-4 miles long. However, it's in a remote portion of the Great Basin desert and isn't really notable. Currently the wikipedia article is silent on the subject, and currently Google maps errantly only shows one of the 2 branches in map view, but the 3rd leg of the wye is visible in the satellite view.
• Nevada State Route 3 - Before decommissioning, this road forked at Carson City with one branch proceeding towards Lake Tahoe and the other Reno. However, this was largely an unsigned designation, as both forks were signed with US Highway designations for most of the route's history. Currently the infobox only shows one of the legs from the fork, the other leg is only mentioned in the route description.
• Interstate 10 in California, with the spur at the East Los Angeles Interchange. Currently the two articles mention the split but IMO the verbiage is confusing. IMHO, the best description for what's going on here is at the article for Unsigned highway.

Dave (talk) 17:32, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

You may also consider putting the leg on 3 Mile Road, or all three legs, into the section parameters. I have a few historic examples myself, ON 72 back in the 30s is the one that comes to mind. The infobox code change is prob ably the best long-term solution though. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 17:39, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

For now, I have the three legs each as a section, but it makes the infobox overly long. They're named "South leg", "West leg" and "North leg", and they each have the split point listed with the overall termini. I think a terminus_c would work better though. Imzadi 1979 → 01:36, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Category renaming

Who supports the creation of Category:New Jersey Turnpike Authority, with subcategories Category:New Jersey Turnpike and create a Category:Garden State Parkway category, since both roads are maintained by the NJTA. This gave me the idea, with Category:Pennsylvania Turnpike currently being discussed for a name change. Tinton5 (talk) 00:15, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

I can see a NJTA category being created with subcategories for the NJTP and GSP. Dough4872 00:31, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

How many articles are we talking about? If the categories are all going to be small, and there isn't a systematic method that requires such a category for consistency, they're of limited utility. For example, there are categories for all of the Interstate Highways for each state. The Category:Interstate Highways in Alaska only has four possible members, but it is part of a system that has Category:Interstate Highways in Alabama, in Arizona, in Arkansas, in California, etc. Such a systematic classification might be necessary for the authority, but there may not be enough articles to subdivide things further. Imzadi 1979 → 03:28, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

So you're saying a NJTA category would be sufficient for everything and subcategories would be too much? –Fredddie™ 03:41, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

The NJTA category might be acceptable if there's other similar categories, and the goal is to systematically categorize all of them, even if there aren't that many articles to place in it. However, there probably aren't enough members to split it further. Imzadi 1979 → 03:47, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

The NJTP and GSP alone may not have enough articles to comprise a category, but a NJTA category for both roads would probably have enough articles. Dough4872 19:27, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

More IRC problems

I try to log on and i get the message " #wikipedia-en-roads #wikimedia-overflow Forwarding to another channel". Dough4872 22:25, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Further, it says "[You have been forwarded here because the channel you tried to join is temporarily closed, too many people are trying to join it, or your connection is malfunctioning. Please try to join again in a few seconds. If that doesn't work, try registering your nickname (http://freenode.net/faq.shtml#nicksetup), or /join #wikimedia-ops for help.]. Dough4872 22:31, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Investigating, although I have no idea what's going on. --Rschen7754 22:33, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Okay, somehow the flag got turned on requiring nickserv identification. I'll try and fix it; meantime, you can register your nick and identify to resolve the problem. --Rschen7754 22:38, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Problem resolved. --Rschen7754 22:49, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

needs-kml parameter now automatic (mostly)

I have updated the USRD template to automatically generate the needs-kml parameter. If an article should not have a KML, you still need to say needs-kml=NA; however, it should be taken care of for you otherwise.

This was my first time dealing with complicated template logic; I'm pretty sure everything works, but if you notice anything broken, let us know so we can fix it. --Rschen7754 10:12, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Great job! —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 15:53, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

AFD

Article alerts doesn't seem to be working, so here is an AFD of our article that was started today: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pennsylvania Route 370. --Rschen7754 06:55, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Is anyone else getting the feeling that USRD is attracting an unusual number of attacks lately? (First DE 17, now PA 370...) Who'd we piss off? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 08:02, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

See my userpage. --Rschen7754 08:03, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

In related news, I think it would behoove us to not mention the gains we made during the GAN drive in the forthcoming newsletter. –Fredddie™ 04:26, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, unfortunately. --Rschen7754 05:47, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I'd just leave it at yes. Sad to say, but for most of the newly promoted GA's that were on my watchlist, no actual article improvements were made. These were articles that were borderline B-GA anyways and they were just shotgun nominated. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but its nothing to brag about either. Dave (talk) 17:25, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Given that, you may wish to be proactive and do an audit of those articles that were promoted during the drive, just to heed off future GARs. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 18:16, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Story hatted on the newsroom. --Rschen7754 19:05, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:NeverLeavesBurrillville

Template:NeverLeavesBurrillville has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 10:39, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Shield Request

According to the Statewide Planning Map, Texas Park Road 1 is split up into PR 1A, PR 1B, PR 1C, PR 1D, and PR 1E, and is signed as so. I plan to create this article in the near future, and I would like for all the shields to be available. As I am unfamiliar with creating shields, I am requesting that someone experienced with it do this. - Awardgive, the editor with the msitaken name. 17:21, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Request this at WP:USRD/S/R. Dough4872 17:44, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Please? Where are your manners, Dough? Awardgive, we do have a shield request page, linked above, but I'll go ahead and do them later today. –Fredddie™ 19:34, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

 Done –Fredddie™ 20:30, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (geographical features)

This is the latest notability proposal to feature highways. --Rschen7754 23:11, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

GAR Delaware Route 17

Hi, just letting you know that I started a GAR at Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Delaware Route 17/1. --ELEKHH^T 22:57, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

I'd just like to make a few comments because there have been some concerns raised about sending more articles to GAN, and about the quality of our GAs. The two main concerns that have gained any form of traction are 1) the lack of KMLs and 2) complaints about history sections that are sourced to only the state DOT. If your article has a KML and some other source besides the state DOT, please feel free to send it to GAN. Otherwise, I would suggest holding off until the above discussion gets sorted out.

If your existing GAs have both of those, they are probably fine for now. If not, I would suggest adding them sooner rather than later; it improves the article, anyway. --Rschen7754 10:41, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

I have to say I'm concerned with the apparent inflation of GA standards. Today's GAN threshhold appears higher than the FAC threshhold of a few years ago. Accordingly, I doubt I will have much very interest in bringing any more articles to GAN after this. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 11:14, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

I have yet to see any evidence of inflation (raising) of the standards, so much as a suggestion that articles are not meeting the existing standard, but have been promoted anyway. But even here, the discussion continues at the DE 17 GAR. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:30, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

I've been watching the GAR, and I agree that there is an inflation of expectations as they apply to the standards. M-35 and M-28 passed through GAN using http://www.michiganhighways.org as a source. Other early (2008) GAs for Michigan did as well. Now, I probably can make a very good case toward using the website given the number of times I see either MDOT press releases or Michigan newspapers directing people to the website, or the number of times libraries direct me there, but it remains a SPS. Because maps and documents from MDOT are considered reliable, and Chris Bessert's work on his website is not for Wikipedia purposes, I've been using old MDOT maps for four years through over a half-dozen FACs and over 150 GANs to document the historical changes of Michigan's highways. I don't see the issue and flat-out dispute that there's a problem with using an archive of maps from the Michigan State Highway Department/Michigan Department of State Highways/Michigan Department of State Highways and Transportation/Michigan Department of Transportation since a) I have a fairly complete archive scanned or on paper from 1919 through 2012, b) the maps are accessible from the Library of Michigan, the official state library, and c) for many years the state had either H.M. Gousha or Rand McNally do their cartography. If the LoM had a full inventory of Rand McNally maps through the years, I'd have paid to have them scanned for my research purposes. As it is, a FOIA request to MDOT in 2008 was returned to me with an estimated cost for $1000 for research time to answer 11 questions on M-28's timeline, yet I spend $73 to have maps scanned. That $73 investment has been used and reused for nearly 200 articles' worth of research.

Now, when I can, I scour various libraries' newspaper holdings and seek out as much as I can through the archives on http://news.google.com, Highbeam Research and other archives. Many times these old articles incur personal cost, either for the photocopy expenses to pull the microfilms up a few dollars each for digital archived copies. When I can obtain good or even decent newspaper coverage (Capitol Loop, M-6, M-186, M-553, M-1, U.S. Route 131, Interstate 496, Interstate 696) I work on taking those articles through ACR and FAC too. However, it seems to me to be the height of conceit for GAN reviewers to reject articles with map-based histories, when FAC reviewers, using the higher bar of "high quality reliable sources" have allowed them in addition or substantially in place of, news media or book sources (M-28, M-35, U.S. Route 41 in Michigan, Business M-28, U.S. Route 2 in Michigan). Sorry, but if GAN is not going to accept something that FAC has specifically allowed, even as recent as this past November–December, then that's an inflation of standards as applied. Imzadi 1979 → 12:54, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

There's no suggestion whatsoever that DE 17 should fail because it has used map-based sources; maps per se are not being challenged. Instead the discussion is whether, given the very limited (and primary) sources used, the article is capable of being a GA. And that concern arises out of advice given in Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles#Passing articles that do not meet the Good article criteria, fourth bullet: "It appears that the article is as good as it will ever get, and will never meet the standards. (Not every article can be a Good article. If the references to improve an article to Good article standards simply do not exist, then you should not overlook that part of the criteria.)". --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:10, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Maps are not primary sources; they are secondary sources. The primary source is GIS data, surveyors' notes or measurements and aerial or satellite photography. A state DOT map would be a first-hand source while a similar map from Rand McNally, Universal Map or another commercial cartographer is a third-party source. Primary≠First-Party, and the GAR commenters are confusing and conflating the two classification schemes. I'm not claiming that DE 17's article is perfect, however, I will challenge this incorrect notion that all items produced by a gov't agency are primary sources, and that primary sources are bad. Such a notion if continued is an inflation of criteria, and I challenge you to point to which part of the actual GA criteria supports this concept. "Reviewing good articles" is a guideline and not a substitute for the actual criteria. If there are gaps in coverage in an article, point them out, but don't fault the specific sources, which meet policy and the criteria. Imzadi 1979 → 13:38, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

The dicussion does not hinge on whether maps are primary or secondary sources (though I'm hard pressed to agree that a Deleware DoT map is not a primary source w.r.t. a Delaware maintained road.) No sources are being faulted. The discussion hinges on whether the broad coverage criteria of the GA criteria is met when an article is pretty much entirely sourced to a single organisation. And where there is a concern like this, we must surely look to the supporting guidelines. So. There is an actual criteria - broad coverage. And there is a guideline suggesting that for lack of an abundance of references, some articles should not be promoted to GA. And there is a question: does DE 17 and articles of its ilk fail the criteria, not least based on the guidelines advice. --Tagishsimon (talk) 14:26, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

The problem is that people are saying "only primary sources, not broad enough coverage, delist". You're wrong on the primary vs. secondary classification of a DelDOT map. They're first-party secondary sources. There's primary source paranoia around here, and people are using that as a faulty justification to brand whole categories of articles as "bad", even though our policy explicitly allows primary sources to be used! I'm not saying that many Delaware highway articles couldn't be improved, however I'm very concerned that the "angry mob" I'm seeing will go after other road articles without making some important distinctions. The only guideline that really applies a first- vs. second- or third-party distinction is WP:GNG regarding notability.

I'm disgusted to see DelDOT maligned on this article when MDOT maps and publications are used in FAs on Michigan highways in much the same way. Yes, I make a point to find as many newspaper articles on history as I can, but not every highway gets such coverage. Not all roads are controversial. Not all construction is notable, and not all construction that makes the newspaper is worth including in the Wikipedia article on that road. Repaving a road is regular maintenance, yet the local papers will probably report temporary road closures for that work. They cover road closures like that so that commuters know to leave for work early in the morning or to take an alternate route. In the historical timeline of the roadway, when MDOT did regular maintenance isn't important. (An article on a lack of regular maintenance might be noteworthy though.) Just like your average two-car crash is very common place for most roads, so the news clipping that someone rear-ended someone else at an intersection on May 15, 1982, isn't important either. It's a balance, and yet I'm seeing people turning up their noses in faux disgust. You know what, I'm sorry if we edit in an area that makes it easier to write some articles, but if you want the kings of short, but high quality articles, go talk to the people behind WP:TROP. Imzadi 1979 → 15:04, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Umm, we're still not connecting on this one. The question revolves around the concept of broad coverage, and whether that can be asserted for an article sourced from, effectively, a single source. It has nothing to do with primary versus secondary. Address, if you choose to, that concept. How can we assert broad coverage from a single source? What do you make of the guideline "It appears that the article is as good as it will ever get, and will never meet the standards. (Not every article can be a Good article. If the references to improve an article to Good article standards simply do not exist, then you should not overlook that part of the criteria.)". --Tagishsimon (talk) 15:21, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Are there demonstrable omissions in the historic timeline of the roadway? If there are, we have content that needs to be added for broad coverage. M-67 is essentially unchanged from its state when the signs went up in 1919. When US 41 was realigned, M-67 was extended slightly to continue to connect to another state highway on its southern end. As for the road itself, paving was completed at a later date, but otherwise the M-67 you or I would drive today is the same as the M-67 of yesteryear. As for DE 17, it's my understanding that Dough4872 doesn't have access to maps for every year published, or that some past years didn't have a new map. That means he may have gaps in coverage in the articles because he has gaps in the research. That situation should be corrected either way.

DelDOT is the official source for information on the the state highway system in Delaware as MDOT is the same for Michigan. That says something. I will assert broad coverage in terms of the historical timeline when I have official maps in my possession, either scanned or on paper, forming an archive from 1919 until 2012 with only a few gaps in the early years. When I worked on the US 41 article, I could pinpoint the opening of the Marquette Bypass to 1963 through those maps. Since then, I've found a newspaper article that pinpoints it to November 21, 1963. I've changed the citation over to get the more exact date, not because the MSHD maps from 1963 and 1964 are faulty nor because it makes the article any less broad in coverage. Imzadi 1979 → 15:51, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Moving forward

Now that the GAR has closed as a Keep, what are we going to do to ensure this is less likely to happen in the future? We should make a list of things that we learned during the GAR and things that need improvement in general. Feel free to add to the list. –Fredddie™ 04:19, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

1. The community wants technical details of highway construction somehow and somewhere.
2. WP:USRD/NT needs a little polish so editors from outside the project can better understand our positions.
3. WP:USRD/P needs to be summarized for the same reasons.
4. Accelerated deployment of KML to all USRD GAs.
5. A request needs to be made for a map if a USRD GAN does not have a map.
6. If third-party sources (newspapers, etc.) are readily available, they should be used.

Note: All USRD FAs have KML. All new USRD A-class articles are required to have a KML, and I am adding KML to the remaining A-class articles that do not have it. --Rschen7754 09:04, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

• I suggest a standard for maps should be developed. The DE17 map does not convey any real info to anyone unfamiliar with that corner of the state (and I'm not sure if people from Sussex County would find it very useful). Not least, the standard might mandate the use of labels for settlements such that users can relate the map either to the article description or to a more detailed and extensive external map. --Tagishsimon (talk) 09:43, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Normally the map should place the location into context in a larger scale. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 10:32, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
    • Placing the location into context could be done with insets showing the close-up view's location in a state and then the U.S., as is done in M-6 (Michigan highway). My preference is to see a close-up view of the profiled route rather than a view of a whole state with the profiled route a tiny red smidgen, such as in Delaware Route 17. The insets of the type used in the M-6 article, File:Michigan Locator Map with US.PNG, are already used as locater maps in other articles and are available in Commons.  VC  12:45, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Resources department proposal

One of the complaints at the latest GAR was the lack of non-DOT sources. To help address this problem, I would like to propose converting the Resource pages into a full-fledged department. The main difference (besides the wording) would be the addition of a requests page where editors could request either a specific article for those with database access, or just a check for secondary sources in general. To prevent overloading the department, we would have request limits similar to the shield and map departments, and disallow requests for sources for Stub-Class articles (because you can write a RD and get a jct list to bring it to Start!) Thoughts? --Rschen7754 07:54, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I think this might help. Dough4872 00:16, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Technically it is a full department, but I was trying to kill it off in favor of each state subpage getting the resource listings. The idea was that for each state, there would be one page with that state's resources in place. For periodical databases, those transcend states in many cases because the databases aren't state-specific. Imzadi 1979 → 01:01, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

What would happen to the national resources? Also, I think the main advantage would be the request page, which would try and put all the random requests happening all over the place onto one page (I've seen Morriswa make a few to general Wikipedia places too, besides the IRC ones). One page would enable many people to take a look at the page and look through the databases they have. --Rschen7754 04:05, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps we should rebrand the resources department as a place to lump together both reference information and internal project resources. Reference information would include national resources not specific to one state or system (things like the map database and periodical database), and could incorporate Rschen's request page idea as a "Reference Desk" page. Internal project resources would include things like essays, embassy, and other similar pages. A case could even be made to have all the editing guidelines could be lumped into this department. -- LJ ↗ 01:44, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

AFD

Article alerts is being annoyingly slow again, but we have another AFD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Delaware Route 17. --Rschen7754 05:47, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Commons category issue

For years, we've sorted the individual route categories on Commons with the same sortkeys that we use for the articles here on enwiki, grouping the members of the categories by the hundreds digit of their number. Apparently one user has a severe case of WP:IDONTLIKEIT and is challenging the long-time status quo. See my Commons talk page. (Posting here since this is an issue of national scope.) – TMF (talk) 12:56, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

KML update

All FA and A-class articles now have KMLs. There are 310 GAs remaining without KMLs. Thanks to those who are adding them, and if a GA that you wrote does not have one, please consider adding it.

Also, I will be checking for a KML on all USRD GAs that I review; other reviewers are starting to do the same, too, so please make sure you have one before you go to GAN. --Rschen7754 20:57, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Project page redesign proposal

The main WP:USRD page has gotten extremely long; I'm concerned about new users being overwhelmed with information. I've noticed that WP:MILHIST has a more compact design despite their project complexity. Thoughts? --Rschen7754 08:21, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

This topic was part of one of the presentations at Wikimania. Many project home pages are too long, too complex, and too unwelcoming to newbies. I fully support this and offer my help to make this happen.  VC  14:00, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm fine with anything to summarize things or spin them off to subpages, so long as our "branding" in terms of the header and navbox stays put for now. Maybe when WMF overhauls all of the Wikiproject pages through some sort of metatemplate system, we can change that. Imzadi 1979 → 00:59, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

I have an idea in mind, but I'm drawing blanks as to how to implement it. I may have to get out the graph paper and then mail it off to Jimbo... –Fredddie™ 01:19, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

I rather like the simple design of the main MILHIST page and the tabbed layout. We could implement something like that here, with a tab for the main page, article showcase, and all the department pages. It seems that the tab layout could be added while still retaining the current branding banners and navbox. The department pages might need some cleaning up to make those into decent splash pages as well. If all that were implemented, the main page could be pared down to the welcome, mission/scope, project organization, how you can help, and maybe some other brief items. -- LJ ↗ 01:56, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sold on the tabs. We have the navbox which has collapsing sections for each of the core areas already. Imzadi 1979 → 17:10, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

MILHIST uses both, at least for pages on the tabs...Their tabs do seem to make it a bit easier to get to pages that provide an overall view of the project. But I'm not married to the tab idea--just like their implementation. We could probably do more reorganization of the navigation template, though--and make it a bit more compact (i.e. does it really need all the shortcut links?). -- LJ ↗ 08:10, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

So far, I have created a sandbox for how I'd change the main USRD page. Doing the main page inspired me to make a new assessment page. –Fredddie™ 23:58, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

I just did a redesign of the Canada Roads Project main page over the past two days in the image of MILHIST. Not sure if it would be of any help for doing likewise yourselves, but at the least it may provide some ideas or inspiration. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 18:20, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

B-Class Guidelines Proposal

Proposed process: Any user may request a B-Class review for a particular article, whether to promote an article to B-Class or to demote an article from B-Class. It is highly frowned upon for a user to promote their own article to B-Class because this assessment boundary is the first to garner feedback from another user.

1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate inline citations.
   • Every paragraph in a non-Lead section of prose should have at least one reference, but preferably more. All controversial (i.e., likely to be challenged) or data-based statements (i.e., specific measurements) must be referenced. The Lead should only have references if necessary to reference a controversial or data-based point that is not mentioned elsewhere in the article.
   • Lengths in the infobox and road junction list must be referenced. Lengths should be referenced to GIS data or prose sources, but may be referenced to online maps if those are the only sources for an area.
   • The citations should be detailed enough for the information to be used by another person to find the work in question or to try to fix a dead link.
2. It reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies.
   • The Lead should make reference to information in every formal section and subsection of the article.
   • The Route description should describe all major information about the road and its surrounding without going into too much detail.
   • The History should, at minimum, describe what was built where and when. If possible, there should be information on why and how the road was built and who built it or was instrumental in building it, but that type of detail is not necessary at this level of assessment. The History should generally be chronological and should cover every era in which the road has existed.
   • The road junction list should be accessible. To this end, use of the jctint series of templates is encouraged, but not required.
3. It has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or more sections of content.
   • For the vast majority of articles, this structure includes a Lead, Route description, History, and road junction list. If other sections are necessary to reasonably cover the topic, such as Services and Related routes, those sections are present. If sections containing prose are excessively long, they should be split into logical subsections.
4. It is free from major grammatical errors.
   • The prose does not need to be flawless, but there should be no glaring errors. The user should be able to smoothly read the article without stumbling through errors or having to stop to figure out what something means.
5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an infobox, images, or diagrams.
   • Articles must contain a proper infobox. That infobox must contain a map. Articles must have a KML file created and attached to the article.
   • Images, such as diagrams and photographs, outside the infobox are not necessary for this assessment level. If those images exist, they must follow copyright guidelines and be properly captioned.
6. It is free from warning templates.

Feedback and other ideas welcome.  VC  00:09, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Regarding number 6 - I assume this includes {{mileposts}}? --Rschen7754 00:16, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Overall, I like the B-class criteria that has been proposed, but I have some concerns. I don't think a map or KML should be required at this stage as it is hard for some people to make them, especially the maps as that requires knowledge of GIS. I think that the {{U.S. Roads WikiProject}} template should be modified to have B-class parameters in which users can determine whether the article meets the criteria, similar to what is used on {{WikiProject Florida}}. I think having another user casually checking off whether it meets the criteria is the best way to go rather than creating a "B-class review" page similar to ACR. Dough4872 00:22, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't think VC is advocating a BCR page; merely a checklist. The rule of thumb in the past has been that a B should be a GA that has not gone through GAN. Is this codifying that rule of thumb? –Fredddie™ 00:24, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I figured we were going to do a checklist, just wanted to make sure. Dough4872 00:26, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I firmly believe in the KML requirement, as this ensures that articles are ready to go to GA, where KML is frequently required. This also makes sure that KML is deployed. That being said, very few of our B-class articles have KML, and obviously we would need some grandfathering in, lest we lose all our B's. --Rschen7754 00:47, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

The purpose of making attaining B-class more formal is it acts as a way to make our articles more resistant to a potential GAR and would improve our already good pass rate at GAN (so yes Fredddie, this is codifying a rule of thumb). As for articles that are already B, we can have a very long grace period to perform audits, improve deficient articles, and add maps and KMLs.  VC  01:25, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Some comments:

1. Direct quotations have to have a citation, regardless of their location, so one in the lead has to have a footnote. Data-based statements (the length of a road) don't need citations in the lead if they're repeated with citations in the body of the article. (I've never cited a length in the lead in any FAs, and they've all passed without issue.) To be honest, the infobox could be devoid of citations if it's information directly repeated in the body of the article.
   • I agree with your first two points. I am leery about not referencing a length in an infobox, but we can make this strongly encouraged instead of required.  VC  01:25, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
2. Looks good.
3. Also good.
4. No complaints
5. I wouldn't require a map. Technically, GAs don't require maps, although their presence is strongly encouraged. KMLs can be created more easily, so I could see requiring them, but not a map.
   • OK, maps can be strongly encouraged.  VC  01:25, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
6. I'd clarify this so that a {{cn}} is not a deal breaker. If the presence of a citation needed tag means an article can't be a B, then we'll have people removing information that should be present in an article. I've used those tags as placeholders until I could pull the proper citation to add to the article. We shouldn't have any of the big banner templates, but inline stuff should be fine, even in a B-Class article. Imzadi 1979 → 00:59, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
   • Banner templates are definitely a dealbreaker. Inline templates should be as well because we are trying to prepare articles for GAN, and those inline templates will be brought up at GAN if the reviewer is competent. If you are using inline templates for your own purposes, you should wait until you solve the issue before nominating the article for review.  VC  01:25, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
     • Set a limit on the number of them. Say a maximum of two. Having a lone (or two) non-contentious statement(s) without a source shouldn't be the difference between a B or C, or I believe the result would be as Imzadi predicts. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 03:35, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Most of this should be common sense, but the events that have transpired over the last few weeks have proven that some editors are sorely lacking in that department. It's sad that things have come to this point. I don't have an issue with anything discussed above, save for point five and a few comments about what B-Class should be.

The WP:1.0 team's "nutshell" description of the B-Class criteria is "The article is mostly complete and without major issues, but requires some further work to reach good article standards." I've always interpreted this to mean that the article is near GA-quality, but has issues (such as sub-par sources or an infobox without a map) that need to be addressed before the articles can be considered for GA. So, while I consider B-Class to be a small notch below GA and a launching point toward GA, I don't see it as a class that should be exclusively holding GA-quality articles that no one's bothered to nominate. That would effectively put near-GAs with very minor issues in C-Class, and that would really garble the assessment scale.

To somewhat echo the comments above, I'm opposed to requiring maps for B-Class articles but supportive of requiring them for potential GAs. I've strongly suggested the latter for the better part of two years, and no one in their right mind should be nominating articles for GA that don't have maps (and in this day and age, a KML). I support requiring KMLs for B-Class articles, but oppose demoting them if that's the only issue the article has, inside or outside a grace period. KMLs take 5-10 minutes to make on average, and getting one made can be as simple as prodding whoever is interested in making them for that state. – TMF (talk) 02:17, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I do not like the idea of requiring GAs to have maps due to the lack of the editors at MTF and the complexity of making maps for some people. Dough4872 02:37, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

So learn. Aren't you studying cartography? –Fredddie™ 02:42, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

(ec) If an editor is interested in getting an article to GA status, they should be willing to invest the time and effort needed to produce a good Good Article. That, of course, includes creating a map for the article. If the MTF isn't producing maps in a timely manner, you could learn how to work with GIS data and create your own. At last check, the MTF had some decent tutorials available, so claiming that the process is too complex comes off more as an excuse than anything. – TMF (talk) 02:44, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I've been busy working on a map with Scott5114 over IRC, or I'd have saved the reply I was drafting earlier. I tend to agree that there is more of a separation between B-Class and GANs or GA-Class. Some inline tags, subpar sources, etc should be allowable if the information that's expected is present. My view is that a decent editor with some modicum of ability and experience should be able to take a B-Class article and prepare it for a GAN in an hour or so, depending on what's needed. I also would grandfather in existing Bs without KMLs with some sort of grace period, or a "if this is the only issue, don't demote" policy. Imzadi 1979 → 04:05, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't really like this proposal in general. I think if we implement this, we are risking inflating the importance of B-Class to the point that it overlaps GA. To me, B has always been the top rank of the "lower half" articles. It is the stopping-off point before you get into the serious article vetting levels. If we implement this, it feels as though we are basically creating a class redundant to GA—that is what GA is, right, asking someone else to review an article, which they do by ticking off all the boxes on a checklist? I think our existing informal standard of "big three sections reasonably complete and no glaring article issues" is quite enough to get the job done. That it is frowned upon to take assessment upon yourself shouldn't really need to be codified since it's pretty much a cultural norm that we have at all assessment levels (I can't speak for others, but even going stub to start is enough for me to have someone double-check that it does indeed qualify to be bumped up). —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 17:18, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I think I would like this B-Class proposal better if it became our interpretation of the Good Article Criteria. Then I like Scott's simpler B-Class criteria of "Big Three reasonably completed, properly cited, (my addition) and no glaring issues." –Fredddie™ 20:10, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I think the lead criterion could be weakened, since that is a simple fix for GA. --Rschen7754 20:45, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

We could use this to implement a B+ Class that is a holding area for future GANs. Imzadi 1979 → 21:13, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't think adding B+ Class is going to help with anything. Actually, I think it will just create confusion. –Fredddie™ 22:00, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

To be honest, I don't see a huge fundamental difference between these two proposals (with the modifications mentioned above). VC's does have the additional requirements on the lead, grammar, and KML, but I'm not really seeing anything else. --Rschen7754 09:49, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I like Fredddie's point about our B-Class criteria should be our project's interpretation of the Good Article Criteria. However, I would still like to keep the Lead and grammar requirements as part of a checklist. We just do not need to go into detail for those like we would items specific to our project. I think on some level that we need to duplicate or heavily supplement the GA criteria because, as we saw in the most recent GA drive, if we do not put up resistance to an article before GAN, it might not happen at GAN. If we are not going to enforce B-class as essentially GA-ready, then we need to be heavily suggestive by saying "you need to do X, Y, and Z or this article may run into trouble at GAN."  VC  17:27, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

For comparison's sake, here are the official WP 1.0 B-Class criteria:

B-Class criteria

B The article is suitably referenced, with inline citations. It has reliable sources, and any important or controversial material which is likely to be challenged is cited. Any format of inline citation is acceptable: the use of <ref> tags and citation templates such as {{cite web}} is optional. The article reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies. It contains a large proportion of the material necessary for an A-Class article, although some sections may need expansion, and some less important topics may be missing. The article has a defined structure. Content should be organized into groups of related material, including a lead section and all the sections that can reasonably be included in an article of its kind. The article is reasonably well-written. The prose contains no major grammatical errors and flows sensibly, but does not need to be of the standard of featured articles. The Manual of Style does not need to be followed rigorously. The article contains supporting materials where appropriate. Illustrations are encouraged, though not required. Diagrams, an infobox etc. should be included where they are relevant and useful to the content. The article presents its content in an appropriately understandable way. It is written with as broad an audience in mind as possible. The article should not assume unnecessary technical background and technical terms should be explained or avoided where possible.

I kinda like the flexibility of the B-Class criteria by itself as a way to know if an article is B-Class or not. What VC is proposing is way more rigid and, to be honest, I don't think hard rules are the way to go. So I'm thinking maybe we're going about this the wrong way. Along the lines of copying from MILHIST's Academy, and borrowing from Scott's FA how-to, maybe we should put together a class-by-class how-to manual. I would then put VC's proposal on a page with the theme "I have a B-class article, now what do I do?" We could cite examples from past experiences of how and why we do what we do. I think it would be better than trying to distill everything down to bullet points. –Fredddie™ 19:21, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Uhhh...

How in the world do I put this in a junction list? (Aren't you folks glad you don't edit Oklahoma?) :) —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 08:38, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

It'd be OK78 to OK48 north, would it not? They've just used "via" instead of "to". - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 13:18, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Agreed with Floydian. I suggested a |via= for {{Jct}} a while back but it went nowhere. –Fredddie™ 14:39, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

New article idea

I have been thinking, that I would like to create a page on a list of traffic signs in the US. I know there is one for worldwide, at Traffic sign, but it looks incomplete. I would like there to be a gallery of each type of sign found in the US, so readers could have an easy way of looking them up, based from this: [5] and [6]. Perhaps we can start a List of traffic signs in the United States or something close to that. Tinton5 (talk) 18:43, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Although, I found this: Warning sign, but it is international. Tinton5 (talk) 18:45, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

You mean like Road signs in the United States? Imzadi 1979 → 18:45, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I did not even see that. Thanks! I feel dumb. Tinton5 (talk) 18:48, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Roads opened/designated in <year> categories

I'm not sure I see the point of these categories, especially when they lead to edits implying that an Interstate Highway built in the 1960s was "open" in 1908. – TMF (talk) 02:31, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

We're just as mystified as you are. –Fredddie™ 04:36, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not a huge fan. But I don't know if we have any grounds for a CFD except "I don't like it." --Rschen7754 04:38, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I concur with rschen on this... we may not like it, but I don't think we have a policy basis to oppose them. If anyone has thoughts on how they might be sent to CfD and eliminated, I'm all ears. Imzadi 1979 → 05:02, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

First things first, though. Can we stop the categories from filling any further? –Fredddie™ 05:33, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I do not like the idea of these categories, especially as many roads opened in separate parts over several years. Dough4872 15:08, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

The problem I have with these categories (and the same thing applies to the infobox) is that, at least in the United States, these categories are prone to 1 of 2 major sources of inaccuracies. First problem, For most Interstate Highways they were designated in 1955-7 (depending on what you mean by designated), but didn't actually have any significant portions existing until the 1960's (coastal states) or 1970's (inland states) or even 1980's (Rocky Mountain states). So that designation date, while technically true, is practically meaningless. Second, the reverse is also true, for a highway that received its numerical designation in this century, but has existed in some form since the 1800s. I don't know if an argument for CfD could be based on those facts. Dave (talk) 17:06, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

In Michigan, parts of our mainline Interstates were built before the system was created, but none were signed until 1959 when MSHD received confirmation of a final numbering and signage plan. So US 12 was already freeway in places before 1956, but it wasn't co-designated I-94 until 1959. So what year was I-94 "designated" in the state? Imzadi 1979 → 20:58, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I looked through Wikipedia:Overcategorization and we surely have a case to mass-CfD these categories of highways based on opening, constructed, or designated years. These categories are based on non-defining characteristics, arbitrary inclusion criteria, trivial characteristics or intersections, and subjective inclusion criteria. Is overcategorization a sufficient policy basis?  VC  17:43, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

It might not be policy, but it might be enough. The concern I have is that there is Category:Bridges completed in 1914, and Trunk Line Bridge No. 1 is included. Can we make a case that roadways are sufficiently different than individual bridges not to be categorized by year opened to traffic or designated? Imzadi 1979 → 20:58, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

This tree has its roots in the cleanup of the ambiguous by year architecture categories for NRHP articles like Bear Creek Canyon Scenic Mountain Drive. Architecture as a category without clarification is ambiguous since it does not define what happened. In the case of a road was it opened or designed etc.? Note there there are already well used Category:Bridges by year of completion and Category:Tunnels by year. So this category is the road equivalent of those. So since architecture by year is not the best choice, what other options are available? Vegaswikian (talk) 21:36, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I guess my attempt to help to make Wikipedia a better site is not wanted. Since actually writing articles is not my forte, I tried some "easy-type" edits. This is why I edit categories, and use scripts/tools to do most of my edits.

I want to help and contribute meaningfully, but I don't know what to do. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 22:04, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

The best way to become a better writer is...by writing. Who cares if the writing stinks?! With time and confidence in your writing, you'll go back and redo your previous work. I have, and I'm certain everyone else who's been around for a few years has done the same. –Fredddie™ 22:27, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I've been lucky to nominate 11 FAs for the project, with a 12th under review now. Each time I've gone through the process, I've learned something, big or small, and I've gone back to apply it to my older articles to improve them. Someday, I'll probably really dig into my oldest FAs and copy edit them. So yes, you can improve your writing by a) writing more and b) having others give you feedback on it. PR/GAN/ACR/FAC are great ways to get that feedback. Imzadi 1979 → 22:48, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I actually started editing at the age of 15, and my first article, California State Route 78, is now a FA. It took me until I was 19 to get it there, but I had no clue what I was doing. Three years later, I have a second FA, and am working on a third. You get used to it over time. --Rschen7754 23:07, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

To add my voice to the chorus, I think we all have received some feedback that sounded harsh throughout our wikipedia "careers". The intent is to help make this site a better place. With so many Wikipedians with different ideas, a clash of ideas is inevitable. Don't take it personally. Anybody can have a idea they think is brilliant, that everybody else says, "Meh, that sucks". It's not a reflection on you personally. I'm even critical of myself, I re-read articles that I worked on a few years ago and say to myself, "what the heck was I thinking?" Dave (talk) 23:25, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Morriswa, we are here to help you. We can lead you through the process to write a good article. There are numerous pages across USRD that give advice for writing an article. As I mentioned in the past, you can always come onto IRC to get live help. Dough4872 00:30, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

If you do decide to try FA, as Imzadi recommends, you might find User:Scott5114/How to write an FA from scratch useful. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:48, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Getting back to the topic at hand, to respond to the comments about bridges: The completion dates of bridges are less subjective and usually better documented than those of roads, so I think bridge (or tunnel) year categories would better withstand scrutiny than road year categories.  VC  14:18, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

The comparison between the "Bridges by opening year" and "Roads by opening year" categories is apples-oranges in my book. Bridges are completely opened at a single time in some form - even if it's just in one direction - making the opening date of a bridge fairly cut-and-dry to figure out. Roads are rarely built all at once (unless they're as short as a bridge, in which case we're probably not covering them anyway), making it impossible to determine an opening date that isn't subjective. Should the date reflect when the first part was opened? The last part? The majority of the road? Really, who are we to say?

Also, a category holding bridges opened in, say, 1951 will generally reflect how bridges were built in the early 1950s, which is useful for anyone looking for a quick snapshot of the styles of bridge construction used during that time. The equivalent category for roads would have highways with parts built long before or long after a given year, depending on what criteria was used, and thus it would have no practical use. I don't see any reason to keep these categories around.

I'm indifferent to the "Roads by designation year" categories. There are many roads where the year is meaningful, like the routes assigned to existing highways as part of a renumbering, but there are also many roads where the year predated the physical road by years or decades, like Dave posted above. I wouldn't go around tagging articles based on the designation year, but I'm not going to revert anyone who does. A non-road editor would probably see the categories as cruft, though, because of how much the importance of the designation year varies by highway. – TMF (talk) 02:40, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Capital Beltway signage

Please see this discussion on the Help Desk, during which it was recommended that I come here. It regards my creation of a Capital Beltway sign image, and my uncertainty as to how it may be used. I want to do more of these, but I'm not sure how to determine if is worthwhile or even necessary. Thank you.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 16:15, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Neat! How did you make that? Did you have a standard drawing from a DOT? If you're interested in making more, you may want to check out WP:USRD/S, our shield-making department. –Fredddie™ 16:23, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

No, I traced it from a photograph that I found online. It took about an hour. I actually have already made several others, but now that the status of the Beltway sign is in question, I don't know whether I should post them. (I would love for this to go into exit lists, but as you see it may not be allowed.) ... Thanks, I have already put my name on the Shield Department. It is fun to make them.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 16:31, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Michael, see my reply at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Shields task force‎‎. In short, if the sign was posted before 1978 without a copyright notice, it's in the public domain. Imzadi 1979 → 17:37, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Concurrency vs Overlap

What is the difference between a concurrency and an overlap? MikeM2011 (talk) 19:58, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

They are synonyms to refer to two or more routes following one stretch of road. Dough4872 20:15, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Two routes overlap in a concurrency. I wouldn't exactly call them synonyms, though. I prefer using overlap to concurrency as it's simpler, both in concept and in verb usage (to be concurrent is the correct verb form of concurrency). –Fredddie™ 22:41, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Although to run concurrently is another option. Either verbiage is fine though, and in fact, concurrency is the linked term in the {{legendRJL}} footer template for junction list tables. Imzadi 1979 → 23:48, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Lewis and Clark Highway

I have converted Lewis and Clark Highway to a dab page that may need to be cleaned up. If this can be converted to an article please feel free to do so. – Allen4names (IPv6 contributions) 05:50, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

This was a great idea. Do you think we should incorporate the Lewis and Clark Trail on this dab page? –Fredddie™ 17:38, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

It can't hurt to include it.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 19:15, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

File:Map of USRD rel WW alt 4.svg

File:Map of USRD rel WW alt 4.svg is throwing an error, since it is one of your project files, you might want to fix that. No source and no author are indicated, but that automatically sets the no-author cleanup category, and I think a bot tags sourceless images as well. -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 03:36, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

It's still being categorized into the cleanup category Category:Wikipedia files with unknown source... so if someone could fix up the source parameter? -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 14:39, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh yeah...

Now that I'm through with ranting for the moment...I just came back from Anchorage. I've been hobbling around on a badly bruised ankle for the past four days, so I couldn't cover as much ground as I wished. I did, however, snap a number of photos of Minnesota Drive and the Seward Highway. I hope that I can find/make some time to upload them soon.RadioKAOS (talk) 23:08, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Road junction lists

If an article has a road junction list/exit list that is in table format, what template can be placed on the page alerting users to the fact that it needs to be templated (Jct, Jctint, GAint, etc.)? Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 03:30, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Why would we want to do that? –Fredddie™ 03:40, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

There isn't one for that. There is now |needs-jctint= for the banner on the talk page for tracking purposes, similar to |needs-map= and |needs-kml=. Imzadi 1979 → 03:43, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

What do you mean, "Why would we want to do that?"? Aren't all junction lists supposed to be built using the jcttop & jctint templates? Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 03:49, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

There are better things to be doing (like writing route descriptions) than wasting an AWB run to tag a bunch of articles. –Fredddie™ 03:52, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

There is only a negative benefit in presenting a visually obtrusive tag to readers in order to encourage them to make a technical change that has minimal impact on the article. This is something for us to track as editors, and so the talk page is the best place to take care of that. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 04:22, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand why this is such a bad thing. If some of you could explain why this is so terrible, then I might understand why you are so against it. By the way, I thought there used to be this very same template a few years ago. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 04:43, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Because it's redundant, and a waste of time, darn it as people have said above. --Rschen7754 04:51, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Floydian sums it up pretty well. Templates aren't required to make a properly formatted RJL table. This isn't like the {{mileposts}} template, which informs readers and editors alike that there is missing content. It isn't like {{jct}} that informs readers/editors that the content should be in a table, and is missing content. Your notice would be about something very esoteric that isn't required. Yes, we encourage the use of the templates because it allows us to future proof. Update the templates, and the articles re-arrange the values to produce the new format. However, an editor can hand-format a fully compliant RJL table without the templates, and MOS:RJL will likely never require the use of the templates. Imzadi 1979 → 05:06, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

<rant alert = on>Tagging articles is a pet peeve of mine. IMO article tagging is not much worse that vandalism, and I frankly find the tags insulting. I don't need someone to tell me a section is unsorced, has POV issues, or is missing co-ordinates with a huge orange banner. I could have figured those things out on my own by reading the article.<rant alert = off> Banners are visually obtrusive, often more so than the problem with the article the banner is warning about, and in many cases that problem with the article could be fixed with only slightly more effort. IMO the only appropriate use of such banners is to encourage more editors to get involved when an article is suffering from ownership issues and/or edit wars and all good faith efforts to actually fix the problem have failed.Dave (talk) 17:10, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree that most banners are insulting to the intelligence, especially those that state something obvious, have an obvious solution, and point out something that will solve itself through the natural progression of article improvement. A History section with a banner stating this section is empty? There is an easy solution to that: delete the History section. Someone will write the History section eventually; there is no deadline.

The milepost banner is not as obvious to fix, but it is still disturbing. If there is an empty row column in a table, anyone should be able to interpret that as "no one has added mileposts yet," or perhaps "we do not yet know how to find or add this information."  VC  20:46, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Those banners could possibly be there for the benefit of users whose use of Wikipedia is far more casual than that of an active editor who participates in WikiProjects. You may have forgotten that Wikipedia is a go-to site for a significant portion of the general public, not just a personal plaything for 19-year-old college students with Aspergers and too much time on their hands. Along those same lines, it's just more bullshit and platitudes to declare that "Wikipedia has no time limit", all the while oblivious to the fact that many of its contributors sure as shit do. The encyclopaedia recently passed four million articles. Want to take a stab as to how many of those articles reveal a complete lack of any historical grasp whatsoever? What makes anyone think that someone else will come along in 20 or 30 years and get it right, if getting it right isn't presently all that important?RadioKAOS (talk) 22:47, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

How would these banners benefit said users? How does it benefit them to know about the internal coding of the junction list? --Rschen7754 22:55, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Would it be a good idea to take the USRD-specific banners, {{Mileposts}} and the wrong direction template, for instance, and remove the visuals. Then we could use the templates as a shorthand for putting articles into tracking categories. –Fredddie™ 23:56, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

New parameter

So anyway, we now have needs-jctint= on the USRD banner, which takes yes, no, or NA. We have over 10,800 USRD articles now. With AWB runs and some set logic I got the number down to just under 3600. Unfortunately, that means that we're gonna have to do some work. I encourage all active members of USRD to partake in the work; the sooner we can get this done, the closer we are to reaching one of our goals for 2012. See the goals banner for the appropriate categories.

All FA/A/GA articles have been tagged; there are 70 that we need to convert to templates before the end of the year. --Rschen7754 09:19, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

To what "work" are you referring? Where is the goals banner? Maybe I can help. Thanks. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 13:34, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:USRD#Goals. Imzadi 1979 → 14:22, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Issue with the Jcttop template

As it can be seen here, here, and here, there is something wrong with Template:Jcttop. As you can see, for some reason, setting the nocty parameter to yes and the location to none now adds a "The entire highway is located in none." banner above the junction table. This needs to be fixed, as it is currently causing problems at a GAN review, and will likely cause more issues in the near future. - Awardgive, the editor with the msitaken name. 00:10, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

This is fixed. Now, to turn off the hatnote, you have to add |hatnote=off. –Fredddie™ 02:35, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. - Awardgive, the editor with the msitaken name. 02:50, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

State highways with multiple segments

I have noticed that our coverage of state highways made up of multiple disjoint segments is inconsistent. In most cases, the segments are covered in one article, such as New Jersey Route 167 or Pennsylvania Route 29. But in other cases, we have multiple articles. For instance, we have Pennsylvania Route 97 (Adams County) and Pennsylvania Route 97 (Erie County), with Pennsylvania Route 97 serving as a dab page. Also, we have a unique way of covering Missouri Route 110, with the original incarnation covered at the Missouri Route 110 title and the new version covered at Chicago–Kansas City Expressway. I feel we need to be consistent in covering these types of situations. Should we lump all the segments into one article or should we cover them separately. Should we only combine them when related and split them when unrelated? Should we have dab pages when there are multiple segments covered separately? Dough4872 00:46, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm of the opinion that this is something that should be left to the task forces. It can be difficult (read: unsourceable) to determine whether two segments of a highway are "related". Consider Oklahoma State Highway 58; both of its halves are on roughly the same line of longitude, but they have never connected. We have no sources on why they are like this. Are they related enough to share an article? I also want to say we've discussed this before. Maybe doing an archive search would be enlightening. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:47, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

If we can't determine what to do based on whether or not they are related, I think we need to either have all of them split or all of them merged together. Dough4872 03:41, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Scott5114. The decision on what to do in each particular situation should be handled at the local level, not the national level.  VC  12:45, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Indeed. There are likely cases where one segment is a fraction of the length of the other, in which case it would be rather pointless to fork the stubby segment into its own article. However, if each segment has its own lengthy cultural and historical story, it may very well warrant individual articles for each segment. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 14:37, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

I can see how the current setup makes sense for most cases. The two segments of NJ 167 are directly related as they were both former segments of US 9 leading up to a demolished bridge, so they should be covered together. As for PA 97, the two segments are at opposite ends of the state and have no historical relation, so it makes sense to cover them separately. As for MO 110, the Missouri Route 110 title is for the original route in Jefferson County with a hatnote to the unrelated segment that is the Chicago–Kansas City Expressway. Since there are two unrelated MO 110's, and neither of them should get priority, wouldn't it make sense to make Missouri Route 110 a dab page and move the original incarnation to Missouri Route 110 (Jefferson County)? Dough4872 17:46, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Considering one of the 110s is completely concurrent with I-35 and US 36, and doesn't have its own article (it is covered in the CKC article), the Jefferson County MO 110 should take priority. There is no real need to disambiguate if one of the articles doesn't share that title. A hatnote should suffice. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:56, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

While a hatnote works, is there proof that the Jefferson County MO 110 is more important? The CKC MO 110 is almost 200 miles long, compared to 6 miles for the one in Jefferson County, and the CKC has gotten more media attention. Dough4872 23:14, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Under the doctrine of using the common name, in this case, the other MO 110's common name is "Chicago–Kansas City Expressway" or "CKC", not MO 110. The Jefferson County example wouldn't have another name to take precedence, so in this case, the MO 110 entry for the CKC would get the disambiguation term, and the original MO 110 could be left alone, applying hatnotes as needed. Imzadi 1979 → 23:58, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Georgia State Route 368's major intersections section

I added a major intersections section to the Georgia State Route 368 article. Normally, I have no problem with this, but SR 368 ends at a state line, so I don't understand how to do this. Could someone correct this section, and let me know what I did wrong? Thanks. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 19:39, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

river= and location= are not substitutes for each other. --Rschen7754 19:42, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

What would the correct code for that section be? Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 19:50, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Take a look; I've fixed it. --Rschen7754 20:03, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Another option is to use a line of {{SCint}} and show continuation that way. See I-74's exit list for what I mean. –Fredddie™ 20:28, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Often Missing the Names of Mtn Passes

I'm reanalyzing my mc trip and find that for many roads/hiwys there are no indications of their mountain passes in lots of the road wiki pages (e.g. CA-299, UT-12...).

For UT-12 between Torrey and Boulder there is a distinct and high mtn pass with a distinct name I forgot. Also for 299 between Eureka and Willow Creek, there are two major elevations I don't find any name here. But I know there was a traffic shield with the name of at least one of the mtn. passes.

Unfortunately, also on Google Maps and Google Earth there is rarely an indication of the mtn pass names.

Since I was a tourist from Europe I have no idea of these names, but still want to know.

I appreciate if you could provide the names of major mtn passes of the (scenic) roads/hiwys.

Lorenz, Zurich, Switzerland

178.83.26.106 (talk) 09:25, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Mountain passes along a route can usually be mentioned in the Route description section. Dough4872 15:58, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Lorenz, thanks for the feedback. If we find reliable sources that list them, we'll be sure to add them. –Fredddie™ 21:56, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Do you think we could possibly include mountain passes in our junction lists, much like we include bridges, tunnels, and ferries? Dough4872 23:01, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. I see where this could be helpful, but I could also see where this could be abused and every minor mountain pass would be included. --Rschen7754 06:17, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Where do you see abuse of it? I'd expect more that people would demand covering all, not abuse of adding all names. Mitch32^{(Victim of public education, 17 years and counting)} 10:54, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

IMHO, this is like major bridge/tunnel crossings, and a detail that should be included in articles on a case-by-case basis. Again, I understand that there have been cases in the past, but I dislike the attitude of proscribing potentially negative behaviors and content before there's a problem instead of prescribing best practices. Imzadi 1979 → 13:21, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, this could get to the point where every little gap in the range could be in the jct list as a mountain pass. How about a criteria that a pass must be worthy of its own Wikipedia article to be included on a jct list?    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 00:49, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree in principle, but I'm not sure if we have to legislate this. I'm sure that if any one of us came upon a junction list that was clogged with mountain passes that we'd remove them. –Fredddie™ 00:59, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Ok, hold on. Since when should this be in junction lists? I downright oppose that. It should only be in route descriptions and maybe a lead if notable enough. (Clearly I misread something.) Mitch32^{(Victim of public education, 17 years and counting)} 12:04, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

If we include what we believe to be major river crossings in junction lists, then we should include major mountain crossings as well. I understand we need to have limits to prevent the abuse of including too many mountain passes, just as we should for river crossings. Therefore, I propose the following:

1. All mountain passes that close for extended periods during the winter—such as Chinook Pass, Independence Pass, Logan Pass, and Sherman Pass—may be included in junction lists without reservation. There should be a reference to a reliable source for the road closure.
2. All mountain passes that remain open during the winter, but for which the state highway agency makes notable efforts to keep open—such as Donner Pass, Snoqualmie Pass, and Loveland Pass—may also be included in junction lists without reservation. There should be a reference to a reliable source for the effort to keep the road open.
3. Unless there are other non-reservation situations introduced, all other passes must justify their inclusion on an individual basis on exceptional value, backed by reliable sources, to be included.
4. Mountain passes may be included in a secondary fashion, as a supplement to another junction list entry. Examples include a junction with a ridge-top highway, such as US 211's junction with Skyline Drive at Thornton Gap or I-405's interchange with Mulholland Drive at Sepulveda Pass; a highway terminus at a gap (no obvious example); or a state line, like where US 33 crosses Dry Run Gap at the Virginia–West Virginia state line.  VC  17:51, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I think that's good. --Rschen7754 18:09, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I think that mountain passes should be included if they are notable enough for an article, much like bridges. Dough4872 18:24, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Merge or not?

I have been working on an article for U.S. Route 90 in Florida since late-July 2012. Once I finish it, does that mean that Beach Boulevard (Jacksonville, Florida) will be merged into the article? ----DanTD 16:57, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

I do not know for sure whether Beach Boulevard will be merged into the main article, but I agree that it should be merged into the main article.  VC  17:26, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree with VC. –Fredddie™ 23:10, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Wow. Maybe I should swipe some material from the Beach Boulevard article and put it in there as well. ----DanTD 23:52, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

You could scrub Beach Boulevard of its USRD bits and rework it into a USST article. –Fredddie™ 01:00, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, I didn't think of that. But I suppose if Queens Boulevard and Union Turnpike can be stand-alone articles along with New York State Route 25 and New York State Route 25C, I suppose this can remain one too. The only thing I wonder about is whether or not the current elements of the article can stay there, or f they have to be changed for USST. --DanTD 14:33, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Old exit numbers

I know we've had this discussion in the past, but we need to set a policy regarding old exit numbers in exit lists. The main concern is how long should we include the old exit numbers. Should we include them only in the transitional period, until 10 years after, or forever? We should come to a consensus on what it should be and possibly add it to MOS:RJL. Dough4872 23:31, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Permanent inclusion—find a source and keep them in place. We're a reference work, and just because the numbers may not be active doesn't make them any less valid information in an historical context to include. Also, we can't really amend MOS:RJL from a discussion here, however, we can apply the consensus to WP:USRD/STDS since MOS:RJL is neutral on the concept. Imzadi 1979 → 23:36, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

I have seen a picture from the 1970s of a consecutively-numbered exit along I-80 in Iowa. Does that mean I have to hunt down exit numbers from that era and include them? I see your point about including them, but it opens a can of worms for those states that had consecutive numbers long ago but do not now. –Fredddie™ 00:29, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

When exit numbers are changed, how long does the signage reflect that? How long do the BGSs have "OLD EXIT 00" tabs attached to them? Maybe the time period used in real life should be our guide.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 00:50, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

The time period can vary with the state. Pennsylvania switched to mile-based exits about 10 years ago, yet signs for the old exit numbers still exist. It can be hard to track down whether or not a state still signs its old exit numbers, and signage can be inconsistent within a state. Dough4872 01:04, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

PennDOT's leaving them up for the last 11 years hasn't exactly helped much. I still from personal experience have seen billboards / advertisements for Exit 46, 53, etc. running around on Interstate 80, as much as I know that its been 11 year since those were relevant. I do support them as staying in the article. Exactly who are they hurting really by being in there? We're not gaining or losing much by removing them. Mitch32^{(Victim of public education, 17 years and counting)} 01:35, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

What then of the sequential numbering system used on Highway 401 up until 1978?... Somehow I remember several of the editors that have commented here opposing the inclusion of these exit numbers as historical and unnecessary. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 19:23, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

1. Road junction lists should mainly reflect a highway as it is now. I am not opposed to all historical references in a junction list, but the historical references in the junction list should not be used comprehensively. I agree that we are a reference work, but comprehensive historical references belong in the History section.
2. How notable are old exit numbers on an individual basis? I agree that old exiting numbering systems are notable, but individual numbers are unlikely to be notable on their own.
3. States often announce that the old numbers will be displayed for 1 year or 2 years after implementation of the new system, but that rarely squares with reality. State transportation departments forget the old exit signs exist or let them hang around until gentries are replaced or the signs get blown down. To determine whether old exits are still signed without a reliable source is original research.  VC  20:50, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

The question I argue is are we actually hurting anyone? If people are going to be on Interstate 80 in PA, and haven't been in 15-20 years, they may not know what exit is what. I'd argue having the old numbers next to the current one are actually a benefit to readers than removing them. I mean, if I get what you want, we're going to replace it with a passing mention in the article, which I don't support without the old exit numbers in the junction list.Mitch32^{(Victim of public education, 17 years and counting)} 11:59, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

New Jersey Route 495

River does not span the location version

County Location mi km Destinations Notes Hudson Secaucus 0.00 0.00 I-95 / N.J. Turnpike south to I-280 / I-78 – Newark Westbound exit and eastbound entrance North Bergen 0.19 0.31 I-95 / N.J. Turnpike north to US 46 / I-80 – Clifton Westbound exit and eastbound entrance 0.78 1.26 US 1-9 / Route 3 east – Park & Ride Eastbound exit and westbound entrance 0.78 1.26 Route 3 west to G.S. Parkway – Secaucus Westbound exit and eastbound entrance 0.90 1.45 US 1-9 – Ridgefield, Jersey City Westbound exit and eastbound entrance Union City 1.23 1.98 CR 501 (John F. Kennedy Boulevard) Traffic circle above Route 495 and below JFK Blvd. 2.08 3.35 Park Avenue – Union City, Weehawken, Hoboken Westbound entrance, eastbound-last exit in N.J. before toll Weehawken Lincoln Tunnel Helix Park Avenue – Union City, Weehawken, Hoboken Eastbound entrance, westbound exit 2.23 3.59 Boulevard East – Weehawken Northbound exit Marginal Highway local lane 2.50 4.02 Weehawken, Hoboken Eastbound entrance at Boulevard East, southbound exit to Willow Avenue 2.60 4.18 Lincoln Tunnel under Hudson River 3.45 5.55 NY 495 – Manhattan, New York City New York State line in tunnel at river midpoint 1.000 mi = 1.609 km; 1.000 km = 0.621 mi

River spans the location version

County Location mi km Destinations Notes Hudson Secaucus 0.00 0.00 I-95 / N.J. Turnpike south to I-280 / I-78 – Newark Westbound exit and eastbound entrance North Bergen 0.19 0.31 I-95 / N.J. Turnpike north to US 46 / I-80 – Clifton Westbound exit and eastbound entrance 0.78 1.26 US 1-9 / Route 3 east – Park & Ride Eastbound exit and westbound entrance 0.78 1.26 Route 3 west to G.S. Parkway – Secaucus Westbound exit and eastbound entrance 0.90 1.45 US 1-9 – Ridgefield, Jersey City Westbound exit and eastbound entrance Union City 1.23 1.98 CR 501 (John F. Kennedy Boulevard) Traffic circle above Route 495 and below JFK Blvd. 2.08 3.35 Park Avenue – Union City, Weehawken, Hoboken Westbound entrance, eastbound-last exit in N.J. before toll Weehawken Lincoln Tunnel Helix Park Avenue – Union City, Weehawken, Hoboken Eastbound entrance, westbound exit 2.23 3.59 Boulevard East – Weehawken Northbound exit Marginal Highway local lane 2.50 4.02 Weehawken, Hoboken Eastbound entrance at Boulevard East, southbound exit to Willow Avenue 2.60 4.18 Lincoln Tunnel toll plaza Hudson River 3.45 5.55 Lincoln Tunnel New York New York 3.45 5.55 NY 495 east New York state line 1.000 mi = 1.609 km; 1.000 km = 0.621 mi

Ends with river version

}} County Location mi km Destinations Notes Hudson Secaucus 0.00 0.00 I-95 / N.J. Turnpike south to I-280 / I-78 – Newark Westbound exit and eastbound entrance North Bergen 0.19 0.31 I-95 / N.J. Turnpike north to US 46 / I-80 – Clifton Westbound exit and eastbound entrance 0.78 1.26 US 1-9 / Route 3 east – Park & Ride Eastbound exit and westbound entrance 0.78 1.26 Route 3 west to G.S. Parkway – Secaucus Westbound exit and eastbound entrance 0.90 1.45 US 1-9 – Ridgefield, Jersey City Westbound exit and eastbound entrance Union City 1.23 1.98 CR 501 (John F. Kennedy Boulevard) Traffic circle above Route 495 and below JFK Blvd. 2.08 3.35 Park Avenue – Union City, Weehawken, Hoboken Westbound entrance, eastbound-last exit in N.J. before toll Weehawken Lincoln Tunnel Helix Park Avenue – Union City, Weehawken, Hoboken Eastbound entrance, westbound exit 2.23 3.59 Boulevard East – Weehawken Northbound exit Marginal Highway local lane 2.50 4.02 Weehawken, Hoboken Eastbound entrance at Boulevard East, southbound exit to Willow Avenue 2.60 4.18 Lincoln Tunnel toll plaza Hudson River 3.45 5.55 midpoint of Lincoln Tunnel under Hudson River 1.000 mi = 1.609 km; 1.000 km = 0.621 mi

Note: I added these to facilitate discussion. –Fredddie™ 22:48, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

There is a dispute in how the Lincoln Tunnel crossing should be handled in the New Jersey Route 495 exit list. My version uses the standard jctbridge with the river spanning the county and location columns and the state line continuation shown in a separate row but Djflem keeps reverting it to look like it currently does. Which version is better? Dough4872 18:40, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I would say Dough4872's version is more accurate, as NY-495 is not in Weehawken, nor in Hudson County, nor in New Jersey.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 21:07, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Either way is a valid way of noting the continuation of a highway past its terminus in the junction list. We currently have no standard for this and it varies state to state. Dough's preferred version is what I refer to as "Iowa-style" because it is the way this sort of situation is handled in Iowa articles. Its benefit is that it is technically accurate in all aspects, however, while it is obvious on this article that New York City/New York County is not in New Jersey, in most instances that's not the case (consider U.S. Route 30 in Iowa—it may not be obvious that Washington County is, in fact, in Nebraska). You have already outlined the problems with the other way of doing it, which I refer to as "Michigan-style". For Oklahoma's articles, I do things a third way; see Interstate 35 in Oklahoma. While this explicitly notes the state line as the location, it's been pointed out that the "Oklahoma-style" method often results in the centered cell beginning with shields, which could be considered aesthetically displeasing at best and chafing on MOS:ICON at the worst. You might consider it as a compromise to settle the situation.

This might be something that we should standardize in RJL but for now it should be handled at the task force level. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:04, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Well I guess you all know where I stand. :) That being said, I do always make a point to add "Continuation into Nebraska" (in US 30's case) for clarification's sake. –Fredddie™ 22:22, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I decided to use the IA style per VC's recommendation that the continuation to the other state at the river crossing should be shown as not to give the impression the road ends at the state line with no continuation. The OK style could possibly work for the situation of NJ 495. The current style in the NJ 495 article is not the best as it does not show the river spanning the location column and implies that NY 495 enters Weehawken. Dough4872 23:01, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

If you re-revert, I wouldn't include the end mileage in the NY junction; just leave the mile column blank. –Fredddie™ 01:02, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Why not? MP 3.45 is still relevant here.Mitch32^{(Victim of public education, 17 years and counting)} 12:03, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

As it was, the NJ endpoint mileage was repeated in the NY line, which is wrong. –Fredddie™ 22:48, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Dough 4872's interest in destabilizing a consensus which he helped to establish is perplexing. Since Sept 22 2006 when municipality location was introduced into the exit list New York City/County have been not included in it. This is because NJ495 does not travel through or have any exits in New York, and including in that column would imply that it did. NJ495 ends in the tunnel at the mid-point of the river at the border established in 1834 (by compact between the states ratified by Congress). Having the river span the location would imply that that the river is not located within the places it is at that point, namely in Weehawken and Manhattan. For the purposes of an article about highway designation exclusively located in one state (NJ in this case), only the portion that is relevent to the state need be notated. Using the current format of destination/note, a simple correction can be made by shifting the NY495 info to the note column to the effect: road continues as NY495 at state line at river midpoint in tunnel.Djflem (talk) 21:47, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

What about ending the list with the "Lincoln Tunnel under Hudson River" line at the bottom? (See the third sample I added above.)    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 23:08, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Having the river span the location columns implies that the river separates the two cities, which it does. Having New York, New York in the junction list shows that the route continues on the other side of the river/tunnel and where it lands. There is absolutely nothing wrong with providing that for our readers. –Fredddie™ 23:00, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

The city line of the municipalities are not separated by anything: they abut each other, their shared border the midpoint of the Hudson River, the start/end point of NJ495. The Hudson at the point in question is located in Weehawken, New Jersey and there no reason to re-write history or geography to accommodate an exit list. I would suggest reversing the order of the list, thus east to west, beginning with the zero milepoint at Weehawken and ending in North Bergen.Djflem (talk) 05:55, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

...You do know that the zero milepost was established by NJDOT, using the west end of the route as required by the federal Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, correct? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 06:08, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Now we're just arguing semantics. Yes, legally, the cities border each other in the middle of the Hudson River. I still say that under a river is a more notable location than the city limits of two cities in neighboring states. If we ignore this fact, we're really doing a disservice to our readers. –Fredddie™ 11:40, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Misrepresenting the fact that the cities legally border each other in the middle of the river would indeed be disservice to the reader.Djflem (talk) 20:12, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

M-553 FAC

Unfortunately, M-553 failed FAC today, our first FAC that did not pass in several years. The main issue was that there was not enough support; it needed more independent review. While this largely is not our fault, does anyone have any ideas as to how we can prevent this from happening again? --Rschen7754 20:53, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Largely not our fault? The main problem, lack of reviewers, is out of our hands. I also think we're overreacting. Mitch32^{(Victim of public education, 17 years and counting)} 21:50, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

We did what we could to let the project know through Article Alerts and the USRD Announcements template. Most of the active project members had already reviewed the article at ACR and had no review to offer at FAC, other than a support. Dough4872 23:13, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Whoever reviews an article at ACR should support the article as soon as it is nominated at FAC. The expediency is due to the unfortunate "top is recent" setup of FAC. Four immediate supports are more likely to get reviewers' attention than one immediate support. Some of that attention will be negative, but in this case any attention is good attention because there will be activity. Prolonged lack of activity before a significant level of support is a recipe for apathy FAC-fail.  VC  23:36, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

However, I just don't understand how this changes anything. We could support it seven ways to Sunday, but we could still get no reviews, it happens. Why are we trying to require/fix things that isn't really something we control? Mitch32^{(Victim of public education, 17 years and counting)} 00:56, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure we could really do anything to stop this. I was hesitant to support because I don't want one of our FACs to devolve into USRD-bashing because we were voting as a bloc, and I don't know the MOS or FAC standards well enough to make a legitimate case for a support other than "It passed ACR so it's good enough for me".—Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 04:29, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Making sure our ACR reviewers offer support at FAC is one thing in this process we can control and does not require much work beyond the ACR review. I agree with not rubber-stamping a support if you were not one of the ACR reviewers. However, I see no problem with doing the same if you were one of the ACR reviewers. Each ACR reviewer has done significant work in a rigorous, FAC-like process. Would it be more beneficial to also link to the particular ACR review conducted by that user?  VC  14:53, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

I think this is at least worth trying. --Rschen7754 19:15, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

I've started trying to do image reviews at ACR, which is one of the areas that can hold up an open FAC. If I did one, as I did with California State Route 57, I link to the ACR in my FAC comments. That way the FAC delegates can jump over to the ACR, see what was said and done in terms of the image review, and check it off the list of things they'd want done in the FAC. If an editor did a substantive review at ACR, and links to that in their comments in supporting at FAC, then they shouldn't feel like they're "rubber stamping" anything.

P.S., the article has been renominated at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/M-553 (Michigan highway)/archive2. Imzadi 1979 → 20:13, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

I am one of those people who thinks it looks bad if everyone who reviewed it at ACR immediately supports it at FAC. Right this moment, if I were to support M-553 at FAC, all four reviewers would have supported it within 3 hours of the nomination going live. I think it throws up red flags if there are that many supports that quickly.

That being said, I have no problem with supporting at FAC any article I review at ACR. But, I will wait until at least one non-HWY person reviews the article. –Fredddie™ 22:39, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

That also being said, this is a renomination/restart of an idle nomination; it's understandable if those who had previously supported continue to still support and reiterate that support in the new FAC. Any fishiness factor is negated by the fact that it was restarted right away. (Plus, let the delegates handle appearances... that's not our worries so much.) Imzadi 1979 → 00:32, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

ACR backlog

Just letting you know that we have five ACRs open that need reviews. I plan on adding a sixth once one of my GANs goes through, so the backlog is only going to grow. If you could take some time to review them, that would be amazing. --Rschen7754 08:01, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Assessment log updates

How often is the Assessment log updated? In particular, where can I see an assessment log for the state of Georgia? Thanks. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 22:38, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

The logs are updated whenever the bot runs and there is something to update; normally the bot runs daily. The USRD project-wide log is at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/U.S. road transport articles by quality log, and a Georgia-specific one is at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Georgia (U.S. state) road transport articles by quality log. Assuming the bot is running daily, the state and national logs will only be updated if there were changes to assessment in the preceding 24 hours. Imzadi 1979 → 22:52, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Daily, huh? I have been updating some of the Georgia state route articles (and updating the assessment on the talk pages). I have been doing this since August 25 (the date on both of the pages that you linked above. Is there a problem on the pages with the date, or did I just overlook the more recent updates? Thank you for clearing all of this up. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 23:07, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

It's supposed to run daily; if it isn't, well, go ask the bot operator. Imzadi 1979 → 23:40, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Georgia went from a 5.733 to its current 5.697 in that time. If you were to improve all of Georgia's stubs to starts today, you would have a 4.959 and our full attention. –Fredddie™ 00:07, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

The bot typically runs daily. There's been a technical issue for the past month or so that has prevented the log updates on wiki. See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index and recent archives for more explanation. The log updates won't be started again until some of the issues are resolved. It's getting better...there was a period in August where the bot-generated wikiwork table was only updated a two times within three weeks. -- LJ ↗ 09:28, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

It should be back to updating normally, but the manual updater is disabled until further notice. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 14:34, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Second opinion

See Talk:U.S. Route 60 in Oklahoma/GA1. I would like a second opinion on whether certain features need to be referenced in the route description. Dough4872 16:51, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Creating KMLs with GIS data [x-post from Maps Task Force]

Having a problem with GIS data and the creation of KML files for routes, see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_U.S._Roads/Maps_task_force/Tutorial#Creating_KMLs_with_GIS_data —Mr. Matté (^Talk/_Contrib) 22:35, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

WP:HWY/TFA

I've created a new page at the above link to put down suggestions for TFA and coordinate nominations for WP:TFAR. --Rschen7754 05:12, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

EZ-Pass only exit list color

Resolved

 – The {{Jctint}} suite of templates have been updated to add purple for ETC exits and yellow for HOV exits. –Fredddie™ 17:55, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

This came up from an IRC discussion about Exit 352 on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the fact that it is an EZ-Pass only interchange. What I thought of was that we should make a lighter shade of purple (i.e. lavender) to signify exits on a junction list for electronic controlled access. Ones that come to mind include the PA Turnpike (Exits 320, 340, 352), the Atlantic City Expressway (exit 17), IL toll roads, etc. I'll leave the floor open, curious to if the project wants to signify it. I personally don't think the "Partial access interchange" fairly covers this type of access. Mitch32^{(Victim of public education, 17 years and counting)} 00:22, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree with the concept, with the understanding that we wouldn't use it on ETC-only (with or without pay-by-plate options) toll roads. In those cases, I wouldn't want the entire table to receive a color, but I would endorse it for interchanges that are the exception, not the rule. Imzadi 1979 → 00:25, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

This does sound like a good idea, but I have three issues. First, the E-ZPass color would conflict with other colors such as the partial interchange colors for exits 340 and 352 on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Second, what would we do in the case of exit 17 of the Atlantic City Expressway, where only part of the interchange is E-ZPass only. Third, we need to take into account there are many toll roads that are ETC only. Dough4872 00:26, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I'd be OK with either of these colors:      #ddaadd or      #dcdcfe. The latter is a complementary color of      #ddffdd, the concurrency color. –Fredddie™ 02:18, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Right after I saved, I thought, "Shouldn't we be having this discussion at WT:RJL?" –Fredddie™ 02:23, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

The question I have is, why discriminate? Why not include carpool lane only exits, or Fastrak exits, or Good2Go? --Rschen7754 02:26, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I think tolls are a silly novelty anyway, so I don't see why we couldn't. –Fredddie™ 02:34, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I am not a fan of colors in general, but I am neutral-permissive about having an electronic-only exit shading. However, I have to disagree the electronic-toll-only color would conflict with the partial interchange color. The former is a shade of purple; the latter is a shade of red. That would be an issue if anyone has red-purple color blindness, but that is why we build MOS-compliant tables and create notes for redundancy with colors people may or may not be able to see.

I edit-conflicted with rschen7754, who has a good point about this possibly being a slippery slope. Fredddie, too, but no point to agree with there.  VC  02:40, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

What I mean to say is that EZPass is very East coast centric. Western states typically use different vendors. --Rschen7754 02:57, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I was reading the original question by substituting other forms of ETC (electronic toll collection) for "EZ-Pass". Maybe I should clarify that if we did this, I would have the legend at the bottom of the table use "ETC" instead of "EZ-Pass" for some of the same reasons mentioned above (uses a generic term instead of a specific brand name for one service, wide applicability to additional situations like TxTag, Good2Go, MNPass, GeauPass, etc) Imzadi 1979 → 03:07, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

What about HOT or HOV only exits though? There are a lot in CA and incomplete doesn't fit those either, but they are not ETC. --Rschen7754 03:19, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Rschen brings up a valid point about HOV-/HOT-only exits, and there are tolled exits in other states where being assessed a toll on the ramp is a notable exception. (On I-355 in IL, some ramps assess a toll on exit in addition to the tolls assessed on the mainline toll barriers, but unlike the ticket systems used in IN or OH, tolls aren't assessed on all exits.)

So what I'm thinking is using the lavender for toll-specific exceptions: ETC-only exits, or exits where a toll is specifically assessed to use that ramp to leave the freeway. {{legendRJL}} would be updated to use a |ETC=yes or |toll=y to display the legend for the color. HOV-/HOT-only items could use another color shade (yellow and blue are the only choices left of the basic rainbow) with a |hov=y option to display that addition to the key. This way these new additions only appear in the key where appropriate (Michigan doesn't have ETC nor HOV/HOT situations). Imzadi 1979 → 03:33, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I think it is overkill to have colors for every exit that has a toll plaza along with every HOV/HOT exit. The notes column works fine. Dough4872 03:41, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

It's more a case of calling out the exceptions to the general patterns. I've skipped colors where all interchanges are partial ones, rather than have the whole table appear in pink. Where there are valid exceptions worth noting, it can be worth calling attention to them. Imzadi 1979 → 03:44, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I think we need to be consistent with the colors we use in junction lists. If not, I think we need to abolish them totally. Dough4872 03:48, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Skipping colors in that instance is a valid extension of dropping the county column on a junction list. –Fredddie™ 05:09, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

But we have a set rule for whether the county column is needed or not. We do not for colors, as one exit may require more than one color (such as a partial interchange at a concurrency terminus). With this, we have to pick and choose which color to include for that exit and that can lead to edit warring. Dough4872 15:15, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Which is a valid discussion for WT:RJL. –Fredddie™ 15:20, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Proscribing an option because it could lead to edit-warring is a straw man argument. As long as the "edit" link(s) in an article exist, there can always be edit warring. I summarily reject your argument on that subject in its totality. Edit warring is already against policy, regardless if it's over what photos to use or not use in an article, how to format a table or how to word a sentence. Period. End of Discussion. Never use that argument here again. Where there is a legitimate difference of opinion over photo, formatting or linguistic options, WP:Consensus will determine which options to use, and there is no need to legislate for any possibility. Imzadi 1979 → 20:28, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Kind of going on the tangent here, but there can be certain concepts that are plagued with the potential for unabated edit warring... But that's more like the genre parameter of {{infobox musical artist}}, and certainly in this case you are correct that it's a straw man argument. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 21:18, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I fully disagree with the above comments. In an ideal Wikipedia, we shouldn't have the edit warring policy at all. However, edit warring is a fact. Where there are holes in the guidelines, we get threads like the one immediately above this one. The California project was torn apart for years over IPs and socks (who generally cannot be blocked effectively) who edit warred over the junction lists for years. I was powerless to do anything because many USRD regulars did not want to get involved, so there went consensus; 1 support and 1 oppose is not consensus. I also don't think that we should be telling people to "Never use that argument here again." --Rschen7754 20:25, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm working on {{LegendRJL/sandbox}}. A problem I'm finding is that the light purple colors I proposed are too close to the reddish color used for incomplete movements. If we were to go much darker, we would have to make the row text white to be WP:COLOR compliant. –Fredddie™ 15:36, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

We could change the the incomplete movements color. Mitch32^{(Victim of public education, 17 years and counting)} 20:35, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

We could use a blue color for something. –Fredddie™ 01:50, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't think      #dcdcfe would be too close...                —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 04:27, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

The color-blind might have trouble with this, but I think they'll have trouble to some extent no matter what we do. --Rschen7754 08:02, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

This is exposing a reason why it is not a good idea to use colors in our junction lists. Dough4872 15:57, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Per MOS:RJL and MOS:COLOR: "Color should not be the only method to impart the information. For the benefit of colorblind readers or persons using screen readers, the Notes or Destination column(s) must include the information." and "Do not use color alone to mark differences in text." So this "problem" was already dealt with by requiring the notes column to repeat and expand on the information being imparted by the colors. Imzadi 1979 → 16:20, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

I feel it is redundant to have both the notes and the colors. Personally, I see the colors as redundant to the notes. Dough4872 17:30, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

And you keep interjecting comments against an allowed, optional, practice when we're discussing amending that. If you're so opposed to the usage of colors, don't use them in the articles you work on, but please stop using any discussion related to tweaking the practice as a soapbox to get them removed from other article. Thanks. Imzadi 1979 → 17:54, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Can we get back to the point? We have three options on the table: Add/don't add an ETC Color, Change the colors for Incomplete access and what color to make the ETC one. My thought is just adopt a color that we can agree on that is a lighter shade of purple and doesn't interfere with the eyes. Mitch32^{(Victim of public education, 17 years and counting)} 23:46, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. Since the MUTCD already makes the Purple=ETC connection, it's a natural candidate for the color choice. If we want to take the opportunity to deal with HOV-/HOT-only situations, we can as well. Imzadi 1979 → 00:00, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

I made a change to the Jctint/core sandbox to give us some flexibility for adding colors in the future. –Fredddie™ 00:35, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

So, any other thoughts? Don't want this discussion going dead. Mitch32^{(Victim of public education, 17 years and counting)} 22:41, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

• Support both colors just to get things moving. --Rschen7754 19:27, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose - We do not need colors for everything. The current assortment of colors is fine. Dough4872 20:01, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
• Support, but per the talkpage banner, we should put up a notice on WT:RJL. –Fredddie™ 00:55, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

  It only affects the US though, so does it matter? --Rschen7754 01:03, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

  It is a junction list standard that we're discussing. Also, I don't see how getting input from people outside North America could ever be a bad thing. –Fredddie™ 01:10, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

  I agree that this should go to WT:RJL. -- LJ ↗ 21:22, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

  Crossposted there. --Rschen7754 21:24, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

• Support color #dcdcfe for ETC-only ramps. This would only be in cases where a route has certain exits that are ETC-only, not to color an entire table purple if every interchange is ETC-only or every interchange has ETC lanes with other options. Additionally, I'd support using this as a background color for a jctbridge-type entry for mainline toll barriers on ETC-only highways. -- LJ ↗ 21:21, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

  Since {{Jctbridge}} uses {{Jctint/core}} just like all the other {{Jctint}}-family templates, this will work right away. –Fredddie™ 14:20, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

• We ready to go then? Mitch32^{(Victim of public education, 17 years and counting)} 10:49, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

  I think so. I will check the sandbox one more time to make sure we're good to go. –Fredddie™ 14:20, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

  Yes. {{Jctint/core/sandbox}} can be copied to {{Jctint/core}}. After that's done, {{Jctint/type}} should be semi-protected per WP:HRT. –Fredddie™ 15:12, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Sources for Georgia State Routes?

Is there a reliable source for a list of all of the current state highways in the state of Georgia? I have noticed that some of the state route articles don't currently exist, and I want to eliminate the red links. Thanks! Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 01:59, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

I would poke around on the Georgia DOT site and see if you can find something. If I get time I might take another look, grad school's starting to catch up to me. --Rschen7754 07:15, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

IRC!

Just another reminder that our IRC chat channel is always open, and there's people in it frequently (the best times are afternoons and evenings US time). I'll be inviting the newer users on their talk pages, but anyone is welcome! --Rschen7754 07:39, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

ACR statistics

Thanks to everyone who's been helping out at ACR! We still have quite a backlog, with 7 ACRs open, and up to 5 potential nominees coming shortly. --Rschen7754 08:31, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Pre-FLC reviews at ACR?

I'm not at all proposing we add an A-Class List assessment like WP:MILHIST has, but do you think it would be a good idea to take any potential FLC-bound lists through ACR before going to FLC? –Fredddie™ 03:34, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

I actually thought we did this already... and then I realized we didn't. I would actually propose adding an A-Class List assessment, just so people feel like they're earning something by going through ACR. It would also help with our high fail rate at FLC. --Rschen7754 03:38, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

At some point, I think we should emulate the model used by MILHIST, which has CL-, BL-, and AL-Classes to parallel C-, B-, and A-Classes for articles. (They use List-Class as the parallel to Start-Class and assume that until an article is developed past the Stub-Class stage that's it's not possible to determine if an article will be a list or not. We already know which topics will be lists.) That plus reviewing lists at ACR to award AL-Class status as a preparation for FLC would be a good start. We could even amend and expand on our WikiWork system to track list progress at some point.

To summarize, let's implement AL-Class and work backwards down the scale first to implement the other parallel classes. Imzadi 1979 → 06:27, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

I suppose BL and CL might be good in the future, but let's work on AL first, IMHO. By the way, we probably need a discussion at WT:HWY for the ACR part, since that's no longer under USRD. If Canada, the UK, or India want into the AL classification, they'll probably need a discussion there too. --Rschen7754 06:31, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

I support the implementation of a formal A-Class List Review and the AL class. We should start the formation by figuring out what our criteria should be and testing those criteria with one of our existing Featured Lists. Once we get ACLR going, we should implement a BL Class. I do not think we need three list classes below AL; List, BL, and AL should be sufficient gradation.  VC  17:56, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure how this would work out. While articles on individual roads and interchanges have more or less the same structure, the layout of lists widely varies based on the scope of an individual list - and that's completely fine. I'd have to see the proposed assessment criteria before I can support this concept. Even then, VC's idea of only a handful of "upper-tier" classes makes more sense: some lists will never reach FL status, and, again, that's completely fine in my book. I can think of a few lists where the amount of stuff that would need to be added for FLC would basically render the list useless for one reason or another. – TMF (talk) 18:56, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't looking to implement A-Class Lists, but it appears consensus is here to do something. WP:MILHIST is the only project that I can think of that has A-Class Lists (they call it AL-Class). Are there others? We could compare and contrast what they all do and come up with our own criteria. –Fredddie™ 23:28, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Response to the events happening in the greater Wikipedia

Many of us are aware of the chaotic events that have been happening over the last few weeks on Wikipedia. Those of us in the IRC channel are monitoring those events, and I am participating in many of the discussions, but as far as we know, this will not affect the roads projects in general. Ever since 2008, we have kept the drama far from our doorsteps, with only a few minor incidents here and there. We have enough administrators to deal with the project's needs, and a few editors who would probably pass RFA if we need more, so we don't need to worry about administrators leaving en masse. Please shoot me an email if you have any questions or concerns. --Rschen7754 04:33, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Talk:Interstate 96 issue

A user insists on adding a nonstandard section to the I-96 article called "I-96 Sniper". Your comments would be appreciated. --Rschen7754 21:01, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

A-List discussion

Trying to restart the A-List discussion here since it got archived...

Why don't we adopt the Wikipedia:Featured list criteria, since FLC is the end goal of an A-List? --Rschen7754 07:30, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

That is an idea we can work with. Dough4872 13:45, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Georgia state routes concerns

I have been looking at the Georgia County Maps, and I have come across some routes on them that are not on the List of numbered highways in Georgia (U.S. state) page. There are the normal alternate, business, bypass, connector, loop, and spur routes, however, there are also some state routes that have "CW", "DU", "EA", "LO", "SE", "SO", "TA", and "WE" suffixes on them. Can someone tell me what these road abbreviations are? Also, the "List" page above only has the routes numbered 1-388, some 400-series routes, and a few 500-series routes. On the GDOT maps, there are routes in the 700-, 800-, 900-, 1000-, 1100-, and 1200-series. What is up with that? Since the GDOT doesn't have a route log, this is very confusing. There is also confusion over roads listed as either future or future alignments. Some are broken into as many as 5+ segments; some are less than a mile long. Thank you for your help. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 08:10, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Can you be more specific where these marked highways are? I wonder if those two-letter abbreviations might have something to do with the counties they are in. ("CW" = Coweta? "EA" = Early?) And are the higher numbers in rural or urban areas?    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 16:40, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

This document shows the legislation designating some local roads as Georgia state roads with some of those odd letter suffixes, but it does not explain those suffixes.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 22:57, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Nice find, Michael. If I'm reading the document and interpreting the maps correctly, GDOT projects are assigned a temporary route number, whether or not the project is located on a state highway. Since they're temporary, I don't think it would be wise to include them (routes numbered over 700) on the state route list. I do think the fact that temporary route numbers are assigned is worth mentioning, however. –Fredddie™ 23:33, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

First, I want to say that I don't like my reply (or my re-reply, for that matter) being removed (for little or no reason). Michael J asked me a question (see second "thought" above), and I thought the easiest way to answer him was to paste my researched route log in the edit box.

Second, what exactly is that PDF document supposed to show (related to my original question above)? I would like to re-write the "List of numbered highways in Georgia (U.S. state)" page, including all of the state routes. If there is any way that I could do that, could you please help me? Thank you. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 00:33, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

A 30kb text dump is generally not useful, either on this talk page or for the purposes of creating/improving upon any related subset of articles. As suggested in this edit summary, it would be helpful to have this in a sandbox or similar appropriate subpage for reference. --Kinu ^t/_c 00:48, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, remember that everything left on here is archived for the bot. Those archives are searchable, and each one is of a limited size. 30K isn't near the size, but it goes a long way toward filling a single archive page. Imzadi 1979 → 00:53, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Your list is now here. You should concentrate on all of the permanent routes. You're tilting at windmills if you think including the temporary routes on the list is a good idea. Secondly, that document shows that route numbers are assigned to projects and that they are indeed temporary. –Fredddie™ 00:55, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Allen (Morriswa), I appreciate the effort you put into posting that list, although I was only expecting a couple of examples, so that I might look at a few of the counties and see if I could find a pattern. Thank you.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 17:51, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

ACR backlog

This is the monthly reminder that we need reviewers at ACR! We're at 7 articles now, and more are definitely on the way! --Rschen7754 03:55, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Exits posted on non-Interstates in Ohio

So I and an anonymous poster have been posting newly-posted exit numbers on the exit list on Ohio State Route 2. I have been putting "citation needed" templates next to each of them since there isn't really a direct source yet, but it's starting to look silly (I didn't just put "cn" in the column header because I-90's exit numbers where SR-2 runs with it are also listed). It's been noted with a RS that Ohio has started to do this (Exit numbers in the United States#Other highways, although the source is inaccessible to the general public now) and I even just found an internal ODOT source via a Google search which reaffirms that and even tells how to calculate exit numbers for this particular posting activity (Project 113004 Addendum: Q/A 25, 5/27/11), but I haven't found an ODOT document which lists specific numbers, and I don't anticipate one anytime soon since they even overtly identify that their Interstate exit guide is no longer being updated. Are we really going to have to wait for the first edition of the Ohio Transportation Map with these identified, assuming that they ever are, to remove the "cn"? If I understand WP:RS and WP:SYNTH, unfortunately I don't know of any way to be able to list them until then. Mapsax (talk) 13:15, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

I would remove the "citation needed" templates because, as you say, they look silly. I have no problem with leaving the exit numbers there without a source for now because I do not think this information is controversial. If someone complains, we can revisit this and figure out the best way to cite the existence of the exit numbers in the article. In the meantime, please place a note like the above on the article's talk page so someone who goes to that talk page but not this talk page will be able to learn about this issue.  VC  15:31, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Generally, geographic information isn't considered controversial enough to require a cite, since it could be verified by visiting the actual feature as a last resort. We generally don't cite the text of guide signs, for example. If you really want to include a reference, though, you might try to find a non-ODOT map showing them (I imagine this may be difficult if they are only a few months old, but one of the online map vendors might have added them). —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:58, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

I didn't put anything on the talk page, but I did put a link back to here (valid until this hits the archives) in the edit note. Would a mention on the talk pages of List of numbered highways in Ohio or List of State Routes in Ohio go unnoticed? Mapsax (talk) 12:46, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

US elections

A lot of us will be hanging out on IRC tomorrow night as the election results come in and you're welcome to sign in! For more information on connecting, see WP:HWY/IRC. Warning: it might get a bit crazy. :) --Rschen7754 19:18, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Number of junctions in Infobox Major Intersections list

I just realized that I have been adding way too many intersections into the Georgia State Route articles, at least when based on the standard for that section found on this page. Having said that, would someone be able to explain to me the reasoning behind the 10 or fewer intersections, especially on state routes?

For anyone who has driven any state routes, especially ones not in urban areas, any intersection with another state route is a significant event. In addition, it is often at these intersections that a route's direction may change, a concurrency starts, or that the route will intersect a community worth bringing to the attention of the reader. One could argue that all of these intersections could be mentioned in the Route Description, but descriptive text is harder to digest than a good listing of intersections in the Infobox.

In other words, I am arguing that ALL intersections with any route of equal or higher status should be listed in the Infobox. Therefore, on a Georgia State Route, all intersections with other state routes, US highways, and Interstates should be listed, IMHO.

Comments? Thank you! Concertmusic (talk) 17:49, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

The limit is arbitrary, but for a good reason. The infobox is supposed to be a short summary of the route. When you start adding too many junctions, the infobox gets longer and longer, and becomes useless. We decided to cut it off at 10 before we got super-long infoboxes (see California State Route 99 for an example of a route that could have an infobox overrun by junctions). --Rschen7754 19:02, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. I should have included a recent example to better illustrate my point. Having said that, few state routes in Georgia should have many more than the junctions listed in this article: Georgia State Route 30. Certainly too much by the standards - but really bad, or bearable? I have stopped adding every SR for now - FYI. Concertmusic (talk) 19:27, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

That's way too much. The infobox is longer than the article! One of the reasons we do this is because WP:FAC will never accept anything like this. --Rschen7754 19:37, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Very well. I personally err on the side of too much info, but can certainly see the point. I will finish going through the GA SRs, and will fix the ones I have overdone next week. Concertmusic (talk) 19:41, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

In the Georgia State Route 30 example, if you included only junctions with Interstate or U.S. routes, it gets you down to 11 which is probably acceptable. In other cases you may have to make judgement calls. I would suggest keeping junctions with all Interstate and U.S. routes, and if there is room add a handful of selected state routes.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 20:41, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

The purpose of the Major intersections table in road articles is to show all notable intersections, which is all Interstates, U.S. Highways, state highways, and any other notable junctions. The list in the infobox should, in effect, be a summary of such a table that shows the most important junctions and/or locations. You should use the list of intersections you put in the infobox of the Georgia State Route 30 article and transform that into a USRD-standard Major intersections table. There are plenty of examples of Georgia state route articles with these Major intersection tables. I recommend looking at Georgia State Route 40 (a short example), U.S. Route 17 in Georgia (a moderate example), and U.S. Route 280 (a long example). Because US 280 runs concurrently with Georgia State Route 30 for much of its length, you can cut and paste a lot of it into the state route article.  VC  21:58, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, please transform that long infobox jct list to a major intersections table, as VC suggests. That will make the article comply with standards--adding the major intersections section will turn the article into a decent start class instead of a stub.

The general guideline I use on Nevada SR articles for what junctions I list in the infobox is to only include junctions with US or Interstate highways and not other state routes (except I will sometimes include junctions with primary SRs if they are really important, such as being on the NHS). But overall, it's a gauge and balance based on the length of the route and number of (important) junctions. -- LJ ↗ 02:42, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

For me, the selection of what routes should be included in the infobox depend on the type of route. For national-detail articles of long cross-country routes, only junctions with Interstates ending in 0 or 5 should be included. For shorter national-detail articles, only junctions with Interstates should be included. For cross-state routes, only Interstate and U.S. routes should be included. For shorter routes within a state, Interstate, U.S., and state route junctions should be included up to a limit of 10 junctions. The process of determining which junctions make the cut is subjective, but is the best that can be done. For some states, other routes can be included, such as named toll roads and parkways or the 500-series county routes in New Jersey, which are part of a statewide system. Dough4872 19:38, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

It should _^not be a strict rule to include junctions by type of route, though. Proper research must be done so as not to omit the occasional state route that might be at or near Interstate standards. (As was NY 17 until its recent re-designation.)    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 02:19, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't like the idea of a hard and fast rule here. Just use your best judgment and apply WP:BRD as necessary. –Fredddie™ 15:27, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. These are guidelines, not rules... and the guidelines exist for important reasons, but they aren't set in stone. The goal is to keep the infobox from being longer than the article without using a collapsing section. M-28 (Michigan highway) intersects or runs concurrently with around a dozen state highways and another eight major county roads or federal forest highways that warrant inclusion in its junction list. For the infobox, I limited it to the termini, the lone Interstate, the US Highways and M-35. Grand total of six junctions and the termini for 290 miles. The infobox is about the same length as the lead and ToC on a printed page. Imzadi 1979 → 15:44, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

I goofed. I meant to say not a strict rule, but I inadvertently left out the word "not". Sorry.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 02:54, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

I appreciate all of the comments provided. I think I will finish the cleanup of the remaining Georgia State Routes, then go back through and clean up the Infoboxes where I added too much content. As much as I'd like to add the Major Intersections section to the body of many of these articles, I don't have access to an approved mile post data source - Google appears to be frowned upon, and GeoTRAQS is not working for me at all. I should have the cleanup completed by the end of the week with any luck. Concertmusic (talk) 13:40, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

You can always add the section without the mileposts, add {{mileposts}} and someone else can add them. Imzadi 1979 → 13:43, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

It's okay to add the junction list without milepost data. There are very few Nevada articles with complete (or partial) milepost information, since NDOT hasn't made milepost information as readily available as other state DOTs have. If the article is still in developing stages, not having specific milepost data listed is usually fine--going to FA/A/GA status would be another story. -- LJ ↗ 09:30, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Assistance with an ACR needed

May 13, 2012, will mark the centennial since the Michigan State Trunkline Highway System was created. That article is at WP:HWY/ACR, but we've never had an article on a whole highway system go up that far on the scale, so I'm inviting project members to participate in the ACR to make suggestions in terms of content and organization before we do the usual review process to look at prose, sources/sourcing, images and the like. My personal goal is to take the article to WP:FAC early next year so that it can run as WP:TFA on the anniversary. Imzadi 1979 → 09:26, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

AWB requests

I've had people make requests for me to do AWB jobs as one of the few USRD editors who has access to the tool and knows how to use it. I've started a new requests page at User:Rschen7754/AWB. --Rschen7754 23:04, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Nebraska State Highways

I was just on the NDOR log book and all the highways in Nebraska are listed as "State Highways". Therefore, I personally think all of them should be renamed from Nebraska Highway X to Nebraska State Highway X. Also, Connecting Links and Spurs are listed as State Connecting Links and State Spurs, respectively. It seem to me they should all be renamed. DandyDan2007 (talk) 23:06, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Note: moved above from the Nebraska archives. --Rschen7754 23:07, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

I was going to stick it on the Nebraska page, but while there is a Nebraska archive page, there is no Nebraska page, which doesn't make sense to me. DandyDan2007 (talk) 23:17, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

In January all state highway WikiProjects were demoted to task forces (except New York), and all task force talk pages were redirected here. --Rschen7754 23:19, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, any comments? --Rschen7754 23:03, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

The log also seems to abbreviate the state highways as "N-XX"...so a potential thing to look out for if renaming occurs. Other than that, the request seems logical. -- LJ ↗ 09:58, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

I think N-XX is just an abbreviation and not the name of the highway like in Kansas or Michigan. –Fredddie™ 23:49, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Has anyone done searches for how often various formulations come up on the Internet in general and in news articles? How do the state's newspapers refer to the state-numbered highways?  VC  18:01, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

This article on the Omaha World-Herald website shows Nebraska Highway X. -happy5214 19:28, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

There's always the chance that the Omaha World-Herald checked us to see what to call their state highways... –Fredddie™ 23:49, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

I just did this search. –Fredddie™ 23:59, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Does that include Wikipedia mirrors? --Rschen7754 00:17, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

It probably does; I didn't check the results. –Fredddie™ 00:31, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

User:Rschen7754/How to review road articles

I have written this guide to help new reviewers, and new editors who want to bring their articles to ACR. Let me know if you have anything to add! --Rschen7754 09:40, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Multiple notes for an exit should be separated with semicolons. Is that right? I would have thought that if notes do not form a complete sentence, they should be comma separated. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 11:39, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

No, semicolons are correct. --Rschen7754 19:48, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. These should have links to the relevant MOS sections; otherwise, they seem like arbitrary personal preferences of random FAC reviewers (i.e., things you don't really need to fix). —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 09:39, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I can see about adding that. --Rschen7754 09:41, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Interstate 49

The I-49 designation is going live in Missouri on December 12. I have just created Interstate 49 in Missouri, although it still needs some work (mainly a route description). If someone has some time, Interstate 49 in Louisiana will need to be created, and then Interstate 49 cleaned up to more closely resemble a main article. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 05:58, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Newsletter time!

It's that time of the year where we do the newsletter! If you want to write a super cool story, or you want to share what's going on in your state, feel free to do so! Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Newsletter/Newsroom is the place. Please submit stuff within the next week. Thanks! --Rschen7754 08:33, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Scenic highways and infoboxes

An example lead image for a fictitious article about the Oneonta Gorge Highway in Oregon

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I want to throw it out there. For scenic highway articles, I'd like to propose dropping the requirement (tacit or otherwise) that it have an infobox if there is, or could be, a decent lead image. Let me be clear, I am not proposing banning them altogether on scenic highways. To do this, I would also propose the following guidelines: 1) The image would be 300 pixels wide (the width of a standard infobox), 2) Portrait orientation would be preferred (will look bigger), 3) No SVG shield graphics or April Fool's Day nominees, and 4) Bonus points for recognized works (Commons:QI or WP:FP). –Fredddie™ 08:36, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I still think we should use infoboxes in scenic highway articles as they are still roads. An alternate idea to using {{infobox road}} in the traditional sense is to either add modifications to infobox road that could be used for scenic highways or to create a new infobox called {{infobox scenic highway}}. The modified or new infobox could have special parameters that are unique to scenic highways and could also allow for scenic images to be incorporated into the infobox. Dough4872 02:24, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Directions of Highway

There are many highways whose inventory directions are different from their signed directions. That is, a route may run northwest–southeast on a map, and be inventoried from south to north in the state highway department log books, but is signed east–west. I was wondering (1) whether it is more prudent to produce road junction lists and route descriptions in the inventory direction or the signed direction—we typically write those article sections south to north and west to east—for cases where inventory and signage conflict; and (2) how to reference signage directions, which is necessary for upper class articles if we state something like "Route X is signed east–west."  VC  04:52, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I've always thought that it is better to present the major intersections/junctions in the west-to-east or south-to-north order for overall consistency's sake, than to disrupt the normal flow of an article solely to put junctions in numerical order by milepost. If it is possible to reference a state route log or other document to indicate signed direction, then that would be helpful. -- LJ ↗ 22:16, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I stick with south-north or west-east based on signage, regardless of what the mileposts do. I add a note to indicate this quirk. See Atlantic City Expressway and Delaware Route 52 as examples. Dough4872 02:20, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

The first question has been answered, and most or all of us think we should use signed direction instead of inventory direction when the two conflict. However, the second question has not been answered. Keep in mind usage of the term "mileposts." There is a difference between mileage numbers from a document and mileposts physically placed along highways. The former are just numbers; it is not considered original research to use simple math to "flip" the mileposts. Mileposts along a highway cannot be flipped; we should go with the direction of those mileposts if there is a conflict.  VC  16:21, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Most route logs inventory the mileage of the route in the same direction at the mileposts placed along the highway. I still say we stick to the south-north and west-east convention, even if the mileposts are north-south or east-west. The mileage can always be listed in decreasing order as in the two examples I provided. We should keep consistent with the directions our highway articles are written in. Dough4872 16:31, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

M-115 physically runs northwest–southeast, it's signed north–south but inventoried west-to-east. The article treats it as a north–south highway and makes a note of the reverse inventory. This seems like a sensible approach to take. Imzadi 1979 → 17:04, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

ACR

Three supports, image review, and spotcheck. Applied retroactively. --Rschen7754 08:52, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

• Goal to have all ACRs finished in a month. --Rschen7754 02:10, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

  I'm not sure I like this. Another solution may be to put a cap on the number of active ACRs going at once. –Fredddie™ 02:51, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

  Well, without any queue we could wind up with a starvation issue... --Rschen7754 02:55, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

  Then I would propose creating an ACR queue. For the sake of argument, let's say the ACR limit is 4 articles (completely arbitrary, but I want to illustrate my point). With the help of a template, only 4 ACRs could be open and visible on WP:HWY/ACR. More ACRs could be added to the template (same idea as transcluding to the page now), but until the first four are cleared, they would only appear in a list of upcoming discussions. Now, this would not forbid someone from creating the ACR subpage. Then we institute a rule or strong urging that says we don't discuss pending ACRs until they are in the top four. –Fredddie™ 03:44, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

  But then what would happen is that some of us would go ahead and put 6-10 articles on the queue since there's a waiting list, and anyone who wanted to submit a new one and didn't have one on there already would have to wait months to get started. --Rschen7754 03:56, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

  First we shame the user for clogging up the queue, then we allow the person who has the one article to jump in front. We're all (mostly) adults, so there should be some commons sense involved here, too. User:Fredddie/ACR is a proof of concept I have devised. –Fredddie™ 04:11, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

  I would support a queueing system that allows only one article per nominator to be in the current discussions. --Rschen7754 04:14, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

  I also support a queueing system that allows one article per nominator in the publicized discussions. Whether that number is four, five, six, or something else can be figured out later based on the number of editors who constantly have an article ready to send to ACR. However, I think we should maintain a separate queue for articles like Kansas Turnpike that are already a Featured Article and are being reviewed to improve the article to modern standards. There is less urgency to get these articles through ACR because the standard rules do not apply and the article is not headed to FAC afterward.  VC  15:18, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

  I did update my template example to allow for a special discussion. Frankly, I don't ever see us having more than one special case like the Kansas Turnpike at a time. –Fredddie™ 13:25, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

• Folks, ACR isn't a USRD-only process anymore. Short of making commitments to review articles faster, any discussion about changing the ACR process needs to happen over at WT:HWY or WT:HWY/ACR, or a set of cross posts need to happen to give the non-USRD members of HWY and other sister project a chance to weigh in.
• Really, I have a bunch of thoughts and ideas, but the problem isn't the number of open reviews, it's the number of open reviews that have been open for weeks waiting for comments. The 14-day minimum open period is a joke because that much time normally elapses between the conclusion of one review and the commencement of another. Whether the backlog piles up in the open discussion area or a waiting area, it will still pile up if items aren't moved through expeditiously. That said, I don't want us to sacrifice quality for speed. We have a decent reputation at work right now where some FACs are passing, in large part, on the strength of the ACR comments being referenced in support statements. I'd like to see us pick up the pace, but avoid getting the assembly line out of control like on the "Job Switching" episode of I Love Lucy. Imzadi 1979 → 19:29, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

• You may have noticed already, but I did crosspost this last night. –Fredddie™ 13:25, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the backlog at ACR, I support a plan to limit a user to one ACR at a time, much like what is in place at FAC. However, we need to grandfather the ones already there. If we implement such a system, any user who has one or more articles currently at ACR can have that many there, but cannot nominate any new ACRs until they are all closed. Dough4872 21:29, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

I've thought about this for the last few days, and something needs to be done about ACR. Articles are taking upwards of two months to get through there; moreover, it's because they're sitting idle for six weeks of those two months. This is clearly not acceptable; if FAC can pass articles in four weeks, why do we have to take longer?

I support putting an upper limit on the number of nominations (I'd suggest 4), and I also support an upper limit on the number of nominations (1). I know that I'm planning to send tons of articles to ACR over the next few months, and this is going to hurt me a bit in the short-term, as it will any editor in my position.

However, I am supporting this proposal as that's what I believe is best for the roads project. There are three primary reasons why I am supporting this and believe this:

• Perceived fairness: so nominators cannot clog the process with tons of A-Class articles, all from the same nominator. I think that this may be one of the biggest factors in the reticence for editors to participate in today's ACR - people feel it's one or two editors nominating all the other articles and increasing the backlog while nobody else benefits. People haven't told me why they're reluctant to review, but my hunch is that this is a factor. Moreover, this gets editors with not as much experience writing A-Class articles a chance to try sooner rather than later, so that they are not discouraged by a 10-article backlog and having to wait several months for the process to conclude.
• Forces more editors to engage: if there is a backlog, then the nominators waiting have motivation to review standing articles already. I've seen a palpable lack of participation from a few nominators compared to their choice to participate in the process by nominating articles. Meanwhile, the same few editors are reviewing every article; I am one of them, and I'm getting a bit burned out and might be letting things slip that I would otherwise catch. But if I don't review every article, we have to wait for another reviewer, when we already have trouble filling the other three slots and might add another few weeks to the review time.
• Priority to older nominations: I've seen a lot of very new nominations get passed at ACR before older ones, even if the newer nomination is a longer article than some of the older articles. This is obviously not fair. This, I also believe, will focus all the reviews on the four oldest nominations, so statistically speaking, there's a lower expected value of the time it takes to get the four required reviews to pass. I think this will help to guarantee that our articles get to FAC in a timely manner without decreasing quality.

If we do this, however, we need a firm inactivity rule. Right now, it doesn't really matter if someone takes forever to address concerns left for weeks on end, because there are unlimited spots available on ACR. However, if someone does this with a limited number of slots, it is not fair to the other editors waiting for an ACR for a nominator to take their time. Therefore, I also propose the following inactivity criteria, all three of which must be met for a review to be summarily archived:

• There are outstanding unresolved comments.
• The nominator has not edited the review page in 7 days.
  • Note this says nothing about addressing comments.
• All slots for reviews are full

I think this inactivity rule resolves the issues and isn't gameable, when taking in combination with our long-standing rule that nominations with several opposes can be rejected right away. I think this overall solution (with grandfathering in existing nominations) is a good way to move forward; I don't claim that it's flawless or solves everything, but I think it's worth trying in order to get things moving at ACR again. For articles like Kansas Turnpike, I would even consider setting up a separate process that operates more like FAR, but we can discuss that later. --Rschen7754 10:51, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Regarding reluctance to review: I can only speak for myself, but personally I usually don't review because I simply never have any reason to interact with ACR. I don't have anything in the short term to take to ACR (or FAC for that matter). I rarely even nominate GAs. My preferred work method is to take many articles to B rather than spending the same time to bring a few to GA/ACR/FAC. Since I don't really participate on that side of the process, I feel somewhat estranged from the FAC criteria. I can comment on grammar and spelling and style, but I am thoroughly unfamiliar with picky details like the MOS and similar policies that FAC likes, so whenever I offer a review it feels lacking because I'm missing something. My most recent reviwe was a 4th review solicited on my talk page, and I pretty much didn't review it so much as auto-support because I didn't really see anything wrong. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 11:12, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Scott, I thought you did a fine job reviewing I-80 when it was at ACR. Don't get yourself down that you're not a good reviewer.

Anyway, here the biggest issue I have with ACR: we want to have as many articles pass through it as quickly as possible. Those of us who bring articles to ACR have made clear their intentions (or at least to me they have) about what articles are in their personal queue. So, when one article passes, the next is transcluded right away. Now this is not necessarily a bad thing, but with our current pool of reviewers, it's asking a lot. If every article is as long and as rough as Pennsylvania Turnpike (thankfully 95% of them are not), it burns us out as reviewers. That's why you saw me making a couple image reviews; I simply didn't want to do a prose review. It comes down to respecting our time when we're online. Using myself as an example, between work and sleep, I have roughly a 6-hour window most days to live my life and contribute here. And if we increase our throughput, that means reviewing articles every day. I'd rather work with new editors or de-stub Missouri than review articles every day.

We don't have to go 100 mph. There is no deadline. –Fredddie™ 13:06, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

If you only have a limited amount of time to review, wouldn't it be better to focus it on the older nominations? --Rschen7754 19:42, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

So are there any comments about the proposal itself? --Rschen7754 23:27, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

I like the proposal as discussed so far, but I think there are two important elements it does not have:

1. An action plan for transitioning from the current system to the new system.
2. Incentives for users to review articles.

The first element should not be difficult. The second element will be. It is not necessary for the overall plan to go through, but I think we should try to come up with something to incentivize conducting reviews before we implement this proposal.

In the primary reasons rschen7754 gives above, the second reason states that "if there is a backlog, then the nominators waiting have motivation to review standing articles already." If so, it is a weak motivation because there is a carrot missing. Perhaps number of reviews conducted could be a factor in the queue. Suppose Editor A and Editor B both have articles at ACR, and the promotion of their articles is coming very soon. If Editor A has been reviewing more articles than Editor B, and there are articles from more than four editors in the queue, then Editor A's next article could get priority for placement in the top four compared to Editor B's next article.  VC  00:52, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

A couple ideas:

1. Perhaps we can require people who put articles into the queue to review any open discussions.
2. Maybe look back at ACR reviewing history and compute weights for reviews. Say if Editors A, B, C, and D are reviewing Article X, Editor A's support might be worth 1.5 since (s)he thoroughly reviewed the last 10 ACRs. Editors B and D intermittently review, so their supports are worth 1. Editor C does drive-by reviews of every ACR and misses a lot of stuff, so their support would be worth 0.5. I'm not sure how we would measure that, though.

The problem with both of these is that while they are both means to ends, they are not ends. –Fredddie™ 01:57, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't agree with compulsory reviewing. Someone could write a good A-Class article but be a horrible reviewer. More to the point, I feel it could discourage nomination of articles for ACR. I don't nominate things for DYK anymore since the process became too overly elaborate for occasional users like myself to deal with, including a compulsory review to nominate. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 03:17, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I don't particularly like the idea of QPQ. As far as grandfathering in articles, right now we would need no special arrangements, except for allowing the two articles by Imzadi1979 to stand. Kansas Turnpike is in a separate category and shouldn't count towards the 4. I'm not particularly a fan of weights either because that's subjective. What about a leaderboard of reviewers? --Rschen7754 06:56, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

I was just throwing ideas out there. QPQ wouldn't be so bad if it were willingly imposed, and it's clear not everyone here is willing. I completely agree that DYK is a clusterfuck, and QPQ does not help it one bit. But in that forum, there were users who abused the system and QPQ was imposed. Here, there are definitely a few editors who are more prolific with their article writing and improvement. I don't think, however, that it's close to the point of abusing the system. –Fredddie™ 01:14, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Restarting the ACR discussion

After some consultation with affected editors, I no longer think that the queueing solution is what is best for the project. I have a few other ideas, but I'm trying to get some input before I post them. --Rschen7754 10:26, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I'd like to propose dropping the required level of support for promotion to 3 substantiative supports plus an image review. The image review can be done by one of the three reviewers. There's two reasons for this: 1) this is higher than some FACs and MilHist's ACR require, and 2) this faces the reality that we don't have enough reviewers to do 4 supports like we used to. The number 4 was chosen in 2008, when reviews were not as comprehensive and were easier to come by. I'd also suggest applying this to the current reviews in the system, though it's not entirely necessary. Thoughts? --Rschen7754 16:46, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I support the idea of dropping to 3 supports and an image review. We do not have enough reviewers in order to do 4 supports anymore. In addition, it is helpful for the image review to be a factor in the ACR since it reduces the need for one should an article go to FAC. Dough4872 23:25, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Deep down, I think this is really the best solution. I would, however, like to see some sort of mechanism for calling out bad reviews when we see them. I know it's frustrating for me when I see another reviewer support after finding 10 nitpicky things and then the nominator argues their way out of actually fixing them because they're nitpicky. –Fredddie™ 00:19, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I am not crazy about dropping to three reviewers, but I do not have any compelling reason against it. I would prefer we try to incentivize editors conducting reviews. However, it seems like mine is a minority opinion. In addition to an image review, we should require a reference audit. If A-Class Review is concerned with preparing articles for the Featured Article process, we should identify the common tests applied there.  VC  00:54, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

I have thought about this for a while too. My only concern is about bogging down the process. I would suggest a lighter spotcheck for any article where a spotcheck would not be required at FAC (it seems that the delegates want one once a year). --Rschen7754 01:44, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

So what do other people think about adding a spotcheck? --Rschen7754 08:40, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Not a bad idea to align ACR and FAC in this manner. –Fredddie™ 08:48, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I think it would be helpful to have a reference spotcheck at ACR. This would make it easier at FAC if an article needs one there. Dough4872 02:18, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Final question: do we want the +3, image review, and spotcheck to be retroactive? In other words, applying to the current ACRs? --Rschen7754 02:31, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I think this would help with the current backlog at ACR. Dough4872 02:33, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not 100% crazy about switching to +3/+IR, but WP:WIAACA only requires two supports in the non-ACR method to promote an article to A-Class. There is then precedent for using a lower threshold for promotion, since I also believe MILHIST only uses +3. That said, and knowing that any retroactive change would be to my benefit, I will support retroactively applying the change instead of grandfathering a requirement to use a higher promotion standard on the current nominations. Imzadi 1979 → 04:59, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

---

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

2013 goals

So... any suggestions? --Rschen7754 06:17, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

I think more editors than Concertmusic and myself should be correcting and modifying Georgia road transport articles. I have a crazy work schedule, so I can only do so much. By the way I am attempting to update and correct the List of numbered highways in Georgia (U.S. state) page. My attempt is currently on my sandbox. Please let me know what you guys think of it. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 06:55, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, that's twice as many editors as California has; we all have crazy schedules too, and can only do so much as well. I get that we want to improve Georgia road articles, but we can't shift all our manpower to Georgia while the other states fall apart. --Rschen7754 06:58, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, I work 10pm-10am (2-5 days a week; some kind of rotating schedule they came up with). Now, I didn't mean that everyone would stop what they are doing and focus on Georgia. It would be nice to have other people helping out from time to time. Thanks in advance. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 08:26, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Okay, but keep in mind that it's just me in CA now, Fredddie in Iowa, Imzadi in Michigan, Britinvasion in LA, VC in MD, Dough in PA, TCNJ7M in the Dakotas, Scott in OK, the New York editors, and a few people doing KMLs. And that's for a project supposed to be covering the entire country. We're a bit stretched thin, the most I've seen in a long time. We barely have enough people at ACR to review, which is eating a lot of time too. --Rschen7754 08:31, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't know the project was so stretched thin. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 08:45, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

• Stub drive. --Rschen7754 07:10, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
• KML drive of some sort. --Rschen7754 07:10, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
• How about a B-and-up drive? The stub drive was pretty good at getting articles improved from stub status. But a lot of them just ended up being pushed up only one class to Start. This drive would help motivate people to get the articles they worked on in 2011 the rest of the way up the hill. In keeping with the last stub drive's convention, how about a goal of increasing the total of FAs + As + GAs + Bs by 2013 from what it is on December 31? This would be a goal all states could contribute toward, whether they have 300 stubs or 0. It would be a great way to help us think about capitalizing on the resources offered for states which are not currently the major focus of an active editor (states like MO and KS, which have full map archives, just nobody to do the research). —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 11:26, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
• For 2013, I would say we just keep pushing articles up in quality, whether it be stub to start, start to B, or getting more GAs and FAs. Since we lost a lot of stubs in 2011, we should give our attention to not only stubs but also start-class articles. Dough4872 15:21, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
• This is nothing concrete, but take a snapshot of the 100 or 500 most popular articles and try to improve them.  VC  20:16, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

  WP:USRD/PP exists for the snapshot. If you check the page history, you'll see that there are a few articles that consistently get more traffic than others. I'm not sure if it goes back that far, but might be able to see the effect that being TFA, even being at FAC, has on an article. –Fredddie™ 22:46, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

• From a new editor who really enjoys working on road articles, might I suggest a goal of training and recruitment? It sounds from the above like that is a bigger need than any production goal! Gtwfan52 (talk) 20:18, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

  I like this idea, but how do we reach out to new editors? –Fredddie™ 22:46, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

  One way of reaching out is to have a more welcoming project front page. We have kicked this idea around sporadically; how about we get serious about it by making it a goal?  VC  22:53, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

  We have an IRC channel at #wikipedia-en-roads, where interested users can discuss road-related issues with other editors. I, for one, think this was the key component in welcoming me to WP:USRD. Although, this shouldn't be the only way to welcome new users. I agree that a more welcoming project page is also needed. –TCN7JM 23:13, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

  A "guide to writing road article's" with some basic sources listed would be good. I accidentally discovered a milepost by milepost guide to Indiana highways (It's a PDF and I downloaded it, but I forget the link now) and I am wondering if this type of source is widely available for other states? Indiana is already pretty well done, although there are articles that can be improved. A second goal along the same line as training and recruitment might be to find an individual that would be willing to act as "state coordinator" for each state. Some of the smaller Eastern states could probably be grouped as a region, but once you get west of the Appalachians, all the states have enough roads to keep one guy more than busy. Gtwfan52 (talk) 05:32, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

  Unfortunately, we don't have editors for every state. What state are you interested in editing though? I'll see what we can do. --Rschen7754 05:51, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

  We also have the New User Orientation page, which gives new users the groundwork to get started in writing USRD articles. Basic resources that we are aware of are (or should be) contained on the state task force page for each state. But yeah, right now there are not enough editors in all states/regions to have a state/regional coordinator for everywhere. -- LJ ↗ 12:11, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

• I'm going to dropkick oppose any plan for another stub drive. I would really like to see that, as long as we commit to not making stubs, we have several states (KY, SC, NC, ME, etc) that still have routes without articles.Mitch32^{(Victim of public education, 17 years and counting)} 22:26, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

I am a new editor to the project (but not to Wikipedia). I have some time but I'm not exactly sure what work is needed. Still trying to learn.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 23:11, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

What are you interested in doing? --Rschen7754 23:14, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

• Cleanup and reoganization of various project pages, starting with the proposed main page revamp mentioned previously. If not a project goal, it should probably be worked on anyway... -- LJ ↗ 12:13, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
• Backlog reduction drive, i.e. clearing out some of our maintenance categories by adding needed maps, addressing articles needing attention, converting jct lists to templates, adding KML files, etc. This seems to be an area that is largely ignored. -- LJ ↗ 12:16, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

  {{USRD Announcements}} has a lot of backlog links in the right column. –Fredddie™ 15:18, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

So if I'm hearing everybody right, our two biggest goals for 2013 should be:

• Making the project pages more welcoming
• Recruiting new editors in quiet states
• Clarify where our backlogs are

Then once they're here, and get their feet wet, we urge them to:

• De-stub and/or make improvements with a goal of B-Class (or above)
• Backlog clearing

The first three are meta-goals to get us more help and where we need it. Obviously, the rest of us can do the bottom two :) –Fredddie™ 15:18, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, the first three are not really actionable "goals" per se, since we can't really objectively say this time next year whether we achieved them or not (though we can discuss ways to make our project more oriented towards those aims). Also, there is not really a whole lot we can directly do to recruit—either someone is going to be interested in editing Missouri, or they're not; while we can make it easier for them to clear the hurdles to start contributing, we don't really have a whole lot we can do to make them interested in the subject if they're not already. Progress on a backlog clearing and a de-stub or B-and-up drive can be numerically measured, so we can easily see whether we are making progress towards those. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 16:25, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

One the suggestions I would add if we could add Find reputable resources for all 50 states (or as much as we can). If we want to get new membership, I might suggest doing this, so we have sources to provide them. Mitch32^{(Victim of public education, 17 years and counting)} 23:12, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

I disagree about the first three goals not being actionable, but I understand the sentiment. After all, it is easier to point to X number of new Good Articles or Y percent improvement in wikiwork statistics than to point out infrastructure improvements or quantify how many new, productive editors the project has gained. I think goals 1 and 3 are definitely actionable, while goal 2 will take a little longer to crack.

• How do we take action on Goal 1: Making the project pages more welcoming? We review our current project pages, identify what improvements need to be made, implement those improvements (they can be as minor as cosmetic and as major as an overhaul), evaluate the improvements, and continue to make improvements based on the evaluations.
• How do we take action on Goal 3: Clarify where our backlogs are? This goes hand-in-hand with Goal 1. We need to first make new editors feel welcome, direct them to our areas of need, and give them the support and context they need to reduce the backlog.
• How do we take action on Goal 2: Recruiting new editors in quiet states? This is a very hard one to crack. First, we need to have the infrastructure in place to support new editors properly, so we should try to meet goals 1 and 3 first; however, we need to accomplish goals 1 and 3 with goal 2 in mind, because the goals are somewhat interdependent. Once we meet goals 1 and 3, we consider how active we want to be in recruiting new editors. Are we looking for editors to work in a particular state or to do project-wide tasks like maps? If it is the former, we can look to the geography projects. For the latter, perhaps we look to the coordinates project or a similar project.

As with any set of infrastructure improvements, we can look to other projects that have done it and done it well.  VC  19:37, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps "actionable" was a poor choice of words. "Quantifiable" is probably a better way of phrasing it. We can certainly take action towards these goals, but we can never really get to a point where we can say we either achieved or didn't achieve them. Also, to be honest, we've been trying to achieve most of these as a secondary objective for the past five years, but not really having all that much success. Because there is really no way to recruit someone to a WikiProject; they have to want to participate in Wikipedia in general and our project in particular, and the only say we have in that is to let them know we exist and to make participating appealing (by making project pages more welcoming). How will we know when project pages are "more welcoming to outsiders"? We're not exactly outsiders, so we'll never know that for sure! We can have renewed focus on these things, yes, but I think having something as a primary goal that really depends so much on external forces is really a bad idea.

Our primary goal for the project should be something metrics-based so that we can definitively say on June 30 "We are X% of the way towards the goal" and on December 31, 2013 "Yes, we accomplished our goal" or "No, we did not accomplish our goal". Otherwise it is sort of pointless to have as a goal. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 21:58, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Recruitment should be easily quantifiable. How many editors are you gaining? If you want to use another, more meaningful metric, how much increase are we seeing on project article edits by project editors? Doing things like article upgrades as a goal is admirable and doable, but it seems to me that a primary goal of any project has to be sustainability. You can't have sustainability without a constant growth in membership, because face it, everyone will die someday. just sayin...Gtwfan52 (talk) 02:06, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

It is not all that precise. At what point can we say that we have "gained" an editor? When they sign up on the membership list? Well, we have plenty of people that do that and then we never hear from them again. What if they are just doing minor typo fixing? What if they mostly focus on another project and occasionally add a sentence or two to a USRD article? This helps a little, of course, but what we really need is one dedicated editor with the drive to expand articles in each state. We need them to join in USRD discussions and network with us.

I am not advocating that we not recruit new members. A bigger USRD would benefit everyone and we definitely need to recruit people for the reasons both you and I have stated. I am pointing out that if we are going to say "OUR GOAL FOR 2013 IS: " we would be better served picking something that we can more easily determine whether we have achieved. I hate to trot out one of those tired management maxims that everyone hates hearing, but the SMART criteria are relevant here—our goal needs to be specific, measurable, and achievable. Setting a mushy goal to "recruit more members" isn't. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 04:30, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

I am not really in agreement that growth is unmeasurable. Meaningful growth could be determined by using a metric like counting edits on project articles by project editors. I agree that we don't at this time know what a control level would be, but that could be determined. Perhaps creating a goal for established editors to mentor another editor this year and that as a continuing goal as so to achieve geometric growth rates in the future? Perhaps shifting some focus from the production to the sustainability by using some of the efforts of established editors to work in conjunction with newer editors to create content rather than just doing it themselves? This project does really good work, no one doubts that. The concern I see is that most of the production comes from a group of editors numbering less than ten (probably smaller than that, but...). What will happen to this project if some of those key editors are forced off Wikipedia by some RL event? Gtwfan52 (talk) 05:49, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

How would we collect that metric? I am sure nobody wants to count it manually by contribution stalking people, but I am not aware of an existing tool to do that task. How would you determine whether someone is a "project editor" in the borderline cases? I am sure most of us would be willing to mentor new users, whether one-on-one or as a group (we always encourage new users to join IRC because we can help them in real time there). The underlying issue here, though, is that achieving this goal will depend on attracting and retaining people we don't yet know, and to a rather large degree, that will be out of our hands. So while it is definitely something we need to think about and encourage, setting it as a year-long primary goal is probably not the best idea. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 10:19, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

• Building off of what VC was saying before, how about no stubs or starts on WP:USRD/PP? –Fredddie™ 23:32, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Refocusing discussion

See Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/2013 goals for a rough draft

So... any more thoughts? --Rschen7754 public (talk) 15:14, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

I say we stick with improving articles in class along with reducing the number of redlinks. A goal to reach a certain WikiWork may work. Dough4872 21:50, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Here is a quantifiable goal. Get the USRD relative WikiWork down to 4.400. With roughly 11,000 articles, we would need to improve by roughly 1600 classes to reach it. –Fredddie™ 01:34, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I would set it a bit lower to 4.350, since 1600 classes could be 1600 stubs, and we did 2000 stubs in 2011. --Rschen7754 01:36, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

That would be 2150 classes. I know we completed 2000 stubs with a few days to spare in 2011, but I think our lives are much busier now than they were then. I'm not so sure we could duplicate that effort. Plus there was a LOT more low-hanging fruit, so to speak, than there was in 2011. –Fredddie™ 01:44, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Okay, 4.4 sounds good after further discussion. I do think we need a project pages revamp still. --Rschen7754 01:51, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

In conjunction with that, another idea might be to have 25 states (i.e. half) destubbed by December 31, 2013. We currently have 11 (13 if you count DC and Guam), with a fair number of states within striking distance (there are two states with 1 stub, two with 2 stubs, and quite a few more with less than 10). Not terribly out of reach, and progress on this would be progress on the wikiwork. This would give people who like stub drives a thing to do, and people that don't like them could go do regular wikiwork stuff. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 03:42, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

One goal helping another goal, plus it's doable. Good thinking. –Fredddie™ 03:48, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I like this, especially the multi-faceted aspect of the goal. It might help me get more of Nevada de-stubbed in my spare time. -- LJ ↗ 03:54, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Coordination

I'm start a page to help with coordination of the tasks that we need to keep the project running, as we continue to grow in infrastructure and editors. So far it's at User:Rschen7754/Coordination. I've added what I'm aware of, and this is basically the status quo, just written down. Feel free to add new tasks or add yourself to any tasks; I'm sure that stuff got missed. On the talk page we can post about wikibreaks or anything like that. Comments? Suggestions? --Rschen7754 06:18, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I-40 in Oklahoma JCT List screw-up

I suddenly discovered a big goof regarding the junction list for Interstate 40 in Oklahoma; All the I-40 Business Routes and Loops lead to redlinks to Michigan for whatever crazy reason. I thought this would be an easy problem to fix, but that turned out not to be true. What gives? ---------User:DanTD (talk) 18:18, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Fixed the problem changed the state in the template to Oklahoma from Michigan (Infobox road/OK/link BL template, not the Jct template). Detcin (talk) 18:48, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Portal

We need some suggestions for Selected Picture and Did you know? for Portal:U.S. Roads for next month. Dough4872 01:26, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

2013 USRD WikiCup

It's been a few years since we've attempted a WikiCup. I'm wondering if anyone would be willing to participate. I am willing to coordinate it, but I'd like some input on what you'd like to get out of it. Here are a few ideas that I have:

1. The submissions page would be used again with diffs required
2. Points would largely be based on the 2010 Cup (chart)
3. Sample points breakdown
   • Points based on class improvements (stub to start=1 pt, stub to C=2 pts, etc.)
   • No points for states in the top ten
   • Half points for states above USRD Relative WW
   • Points squared for bottom five states (stub to start=1 pt, stub to C=4 pts, etc.)
   • Points for working on US 66 (would override no- and half-points multipliers)
4. Points for fixing up USRD project pages
5. Points for finding route logs in new states (yearly updates won't count)

If you have any ideas, please submit them below. –Fredddie™ 05:25, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm willing to participate. As I've told Fredddie, I will be staying far away from coordinating it though. --Rschen7754 05:37, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I would decline to participate if the proposed point structure is used. By all means, we should incentivize working on the lower-quality states, but allocating zero points at all for the top ten states is unduly harsh. There are many active editors that are likely to participate who primarily contribute to states both above and below the top ten threshhold, and this will greatly favor editors whose natural state of interest fall below the threshold while penalizing those above it. Additionally, the cup is usually when I like to take a break from article expansions to do a run of maps (and now KMLs)—Oklahoma, and many of the states above it, have yet to receive KML files, and a cup would be a great way to get people going on 100% completion of KMLs, but this gives the states with poor articles priority to get those poor articles KMLs before the quality articles have them. The bonus for bottom five states is far too high, as well—if one person gets Georgia an FA there would be no way for anyone else to win the cup. I propose establishing a baseline number of points, with a 2x multiplier for the states below USRD relative wikiwork and a 3x or 4x multiplier for the bottom five states. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 13:44, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I haven't personally participated in any of these WikiCup-type contests before, and the proposed structure wouldn't change that. Given my past opinion, I don't really care if USRD holds one again, so long as it doesn't incentivize crappy editing (massive crappy article creation to get lots of DYKs, etc.) Imzadi 1979 → 14:37, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

So what would you change your mind? I'm not looking so much to win you over as I am looking for ideas. –Fredddie™ 02:57, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I like the idea of the cup and I would be willing to participate; however, I agree with Scott that skewing all the points to the bottom states on the leaderboard would not be a good idea. There is still plenty of work needed to be done in the higher states, and some people are more comfortable working in certain states than others. Dough4872 01:32, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I like the cup, and I'd like to participate. I also agree with the others that the point system needs some work. I'm just beating a dead horse, though, aren't I? –TCN7JM 01:40, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I can definitely see the issues with the points; it should definitely favor the worse off states, but it's a little too skewed. --Rschen7754 public (talk) 01:54, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Have we ever had a FA during the past Cups? I...don't recall any. I admit that 10,000 points for a getting a FA in one of the bottom five states is a bit ridiculous, but it got your attention, didn't it? I do like Scott's points proposal, and I'll knock the top tier back to the top five and give half points instead of no points. Regarding DYK, would it be better to give points for 5x expansions only or give points for every DYK but scale them back? –Fredddie™ 02:57, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

When will the WikiCup start? If I decide to participate, maybe it can be a fresh re-start to my editing. For one thing, I can get back to trying to de-stub and expand the Georgia state articles. Also, I can continue to hone my editing skills for the better. I was just curious. Could someone tell me what they thought of my expansion and de-stubbing of the Georgia articles the first time I worked on them? Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 00:29, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

I forgot one of the most important questions: Will there be a sign-up page? Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 00:56, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

WP:USRDCUP –Fredddie™ 06:04, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

I am thinking it will start on February 1. I am working on getting all the pages ready. –Fredddie™ 01:03, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

We may have never had an FA during the Cup before, but then again, we have never really had as much of a pro-FA environment as we do now. Some rules that need to be clarified—at what point level are full-USRD efforts tallied, the 1x level? (i.e. maps of the entire US, the USRD portal, etc.) Also, will the top 5/bottom 5 be "locked in", so to say, at the beginning of the contest, or will it be the top 5/bottom 5 states as of the time that points are awarded? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 04:40, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Unless someone makes a good case otherwise, I would say the 1x level. The top and bottom 5 would be locked in for the entire round. I'm not completely done with all the pages yet. –Fredddie™ 06:04, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Happy New Year!

Welcome to the year 2013 on Wikipedia! This is just a reminder that our 2013 goals are now active, as listed on the project page.

As far as our 2012 goals:

• We lost 100 stubs last year, which fulfills our net loss goal.
• We were unable to finish removing all the IH and USH stubs, but that will continue this year.
• All FA/A/GAs are on the {{jctint}} templates, and we deployed the templates to at least two-thirds of our articles.

Congratulations to everyone on their hard work!

Many of us have been away over the holidays, but we hope to get a new newsletter out soon. As always, you can join us on the IRC channel; see WP:HWY/IRC for details. --Rschen7754 00:12, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Portal:Massachusetts is up for Featured Portal status

Hello all. The following is a neutrally worded courtesy message:

Portal:Massachusetts has been nominated for Featured Portal status. The nomination page is Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Massachusetts.

As a WikiProject with a related sphere of interest, you are being notified of the proceedings, and invited to participate in them.

Yours, Sven Manguard Wha? 17:54, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Commons and Wikidata projects

Our presence on Commons is at commons:COM:USRD, and on Wikidata at d:WD:USRD. --Rschen7754 05:36, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Category scope

Since it needs to be discussed, and probably should be added to WP:USRD/STDS—what exactly should be in each highway category, e.g. Category:U.S. Route 60? I think everyone can agree that the main US-60 article should be present, and all of the US-60 in X state-detail articles. Historically, I believe child route articles, such as US-160 are included as well. Do we want to continue this or move all child routes to their own category (possibly a subcat of the parent route's category)? Should routes that overlap with the focus route be included in the category? What about designations for former alignments of the focus routes, or routes that were subsumed by the focus route? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 12:47, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for suggesting this -- as I guess I should have before I started adding categories "willy-nilly".

I think that the categories should have all of the above, except for the concurrent routes. That was what I was attempting to accomplish myself. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 13:16, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't think the former alignments or routes subsumed are really pertinent enough to be included in the categories. On the topic of child routes, can't they be in the parent route's category and have their own (dependent on how many pages would be included in the category)? –TCN7JM 13:20, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

They could, but if they were a subcategory of the parent route, then you would see it listed alongside the other categories. The US-60 category would contain a subcategory for US-160, and you would see that subcategory from the US-60 category page, so there would be no reason to list US-160 pages directly in the US-60 category. [Edited to add—I think I may have misunderstood you here, but still ended up agreeing with your point in the next paragraph and the next bit down where I reset the indention.]

As for my own opinion, I think the categories should be strictly limited to pages directly dealing with the route (i.e. not routes related only by history, just the main article, state detail articles, and bannered route articles), with child routes given their own subcategories in cases where they have multiple pages. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 14:33, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Another thing we should probably be writing down while we're doing this—what should have categories for individual highways? Just U.S. and Interstate routes, and not state routes? If we decide to move the child route pages to new categories, perhaps we should suggest only doing so if there are multiple pages besides the main article (i.e. at least one S/D article or bannered route page has to exist). —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 14:33, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

If only one S/D article or bannered route article exists, then that would only be two pages total in the category. That isn't enough to keep it going, and it would either be deleted or merged back to the parent category. I agree with your statement that state routes shouldn't have their own categories. –TCN7JM 14:45, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

The only state trunkline in Michigan (using that term not to include Interstates and US Highways for a moment) that has its own category is M-28, but M-28 has articles for one current, and two former, business loops. (M-28 also has its own featured topic, and one of the criteria of a FT is "All articles or lists in the topic are linked together, preferably using a template, and share a common category or super-category." [emphasis mine] ) In general though, I would only support categories for other individual state highways in similar cases: related "child routes" with a definite connection and to help support a GT/FT situation.

When it comes to Interstates and US Highways, the parent–child situation is more clear-cut. In some cases, the category membership might be small, but if WP:SMALLCAT's exception for items as part of an accepted subdivision scheme applies, we're ok. Imzadi 1979 → 16:33, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I would say that the only highways that should have categories are the ones notable enough to support a tree of articles. That would be limited to the transcontinental (or nearly transcontinental) highways (be them US or interstate) and and a handful of other highways (be them US or state routes) where they the multi-article notability comes from other factors aside from length. I can think of several US and interstate highways that only have a single article and would not need categories.Dave (talk) 17:50, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I take the opposite view, let's take U.S. Route 66. I have no doubt that category needs some pruning (as does everything associated with that article) but the former route IS what gives that route notability. If the category were limited to only active routes and sub-articles, the category would be, well, empty. I would also argue that at least for the former transcontinental arteries that have been decommissioned in the western states thanks to the interstate highway system, (read most of the US highways that have a 0 as the final digit) former alignments ARE notable enough to merit being included in the category. I would also argue that significant stretches of former auto trails merit a category mention too. I'll grant you that some county route that used to be part of US 40 before a new alignment was built 1/2 mile to the north, yeah that's iffy. Dave (talk) 17:38, 3 January 2013 (UTC) P.S. Yes Imzadi I know I owe you an article review. I'm working on it, I promise.

Personally, I think categories for Interstates and U.S. Routes should include the main route, any state-detail pages of the main route, any child routes, any bannered/business routes of the main route, and any bridges/tunnels/other structures related to the main route. I do not think the category should include anything related to the child routes and not the main route at all. As for former alignments, I'm on the fence on including them for the main route but am definitely against including former alignments of child routes in the category. Dough4872 18:49, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

66 isn't the greatest example, since there's an entire task force on it... --Rschen7754 20:03, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I am glad you brought this up Scott, because it is something that seems inconsistent in the project. I believe for the US routes that we should make each route its own category, with child routes having separate categories for their own state detail and related articles--this is the scheme used for category:U.S. Route 95 and category:U.S. Route 395, with the latter being a category within the former. I don't think we should include overlapping routes, and perhaps all the former alignments would not be needed (but a major supplanted alignment possibly, i.e. including I-80 in NV as part of the US 40 category tree) However, notable bridges, tunnels, etc. as well as bannered routes should be included in the appropriate route category (perhaps state-detail level categories, if there are many).

We might also have to examine what kind of category structure would work well for the interstate highways, since that numbering scheme is different. Would it be necessary, for example, to have state-detail categories to cover the 3DIs and business routes in each state? Also state routes--I agree with Imzadi that we probably shouldn't have categories for every state highway, but exceptions can be made for notable schemes and cases. -- LJ ↗ 23:26, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Meta

We now also have a page on Meta: m:USRD. This is more for outreach efforts and interwiki discussion rather than anything else, like most of the other pages on Meta. --Rschen7754 07:31, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

We also have wikisource:WS:USRD now as well. This would coordinate inclusion of the full texts of the various statutes and court cases that impact highways in the US. Imzadi 1979 → 01:17, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

County routes in Georgia (U.S. state)

As I have driven through parts of Georgia, I have noticed signs for upcoming intersections. These are the kind with the name of the upcoming road listed underneath. Some of them say "CR&XXX". Now, does Georgia actually have county routes? If so, can they be added to Wikipedia at all? I haven't done any search on Google -- or elsewhere -- for them. I just wondered if any of you had any information on them. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 00:56, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

WP:USRD/NT. --Rschen7754 00:57, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I kind of thought that you guys would say they aren't notable enough to add, but I thought that I'd ask.

Anyway, where can I go to find any information on those routes? Since -- for the most part -- the GDOT website sucks, I'm not sure where to go to find correct, reliable sources for any Interstate, U.S., or state routes in the state, let alone the county routes. I truly want to get closer to the level of editing of Imzadi1979, Rschen7754, and the rest of the USRD folks, but I keep running into brick walls. Since I plan to continue expanding and de-stubbing Georgia articles for the WikiCup, I need good sources. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 01:06, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

With Georgia, I would just look at Google Maps and just start writing. –Fredddie™ 02:23, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, just write. That's how I got to where I am. I wrote articles, improved the writing in articles, and kept researching articles. Over time I nominated articles through the various review and assessment processes, learning from the critiques along the way. Imzadi 1979 → 02:39, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Go to the bookstore and buy a DeLorme atlas for Georgia (about $20). If you can't find one there, order it online. This will give you the names of local roads and minor geographical features, for use in the route description of shorter articles. For longer articles, the state-level GDOT map or Google Maps will suffice. Read some Michigan articles, and some FAs from other states, and follow the practices they do. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 02:47, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I was just curious about the county routes in Georgia, but you guys turned it around on me.

I have the 2013 Large Scale Rand McNally Road Atlas, the 2011-2012 GDOT road map, and an Augusta, Georgia, and Columbia County road map. I also use Google Maps and Rand McNally's online mapping (randmcnally.com).

I do plan to expand more Georgia state route articles, but I want to wait until the WikiCup. Do you have any more updated information on it?

I do thank you for helping me become a better road article editor. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 00:49, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

If you're waiting for the cup, the least you can do is sign up. –Fredddie™ 02:33, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Florida CR infobox shields

I am making a change to {{Infobox road/shieldmain/USA/CR}} that will likely break a few instances of county road shields in Florida. Right now it's a mishmash of code caused by the new naming scheme we rolled out in the last year and this will vastly simplify things. Anyone with the filemover right on Commons is encouraged to help out. Shields will need to be at "<county> County <number>.svg". –Fredddie™ 06:41, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Turned out to be all for naught. Only 20 or so instances popped into the category where I was expecting nearly all of them. –Fredddie™ 17:05, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Questionable page moves

Am I the only one who finds these three page moves to be a bit bizarre? The purpose of the pages was clear before the rename; now, the title could easily lead people to think that it's cruft. – TMF (talk) 15:12, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

I like "X (disambiguation)" better than "List of roads named X" as the former clearly illustrates the use as a disambiguation page. Dough4872 15:44, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

See previous discussions at Template talk:Roadindex, Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 28#Is this a dab?, Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (U.S. state and territory highways)/Archive 1#dab articles, Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 15#"List of highways numbered X", and likely many other discussions as well. This is squarely in the opaquely gray no-man's land between deeply entrenched opinions regarding disambiguation and set index pages.

In the particular case of these three pages, these look to be more like disambiguation pages than set index lists. The issue may be that Category:Lists of roads sharing the same title was moved to that name to address pages like List of highways numbered 2 -- where some, but not all of the entries might be ambiguous with "Route 2", and some but not all of the entries might be ambiguous with "Highway 2", etc. Thus the list is heterogeneous with regards to disambiguation, but they all share the common property of having "2" as an identifying number. Thus that sort of page is clearly a set index rather than a disambiguation page. However, where a road name is ambiguous, it seems that could be a disambiguation page. However, by analogy with set index usage for ships and mountains {{shipindex}} and {{mountain index}}, the set index classification is also used for pages that address ambiguous uses. So it is a mixed bag and previously the subject of extensive discussion. older ≠ wiser 16:18, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

I understand all of that, and I get why the moves were made after reading up on the thin line between dabs and SIAs. (It's still not something I agree with, but I have better things to do with my time than tilt at windmills over this.) However, I'm still genuinely concerned that some drive-by editor is going to see "List of roads named New York State Route #" and instantly think "Why do we have this cruft?" Maybe it's just because I've been around long enough to remember the days when state route AFDs weren't unheard of, but I can see how a page named "List of roads named New York State Route #" would draw much more ire than, say, "List of peaks named Signal Mountain" or "New York State Route # (dab)". – TMF (talk) 17:02, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

If they are to be dabs, they should be tagged (and formatted) as dabs instead of with "road index". The cruftiness of the content as a set index/list article is not affected by moving them the the correct title. I'll be happy to move them back and reformat them as dabs if they aren't supposed to be set indexes. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:10, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

They're clearly supposed to be disambiguation pages. Not sure what formatting has to do with this other than the tag at the bottom of the page; they were already compliant with MOS:DAB. – TMF (talk) 18:20, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

I changed the tag at the bottom of each page and undid my moves. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:58, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Migrating STF and MTF to Commons

Now that we have a USRD at Commons, do you think it would be a good idea to migrate our shields and maps task forces to Commons? –Fredddie™ 03:57, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

I think we can keep task force pages there, but we should also keep them here still (specifically the requests pages) so they are more accessible to users. Dough4872 04:38, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

I think that overall this is the best move for the project in the long term as we branch out to other WMF wikis, and also to protect our own interests over at Commons. --Rschen7754 04:42, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm not so sure this is a good idea. Is there a precedent for this sort of thing on Commons? If not, I'm afraid we may encounter pushback from the locals over there. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 05:37, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Another thought—this would make it more difficult for us to keep track of everything going on; I personally don't check my Commons watchlist, and I doubt I'm the only one who would have to get in the habit of doing so. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 05:39, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Stalk-bot *cough cough* There's an Aviation WikiProject over there and it seems to be doing well. --Rschen7754 05:43, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

My thought behind this is that we could possibly attract people there who don't give a hoot about editing here. Or people who don't speak English, but would like to help out in their own way. Also, KML seems like a perfect candidate for WikiData, but I don't think there is any framework for thinking about beginning discussions over there. All in all, I don't see this being a Bad Thing®. –Fredddie™ 23:21, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

I think this would be a good idea to pursue. I really like Fredddie's division of labor reasoning.  VC  02:37, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Exactly; a lot of people I've talked to from other wikis are turned off to the thought of participating on the English Wikipedia because of the current editing environment. --Rschen7754 09:00, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

U.S. Routes don't exist within National Parks?

There's a claim made at U.S. Route 20 that U.S. Routes don't exist within national parks, and thus any such route that crosses such a park is considered to be disjointed. Does anyone have any reliable sources which state this to be true? I've driven any number of U.S. Routes through any number of national parks, and never noticed that the Route stopped existing, nor have I ever heard this as a policy. For example, U.S. Route 441 is the main north-south route through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and as far as I can remember, there's no indication it stops at the park boundaries. Likewise, U.S. Route 89 crosses several national parks. Can someone verify whether or not the claim in the U.S. 20 article is valid? --Jayron32 21:01, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

That's true of some but not all national parks. Yellowstone's notorious for stopping virtually all U.S. Routes. --Rschen7754 21:04, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

The roadway inside National Park Boundaries would be maintained by the NPS, while outside park boundaries it would be maintained by a state agency. NPS isn't consistent, usually they continue to sign highways by number inside park boundaries. Yellowstone is an exception where no highways are signed by number inside park boundaries. As such all the highways that touch Yellowstone park boundaries have a gap in signage. Even then it's debatable weather (for example) US 20 is a discontinuous route, or is continuous with a sizable unsigned portion. Sadly, many roadgeek sites are wrong or exaggerated in how such highways are handled, and this has carried over into wikipedia. An example where Wikipedia is inconsistent within the same article is US-191. It has a section in Wyoming that is mantained by NPS and a section in Arizona that is mantained by the Navajo Nation. Neither section is signed with the US-191 designation (the Navajo Nation portion is signed with its Navajo numerical designation and even signed in kilometers, not miles, as are all other Navajo Nation highways). However, the article for US-191, with great fanfare, pronounces the route discontinuous through Yellowstone, but continuous within the Navajo Nation. How to fix it? IDK. Dave (talk) 22:11, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

My experience in Yellowstone is not a reliable source, but I can verify that US Highways are not signed within the park. –Fredddie™ 23:23, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

The best way to answer this question or come to a satisfactory interpretation is to look at reliable sources from state or federal transportation agencies. Using signage status based on anecdotes would be challenged as original research. Using state highway log books or even GIS that indicates a particular segment is part of a U.S. Highway or even is signed should be sufficient. For instance, the Arizona log includes all of US 191, including the part within the Navajo reservation. The Montana route log shows US 191 (inventoried as N-11) beginning at the Yellowstone park boundary. Wyoming has a route log as well and the U.S. Highways appear to end or begin at the Yellowstone boundary.  VC  02:34, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Curiously, there is a segment of US 191 north of West Yellowstone, Montana, that not only enters the park boundary, but also Wyoming. The part in Wyoming is not inventoried by Montana, but the mileposts end and begin again as if it were. –Fredddie™ 05:09, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

I like VC's approach, but there is still the potential for argument even using official sources. Correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC the AASHTO logs list the Yellowstone highways as continuous. Dave (talk) 08:53, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata

As you may know, Wikidata today launched phase 1 (the interwiki links) on the Hebrew and Italian Wikipedias: http://blog.wikimedia.de/2013/01/30/wikidata-coming-to-the-next-two-wikipedias/. The important news is that it will be launching on the English Wikipedia on February 11th. That is also the same day that Interstate 80 Business (West Wendover, Nevada–Wendover, Utah) will be TFA, by the way. Before then we ideally want to finish up phase 1 (descriptions, finishing any missing items, etc.) On that day, hopefully enwp won't spiral out of control with people removing interwiki links before they're input into Wikidata; we should be good to go however since over 90% of our items are created and set up already. I'm not sure if we should be removing interwikis from our articles en masse after February 11th yet.

Ideally, we want to finish phase 1 because the first parts of phase 2 will be deploying on February 4th. This is where Wikidata really begins for us. On that day, two types of fields will be added to items: links to media on Commons, and links to other items. This will allow us to have a link to a highway's map and shield on Commons, as well as form hierarchical relationships (say, auxiliary routes). I'm hoping to start a discussion to get this all figured out on Wikidata sometime soon, before the chaos erupts February 4th. These fields will not be deployed onto Wikipedia for a few weeks, so we'll have a bit of time to figure it all out. --Rschen7754 20:31, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Nomination of Highway 2 Bridge for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Highway 2 Bridge is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Highway 2 Bridge until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article.

Is that nomination complete? Vegaswikian (talk) 00:45, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata phase 2 live!

[7] is an example item with three statements. I would suggest holding off on adding these to articles en masse for a few days, since you risk having to redo them should something change. Besides, we still have Phase 1 to finish :) I'll be proposing a few more statements as well over the next few days. --Rschen7754 20:08, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Do you think it would be possible to add KML data as one of these "statements" at some point, or will we need something more suited to the task? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:30, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

It remains to be seen - so much of the site is in flux right now. --Rschen7754 02:24, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

A favor from you?

Hi...I am an inactive member here, hoping to change that but never seeming to find the time. I do a lot with the Editor Retention Project, and we have started an editor recognition program. I am just gonna post the ad, and you all can do what you would like with it. Hope some of you would contribute a nomination or two! Gtwfan52 (talk) 05:47, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Do you know an under-appreciated editor that should be recognized?

Hi! The folks over at WER-Editor of the Week are looking for some help! We need nominations for "Editor of the Week". The ideal candidate is an editor who works hard, possibly doing behind-the-scenes kind of stuff, that just doesn't get recognized as much as they should. Although we have a preference for newer editors, any under recognized editor is eligible. So please make a note of this, and give us your nomination at: WP:EotW/N. Gtwfan52 (talk) 05:09, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I-96 ACR

Hi! Would someone mind giving I-96 a review at ACR? It's been sitting for months with no activity. Remember it's also worth 15 points at the USRD Cup! --Rschen7754 08:18, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Categorization

I would like to put out there I am in the process of adding the category Roads designated in XXXX (year) on several highway pages, to populate the categories. If anyone is willing to help, that would be great. Tinton5 (talk) 01:49, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Please don't; this is a very controversial categorization. --Rschen7754 01:50, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

How so? Tinton5 (talk) 02:14, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

For example, take California State Route 67. When was it designated? There is no clear-cut answer here. There have also been concerns that this is overcategorization, and rightly so; we don't need to categorize based off every single way possible. --Rschen7754 02:15, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

So, should all of these categories be removed from the pages they are on? If so, I could help out with that. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 03:06, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

My preference would be we just limit categories to "Transport in X County, Y state", "State highways in X", "Byways, freeways in X, NHS X, projects by ______ (like Robert Moses) and nothing else. The vagueness of the categories doesn't help the cause and besides, we already have with the first group can manage 10-15 categories. Mitch32^{(The man most unlikely to drive 25 before 24.)} 03:16, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree that we do not need these by-year categories as they are more trouble than they are worth. Dough4872 03:28, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I am in favor of not further populating categories of roads based on years. This we can implement immediately, by stopping any efforts to populate the categories. I am also in favor of removing articles from those categories and deleting the categories. For this, we should probably find out what the consensus is for taking action. I seem to remember a previous discussion about this. Did we come to a conclusion in that discussion?  VC  05:34, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

The original discussion was held about six months ago. It seems that the conclusion was that the "Roads opened in Foo" categories are unquestionably problematic and should be deleted, and the "Roads designated in Foo" categories, while somewhat less problematic, are still crufty and shouldn't be used. I guess both categories are attempts to give roads an entry in Category:Transport infrastructure by year of completion, but I'm not convinced that roads need an entry there. All but one of the other topics there (excluding rail lines, which would have the same problems as roads) are structures at a single location, which makes the year to use for them much less controversial. – TMF (talk) 16:53, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I've been removing the articles in the categories. I think that all of the categories are empty now. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 18:42, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Should we CfD the categories? –TCN7JM 18:49, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I think that would be a good idea. Dough4872 20:16, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Okay, I started to CfD them, and then an admin just told me to CSD them, so that's what I'm doing now. –TCN7JM 20:47, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

And now I'm CfD-ing them again...discussion can be found here. Feel free to leave comments! –TCN7JM 21:14, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

m:Grants:IEG/GIS and Cartography in Wikimedia

Not sure if this is interesting, but here's a link... --Rschen7754 22:57, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Along those same lines, I mentioned in IRC the other night about an idea to speed up the backlog at MTF/R. Basically, it would apply the MTF style to OpenStreetMap so we could simply export maps for our use. I have no idea how to go forward from this, but maybe by putting it in writing something will come of it. –Fredddie™ 23:26, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

You know, what would speed things up would be a tool that would show us a list of articles with KMLs but not maps (this is a simple proposition of category intersection and probably already exists). With a KML already made, making a map is trivial. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 03:23, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

This can be done with AWB and set intersection. --Rschen7754 03:25, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Bold abbreviations?

I don't know if it matters much, but is there a styling guide to whether the abbreviated road name should be bolded? (Interstate 68 is not, but Interstate 355) is...) It seems to be that the majority are bold, but there are many, including a number of the interstate articles, which do not bold the "I-.." Thanks. "Pepper" @ 21:36, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Generally, the abbreviation is bolded at the first mention in the lead (not including the parentheses). Some articles still need to be updated. Dough4872 22:01, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Great, thanks. "Pepper" @ 22:38, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata update

Well, a week's gone by since the enwp launch and things are off to a good start. We're working to finish up Phase 1 on 14 more states, plus USH. Phase 2 has begun in earnest. So far we have 5 properties, and there is a massive bot run to add three of them (highway system, maintained by, owner) to all IH, USH, and state highway items. Alabama through Maine are going to run tonight, and the rest will run at some other date within the next week. I have a few more ideas for items that can be done with the limited data types that we have, but that will come at some point once we're caught up. --Rschen7754 10:46, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Maryland will run within the hour, and Ohio has already been run. We have 12 more states left plus USH. So we're slowly getting caught up... --Rschen7754 21:37, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Suspicious photo

File:SawgrassExpressway-MainSign-July1992.jpg, which is claimed to be taken in 1992 by Formulanone (talk · contribs), looks like a duplicate of this photo taken by Michael Summa in 1986. Dough4872 20:39, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

They sure look to be the same photo, with the picture on aaroads only being zoomed in (maybe cut off) and commons not. The cars in the background all look to be the same, minus the van that is partly cut off on the aaroads photo (because of the zoom), that van has something out the windows in both photos also. If they are not the same that is sure odd that both photos have the same cars and the van has something out the window in both photos. Detcin (talk) 21:11, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

They are both clearly scans of the same photo. By appearances the one on commons is probably the one with the more accurate description. What I would say is, although I'm a big fan of AARoads and Michael Summa for their historical road pics, they are not immune from sloppy and/or mistaken notes. Case in point [8] that is in no way Green River, Utah as claimed in the photo. If I had to guess that is Grand Junction, Colorado. This is similar to this photo [9], which was at one time claimed to be in Green River, but I pointed out to AAROADS is obviously Grand Junction, Colorado. They promptly corrected the obvious one, but I suspect both of these pics were taken at the same place and time. My point is not to bash, we all make mistakes, only to point out I wouldn't assume one is right and the other is wrong, just because one has been around longer or claimed to be older. Dave (talk) 21:31, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

If it would help at all, I can contact the administrator of the AARoads Shield Gallery to confirm that the photo is, in fact, from Summa. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:29, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

I just looked at the two photos, and they are the same. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 00:50, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Scott, please do so. I also notified the user who uploaded the photo. Dough4872 14:59, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

The plot thickens: Jake from the AARoads Shield Gallery says the description there is in error; it is not the work of Michael Summa! He says he is not sure who the actual photographer is, and may well be Formulanone. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:57, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Boilerplate prose copied from another article

Copied from Wikipedia:Help desk#Boilerplate prose copied from another article:

I'm looking for the specific policy or guideline about making boilerplate copies of prose from one article which repeat fundamental points about that article into tangentially-related articles (not daughter pages where a summary might be appropriate). This seems very simple, but I can't find a good reference. Thanks. --Chaswmsday (talk) 20:10, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Does WP:COPYWITHIN help?--ukexpat (talk) 20:13, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

WP:COPYPASTE looks like it applies. See the bottom section -- it covers copying from one Wikipedia article to another. You must preserve attribution. RudolfRed (talk) 20:15, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Of course another consideration, aside from the above, is whether the copied text is being used in an unacceptable WP:FORK.--ukexpat (talk) 20:28, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

WP:COPYWITHIN seems to talk about attribution, WP:COPYPASTE says that you can/may copy from another article, but not whether that is advisable. It's sort of a WP:FORK, but it only duplicates a piece of the article, not full duplication. I'm concerned about unnecessarily creating {{Sync}} problems and the plain fact that details about a tangential topic don't belong in articles linking to that topic.

Here's an example: The last paragraph in Ohio State Route 444#Route description talks about the defining characteristics of the National Highway System (United States), the overall maintenance responsibilities of the Ohio Department of Transportation and the definition of average annual daily traffic. These facts, IMO, should be left to those articles; a reader wishing to learn more could easily navigate to those articles.

The editor in question has changed several articles in this manner. I could address with him/her individually, but I wanted to find specific guidelines first. --Chaswmsday (talk) 20:49, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree with your position. One approach would be to use {{Main}} or {{See also}} templates to link back to the more general stuff making navigation easier and getting rid of unnecessary bloat.--ukexpat (talk) 21:03, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but it's not even a summary-type article, so Main wouldn't really apply; there is appropriate content, just too much that's tangential, so See Also probably also wouldn't apply. When I searched though the Help pages, I was rather astonished this topic wasn't clearly addressed. --Chaswmsday (talk) 21:12, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

It's not boilerplate prose copied from another article, per se. It's a half-sentencen or single sentence explanation/definition in the form of a paraphrased quotation offered inline and quoted to its original source. In the case of the NHS definition, standard practice is to quote the Federal Highway Administration's page that explains the NHS, so we are not truly copying text from one article to another. Rather we are repeating a standard quotation and citation across multiple articles. If the reader wants more detail about the background, legal foundation and detailed designation of the subsystems of the NHS involved, the link is provided.

As for ODOT's maintenance responsibility, that must be mentioned, and not implied, in the text of the article. The infobox at the top right corner of the should already be mentioning the maintaining agency for a roadway, and all information in the infobox, like the rest of the lead, should be repeated elsewhere in the body of the article. The infobox would not serve as a good summary of an article if it mentioned unique details not supplied in the prose someplace.

As for the short definition of AADT, good writing says that we can offer a short explanation inline to avoid sending a reader to another article. This practice was upheld in several articles I took to FAC, including U.S. Route 2 in Michigan. I agree that if we delved into more technical explanations of the AADT concept that it would be tangential, but the summation and explanation of the concept offered in the articles in question is fine.

In short, I disagree with the notion that there is a problem, and I would submit that if these articles are taken higher up the assessment scale, these shorts of details being removed by Chaswmsday would need to be reinserted to satisfy expectations of good writing. Imzadi 1979 → 01:09, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

End copy --Chaswmsday (talk) 01:09, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Copied from User talk:Chaswmsday#Ohio State Routes edits:

Please don't remove the NHS and AADT info, most every other road article that is at ~B or above has this info. So why would these not have this info.Detcin (talk) 00:20, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I believe the prose specifically about NHS and AADT should be removed from the route articles (references to them are great), per the edit summary comments I made when removing. Please see comments made at Wikipedia:Help desk#Boilerplate prose copied from another article. --Chaswmsday (talk) 00:26, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

The same (or something smiliar) prose are in most Michigan road articles and most are above GA, M-51 (Michigan highway).. How about adding a commit over at WT:USRD the wik project that maintain US road articles, instead somewhere else.Detcin (talk) 00:39, 1 March 2013 (UTC).

Except that when articles have gone through FAC and later been granted FA status have been reviewed, other editors asked for commentary on the significance of the road and the level of traffic. Since NHS inclusion or exclusion is a mark of significance, that has been added to many, many articles in most states with active editorship by USRD, including the brief statement of explanation.

Similar is true of the inclusion of AADT data, which answers one of the Five Ws, "Who" as in "Who uses the road?"

Now that we've established why NHS and AADT are included in the articles, we've got the situation where technical information about transportation planning is included in an otherwise non-technical article. A brief explanation of technical details, such as a basic definition of AADT or what the NHS is about, is appropriate in good writing. Forcing readers to jump to another article, just so that they'd understand that "the National Highway System consists of roadways important to the nation's economy, defense, and mobility." is a bad writing practice. It is considered bad at the higher levels of writing standards expected of FAs because we should not send a reader to another article for such a simple explanation that can be offered inline. I would agree that this is tangential if we summarized the NHS as more than "important to the country's economy, defense, and mobility", but a half-sentence is not excessive. Entire details of the Interstate Highway System, STRAHNET, and intermodal connectors, as well as the entire background and legal foundation for the system are left for the larger article, for example.

A single sentence explanation of AADT is also not excessive. If the reader wants more information than provided, that's what the wikilink is for, but a reader shipped off to another article may not come back to the subject article to continue reading. Imzadi 1979 → 01:10, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

End copy --Chaswmsday (talk) 01:09, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Prior to editing, I researched the WP Help pages and asked a Help desk question since this question would seem widespread, and not specifically Roads-related.

I removed boilerplate prose from several Route articles specifically describing the rationale of the NHS, defining AADT and describing the responsibilities of Ohio DOT. I believe that the basic nature of WP calls for such details to exist within those specific articles, not in articles merely referencing other articles, unless there is a parent-child or general-specific relationship between the articles. I also believe that leaving the articles in this state is a dangerous invitation to massive Template:Sync problems if any of the underlying details would happen to change.

My edit summaries were of the form: "Removed boilerplate prose describing other WP articles, best left to those articles & avoiding future Template:Sync problems."

My edits were reverted by User:Detcin - in a couple of cases, twice.

Please weigh in. Thanks! --Chaswmsday (talk) 01:09, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm left asking the same question: why did you remove the information? It's in California State Route 52 which just passed FA. --Rschen7754 01:10, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. Several FAs have exactly this information, which has been provided on request. I've replied to both the Help Desk thread and Chaswmsday's talk page, but the case is that these are simple explanations of more complicated topics, provided inline so that a reader doesn't have to read another article to understand the individual highway article. The removed content should be restored. In fact, under WP:BRD, after Chaswmsday was bold in removing it, and that removal was reverted, that should have been the end of the matter until a discussion including Detcin determined a path forward. Imzadi 1979 → 01:14, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Except that CA SR 52 doesn't have all the prose about AADT, and NHS didn't even have the purpose information from the cite until I added it. --Chaswmsday (talk) 01:28, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

You haven't recorded an edit to CA SR 52. –TCN7JM 01:37, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

The CA SR 52 article doesn't have AADT prose; I didn't claim to have touched it. To the NHS article, I added "it" - the purpose information. --Chaswmsday (talk) 06:02, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

@Rschen7754, you seem to have been a significant contributor to CA SR 52 and nominated it for Featured Article status yourself. You're hardly a disinterested observer. If my view prevails, that might be seen as diminishing the luster of the FA. Not at all my intent.

BTW, per its linked NHS map and [10], contrary to its current contents, CA SR 52 now appears to be part of NHS. Facts matter too, not just prose and layout. --Chaswmsday (talk) 06:16, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Per [11], it is not part of the NHS. And invalidating people's opinions by fiat is bad form. --Rschen7754 06:19, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I truly don't understand what you mean here. I'm somehow invalidating others' opinions by force? I'm just stating my own arguments. So yeah, I put a snotty little zinger there about CA SR 52's content, because I'm getting annoyed over your breaches of Talk protocol. But really, the NHS map shows SR 52 as a "MAP-21 Principal Arterial" and the NHS memo talks about principal arterials under MAP-21 becoming part of NHS on October 1, 2012. So I might be correct? Not that I'd ever heard of any of this before a few days ago. --Chaswmsday (talk) 06:43, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

You can't just discard people's opinions because they are involved with the topic - that's why you posted here, right? to get our opinions? You may be technically correct, but the sources are not clear enough on whether CA 52 specifically was added to the system. As a tertiary source (an encyclopedia), we are bound by our sources; we have to go by what the sources. Wikipedia:Verifiability, not truth. --Rschen7754 06:55, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I didn't say your opinion was necessarily incorrect. Just that you objectively have an interest in the SR 52 article. About the MAP-21/NHS bit, it looks to me just as authoritative as the other NHS member cites I've seen - an official NHS map and a link to the official description of NHS page. And about having to "go by the sources", that will come up in my later points. --Chaswmsday (talk) 07:01, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's all that likely that the underlying details of what NHS is are likely to change all that much. Routes may be added and dropped from it, but what the system is will probably remain static, so I don't really see much of a sync issue. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:45, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

This seems like a case of someone trying to find a Wikipedia guideline or policy to justify actions based on not liking a set of identical sentences that appear in many article. I do not like the boilerplate "the National Highway System consists of roadways important to the nation's economy, defense, and mobility," but that does not mean I am going to remove the sentences or request they be removed from hundreds of articles. Being one of thousands of editors of an online encyclopedia means we are going to come across material repeated seemingly incessantly in a set of articles that rubs you the wrong way. If it bothers you, step back and consider whether trying to change something quite trivial is worth the effort.  VC  03:00, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Another point that bears mentioning in a slightly different fashion: each article needs to be able to stand on its own to a certain degree. Yes, we can point readers to other articles for detailed explanations, but these half-sentence explanations left inline keep each article fairly self-sufficient. Imzadi 1979 → 03:35, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I find it curious that, quoting @Imzadi1979, the mere thought that "a reader shipped off to another article may not come back to the subject article to continue reading" is severely onerous to that reader, who couldn't possibly go back a page in their browser, or open the new article in a separate tab, assuming that a casual reader of a road article is even remotely interested in the details of a linked article, which we must summarily describe in the first article. Yet, @Rschen7754 has repeatedly redirected readers of this thread to the locations of some of the original comments, collapsed them (incorrectly), both of which violate Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines and is now entreating me to do so, as some sort of Sync problem, even though the former comment locations have been marked as redirected here. Unlike the reader of the road article, those editors who are interested enough to read this thread in all likelihood would want to read the thread from the beginning. So no. No collapse. --Chaswmsday (talk) 06:33, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Let me state how I got here. Having driven these roads in real life, I have edited Ohio State Route 444 and Ohio State Route 844. While a cursory examination of @Detcin's edits shows many useful contributions, these I felt were violations of Wikipedia's basic principles and fraught with danger: "National Highway System, a system of routes determined to be the most important for the nation's economy, mobility and defense." No comment for now. "The highway is maintained by the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) like all other state routes in the state." Really, the state DOT maintains all state routes?? Who'd a thunk it?? Plus, irrelevant to the road article. "The department tracks the traffic volumes along all state highways as a part of its maintenance responsibilities using a metric called average annual daily traffic [sic] (AADT). This measurement is a calculation of the traffic level along a segment of roadway for any average day of the year." Yeah, half-sentences there (irony).

I found these so egregious in over-defining linked terms and assuring Template:Sync problems in the future that I convinced myself that @Detcin was responsible for this solely in his/her edits. That's why I went first to Help and Help Desk. I was certain that over-defining a linked term was an issue that had already long been dealt with by WP in general. It wasn't. When I found agreement in Help Desk, I set about boldly "correcting" @Detcin's road articles, edit-summarying them accordingly. If @Detcin objected, I could sway her/him with the over-defining and Sync arguments. Only to find...that this format was Standard Operating Procedure in the US Roads Project. Astounding!

As to some of the arguments, would it now be OK for me to, after the first reference to Interstate Highway System, mention the "Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways" and/or give a half or full or two sentence description of its transportation and defense rationale? These points may or may not be obvious to Americans, but likely wouldn't be to non-US readers. Should I further describe Wright-Patterson Air Force Base or Wright State University, which are linked w/i the OH SR 844 article? Or myriad and sundry other links within road articles? If not, why not? This definitely is not my first rodeo, so I expect I'll get "of course not, those cases are entirely different" comments, but I've found, unfortunately, that some editors will use any type of "pretzel logic" to justify their own WP:ILIKEITs, while denigrating similar counter-examples ("YOULIKEITs").

It's all kind of a matter of degree: summaries are valid if there is a parent-child article relationship. Sometimes, a little bit of explanatory text about a linked term is helpful. I've always rebelled against those editors who try to enforce hard-and-fast policy regulations on every situation. I see WP primarily as a work of art, with every situation and article having its own set of challenges. However, I believe that in these particular cases, re-describing these links w/i the Road articles has gone too far. True, NHS probably won't change, but unless the editors who claim that work at FHWA and/or can work a crystal ball, that isn't a given. Maybe AADT will be redefined with some better metric. Sure, ODOT currently maintains Ohio State Routes, but what about in the future? I can easily imagine a scenario where, to cut the state budget, Ohio pushes responsibility for traffic counts down to the counties, municipalities and/or townships in an unfunded mandate. They've certainly done that before. With some of these, you still might have to do some editing, but the verbose verbiage currently existing would make that all the more difficult.

The least objectionable of these is the definition of NHS. It truly adds about a half-sentence of prose, and if it had been the only example, I might have left it alone. And yet...wait for it... In OH SRs 444 & 844, we have "a system of routes determined to be the most important for the nation's economy, mobility and defense". In California State Route 52 we have "a network of roadways important to the country's economy, defense, and mobility". Seems like a small quibble, no? But which is it? How many road articles have the first version, how many the second? Is there a third version...or more? I've seen a bunch of road articles stating that a route is part of NHS and I've seen other articles stating that another route is not. Is the goal to include NHS verbiage in every single road article? Has that already been accomplished? From upthread: "we are bound by our sources; we have to go by what the sources [say]. Wikipedia:Verifiability, not truth." One of these versions misquotes and thus mischaracterizes how the US National Highway System defines itself. Is this an act of WP:Original research? Or an act of WP:Synthesis? Or was it simply a Template:Sync issue? One of these two versions is correct, at least currently. Which one? How many articles must now be corrected? And that, folks, is my point. Thanks for reading. --Chaswmsday (talk) 09:29, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

"a system of routes determined to be the most important for the nation's economy, mobility and defense" and "a network of roadways important to the country's economy, defense, and mobility" say exactly the same thing. In fact, I think I deliberately changed the wording in order to avoid any form of plagiarism. --Rschen7754 09:33, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

(Ugh. Copyright issues. But it's the US Federal Govt. I've been down the copyright debate road before. Please don't make me go there again... :) )

However, none of those changes bother me - except for the word "most". That one small word substantially alters the characterization of what NHS is. But even assuming that all of the articles are located and edited to remove the word "most" (there, I'll say it, that's the "wrong" version), who's to say that FHWA won't at some point decide that "most important" is a characterization they do want to assert. And that's the general nature of Wikipedia. For the most part, locate an article's description within the article, not within others. A change in description thus causes no problem for articles that link to it.

If Wikipedia had more extensive transclusion capabilities, where a single snippet of text could be reused from a parent article, I would take no issue with this. As I've stated, a little bit of explanatory text is sometimes useful. --Chaswmsday (talk) 10:40, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

That's not what transclusion is for; we got yelled at for doing that years ago. --Rschen7754 10:44, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

There's always somebody yelling about what we can't do or what we must do. But rationales are seldom given. That aside, could a transclusion even accomplish this? Every bit of documentation I've seen suggests that it couldn't. But if it could, it's easier to seek forgiveness than permission...Except in Wikipedia :) --Chaswmsday (talk) 10:57, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for opening a can of worms here by not looking into this question more deeply before making my comments at the Help Desk (copied above). I will of course defer to the experts on this WikiProject.--ukexpat (talk) 13:45, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

@Rschen7754: I thought we were having a civil conversation on my talk page, mostly about my past experiences with a few bullying editors on other projects and how I, at first, feared that heavy-handed tactics were going to be used in this discussion. Our conversations had alleviated my fears, but now there's an outside editor involved, carrying this discussion away from here, to her/his user page, at User talk:Dank#USRD comment, where I feel that you mischaracterized the intent of my comments, which I believe I explained were venting about those earlier experiences and my earlier fears, in somewhat of a "WP:A nice cup of tea and a sit down" fashion. If my venting made you think I was trying to make veiled comments about you, or this discussion, please be assured I absolutely was not. Again, just discourse. To wit:

I believe it's generally better practice to leave the definition of a linked term to that term's own article. Unlike the aforementioned bullies, that's certainly not an absolute ("generally" and "better", not "always" and "required"). IMO, if someone is interested enough, they'll visit the link. If they don't come back to the first page, so what? We can't dictate another reader's interests. My current browser will give me a thumbnail of ref's if I hover over them. Maybe in the future (or maybe it already happens in other browsers), WP will give a thumbnail of the "lead" when we hover over a link. So WP's implementation might obsolete the practice as it stands here.

In the specific case of NHS, again, IMO, there is a large distinction between "important roads" and "THE MOST important roads". Equivalent verbiage is totally unobjectionable. But a version that makes a claim not matching the source mischaracterizes the intent of the source and pretty much amounts to WP:Original research. Again, as to NHS, there is a mini-debate within this thread about whether "principal arterials" under "MAP-21" are now included (I believe they are, but that's a separate issue). Government agencies and human nature being what they are, it's likely that the NHS definition wouldn't change. But, it's at least possible that the FHWA could say that NHS roads are important, while the MAP-21 arterials merely connect to important roads. Again, probably not likely, but this is really all about a larger point, anyway. And that's all I intend to say on this subject. No hard feelings intended or taken. --Chaswmsday (talk) 17:12, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

A couple of points quick, but if there is a discrepancy in how the description has been paraphrased ("most important" vs. "important"), the better tactic would have been to engage Detcin in a polite discussion about removing the word "most" instead of posting walls of text on this talk page. As for this "mini-debate", that's a false claim as a single posting by a single editor asking for clarification is hardly a "debate" of any kind. In short, leave the NHS description in the articles, clear it up as needed and move along. Imzadi 1979 → 23:46, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

NHS in Infobox

Note: As mentioned in another section, I've asked the question about NHS principal arterials at Talk:National Highway System (United States)#Principal arterials under MAP-21.

Because National Highway System (United States) is an important attribute in U.S. Road articles, I'm wondering if that shouldn't also be indicated in an article's Infobox. I played around with populating Template:Infobox road's "System" parameter, but that would involve manual intervention for each article and the result, just below "Highway System", created IMO, a hinky-looking line break just after it.

Within Template:Infobox road/browselinks/USA (I had to edit), NHS exists, so it appears that a proper wikilink might possibly be generated. But I would have to seriously read up on my already limited understanding of template code to figure it out.

Does anyone else think this idea has merit and would know how to implement? Thanks. --Chaswmsday (talk) 19:15, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Would it be better to turn it on only for routes that are on the NHS? By definition, the NHS (not including MAP-21) is 4% of all state highway systems. So, I'm thinking it could be implemented with |NHS=yes on articles that are part of the NHS. –Fredddie™ 22:24, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I support the idea of listing what parts of a route are part of the NHS in the infobox in the top part along with the length, dates, tourist routes, and restrictions. Dough4872 23:37, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm not convinced that we'd need to list it in the infobox. Yes, there is the browselinks for the NHS for infobox road, but that's because {{infobox state highway system}} uses several of the same subtemplates (colors, browselinks) for the infoboxes used on system articles. Important enough to mention in prose, but not something needed in the infobox, IMHO. Imzadi 1979 → 23:40, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Oh, didn't realize just portions of routes could be NHS... --Chaswmsday (talk) 23:47, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I am somewhat receptive to having an NHS yes-or-no function in the infobox but completely opposed to anything more than that. For the former, we would need to resolve a number of questions, such as:

• Does the whole route need to be NHS, most of the route, any part of the route? I do not want to see an NHS notation in the infobox for an otherwise moderately notable highway that happens to have a short concurrency with an NHS highway.
• Interstates should not have the NHS notation displayed because all of them are, by definition, included in NHS.
• Which subsets of the NHS warrant inclusion? The red system and STRAHNET, surely. Intermodal connectors or those MAP-21 highways, heavy lean no.

I see this possibly going somewhere, but there is deliberation to be done.  VC  23:57, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I would be opposed to including NHS in the infobox, because the infobox is supposed to be the most important facts about an article's subject. The average member of the traveling public doesn't know what NHS is, and could see no discernible difference between a NHS route and a non-NHS route. NHS is a planning and funding mechanism, which is not really what most people are interested in. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:25, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Scott: mentioning NHS in the prose is fine as part of the maintenance and traffic details, but not in the infobox. Imzadi 1979 → 01:59, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

If we are not mentioning NHS in the infobox, I see no reason for browselinks either. Dough4872 02:05, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of adding NHS to the infobox, per the above. --Rschen7754 02:10, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Dough, the NHS browselinks are used for the NHS article itself at the bottom of the infobox. They shouldn't be in use on any articles at the moment unless someone's manually added them. Imzadi 1979 → 02:15, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't want to see the NHS browselinks used in individual road articles. It should be restricted to the NHS article. Dough4872 02:17, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

It appears that NHS is of minor importance? Any problem then if I pull that info from the lead of the couple I've been editing, since WP:FA California State Route 52 doesn't have in its lead? --Chaswmsday (talk) 06:40, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Some articles have it, some don't. Your call, really. –TCN7JM 06:44, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

A comment on removing the factoid from the lead: on some shorter articles, there may not be that many details to summarize into the lead and still present a decent-length lead section. Personally, NHS information is not something I would normally put in the lead, but it may be good to leave those details in a short lead to help "pad" the content. Imzadi 1979 → 14:54, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

It in my opinion has no place in the infobox due to the grand amount these could add up to in infobox length. The problem with adding more stuff to the infobox personally is that it clutters smaller articles, and just looks sloppy really. I also do tend to believe the NHS isn't really a good system to base the country on, but that's what they use. Primarily 1 or 2 sentences in the route description suffices. Mitch32^{(The man most unlikely to drive 25 before 24.)} 14:01, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Category:Temporary_jct_template_category

Hi guys. I was just working on some of the non-existent categories and came across Category:Temporary jct template category. I've not looked at all of the members but eg U.S. Route 59 in Oklahoma has been in this "temporary" category for nearly 3 years! From that diff it looks like the category is set by a parameter buried deep in {{jct}} so I figured it's not for me to meddle with it but I thought I would bring it to your attention. Le Deluge (talk) 21:55, 5 March 2013 (UTC) (edit - another relevant diff in Western Kentucky Parkway on 24 September 2011) Le Deluge (talk) 01:13, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm not actually sure what triggers that category. I've been searching the seedy underbelly of the template and can't find it. –Fredddie™ 23:05, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

It shows up in the syntax for Template:Jct/sufblank, which is used in all 3 articles, but I couldn't tell you what it's doing there or why only those 3 articles trigger it. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 23:27, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Talk:New Jersey Route 55

Some discussion regarding sources. --Rschen7754 20:17, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Junction list content discussion

See Talk:Interstate 90 in Ohio#Lake and Ashtabula County Exits. I feel confident in my responses and actions (WP:BOLD but not overbearing) but would like comments. Mapsax (talk) 14:39, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Lua

I'm thinking about converting portions of our most used templates (Infobox road, jct, jctint, USRD, etc) to Lua. I hope to be setting up a testing environment at [12] so that we're not making changes go live immediately. We may have to redo some of these templates entirely once Wikidata is fully deployed; however, I'm hoping to convert some of the more complicated parserfunctions to Lua so that they are less computationally expensive and reduce page loading time. --Rschen7754 21:19, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

For those of us not technically educated, what will be the influence of WD on this? I have to ask cause I have no intention to get a Wikidata account. Mitch32^{(The man most unlikely to drive 25 before 24.)} 22:04, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

They will pull some data from Wikidata as a centralized repository, rather than having it spread out across different Wikipedias. Interwiki links are being converted right now, and infoboxes will probably happen over the summer. --Rschen7754 22:10, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I support this change, even before Wikidata happens. Lua looks much easier to code than parserfunctions, so once the Lua conversion happens, I think we might have more people able to maintain the templates (I'll certainly learn Lua), which will help when the Wikidata implementation happens. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:12, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

+1. I've been looking for an excuse to learn another programming language. Lua looks like it would be pretty easy for me to pick up. -happy5214 08:34, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I figure I should let everyone know, I'm trying to feel out how Lua works by converting {{Routelist row}} to Lua. See Module:Routelist row (Lua code), User:Scott5114/SandboxT (template), User:Scott5114/SandboxU (usage). So far beltway/termini work, and row colors kinda work (decommissioned works but future doesn't yet). —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 08:44, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Fixed the future row color. -happy5214 11:32, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

The Lua version of {{Routelist row}} is now live. It might be instructional to check it out if you have an interest in template programming. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:04, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

{{LegendRJL}} is now also on Lua. Check for template breakage, etc. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 09:48, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata update, again

Important dates:

• March 6 (tomorrow) - Interwiki links come to all Wikipedias, and String datatype deployed on Wikidata
• March 27 - Phase 2 of Wikidata (infoboxes) comes to hu, he, it Wikipedias
• April 3 - Phase 2 of Wikidata comes to the English Wikipedia

My thoughts are to do some sort of switch statement to allow data to come from Wikidata, but to have the possibility of a local override as a lot of stuff isn't on there yet.

As far as work on Wikidata goes, things have slowed down a bit as the bot is currently occupied, but we're still making progress. --Rschen7754 21:22, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Do we know how the coding for Wikidata is going to work? It might be prudent to use the month of March to convert infobox road to use Lua so that the Wikidata coding comes easier. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 21:05, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

I just finished creating a module for {{Infobox road/name/USA}}. Maybe we should create a page to coordinate all of this conversion work. -happy5214 14:49, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Assessment/Connectivity

Check it out! --Rschen7754 08:52, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Maybe that should be a project goal. Dough4872 14:04, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

With the exception of M-185, I have a long-term plan to connect Michigan's FAs on the map. I-96 (currently at ACR) would connect M-6 and US 131 on the west with I-696 on the east. I-496 would connect I-96 to the Capitol Loop, and I-75 would connect the UP and LP networks together. That would leave M-26 to connect Brockway Mountain Drive into the rest of the UP network, which except for M-185 already interconnects. If Floydian were to FA Ontario Highway 402, either I-69 or I-94 in Michigan would connect to that, bridging the gap over the international border. Imzadi 1979 → 15:56, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

How about a GA-level version? I'm sure there's still a few lone roads out there that aren't connected to any other GAs. SounderBruce 17:22, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Maybe in a bit, that will take quite a while to generate. --Rschen7754 17:24, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

I can work on a list of interlinked FA/A/GA articles tonight. Dough4872 21:00, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

There are, in fact, GAs that are isolated from other GAs. I thought of one of my own right off the bat. –TCN7JM 21:05, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

How can Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Assessment/ω be expanded to other projects?

I wouldn't mind seeing this in several other WikiProjects where I take active part. The idea got some publicity in Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-02-25/WikiProject report, but nobody is talking about making ω more widely reported... --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:51, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

You have several options:

• The easiest option is probably to put together a "live" table using Parserfunctions. This table would always be up-to-date (as long as the page rendering cache is purged at appropriate times). See WP:USRD/A/L as an example of what you can do. Note that our live table omits the statistics for everything but stubs due to the number of rows causing us to exceed a limit on the number of function calls that can be made; this probably won't be a concern for your project, so you could create a full table if you so desired (or just WikiWork stats). The downside of this is it creates no history, so you can't go back and check your progress, or create line graphs. (You would have to regularly manually record the statistics in a spreadsheet or something to keep such a history.)
• You could ask the WP:1.0 bot people if they would be willing to have the bot automatically calculate the statistic for you when the bot runs. They were able to add code to generate WP:USRD/A/S for us, so it's probably technically possible for your project. If enough projects request this, it could become a standard feature of the bot for all projects.
• Worse comes to worst you can use the web tool linked from the Signpost article to calculate the statistic at a regular interval, such as on the first of every month, or every Monday. If you intend to make graphs, it's important to keep a somewhat regular schedule so that you have regularly-spaced data points. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 07:25, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

• Where could I find those nice "WP:1.0 bot people" you mention? :) --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:19, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

• Try User:Theopolisme. --Rschen7754 11:20, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

FYI, the WP:1.0 folks are working on incorporating WikiWork. Check out this list of projects and some discussions about the data. –Mabeenot (talk) 05:37, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject overlap

One of your key editors, Rschen7754 (really great work, way beyond my current skill level), made these edits (march 22, "removed" section) to the talk pages of WP:San Francisco Bay Area articles, removing them from the SFBA task force and WP:California. I understand the reasoning given (and won't revert), that since other states' road articles are not also in the state projects, why should California roads be in the California project? My question is the reverse: why aren't other road articles in those other state projects? I can't find any hard and fast rules for avoiding overlap of WikiProjects. The best i can find, with a cursory search, is Wikipedia:WikiProject: "WikiProjects are not rule-making organizations. WikiProjects have no special rights or privileges compared to other editors and may not impose their preferences on articles." (somewhat tangential); and Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide#Identify the best scope: "Too much overlap: If the scope is too closely related to an existing project, then having separate projects is usually inefficient and counterproductive, because you wind up dividing the few interested editors across multiple projects. This approach maximizes administrative hassles and minimizes collaboration. However, there is no rule that prohibits two separate groups of editors from being interested in the same articles (my emphasis)." We do have other Wikiprojects whose content is almost, or completely, enclosed by the Cali project, such as the University of California (inactive), California State University (inactive) and Stanford projects, and I havent seen a clear pattern of no overlap with them. We also have such issues as whether the California project should somehow be automatically included in the US project, which of course includes some states but not others. I think ive made my concerns clear. Does anyone here know more about how such issues are resolved? i know its not a content issue, so we wont need to find references, etc, and any sort of edit war on this is rather silly. I would especially like to know if there are more guidelines for managing project overlap. i am a somewhat maniacal editor for the SFBA project (the project and the portal were fairly moribund until i came along), but i want to play well with others while doing so. After all, if every time someone takes an action (like a cdrom) using all the Cali project articles and automatically includes the cali road project articles, it really doesnt matter, does it?Mercurywoodrose (talk) 02:22, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

It's basically tag clutter, and those other projects rarely edit the related articles. The editors that do frequently don't follow the road project standards and make a mess of the article, sometimes not even following Wikipedia-wide guidelines by adding trivia and non-notable stuff into the articles. We don't tag our articles for WikiProject Highways (our "parent" project) nor WikiProject Transport (parent of that project). I've also seen issues where other projects try to claim our FAs and GAs as their own but not our stubs. This puts an end to all of that nonsense. I'm not trying to strike some sort of WP:OWNership stance here or say that non-project editors can't edit "our" articles, but I'm trying to stop unproductive edits under the guise of other WikiProjects. --Rschen7754 02:36, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

The Michigan TF for USRD is considered a TF for the Michigan WP. There's no need to dual-tag, and in fact, I've wanted to update our banner to handle display of the various state-level wikiprojects through our banner to reduce clutter and emphasize the overlap. Imzadi 1979 → 02:49, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

The definition of scope and how it affects an editor who is looking for guidance is important here. State projects are too wide of a scope for an editor looking for specialized assistance with road articles. State projects are great for topics that tie together a wide variety of different disciplines related to a state or for articles on governments or jurisdictions within the state. They are not so great for specialized topics like state highways, universities, sports teams, rivers, and so forth, which are all features that have equivalents in other states and for which it makes more sense to share standards and wikiprojects with those other features. This is a major reason an editor looking for assistance on road articles is unlikely to find guidance in the state wikiproject. The other reason is in most cases, if multiple wikiprojects "claim" or "own" articles, then no one wikiproject really owns the article. Either both wikiprojects try to maintain the article and conflict over standards, no one wikiproject bothers to maintain the article, or one of the listed wikiprojects maintains the article and is available for guidance and the other is missing in action. In conclusion, I argue for tagging articles with the wikiprojects whose scopes suggest their members have the more specialized knowledge of a category of topics.  VC  19:59, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

So, would it be appropriate to tag short roads that exist entirely within the Bay Area as in the Bay Area task force, as editors there may actually have specialized knowledge on the subject, such as significant landmarks on the routes? Thanks for all the informative comments, but i still dont see where there is a guideline which says an article can, or can't, be tagged with multiple, sometimes nesting, projects? It sounds like each active project does as it feels best. I know for my part, im not about to start adding trivia to a bay area road article, just because its in "my" project, but if thats happened a lot due directly to articles being included in projects (and not just by curious and inexperienced editors finding an article to their liking), then ok. PS i have added about 1,000 articles, mostly stubs, to the project in the last few months, with some of them GA and FA articles. I don't know which editors, from which, if any, projects, worked to make them FA's and GA's, but does that mean that Flower Drum Song should NOT be in the Bay Area task force because editors not associated with the TF built it up, as no one else should get "credit" for that hard work? Mercurywoodrose (talk) 04:51, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Such tagging causes more problems than it solves, realistically. Also, "significant landmarks on the routes" usually turns out to be the trivial and non-notable information that has to later be removed. --Rschen7754 04:53, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I probably agree that listing landmarks could be detracting from the main point of the articles, but California State Route 92 has unsourced info on habitats it crosses, and California State Route 238 mentions passing by the mission, no source provided. I think the former may be trivia, while the latter is not. Would my tagging these articles as part of the SFBA task force put them at risk? Is my perspective overruled because im not an expert on Road article construction, but am an expert on the Bay Area? Im sorry, this is sounding a little like ownership, even if with excellent intentions.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 05:09, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Anybody can edit any article, regardless of project tagging. --Rschen7754 05:10, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Suggestion to tweak a line of the welcome template

So, I just recently used {{welcome-roads}} and decided to read over it for the first time, as normally I just drop the template and leave. I found a line that might need tweaking.

There is a line that reads "If you live in the United States, there is an excellent new user's guide."

I propose changing it to "If your interest is in roads in the United States, there is an excellent new user's guide." or something similar, since you don't need to live in the United States to be interested in U.S. roads.

Let me know what you guys think. TCN7JM 16:23, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

I support this.  VC  18:17, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Make it happen. –Fredddie™ 19:34, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree too. That way we can encourage international editors who like US roads. Dough4872 19:49, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

We already have an Australian user is going through our articles one by one because he wants to. I'm guessing this is the reason behind this proposal. –Fredddie™ 20:10, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

 Done since there were no objections. Thanks for your input! TCN7JM 15:21, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Call for organizers: WLM US 2013 needs you

Hi, I wanted to invite you to help organize the 2013 Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest in the United States. Last year, over 22,000 files were uploaded (90% by new Wikipedia users) to illustrate articles about historic places in the United States. We need all the help we can get, so if you're interested in organizing the contest, please add your username at this page. If you have any questions, please don't post them here - place a new message on User talk:Mono. Thanks, Mono 15:13, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Possible IP vandal

I have been watching List of bannered U.S. Routes (on my watchlist) and have noticed that an IP user is adding lots of code and entries. However, the page is looking as if it is being vandalized. I would like to get this page corrected, but I think more experienced editors should take a look at it and deal with the user. Thanks. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 00:04, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Nice catch. –Fredddie™ 00:11, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I think they may have had good intentions (sound familiar?), but they were messing up code on the page and making some bogus entries. I just started an attempt to reformat the page on my sandbox. I have added some entries from the actual "Business routes of U.S. Route . . ." articles. I have also started to re-sort the entries by state, and then by location. Some research will have to be done to fix the entries not on those pages, as well as the "Bannered routes of U.S. Route . . ." pages. Let me know what you think. If you, or someone else can do a better job, just let me know, and I will step aside and let you handle it. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 00:58, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

2008 USRD GA audit

I have audited all the USRD GAs from 2008 and earlier to check for serious issues like SPS use. The results are at User:Rschen7754/2008 USRD GA audit. In a week, I will start the delisting process for articles remaining on the list, but will try and spread out the delistings to give editors time to fix the affected articles. --Rschen7754 02:32, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Elimination of unreliable sources from roadgeek websites

I have been informed that various "roadgeek" websites, like NYCRoads.com, AlpsRoads.net , and MichiganHighways.org, etc. are no longer considered reliable sources since they have not met the criteria for the exception to the SPS section of the verifiabilty policy.

Is there any exception to this policy, such as allowing pictures or maps from these sites?

I have also noticed that these sites are still used in dozens of articles as a reference source for various statements. Is there a reason why there are still some remaining reference sources from these sites?

Please explain if, how, and when all remaining reference sources from NYCRoads.com, AlpsRoads.net , and MichiganHighways.org would be removed.

If alternate source that provides duplicate referenced details in an article statement based on the original road geek site cannot be found, will the referenced details in specific article statements also be removed?Wondering55 (talk) 19:30, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

The short answer is that we're still working on it.

The longer answer is that yes, we should remove citations to those cites when we have something to replace it with. But, any article that has attained Good Article or Featured Article status cannot have any SPS citations in them, as that is part of the definition of a Good Article or Featured Article. If SPS citations are readded to a GA or FA, that is grounds for removing the GA or FA status. We also discourage people adding SPS citations to any article, because then we will have to go back and fix it later when we bring that article to GA or FA status (and our goal is to bring all articles to GA or FA status). A citation to a SPS is a temporary fix that will not hold forever; think of it like duct-taping a hole in your boat.

We generally do allow maps from those sites, if and only if they were published professionally by someone else (say, Rand McNally) and are only hosted on that site for convenience (i.e. someone had a scanner). --Rschen7754 19:40, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) We've typically been fairly liberal in dealing with the replacement of these citations in "lower-tier" articles (Stub-, Start-, C- and B-Class articles). For example, michiganhighways.org is not used in any capacity in any of the 200 "upper-tier" articles (FA-, A-, or GA-Class) from Michigan as a source, and as the remaining 14 articles at B- and C-Class are expanded and updated for nomination as GAs, the remaining footnotes will be replaced. The Wikipedia has no deadline, and with around 10,000 articles in the US Roads project and a core group of editors around a dozen or so, we've focused our efforts complying with the criteria for assessment at the upper levels for now. See the thread above about an audit of articles promoted to GA status back in 2008 that includes SPS replacement as one of the items mentioned. Imzadi 1979 → 19:44, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

A-Class review proposed changes

There are proposed changes for the A-Class review for WP:HWY, to deal with situations where there are several opposes, and when the nominator has failed to respond to the comments. Your input is welcome at WT:HWY/ACR. --Rschen7754 05:48, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Categories for highways

I have observed that some categories mostly for interstate and U.S. Routes are disorganized. For example, some pages in Category:Interstate 95 are not in any particular order. They are somewhat scattered all over the place. Shouldn't Interstate 95 in Virginia be under the primary list? They include Interstate 95 in New York, Interstate 95 in New Hampshire, etc etc with the states in alphabetical order. Shouldn't all pages that start with Interstate 395 be under the "3"? Also, Category:Interstate 65 has two pages are under "A", which have no relevance to the two, them being Interstate 165 and Interstate 565. Thoughts on this matter? Category:U.S. Route 1 seems to be in decent shape. Tinton5 (talk) 23:05, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Part of the issue has to do with the sort key used with each entry. At some point, these seemed mostly standardized, but this is an issue that likely hasn't received much attention over the years with other project standards/revisions taking precedence. I think someone mentioned a little while ago about doing some category cleanup, but I don't recall where that conversation was or what actions were decided on. -- LJ ↗ 00:05, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata guidelines

You're invited to help in drafting guidelines for U.S. highway items on Wikidata! The current draft guidelines are at d:WD:USRD/GL. Input is needed, so help today! -happy5214 10:11, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

List of bannered U.S. Routes

I have been reformatting the List of bannered U.S. Routes page in my sandbox. I have resorted each section by location, and then by route type. I also added entries that weren't on the page. Most of those entries I got from the "Bannered routes of U.S. . . ." pages, the "U.S. Route . . ." pages, the "U.S. Route . . . in . . ." pages, or (as in the case of U.S. Route 87) Loops of U.S. Route 87 in Texas. Also, I used the 2013 Large Scale Rand McNally road atlas, Rand McNally's online mapping service, and Google Maps to find others that aren't on those Wikipedia pages. I listed some by how they are signed (for example, US 67B vice BUS US 67 in Arkansas). I want to make the pages on the actual list page, but I thought I should ask you guys first. Do you think there are any other changes I should make? Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 10:24, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Normally such lists are sorted in geographic order, from south to north or west to east, regardless of "type". Imzadi 1979 → 11:49, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I can go back and re-sort the list. It will take some time, though. Also, all of the existing bannered route lists (Interstates, as well as U.S. routes) need to be reformatted, and all of the routes need an article (or at least a redirect). Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 11:54, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I have re-sorted the sections of the page. What other changes should I make? Today, I start my 10AM-10PM schedule, so I won't reply to you guys until after that. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 12:21, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Highways/Assessment/A-Class Review/Pennsylvania Route 652

Providing notice that I've recommended this article for demotion at ACR. --Rschen7754 10:58, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

California State Route 52 et al

Had a discussion with Rschen at User talk:Rschen7754#California State Route 52 et al concerning original research and ownership. Per Rschen's blanket refusal to consider either issue, I'm going to boldly edit California State Route 52. --Chaswmsday (talk) 20:29, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

All you did was change two or three words. The new words are synonyms or close to synonyms of the old words. I do not understand how this improved the article at all. The fact that you advertised your boldness here makes your course of action seem pointy to me.  VC  21:33, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

No, "important" means "worthy of note", while "essential" means "required". Use of "essential" got away from the meaning in the cited source. As for "highway" vs "road", Rschen's stated concern was to avoid plagiarizing the source. The source had "roadway"; I chose "road" over "highway" since a non-subject matter expert reading the article might misconstrue "highway" as "freeway" or as "multi-lane divided". I've seen other articles with "network" or "system" of "routes". "Roads", "roadways" or "routes" are not as likely to be misconstrued as "highways".

And I stated my intention to be "bold" in this forum strictly because there seems to be a sense of article ownership by frequent contributors to this Project. My, IMHO, good faith effort to improve WP is not "pointy"/disruptive at all. --Chaswmsday (talk) 21:49, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Chaswmsday, I don't want you to feel like that sentence is required in every USRD featured article because it's not. I can think of at least two FAs that specifically do not include it. –Fredddie™ 01:56, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Just a quick thought, but I think there's a bit of fatigue setting in regarding a single sentence of articles. This was discussed recently in the #wikipedia-en-roads IRC channel, and it's been debated multiple times. Where Chaswmsday is seeing "ownership" in a comment made by rschen, I see a general "why are still still discussing this yet?" type of malaise and a certain level of "hey, I put a lot of thought and work into this article, and someone comes along an wikilawyers it over a single word?". Anyway, I'd switch back to the word "important" over "essential" because there are varying degrees of interpretation, but as for "highways" vs. "roadways", in the US, I don't see where someone would confuse that with "freeway", but to each their own. And yes, drawing attention here, Chaswmsday, smacks me of sticking a thumb in rschen's eye for the sake of getting "one up on him". Imzadi 1979 → 02:30, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Were it not for WP:POINT I would be tempted to just delete the NHS information from all of the articles. The amount of energy that's been expended upon this is ludicrous when you consider how important NHS is. (Which is to say, not important at all for your average reader or road user.) —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 06:06, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Is Missouri Route 350 to become a new US 350

Can someone take a look at Missouri Route 350 to see if the recent edits are accurate or not? The editor says that is is slated to become a new US 350. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 20:18, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm going to say no, since US 350 exists in Colorado now. There have been a bunch so similar weird claims on other Missouri articles lately, like upgrades from state routes to Interstates. Imzadi 1979 → 20:24, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Feel free to revert the edits if an editor makes such a significant or controversial edit and the editor does not provide sources.  VC  20:33, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

California Incline

For anyone familiar with California roads, the newly created page California Incline, says it is a road and bridge in the lead. Should it be reworded to say "road bridge" or something else? I am not 100% sure if the entire street is a bridge. Tinton5 (talk) 23:43, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Road yes, incline yes, bridge no. (map) –Fredddie™ 23:53, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

On the map you provided, it looks like it is held up by a few columns, near the intersection with Ocean Ave. This article [13] states the "bridge part" will be reconstructed. Tinton5 (talk) 00:02, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

It is not a state highway, and does not fall in our scope. --Rschen7754 00:35, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Avenues v boulevards

If anyone can help in this CfD discussion please join in. While not restricted to the US, I'm sure someone here can provide some good guidance. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:58, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I think you're looking for WikiProject U.S. Streets. This isn't in our scope. TCN7JM 00:03, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:26, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Mass user renaming coming

I know a lot of people have requested renames in the past on the English Wikipedia, but have not globally, or have not unified their accounts. If you have not done so, it may be a good idea to do so soon, before May 27 - otherwise it may be a huge mess to clean up aftewards. Feel free to drop me a note on my talk page if you have any questions - I'm familiar enough with the process. --Rschen7754 06:54, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Proposed rename

Well, because Morriswa couldn't link it, I will. Mitch32^{(It is very likely this guy doesn't have a girlfriend.)} 00:19, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

I also nominated Washington's two lists for requested moves right here. SounderBruce 23:36, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Volume (carrying capacity)

I would think that articles should mention maximum carrying capacity of a limited access highway. For example, at 50 mph, allowing 3 second interval and a 17 foot vehicle (arbitrary), the capacity for a single lane should be nearly 3,000 vehicles per hour. The "per hour" is important because when the editor specifies that the road carries 6,000 vehicles per hour during peak conditions, the reader might reasonably conclude that the traffic will slow to (say) 25 mph, roughly.

This should be modeled/outlined with a usable citation. Okay, this isn't a very good one: http://books.google.com/books?id=8O4Th52zjssC&pg=PA37&lpg=PA37&dq=carrying+capacity+of+highways&source=bl&ots=O1gkiwnPT2&sig=hX0acaf58qSg1NOqrwKRFGJ72mA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=W058UbvFJYuE9QSD24DAAg&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=carrying%20capacity%20of%20highways&f=false. It assumes a 1.8 second distance which seems short IMO. This one, at least, appears neutral, but is not really the ultimate available: http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/29000/29200/29208/2001WZSnapshot_final_.pdf. The beauty of a real study, is it allows for correct sizing, including an average mix of larger vehicles, like trucks, and a 3 second delay between vehicles.

Unfortunately, for this project, most articles are aimed at mass transportation and are pov on road traffic, which renders them undesirable for a road article. But this is a simple calculation. "All" that needs to be done, is to find an online (for credibility) text which contains it. If I could have, I would have!

For a unlimited access (not a TP), the editor is forced to use engineers design specs or measured volume, if s/he can find them. No "mechanical" table-punching recourse as there would be for limited access roads. We would make that clear in the "outline." Student7 (talk) 22:42, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Not to sound outwardly contrarian, but why would we say how many a highway could carry when we can say how many it does carry. –Fredddie™ 22:53, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

And to go along with that, these sorts of technical details probably should be in articles on controlled-access highways or highway engineering. Imzadi 1979 → 22:54, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

If the maximum carrying capacity of a highway is notable enough to be mentioned in a newspaper article, then it can be included. Often newspaper articles will mention Highway X is designed to carry 65000 vehicles per day or similar statements when talking about the need for improvements or plans for improvement. Otherwise, this information should not be included. Using the above sources to calculate the maximum carrying capacity is original research or involves point of view issues.  VC  00:19, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

The original point, of course, was to find a Transport 101 text (which I do not have) that would contain this information and would be useable by all. The capacity would be speed oriented, and the table listed by speed. The turnpike would hold more at slower speed limits. This would allow table punching by an editor who would also use the identical citation. This would seem more appropriate to local state or city sections that say, the entire I-95 or I-80. It is rather basic to the article. Why else have an road if not to carry vehicles? Student7 (talk) 14:50, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

We're not transportation engineers, and such calculations, if the results are not repeated in reliable sources are original research. Sorry, I don't support the idea outside of an article on highway engineering. Imzadi 1979 → 14:57, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

I am not an engineer, but comments that I've read from registered PEs on forums make me believe that there is considerable disagreement as to what the "acceptable" capacity of a road is, and it differs from agency to agency. Furthermore, what level of service are we talking here? A road will have much lower capacity if you constrain it to be operating at LOS A than it will at LOS F. Then you get things like latent demand involved, and it all gets extremely complicated really quickly. (If further exposition on this point is needed, I can contact a PE registered in New Jersey and ask him about it.) This type of question is the sort of thing people get paid six figures to figure out, and I doubt it's a good idea for us to even attempt to come up with, especially since it's trivia most people either wouldn't understand or wouldn't care about. More to the point, it lands pretty squarely in original research territory. AADT is much easier to source, doesn't have the original research problems, and is more useful, so let's stick to that. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 21:31, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Furthermore to the above, let me give a practical example from what I'm currently looking at. Here is FDOT's Straight-Line Diagram of a portion of FL SR 826, a.k.a. the Palmetto Expressway, and here is the surface road portion of SR 826. The road that the article covers ranges from a busy multi-laned expressway to a city street. How would you incorporate "potential capacity" into this article when the road varies in its function? One way I could see it done is to look at the lane average widths (those numbers directly beneath the diagram) and calculate from there; but, if you think that it would be practical to take every single lane, every milepost the width changes on every highway, Interstate and notable road (and what of states that don't have this information available?), and calculate it and throw it into a table or something...mate, it ain't happenin'. -DyluckTRocket (talk) 03:19, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

GAR notice

Resolved

Pennsylvania Route 51, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. --Rschen7754 20:00, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

By-county highway navboxes

Do we have anything anywhere that strongly urges against making more of them? I noticed this morning that they are being created en masse for Georgia, but they do not appear to be deployed as of yet. I guess my biggest problem with them is that the states that have this style of navbox (Georgia and Texas, specifically) have bigger problems than needing navboxes. –Fredddie™ 11:44, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I have a number of issues with these boxes as a concept, but I won't get into them now. However, emphasis should be on improving the content of the articles instead of cluttering them with navboxes. A two-paragraph stub that isn't longer than the infobox in the article doesn't need more templates at the bottom of the article. Also, the creation of these boxes encourages the creation of "List of highways in Foo County, Bar" type articles, a concept that that has pretty much been deprecated. A simple list of the highways in a county can be added to the article on the county itself in most cases to prevent forking issues. Imzadi 1979 → 11:48, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

What if someone were to go to a highway's page and wanted to know what other highways are in the same county/counties as the "original" highway. If they went to the actual county's page, sometimes the list of highways is not listed. Shouldn't there be some kind of navigational boxes that would help with a situation like this. Also, if someone is in a hurry, they could quickly glance at the boxes to get the same information.

The reason that the boxes for Georgia haven't been "deployed", yet is that the user is waiting until all of them were made, proofread, corrected (if need be), and had their talk pages started. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 12:22, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

The "Transportation in Foo County, Bar" categories will link to them. Categories, btw, take up much less space than navboxes, even collapsed navboxes. Remember that we have to consider highways like Interstate 75 in Michigan that pass through 15 counties as well as ones like M-553 (Michigan highway) that exist in only one. Imzadi 1979 → 12:25, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

First, you are talking about the "Transportation in xxx County, xxx State" categories? Second, what should I do with the county navigational boxes that have already been started for Georgia? It seemed like such a good idea (especially after seeing the ones in Texas) to have them, per my "arguments" above. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 12:30, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, those categories. Second, not everything Texas does is right, nor is everything that state does applicable to other states. They have 254 counties, and not all of their templates are created. Think of it this way, if every county or equivalent in the US had a navbox, there would be 3,143 or so templates for the project to maintain, and it would prompt the potential creation of nearly that many "List of highways in Foo County, Bar" articles.

As for what you should do with the existing templates you've created, tag them with {{db-g7}} and let them get deleted by an administrator in due course. Imzadi 1979 → 12:37, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Personally, I do not see the need for by-county navboxes when categories do the same thing. Also, if a route passes through several counties the navboxes add a lot of clutter. Dough4872 20:56, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Can someone explain how creation of county route navboxen encourages creation of county route articles? This seems like a farfetched argument against county navboxen. It is along the same lines as "don't create any more articles about state highways because the editors who do that don't know what they are doing and are going to ruin everything."  VC  00:58, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

This is about county routes? I thought this was about state routes in a certain county. TCN7JM 01:07, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Not county route articles, lists of highways for each county. Such lists are being created in Texas because the templates link to them in the heading of the navbox. Imzadi 1979 → 02:07, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

By-county highway navboxes should die. --Rschen7754 01:08, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Are you guys trying to ruin my fun? Are there any easy and quick edits I can do to help USRD on my nights after work (like tonight)? On my 10AM-10PM schedule, I don't have much time to edit until I have a day off (won't have one until Monday). I want to help, but -- aside from just plain article editing -- I keep getting denied. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 02:36, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

The simplest solution is to write! You've proven you know how to improve articles in Georgia from Stub to C. That is the main priority in the project, getting rid of stubs. TCN7JM 02:38, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Allen, if you need something "quick and easy" to work on, click this link. It will open a new window with a random article related to USRD. If you don't like what you see, close the window and try again. More often than not, though, you're going to find something easy to fix. –Fredddie™ 02:47, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Note, that link I just provided seems to be flaky. If you get a Bad Gateway error, just refresh the page until it works. –Fredddie™ 02:53, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Morriswa, please stop hijacking these threads by complaining about how your schedule does not leave you time to edit. Almost all of us have obligations in our lives that prevent us from editing Wikipedia as much as we would like. These availability statements are relevant in specific cases in which a user is expected to be responsive, such as GAN, FAC, or dispute resolution. A project talk page is not one of those specific cases.  VC  17:54, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Getting back on topic: The point about a link in the navbox to an article like List of state highways in Glasscock County, Texas is good; however, would not that be solved by removing such a link from the header of the navbox? The category point is good. The county article point is very good.

I admit, I am on the fence about these navboxen, so I am playing devil's advocate. It seems the consensus is pointing toward that we should deprecate these navboxen. However, WP:IDONTLIKEIT is not an appropriate way of supporting that. I want to see some more good reasons why these navboxen should be deprecated. I also want to see some supported examples of when similar navboxen are appropriate.  VC  17:54, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Transportation in X county, state categories do the job better, without the need to be manually updated, and take up less screen space. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 18:45, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree that the the by-county categories are better than the navboxes and the list articles. Dough4872 18:57, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

To answer the second question, I'm not sure we should ever use the by-county navboxes when a category could be used instead. They just take up space. TCN7JM 19:54, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

I know that we have the categories, but the navigational boxes give a quick-glance glimpse into the highways in the county/counties that the "original" highway runs in. Most casual users don't understand categories, so the boxes serve the same purpose (also, any users that are in a hurry, but still want to find the information). Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 20:04, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

But the information seems kinda trivial. Not all readers really care, more or less, if the highway they looked up is in the same county as whatever other highways are in the navbox. TCN7JM 20:08, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) And the infobox has the |counties= parameter for that summary. Ditto a properly formatted junction list table that includes every county along the route of a specific highway. Imzadi 1979 → 20:09, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

So are we going to take any kind of action on these? A couple users are going around creating a bunch for Texas, and if we don't want them, we should probably act soon. TCN7JM 21:55, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

The easiest course of action is for Morriswa to tag all the Georgia navboxes for speedy deletion by placing {{db-g7}} at the top of every Georgia template that he created. But since I'm posting explicit instructions here, he won't understand what to do and we'll be forced TfD. –Fredddie™ 22:11, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

If he just posts a message confirming he wants them all deleted, that will be sufficient enough for me to delete them. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:39, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

It's been five days and still nothing. Are we ready for a massive TfD? –Fredddie™ 03:23, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

To be totally honest, I don't want these boxes deleted. In fact, if someone hadn't complained, I had planned to finish making Georgia's (along with the talk pages), added each box to the appropriate highway articles, and possibly moved on to some other state and started the process all over again. Unfortunately (in my opinion), that is frowned upon. Therefore, I guess all of the ones that I made for Georgia (not even halfway through the counties), all of the current ones for Texas, and any others that exist are being considered (too polite a word?) for deletion. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 03:39, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

The templates and category have now been nominating for deletion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2013 May 7#Georgia county highway navigational boxes. Imzadi 1979 → 05:44, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Blue Ridge Parkway

Is there anyway that the Blue Ridge Parkway can be added to {{Jct/doc/type/USA}}? Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 00:40, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Why? There is no shield for the parkway, so you don't gain any functionality by being able to call it from {{Jct}}. You'd actually have to type more with Jct. {{Jct|country=USA|Parkway|Blue Ridge}} instead of [[Blue Ridge Parkway]]. –Fredddie™ 01:08, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

For one thing, I had no idea that there wasn't a shield for it. Couldn't you just type {{jct|state=NC|Parkway|Blue Ridge}} (or the "VA" version)? I know it would be more typing, but it would be formatted correctly. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 01:53, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Just because it does not use {{jct}} does not mean it is incorrectly formatted. It is fine as it is now. TCN7JM 02:01, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

If there were a shield for it (which, again, I had no idea that one didn't exist), some users would add varying sizes for that shield. The {{jct}} template would format both the shield and link correctly for the articles that it could be used on. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 12:10, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Interstate 395 Alternate

I was in Washington, DC in September 2011, and I took some pictures of signs for "Interstate 395 Alternate" Here is one, and here is the other. Do any of you have any idea what that road is, any of its history, etc.? I was confused when I first saw it. Thanks. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 12:37, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Could be a detour route to get around traffic jams, etc. Did you see whether it was on local streets or was it on a freeway? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:00, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I-395 Alternate is an alternate route for vehicles whose heights exceed those of the tunnels I-395 uses between US 50 (New York Avenue) and the Southwest Freeway south of the U.S. Capitol. I do not know anything else beyond that, and what I do know is original research or a well-educated guess.  VC  20:50, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

The highway was on local streets. I had never heard of it until I saw it in person. Is there any way that someone could research it and add it to the Interstate 395 article? Thanks in advance. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 03:05, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Feel free to do it yourself. There is kind of an unwritten rule among us that says if you bring something up, you work on it. You don't bring up a topic and then ask someone else to work on it. That's just rude. Coincidentally, I have been dragging my feet on a couple of threads above this one. –Fredddie™ 03:19, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

I guess I should have "kept my mouth shut". What I said was not rude. I just know that there are lots of people here who are much better at editing than I am, so I asked nicely if someone would be willing to add any information to the article. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 03:31, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

New infobox parameter for "Component highways"

We've exported a concept from Australia again for the infobox. Now on named highways like the St. Joseph Valley Parkway or the Ohio Turnpike, the numerical highway designations that follow the named roadway can be notated. There are several benefits:

1. If the highway has its own specific marker, like the Ohio Turnpike or the Kansas Turnpike, that marker is given prominence at the top of the infobox.
2. This setup should mean that we never list a marker graphic without the corresponding text next to it, a plus for accessibility reasons.
3. It should actually discourage previous minor edit disagreements (I wouldn't say they rise to the level of edit wars) over whether or not to list all of the markers/shields for the highways at the top of the infobox or not. Now they can be listed in their own dedicated section.

This is the second parameter we've added and partially implemented based on feedback from Australia. The other is |restrictions= which has been used on Brockway Mountain Drive and Interstate 696 among others to note roads that have traffic restrictions. The |tourist= parameter came from discussions with editors in New Zealand and has been used to mark major tourist routes that follow highways in the US and Canada. Imzadi 1979 → 23:54, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Oh, I forgot to mention, this new parameter will be quite useful in Alaska since segments of each named highway have different numbers. This way Richardson Highway will note that it carries parts of three different highway designations and help to deal with the fact that Alaska's highways are known by name more than by number. Imzadi 1979 → 00:07, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Requested articles

FWIW, all the newly created Alt US 1 redirects in CT have been re-targeted to U.S. Route 1A where there is some information already present. --Polaron | Talk 05:33, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for letting us know. I usually don't add redirects to my watchlist, so I probably wouldn't have seen that. However, none of the redirects I made have any information on the US 1A page. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 11:18, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

It's all there under "Former routes". --Polaron | Talk 12:47, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Standardization of route lists

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I think now might be the time to act. We need to come up with a standard format for route lists—you know, those lists of all of the routes in the state, like List of Oklahoma numbered highways. Why? Because there is no reason that, with a standard, MOS-compliant format, the majority of them could not be Featured Lists, since for every state we at least have a source of length data, and most states have a history source now. With a standard format, you would just have to follow standards, build the list, send to FL, done.

Questions to discuss:

1. What is a good model to follow? (Do we have any FLs that would make a good template)?
2. Should the list be broken up by system or all routes listed on one page? What naming conventions should be used?
3. What columns should be present?
4. Should the table be sortable? If so, how do we handle references to ensure that they are with the data they need to be, but don't break sorting? How do we handle sorting where different routes have different levels of precision in their data (e.g. different levels of decimal precision in lengths, some articles having a "circa 1965" creation date while some have "May 25, 1965")?
5. Once we've decided what a standard list should look like, can a template set be created to make creation of standard lists easier?

Let me know what you all think. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:01, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree that it is time to figure out what to do with this.

1. We obviously have the List of Interstate Highways in Texas as a FL. I personally like List of Arizona State Routes, but that's probably personal bias, because that sortable table is my work.
2. This should depend on how many of a certain type of route exists in a state. North Dakota only has two interstates (three if you count, the unsigned I-194), so putting them in a separate list is pointless.
3. The highway, its location, its length, and its date are must-haves. In the Arizona one I did, I had termini, but on second thought, that's probably not the best idea.
4. The table should be sortable if possible. Honestly, I think just the year is enough for dates, and lengths should go to however many decimal places the DOT lists them as in their log.
5. I'm not a template artist. Someone else take this one.

That's what I think, personally. –TCN7JM 19:52, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

This is a very timely posting for me, because as I mentioned on IRC a little bit ago, the state of affairs with the articles in Michigan means before long only the lists will be left to improve and nominate in a Wikipedia-wide assessment process.

1. Personally, I prefer the concept of having a parent article on the system with lists for each subsystem/classification type. It just looks good to have them as links at the bottom of the infobox.
2. For states that lack the requisite numbers of list items (the FL criteria suggest that 10 is a minimum) I would say that a "List of numbered highways in X" is appropriate, combining the separate subsystems into the one list article. Otherwise I'd suggest using "List of Interstate Highways in X", "List of U.S. Highways in X" and "List of <state highways> in X", altering the last one as needed to reflect official nomenclature. (Additional types should have their own lists; for business routes in Michigan, I added tables to the parent system lists.) For Michigan, we also have the Michigan Heritage Routes list at Michigan Heritage Route since the list also has to define what such a designation is as well.
   • As a side note, I'm not opposed to dropping the "List of" from the names and going with "Interstate Highways in X"; list articles don't actually require that prefix, but if we dropped it, we should move the existing lists for consistency..
3. At a minimum, we need
   • A column for the number
   • One for the length
   • Some system for time period the designation was or is still in use (I used two columns for List of state highways in Marquette County, Michigan so that readers could sort by either number.)
   • Some column for location, either separate columns by termini or a single column with a brief description.
   • A column for miscellaneous notes
   • A column for the references.
4. Yes, certain columns (numbers, lengths, years) should be sortable. The current system to deal with references is to either place one reference for the column's data in the header, much like we do with lengths in RJL tables now, or to place any references in a column on the rightmost edge. I'd say we could drop the length reference in the header and run the other references related to years and any comments in the notes needing citation in the references column.
5. I would agree that a template, much like what we've done with {{jctint}} for RJLs would probably simplify the formatting and maintenance of the list articles greatly.

As a side note, the discography listings have been standardized in terms of formatting using some templates, and those templates have been upgraded over time to account for accessibility. Just like we're doing with the RJLs in the US, I think we could do well to do the same with these lists. Imzadi 1979 → 20:48, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I am generally in agreement with Imzadi, except for the last two columns. I am rarely impressed with the miscellany I see in those columns. I think that if the snippet isn't worth mentioning in the first paragraph of the article in question, it probably isn't fit to be included in the table. I hate, hate, hate the reference columns in our featured lists. I would prefer the references be in the cell of the fact they were citing.

If we create a template for building these lists, it would be possible to cite facts without the reference interfering with the sortkeys. The only other thing I would mandate is that we don't use shields in the endpoint columns. The focus should be on the routes in the list. –Fredddie™ 23:44, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Some comments regarding the state of affairs in Oklahoma: because of the way that Oklahoma inventories its routes, only certain routes have mileage available to two decimal places. For all other routes, we only have one decimal place, sourced from Google Maps. So we need to have the ability to put the references either at the top, or in a reference column or in the cell itself. Will this mean that we have to round all decimals to one place to ensure the sort works, or will it be acceptable to mix lengths with one and two decimal places? Also, Oklahoma has its decommissioned routes (of all types) in a separate list. I think this is a good idea, since it reduces possible confusion between several routes that have held the same number (most people are probably only interested in current routes), makes the list shorter, and you can include what happened to it in a special column (did it become another route, get turned over to the county, or what). —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:47, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

What are our technical or practical limitations? Technical limitations are things like being unable to create an exit list for I-10 Texas due to template limits. Practical limitations are things like avoiding 150K pages because they take forever to load for viewing or editing. Once we know our limits, we can figure out what works best within those limits. Most states seem to have 100 to 200 state-numbered highways, but some have 2 or 3 times that number. In the latter situation, putting all routes in one table could be problematic.  VC  01:28, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

No. 7 mentioned the Arizona list as what he'd like to see in a list. I agree that the state route portion of the list seems like a good starting point for a discussion on list formatting. What do other people think of the Arizona list? What should be added or removed, if anything? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 03:34, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Initial template attempt

I made a preliminary stab at creating these templates, using the Arizona list as a guide and adding some stuff that had been discussed above and on IRC: {{Routelist top}}, {{Routelist row}}, {{Routelist bottom}}. Example:

Number	Length (mi)	Length (km)	Southern or western terminus	Northern or eastern terminus	Formed	Removed	Notes
M-36	36	58	US 23 in Ann Arbor	M-28 in Marquette	01912-01-011912	current
SH-135	224	360	SH-74 in Goldsby	I-40 in Webbers Falls	02152-01-012152	current
K-100	100	160	K-99 in Emporia	Level Road in Yates Center	01920-01-011920	01930-01-011930

Things still to do

• The number column needs content. I will leave this to someone else to implement, since I am notoriously bad at grokking {{infobox road}}'s innards, and we can't just fill it with {{jct}}s because that will cause the template processor to barf all over the place with as many transclusions as we need to do.

   Done –Fredddie™ 05:52, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

• Currently the template requires people to specify sortkeys manually. Should we continue this, or have the template generate the sortkeys itself? Will the required logic be too expensive?

   Generating automatically now The sortkey is "<type><route>". –Fredddie™ 05:52, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

• What sortkey will we use to handle suffixed routes, such as SH-412P or NY-20SY?

  ✗ Poorly –Fredddie™ 05:52, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

   Done This is fixed with the creation of |sortkey= and {{0000expr}}. It still uses the <type><number> format, but the number is now padded with zeros to make it a four-digit number (25→0025). So for SH-412P, you would use SH0412-P as the sortkey. –Fredddie™ 04:03, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

• For now, the templates assume references and lengths will be supplied in miles. For internationalization purposes it would be nice to allow km to be specified too.

   Done –Fredddie™ 05:52, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

• References in individual cells are currently not implemented, if that is something we do want to support.
• Some sort of logic for the decommissioned field would be nice. If blank, assume "current". If not blank, have the whole row in the "closed" shade of gray.

   Done Do we want the hover text that Jctint has? –Fredddie™ 23:52, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes! We will also need to add a color legend to {{routelist bottom}}, of course, if that hasn't been done yet. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 07:39, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

OK, hover text added. I was given the suggestion of shading future routes orange, not unlike a junction list, so I added that as well. –Fredddie™ 00:53, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Thoughts? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 21:21, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I can work on the the name and shield part, which really shouldn't be that hard. As far as sortkeys go, for 99% of routes, we should be good to go with using number and type. We may want to keep the manual sortkey door open for the suffixes, though. We can discuss this further but, for simplicity's sake, I prefer "From" and "To" instead of "Southern or western terminus" and "Northern and eastern terminus", respectively. –Fredddie™ 00:11, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Fredddie's last point. "From" and "To" are much simpler. –TCN7JM 07:27, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure about this - we already get so many complaints about people not knowing from what end the articles start. --Rschen7754 07:34, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I prefer the current usage to To and From, which are too simple. We should program for exceptions to when a route goes from point A to point B, such as a beltway or a route number with multiple segments; in these exceptions, there should be one cell spanning the two columns.  VC  13:15, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Rschen: Who is complaining about what end the articles start?! I've also thought about using "Mile zero" for the western/southern end, but I have no idea what we'd use for the eastern/northern column. –Fredddie™ 13:38, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure I've seen this at a few USRD GANs. I'm sure FLC will bring it up too. --Rschen7754 22:56, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

As wordy as it is, I'd prefer using the directions, with the ability to span the two columns for beltways, highways that don't exit a single municipality, etc. We may look into line wrapping the headers, however on widescreen displays the columns will scale wider, so I'm not exactly in favor of that. Imzadi 1979 → 23:49, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

 Done Beltways are supported by |beltway=Your text here. –Fredddie™ 04:41, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Most everything listed is done. I haven't put any cell references in yet, but that won't take much at all. Most importantly, the template is live! A couple things to note:

• The established and decommissioned columns will take a date in any format and spit out just the year. Sorting will still work for the dates, though.
• The gray color is triggered by a decommissioning date being present.
• The orange color is triggered by the established date being after the current date, so if you know the year but not the exact day, specify December 31.

I just implemented it in List of Interstate Highways in Iowa. If things break, three people who want to see the list will be inconvenienced. –Fredddie™ 05:52, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

The default value for the established field is 2013 (using CURRENTDATE?). I do not think that is appropriate; it will be obvious the research has not been done to determine the established date. Can we use something else as the default value for the established field, such as a blank or N/A?  VC  06:04, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm also concerned about routes where we do not have an "established" date yet. --Rschen7754 06:13, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I never said they were finished. I'm merely demonstrating that they will work when you have all the information. It is using CURRENTDATE at the moment so it won't throw errors when you look at it. –Fredddie™ 12:16, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

A pair of thoughts:

1. Some states have four-digit highway numbers. Specifically I'm thinking of Texas and their FM/RM roads, but they aren't the only one. If the sort key is being generated automatically, we'll need to pad it out to four digits consistently, I think. (I noticed that the sorting by number isn't working quite as desired on the Iowa list, btw.)
2. We may want to change the "current" to "present" to match what infobox road displays.

Otherwise, I may transition one of the Michigan lists over as a proof of concept in a sandbox as well later today. Imzadi 1979 → 14:43, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Following up on my comments above, the sorting for the designations doesn't work correctly at all. If there any any non-numeric content in the cells, the tables sort alphabetically. So for our numbers, at current, it's sorting 1, 10, 100, 11, 110, 111, etc. It might be easiest to add |sort= and manually specify a sort key for each row of the table, which would also allow things like 004-1 vs. 004-2 to sort the two M-4s by year of creation, streamline other suffixes, etc. Imzadi 1979 → 17:06, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I was told earlier that there are roads like M-62 and M-94 that have a southern terminus and a western terminus. Seeing as that doesn't fit the template, what should be done for those highways? Footnotes? –TCN7JM 17:25, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm wondering about roads like this too. U.S. Route 98 Truck (Brooksville, Florida) has a northern terminus and an eastern terminus, which makes it hart to add the termini to articles such as List of U.S. Highways in Florida. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 18:43, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

There won't be a satisfactory solution, I'm afraid. From and To as headers are not going to work unless the highways are unidirectional. Unless we went with the generic End 1 and End 2 or similar, no solution is going to cover the oddball cases. Except for cases where the DOT switches the signage from north–south to east–west, I wouldn't worry and stick to the signed direction, and match the columns appropriately. Imzadi 1979 → 20:45, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm thinking we may have to create our own sorting template. I'm looking for something that will add leading zeros to a string of numbers. It would also have to strip anything that isn't a number (read: suffixes). I don't think there is anything like that. –Fredddie™ 21:58, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Could we add a circa flag? If circa_established=yes or circa_decommissioned=yes, wrap the date output in {{circa}} (or a subst of it), but still sort by the year. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:31, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I think yes. Unless I've been missing something, Kansas' state highway maps only go back to 1932, so I put everything that appears on the 1932 map as c. 1932. I think there are other states like this. –TCN7JM 00:34, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Proposed standard

Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Standards/Route lists—comments? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 10:22, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

The only thing I don't like is what seems to be a requirement to start every list's title with List of..., but that's a minor thing. I like the meat and potatoes of the proposal, though. –Fredddie™ 16:25, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't know...I like the sound of List of South Dakota numbered highways better than just South Dakota numbered highways. The latter make the article seem like it's about the system, and not just a list, but that's just me. I like this proposal, too. –TCN7JM 16:31, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not saying I want to ban its usage, I think it sounds like a requirement and not a guideline. –Fredddie™ 16:33, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Okay, but isn't the whole page just a guideline? –TCN7JM 16:36, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

I prefer not having "list of" in front of titles, mainly for aspirational reasons. We should aspire to create lists that are not just one sentence and then a table. For instance, List of Interstate Highways in Texas has a three-paragraph lead before the first table.

A few nitpicks. I took a mini-course on plain language at work that noted how ambiguous the word "shall" is; I think we should change all instances to "should," "will," or whatever a more appropriate word is. More importantly, some states use the term "U.S. Route" and others "U.S. Highway"; we should allow for the variation in terminology and place the appropriate redirects for U.S. Highways in addition to state highways.  VC  20:48, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Our standards documents typically use "shall" to reflect the meaning that the MUTCD uses for that word, i.e. to denote that this is a standard statement and not an option. "Should" denotes guidance or best practice that is more flexible than a standard. "May" denotes purely optional suggestions. See MUTCD chapter 1 for more details. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:33, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

I like the proposed standard for the state highway lists. Another idea to possibly discuss in the essay is a way to standardize county route lists, which have different parameters. For the county route lists, I would recommend modeling them after what NJ and NY have. Dough4872 22:40, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

The standard as currently written could handle county route lists. I looked at a couple NY lists (Orange and Rockland) and it looks like the only columns there that are missing in the standard are the "via" column (which I would rename to "Local name(s)" if we decided to retain it for county routes) and the "Notes" column, which it looks like most people are in favor of deprecating. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 00:43, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I'm not in favor of removing the Notes column. They're useful for pointing out various things, like dealing with how to note that Michigan's Interstates weren't signed until 1959, even though segments were opened starting in 1957 and 1958, alternate names for highways that might be as well known by the other names, etc. Imzadi 1979 → 02:15, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Points of discussion

All right, I'm going to give us some conversation starters here about some things people seem to disagree with on the proposed standard. Let's see if we can come to a consensus on them. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 10:46, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Naming convention

This is probably the big one. Should we prefer List of Interstate Highways in X or Interstate Highways in X? Should we allow U.S. Highways to substitute for U.S. Routes? Should this guideline bless any naming convention at all? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 10:46, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm a bit concerned about having separate lists for IHs and USHs. This is not what dewiki does, to my recollection, and could cause interwiki conflicts and confusion. Also, it makes for two really short lists. --Rschen7754 10:48, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Another user (I think Imzadi) stated that they were opposed to merging the IHs and USHs because such a merge is just an arbitrary attempt to make a longer list. It has FL approved precedent (see the TX interstate list). I don't think we should let interwiki links determine how we structure our own articles. Other than that though I am kind of neutral on how the lists should be divided. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 02:20, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I was the one that opposed an FLC on the basis that it cherry-picked two of the three subsystems in a state. The FL criteria have been interpreted to prefer lists have at least around 10 items to avoid being a short content fork from another list though. Both are considerations to keep in mind, however if the state has business routes for either the IH or USH systems, those can be included as a separate table to bulk up the item total. Imzadi 1979 → 02:26, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

To answer another one of your questions, I don't think we should substitute U.S. Highways for U.S. Routes per WP:USSH. If we don't do it to the articles, why do it to the list? –TCN7JM 02:29, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

We already have a crazy dichotomy of naming conventions. The lead article is titled United States Numbered Highways, but we have U.S. Route 2 in Michigan (even though Michigan eschews "Route" in favor of "Highway" for nomenclature). The category for Michigan is called Category:U.S. Highways in Michigan, and all of the other state categories match it. However, we have those listed in Category:U.S. Routes by state which is in Category:U.S. Highway System. The list for the state is at List of U.S. Highways in Michigan, which is similar to most of the other states. Imzadi 1979 → 02:36, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm...I'm still in favor of listing articles titled U.S. Route X in Y with a list titled the same way. –TCN7JM 02:39, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

I prefer "Interstate Highways in X" to "List of Interstate Highways in X." I am ambivalent about local variation in the "U.S. Routes in X" versus "U.S. Highways in X." There is a good argument to use U.S. Route for the sake of consistency, but there is also a point to be made for using local naming convention. In both of these cases, we can create redirects to the deprecated or alternate term so someone searching for the alternate term would get sent to the correct place, which is ultimately more important than splitting hairs on the terminology. I agree with Imzadi1979 about not creating a list with U.S. Highways and Interstates. If the number of U.S. Highways and Interstates is so few, those lists should be merged into the state route list. There should be either one list or three lists, but never two. Finally, not every state has county routes, so I do not think we should consider them as part of this guideline-making process. County route lists are of questionable notability and trying to include them in a solution here would create information overload.  VC  16:06, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Continued below in "County routes" section. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:21, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

County routes

continued from "Naming convention" above.

I think we should include county routes in this. While it's questionable that county routes deserve their own articles, I doubt even the most rabid deletionist in the project (probably me :P) opposes a mere list of them. Whether or not every state has them, I do think that when they are used, they should be standardized. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 18:41, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

I concur with Scott on the CR issue. County roads have at least some kind of importance and could probably survive in a list. –TCN7JM 18:43, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Agree that county roads are of questionable notability, but iff we have lists of them, they should be of the same standard. –Fredddie™ 18:46, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, I personally like the standard used in NJ and NY for county route lists as they are clean, easy to read, and allow for redirects to point to the specific route in the list. Dough4872 19:50, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

I was not advocating eliminating or keeping county lists. I was advocating not including them in this set of standards.  VC  20:09, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

I still think we need to have a set of published standards for county route lists. Dough4872 21:03, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Is there any reason the standard as currently proposed for state/US/Interstate routes could not be used for county routes? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:21, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

County routes do need an additional column indicating the road name(s). Otherwise, the state route standards can also be applied. Dough4872 23:33, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

I disagree. Having two standards for the same type of information is stupid. Isn't that part of the reason we consolidated the project, to get rid of the multiple standards for the same thing? –Fredddie™ 00:16, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

The state route and county route lists are different though. The county routes redirect to the lists and therefore the list serves as the main coverage area, unlike the state route lists. Also, since county routes are more local in nature it is important to list road names as in many cases the locals are more familiar with the road name. Dough4872 00:24, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

We could implement this by including an optional "local names" column, which could be omitted where it is not relevant. This column could also be used to retain relevant information like freeway names, etc. that are currently found in the Notes column on some lists. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:01, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

I think that is an idea we can go with. Dough4872 01:03, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Local names

Optional column for county route lists? Or shall we deprecate this? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 10:46, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, we should not consider county route lists in this discussion.  VC  16:13, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

I have reservations about this column. I would not mind it so much if we limited the local names to one, similar to our practice with the alternate name field in the infobox. –Fredddie™ 22:42, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Notes column

Should we have a notes column? Some people want it, others don't like the trivia that ends up in them. Make it optional, or deprecate it? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 10:46, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes. The solution for trivia isn't to remove the column, but to be vigilant in pruning it. The notes column is valuable for indicating major alternate names (8 Mile Road for M-102, Woodward Avenue for M-1) and even notes like the fact that MSHD didn't put up any Interstate signs until 1959 even though many segments of Michigan's Interstates were already open to traffic. There are important details that should be included, but obviously unnecessary stuff should be tossed out. Imzadi 1979 → 02:38, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

For the alternate names examples you cite, there is the option of a "local names" column, as has been seen on some county route lists. Although that may be a waste of a column if M-102 and M-1 are the only instances it would be needed in (though you could put Detroit freeway names in there too). —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 03:27, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Deprecate the Notes column. If we keep it, we would need an enforcement mechanism to avoid any piece of miscellaneous info being put there. Any information we deem legitimate that would go in a Notes column could be handled with footnotes.  VC  16:11, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Another baby/bathwater situation. Because some editors have been crufty, we toss out a valuable resource or option to avoid allowing editors to be crufty in the future? In short, the proven value of keeping the column (see section below on special situations) outweighs the potential harm. I'll strenuously remind all members of this project that the best answer for trivia is localized deletions instead of removing the column where it appears. Why lose good notes to avoid bad ones that should just be deleted without comment? Imzadi 1979 → 01:48, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

I advocate keeping the notes column as there are times where it is necessary to provide additional information about the route. Dough4872 18:57, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Special cases

How do we handle routes that...

• Exist as multiple disconnected segments?
  • Use the longest segment for the purpose of sorting for length or creation date, and add a footnote to explain the situation. Use the option to span the termini columns with a single cell to explain the situation ("6 segments between Town X and Town Y").
    • We could also list the segments individually. Dough4872 23:35, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
      • Another option might be to use a bulleted or numbered list to present all termini in the usual termini columns. If multi-segment routes are merged into one row, I would advocate having the length cell display the sum of all segments. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 05:48, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
        • Can you show a visual interpretation of your idea? Dough4872 16:40, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
          • [14], please ignore the alignment issues in the first two rows. To implement the lists, we will need to change the way routelist row outputs its data, as it currently uses a format incompatible with lists in cells. I threw in a third option of horizontal rules, which would require no template changes (though it could look messy at times if the rules don't line up nicely like they did in this case). —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 18:57, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
            • I like the third style the best. Dough4872 19:05, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
              • This version includes some longer termini. Experiment with it in some narrower windows so you can see how page wrapping affects the horizontal rules. Still acceptable? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:50, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
• Routes with strange termini (3 or more termini, like SH-77D and SH-77S in OK)
  • Use the option to span the termini columns with a single cell to explain the situation ("Southern terminus in City A, eastern terminus in City B, and western terminus in Town C.  VC  16:34, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
• Have information that is not known or not available (currently length displays "0", year columns display –)
  • Would it be possible to use N/A and not screw up the sorting mechanism?  VC  16:34, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
    • N/A is probably not appropriate, because it's not that the data is not applicable, it is just missing. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 19:28, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
• Have any other weird quirks that aren't listed above?

For a lot of the above, this is the perfect reason to not deprecate the notes column. These are precisely the situations that call for that column! Imzadi 1979 → 01:30, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

After looking at all the points provided by Imzadi arguing not to remove the notes column, I have to agree with him. There are valid reasons to keep it. –TCN7JM 18:13, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Proposed standard II

Okay, I've updated the standard to include a local names column and a notes column. (I will need to update the templates to support these.) It also explicitly includes county routes. What do people think of the proposed standard now? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 18:10, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I like it. Maybe you could include some examples with county routes (to demonstrate the use of local road names), beltways, or the notes column. Dough4872 22:28, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Expanding the examples will have to wait until the template is extended to support these. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 22:52, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I like it. –TCN7JM 00:01, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

• Support. --Rschen7754 00:59, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Since this has been open nearly a month with no opposition, I'm declaring this proposal accepted and christening this a guideline. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 06:34, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

What is the timeline for reformatting the "state routes in . . ." (and other equivalent) pages? Some pages, such as List of numbered highways in Georgia (U.S. state), are in serious need of reformatting, expansion, and addition of details, etc. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 07:02, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Whenever you feel the urge to do so. Note, however, that the templates do not reflect the changes made to the standard since the first proposal (so no Notes column, etc.) —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 07:03, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

I would like to start converting the Louisiana lists to the new format, but I have two questions: 1) How do I input a bannered route? and 2) Should they be included in the main list or in a separate list on the same page? Britinvasion64 (talk) 17:55, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

I believe you will use the same type parameters as you would on jct, infobox road, etc. (e.g. a US business route is type=US-Bus) —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:52, 10 May 2013 (UTC)