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2015: January • February • March • May • June • September • October • November
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2017: January • February • April • June • July • August • December
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I read the Wikipedia welcome page and the STiki page. I still don't understand: what was wrong with my last Gregorian chant edit? Please help a newcomer. -- Apinksuzy ( talk) 17:40, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
Please read WP:R2D; do not fix links to redirects that are not broken. -- Rs chen 7754 01:10, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
Hi. People are getting the two of us confused. Could you perhaps use a signature that includes your username in some respect, like "Allen (Morriswa; talk)"? I understand fully your wanting to keep our mutual name in your signature... Thanks very much! Allens ( talk | contribs) 01:23, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
I'd like to suggest that you ake the 30 seconds to fix something instead of tagging it. It should be obvious that the Sheridan Township there is in Calhoun County since 1) M-199 is only in Calhoun County and 2) the link is DAB-ed (that's wikispeak for disambiguated) in the junction list. As for the black top link, common words like that can just have their links removed. Imzadi 1979 → 03:35, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to Wikipedia, at least one of
your recent edits, such as the one you made to
George Holt Thomas, did not appear to be constructive and has been
reverted or removed. Please use
the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and read the
welcome page to learn more about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia.
Allen (Morriswa) (
talk)
17:21, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
I believe you were mistaken. You must have warned me by mistake instead of the actual vandal. It was probably a test edit anyway. Narutolovehinata5 t c csd new 01:14, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
[1] is not correct; only the state-detail pages get tagged with the state WikiProjects. Furthermore, it's a waste of time to be obsessing over this sort of thing; what matters is what is in mainspace. -- Rs chen 7754 02:41, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
|state=MI
to the USRD banner would also add the article to WikiProject Michigan. You might want to hold off to see what happens since that could have the effect of tagging all of the articles just by updating the template itself.
Imzadi 1979
→
11:06, 11 April 2012 (UTC)Hold up a moment! I-8 doesn't have state-detail articles anymore. (We merged the two together because of the "three-state rule"). In other cases, it's appropriate for the state projects to tag the national article if there aren't state-detail articles. For instance, I-15 should be tagged for Idaho and Montana because there isn't an Interstate 15 in Idaho nor an Interstate 15 in Montana as a separate article. Oh, and if you're removing all of the banners but one or two, remove the banner shell so that the remaining banners aren't collapsed. We typically only collapse for three or more, but not for one or two. Imzadi 1979 → 11:11, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
Something to keep in mind about the portal links in articles: we don't put more general ones where a specific one suffices. Since the California, Michigan, New York and Washington portals are all subportals of the national one, if an article is about a roadway that's only in one state, it only needs the one portal box. Those four are also subportals of the specific state portals. In other words, a Michigan highway only gets a link to Portal:Michigan Highways and not Portal:U.S. Roads and Portal:Michigan. Now something like US 131 that crosses into Indiana gets portal links for Indiana, US Roads and Michigan Highways because Indiana doesn't have its own roads portal. I haven't added the Detroit portal link to any articles yet, but I will when I get around to cleaning up the articles for highways that run through that area. Yeah, I know it's a lot of "rules" to remember. Imzadi 1979 → 11:17, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
Hi, you put two disambiguous tags on this article but did not leave an explaination. What were the problems? -- Wilson ( talk) 02:40, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
Greetings Morriswa. As the developer of the STiki anti-vandal tool, I would like to thank you for recent and non-trivial use of my software. Whether you just tried out the tool briefly or have been a long-term participant, I appreciate your efforts (as I am sure does the entire Wikipedia community)!
I write to inform you of a new version of the software (link goes to list of new features). This version addresses multiple long-term issues that I am happy to put behind us. Try it out! Provide some feedback!
The STiki project is also always seeking collaborators. In particular, we are seeking non-technical colleagues. Tasks like publicity, talk-page maintenance, advertisement, and barn-star distribution are a burden to technical development. If you are interested, write me at my talk page or STiki's talk page.
As STiki approaches two significant thresholds: (1) 100,000 revert actions and (2) 400 unique users -- I hope to have your support in continuing the efficient fight against unconstructive editing. Thanks, West.andrew.g ( talk) 23:55, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
So, you were looking for some guidance on Wikipedia:Citing sources. <ref>your citation</ref> creates the little reference number in the wikitext. {{reflist}} is where the stuff at your citation (above) gets put, normally in a References section. The easy way to make sure a bunch of useful stuff gets used in your citation is to use Wikipedia:Citation templates and/or Wikipedia:Citation tools. That's a bunch of reading for you, but I think it all explains how to do citations. Feel free to drop me a line if that stuff isn't clear enough. Josh Parris 13:42, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
Here's the GDOT archive of their old maps: http://www.dot.state.ga.us/maps/Pages/StateMaps.aspx . They have maps back to 1920 there. Enjoy! Imzadi 1979 → 12:02, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
We have some semi-reliable sources that WisDOT is asking for the I-55 designation to be extended rather than calling it I-41. I think you might have jumped the gun a bit since we don't have a confirmed intent to renumber that section of US 41 in Wisconsin that's part of a new Intestate with that number. Imzadi 1979 → 02:02, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
{{jct|state=WI|I|41}}
. If that isn't in use, the redirect is pointless.
Imzadi 1979
→
02:58, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Please look here. I didn't add anything about the possibility of that store or anything else possibly ending up in another state, but it might be time to consider doing that.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:34, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Regarding this edit, I don't think an edit summary of "Good faith revert of edit" is helpful. It's not very specific, so it's not clear to the original editor why you're reverting it. A summary like, "Removing uncited opinion" would be more clear. I would go with "Removing opinion lacking citation; please feel free to re-add with a citation to a reliable source." Also, the phrase "Good faith revert" a bit confusing. It suggests that your revert is made in good faith, which is unnecessary as hopefully your fellow edits are all assuming good faith. I think you mean that you assuming good faith on the part of the original editor, but it doesn't really help. If someone suspects that you suspect that the original edit was not in good faith, claiming so isn't likely to change anyone's minds. It's more clear to just omit the bit about good faith and explain the problem and ideally how the edit might be improved. — Alan De Smet | Talk 05:56, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
In short: we don't add the banner for WikiProject Michigan (WP:MICH) to articles for the Michigan State Highways TF (WP:MISH). That's been the procedure for several years now. The same holds for WikiProject Maryland and the MD highways TF. Imzadi 1979 → 22:49, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
If you're looking for something useful to do for the project, every day I check a short list of logs created by a bot.
When you do find a legitimate new article for USRD, look through it. See if it has a map and an infobox; if not, add |needs-map=yes
and |needs-infobox=yes
to the banner on its talk page. Check to see if it has a See also section with the portal links. If not, add them! If it has a See also section with links, make sure none of the links are already used in the body of the article; if so, remove them. Look through to make sure that US measurements (usually these are miles for lengths) have metric conversions and add them if missing. Look at the date formats in the article: if the dates for US highway articles aren't in Month DD, YYYY, format, switch them. (In the US, only military articles should be in DD Month YYYY format.) If the dates in references aren't in Month DD, YYYY, format or ISO (YYYY-MM-DD, yes with leading zeroes on months and days), fix them. (I try to discourage people from using the ISO format in citations; it's allowed under the MOS, but it's still not a good practice in my book.)
Another somewhat quick cleanup task for new articles is to put all of the references into a consistent format with full information. What I do is make sure that each citation is in the appropriate template. (Use the nice ones specific to Google/Yahoo/Bing Maps over just {{ cite map}} because it adds the correct cartography information, etc.) Make sure that authors, dates, access dates, titles, publishers, cartographers and works are all present as needed. For books and journals/magazines, I try to look up the ISBN or ISSN number from http://www.worldcat.org or substitute the OCLC number. (Then readers can use the number to search libraries online faster to locate a copy of the source if they want.) Try to make sure that the article doesn't wikilink the same thing in multiple citations. (For example, a Michigan article might use six different maps published by the Michigan State Highway Department, but only the first footnote will/should have a wikilink to MSHD; anything more is WP:OVERLINKing.) The last thing that I'll check is for missing non-breaking spaces. If you can help put an article's foundation in order early , it helps to keep an article in order.
Long story short, there was a long debate about inserting geographic coordinates into articles on highways/roads. USRD's position is that we won't use them, and instead we will use KML files. Basically, a KML file draws a line on the map to connect a set of points. Go to the article on the M-199 (Michigan highway), and look at the upper right corner. You should see a globe next to "Route map: Google / Bing". That is generated through the combination of {{ Attached KML}} and the KML file. The Maps Dept. Tutorial has instructions on how to trace a highway in Google Earth to generate the KML file. It's actually pretty easy to do, and except for Google Earth, it doesn't require any special software. If you can create some KMLs for articles that lack them, that would be a good thing. I'm slowly trying to make sure that all Michigan highway articles get them, with emphasis on the FAs, As and GAs, but that's over a hundred articles to go. USRD has thousands of articles that need them eventually.
I would suggest that you start with a few shorter highways to get some practice at first and then branch out to longer ones. KMLs are easier to generate than the map graphics, and they can overlay the line in Google Maps, Bing Maps or the "WikiMiniAtlas" (that globe icon in the article is a pop up map) so that a reader can zoom/scroll around the location of the highway on and interactive map. Anyways, once you have the KML file saved on your computer, add {{ Attached KML}} to the External links section of the article and paste the file onto Wikipedia. (They can't be uploaded right now, but the tutorial covers how to add the file itself.)
As you might know, Georgia has the worst average article quality of any of the states; only Puerto Rico is worse. You can see that for yourself on WP:USRD/A/S, which is updated daily by the bot. We use WikiWork as a metric to compare each state. The table lists how many articles of each class (FA, A, GA, B, C, Start, Stub) for each state/territory and the metrics. The last column is the relative WikiWork, which is on a scale of 0 to 6. Lower numbers are better, because WikiWork measures what it would take to reach the theoretical goal of every article being an FA. Note: redirects, disambiguation pages, categories, templates, books, portals, lists and all of that other stuff is NOT factored into WikiWork. Michigan's WW right now is 2.373 (there's a "live" version of the table at WP:USRD/A/L), which means that the average quality of that state's articles is between a GA (2) and a B (3). Just making sure that a state's articles have RDs and JLs (which bumps it to a Start) can immediately impact the WW score. If all of Georgia's Stubs were bumped to Starts (easy to do with a paper map and Google Maps), the WW would drop to 4.970, and the state would fall between Rhode Island and Alabama on the table.
Back in 2008, I was challenged on IRC to get Michigan onto the "leaderboard" (the top ten listing of states for the project in the newsletter), and with some work, Michigan jumped from #26 into the top ten in a month. (Newsletters were monthly back then). Granted, MI has a lot of business routes, and there's the Former Michigan spur routes list, and merging all of those stubs got them "off the books" for WikiWork, but it also means that Michigan has less articles to maintain. (We dropped like 100 stubs just through mergers which also means we have 100 less articles to work on.) So I'm going to issue you a similar challenge: we have a newsletter that's due out this month and another in July. See how far you can get Georgia up the table before the summer newsletter, and we'll put a mention of your progress into the issue. Minnesota is the tenth place at 4.009, so if you could de-stub and de-start (remember the historical map archive link that's available for GA), the state could pass up MN to get into the top ten.
There's lots that you can do to help the project,. Imzadi 1979 → 17:21, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
Dough4872 ( talk · contribs) has a contest, User:Dough4872/GA by number, to challenge editors working on highway/road articles to get a Good Article for each number 1–99. A few of the numbers aren't possible for Michigan (The first M-4 is now M-134 and the second is part of M-10, M-7 is now M-86 and M-9 is now M-99, for instance.) M-92 is part of M-52, so rather than write a partially duplicative article, I can merge M-92 into M-52. As my #92 on the list though, I'm going to work on Georgia State Route 92 at some point in the coming few weeks. I encourage you to follow along with my progress to see what I'm going to do to expand that article and clean it up for a Good Article Nomination. Since I don't live in Georgia, and I've never been there, you'll see what I can do just based on FUTON (FUll Text On the Net) sources and maps. I'll try to document for you what I've done as I'm working on the article. That way you'll have a template for further GA expansions. Imzadi 1979 → 00:57, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
You can pick any numbered route to get to GA, as long it has its own article and is not a county route or has been improved to GA by someone else. Since you have indicated interest in working on Georgia articles and the state currently has no GAs, I would suggest picking state routes in Georgia to fill your 1-99 list. If an article you want is a redirect (for example Georgia State Route 4 redirects to U.S. Route 1 in Georgia), then look in another state for an article to improve. Dough 48 72 19:34, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Interstate 77 (1957-1958). Since you had some involvement with the Interstate 77 (1957-1958) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Imzadi 1979 → 16:08, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect U.S. Route 40 (California-Nevada). Since you had some involvement with the U.S. Route 40 (California-Nevada) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). LJ ↗ 09:49, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
It rarely is helpful to say something like "I don't get it!" in response to a lengthy comment. Surely Imzadi1979 isn't going to rewrite his entire comment, and also, it makes us doubt that you've even read it. Next time, please say what you don't understand so that we can get the issue resolved more quickly. -- Rs chen 7754 20:43, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
Why would a WikiProject want to include a long expired AfD in its project pages? -- Dweller ( talk) 22:04, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
Don't be dismayed about writing. The key thing is trying to find as much information as possible. I don't work much with road articles, but when I do, I try an find all sorts of nuggets of info that can be added. Try different Google searches to improve the articles :) ♫ Hurricanehink ( talk) 22:41, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
I've noticed you have a lot of questions regarding road articles. We have WP:HWY/IRC, which is a chatroom for Wikipedia road editors, where you can talk live to editors and get feedback from multiple people. To connect to the channel, go here and type "Morriswa" for nickname and "wikipedia-en-roads" for channels. I hope to see you on IRC. Dough 48 72 23:25, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect U.S. Route 91 (Arizona-Nevada-California). Since you had some involvement with the U.S. Route 91 (Arizona-Nevada-California) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). LJ ↗ 06:26, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
Hello Morriswa! I see that you've put yourself up for adoption – great idea! I'll be happy to adopt you because I enjoy working with others – especially to help them become a better editor on Wikipedia!
Take a look at my edit history; I usually work at Articles for Deletion, Articles for Creation, in new page patrolling, and in vandalism-fighting. I have been an editor on Wikipedia for a year, and have made over 15,000 edits to the encyclopedia.
I'm usually available on Wikipedia from 0:00 - 5:00 and occasionally from 12:00-16:00 (all times
UTC). I travel frequently, usually on business trips around the world. I'm so young, yet so busy.
If I adopt you, I promise I will provide you with the most friendly, easy, and convenient adoption service through my adoption school. But if you don't think I am the right adopter for you, that's okay – you have no obligation to accept, and I won't be in the least bit offended if you don't. If you think I am the right adopter for you, please let me know – then we shall get started! B music ian 07:40, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
Simple You can check your edit count on the English Wikipedia by going to Special:Preferences and on all Wikimedia projects by way of Special:CentralAuth/EXAMPLE. — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 03:02, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
Welcome!
You are now a student at my adoption school. Your official adoption page is located at User:Bmusician/Adoption/Morriswa.
In your first assignment (which I have already assigned to you) you will learn about the five pillars. Read the lesson carefully. You are required to answer questions about the lesson at the very end. You must answer all of them adequately in order to move on to the next assignment.
After you've completed all required assignments, you will then take an examination. If you pass the examination, you are permitted to either continue to study at the adoption school, or "graduate" from the school. (We'll talk about that when that time actually comes.) If you fail, however, you must stay at the adoption school until you finally pass an exam. Please note that you may leave the school at any time without graduating, but that means that you won't be awarded the "special barnstar" I give to my graduate students.
That's it; again I welcome you to my adoption school! Please me a message on my talk page if you have any questions regarding the school. B music ian 01:25, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
2012: January • February • March • April • May • June • July • August • September • October • November • December
2013: January • February • March • April • May • June • July • August • September • October • November • December
2014: January • February • March • April • May • June • July • August • September • October • November • December
2015: January • February • March • May • June • September • October • November
2016: March • April • May • June • July • September • November • December
2017: January • February • April • June • July • August • December
2018: January • February • May • June • July • August • September • October • November • December
2019: January • February • March • May • June • July • August • September • November
2020: January • March • April • July • August • September • October • November • December
I read the Wikipedia welcome page and the STiki page. I still don't understand: what was wrong with my last Gregorian chant edit? Please help a newcomer. -- Apinksuzy ( talk) 17:40, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
Please read WP:R2D; do not fix links to redirects that are not broken. -- Rs chen 7754 01:10, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
Hi. People are getting the two of us confused. Could you perhaps use a signature that includes your username in some respect, like "Allen (Morriswa; talk)"? I understand fully your wanting to keep our mutual name in your signature... Thanks very much! Allens ( talk | contribs) 01:23, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
I'd like to suggest that you ake the 30 seconds to fix something instead of tagging it. It should be obvious that the Sheridan Township there is in Calhoun County since 1) M-199 is only in Calhoun County and 2) the link is DAB-ed (that's wikispeak for disambiguated) in the junction list. As for the black top link, common words like that can just have their links removed. Imzadi 1979 → 03:35, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to Wikipedia, at least one of
your recent edits, such as the one you made to
George Holt Thomas, did not appear to be constructive and has been
reverted or removed. Please use
the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and read the
welcome page to learn more about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia.
Allen (Morriswa) (
talk)
17:21, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
I believe you were mistaken. You must have warned me by mistake instead of the actual vandal. It was probably a test edit anyway. Narutolovehinata5 t c csd new 01:14, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
[1] is not correct; only the state-detail pages get tagged with the state WikiProjects. Furthermore, it's a waste of time to be obsessing over this sort of thing; what matters is what is in mainspace. -- Rs chen 7754 02:41, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
|state=MI
to the USRD banner would also add the article to WikiProject Michigan. You might want to hold off to see what happens since that could have the effect of tagging all of the articles just by updating the template itself.
Imzadi 1979
→
11:06, 11 April 2012 (UTC)Hold up a moment! I-8 doesn't have state-detail articles anymore. (We merged the two together because of the "three-state rule"). In other cases, it's appropriate for the state projects to tag the national article if there aren't state-detail articles. For instance, I-15 should be tagged for Idaho and Montana because there isn't an Interstate 15 in Idaho nor an Interstate 15 in Montana as a separate article. Oh, and if you're removing all of the banners but one or two, remove the banner shell so that the remaining banners aren't collapsed. We typically only collapse for three or more, but not for one or two. Imzadi 1979 → 11:11, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
Something to keep in mind about the portal links in articles: we don't put more general ones where a specific one suffices. Since the California, Michigan, New York and Washington portals are all subportals of the national one, if an article is about a roadway that's only in one state, it only needs the one portal box. Those four are also subportals of the specific state portals. In other words, a Michigan highway only gets a link to Portal:Michigan Highways and not Portal:U.S. Roads and Portal:Michigan. Now something like US 131 that crosses into Indiana gets portal links for Indiana, US Roads and Michigan Highways because Indiana doesn't have its own roads portal. I haven't added the Detroit portal link to any articles yet, but I will when I get around to cleaning up the articles for highways that run through that area. Yeah, I know it's a lot of "rules" to remember. Imzadi 1979 → 11:17, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
Hi, you put two disambiguous tags on this article but did not leave an explaination. What were the problems? -- Wilson ( talk) 02:40, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
Greetings Morriswa. As the developer of the STiki anti-vandal tool, I would like to thank you for recent and non-trivial use of my software. Whether you just tried out the tool briefly or have been a long-term participant, I appreciate your efforts (as I am sure does the entire Wikipedia community)!
I write to inform you of a new version of the software (link goes to list of new features). This version addresses multiple long-term issues that I am happy to put behind us. Try it out! Provide some feedback!
The STiki project is also always seeking collaborators. In particular, we are seeking non-technical colleagues. Tasks like publicity, talk-page maintenance, advertisement, and barn-star distribution are a burden to technical development. If you are interested, write me at my talk page or STiki's talk page.
As STiki approaches two significant thresholds: (1) 100,000 revert actions and (2) 400 unique users -- I hope to have your support in continuing the efficient fight against unconstructive editing. Thanks, West.andrew.g ( talk) 23:55, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
So, you were looking for some guidance on Wikipedia:Citing sources. <ref>your citation</ref> creates the little reference number in the wikitext. {{reflist}} is where the stuff at your citation (above) gets put, normally in a References section. The easy way to make sure a bunch of useful stuff gets used in your citation is to use Wikipedia:Citation templates and/or Wikipedia:Citation tools. That's a bunch of reading for you, but I think it all explains how to do citations. Feel free to drop me a line if that stuff isn't clear enough. Josh Parris 13:42, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
Here's the GDOT archive of their old maps: http://www.dot.state.ga.us/maps/Pages/StateMaps.aspx . They have maps back to 1920 there. Enjoy! Imzadi 1979 → 12:02, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
We have some semi-reliable sources that WisDOT is asking for the I-55 designation to be extended rather than calling it I-41. I think you might have jumped the gun a bit since we don't have a confirmed intent to renumber that section of US 41 in Wisconsin that's part of a new Intestate with that number. Imzadi 1979 → 02:02, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
{{jct|state=WI|I|41}}
. If that isn't in use, the redirect is pointless.
Imzadi 1979
→
02:58, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Please look here. I didn't add anything about the possibility of that store or anything else possibly ending up in another state, but it might be time to consider doing that.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:34, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Regarding this edit, I don't think an edit summary of "Good faith revert of edit" is helpful. It's not very specific, so it's not clear to the original editor why you're reverting it. A summary like, "Removing uncited opinion" would be more clear. I would go with "Removing opinion lacking citation; please feel free to re-add with a citation to a reliable source." Also, the phrase "Good faith revert" a bit confusing. It suggests that your revert is made in good faith, which is unnecessary as hopefully your fellow edits are all assuming good faith. I think you mean that you assuming good faith on the part of the original editor, but it doesn't really help. If someone suspects that you suspect that the original edit was not in good faith, claiming so isn't likely to change anyone's minds. It's more clear to just omit the bit about good faith and explain the problem and ideally how the edit might be improved. — Alan De Smet | Talk 05:56, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
In short: we don't add the banner for WikiProject Michigan (WP:MICH) to articles for the Michigan State Highways TF (WP:MISH). That's been the procedure for several years now. The same holds for WikiProject Maryland and the MD highways TF. Imzadi 1979 → 22:49, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
If you're looking for something useful to do for the project, every day I check a short list of logs created by a bot.
When you do find a legitimate new article for USRD, look through it. See if it has a map and an infobox; if not, add |needs-map=yes
and |needs-infobox=yes
to the banner on its talk page. Check to see if it has a See also section with the portal links. If not, add them! If it has a See also section with links, make sure none of the links are already used in the body of the article; if so, remove them. Look through to make sure that US measurements (usually these are miles for lengths) have metric conversions and add them if missing. Look at the date formats in the article: if the dates for US highway articles aren't in Month DD, YYYY, format, switch them. (In the US, only military articles should be in DD Month YYYY format.) If the dates in references aren't in Month DD, YYYY, format or ISO (YYYY-MM-DD, yes with leading zeroes on months and days), fix them. (I try to discourage people from using the ISO format in citations; it's allowed under the MOS, but it's still not a good practice in my book.)
Another somewhat quick cleanup task for new articles is to put all of the references into a consistent format with full information. What I do is make sure that each citation is in the appropriate template. (Use the nice ones specific to Google/Yahoo/Bing Maps over just {{ cite map}} because it adds the correct cartography information, etc.) Make sure that authors, dates, access dates, titles, publishers, cartographers and works are all present as needed. For books and journals/magazines, I try to look up the ISBN or ISSN number from http://www.worldcat.org or substitute the OCLC number. (Then readers can use the number to search libraries online faster to locate a copy of the source if they want.) Try to make sure that the article doesn't wikilink the same thing in multiple citations. (For example, a Michigan article might use six different maps published by the Michigan State Highway Department, but only the first footnote will/should have a wikilink to MSHD; anything more is WP:OVERLINKing.) The last thing that I'll check is for missing non-breaking spaces. If you can help put an article's foundation in order early , it helps to keep an article in order.
Long story short, there was a long debate about inserting geographic coordinates into articles on highways/roads. USRD's position is that we won't use them, and instead we will use KML files. Basically, a KML file draws a line on the map to connect a set of points. Go to the article on the M-199 (Michigan highway), and look at the upper right corner. You should see a globe next to "Route map: Google / Bing". That is generated through the combination of {{ Attached KML}} and the KML file. The Maps Dept. Tutorial has instructions on how to trace a highway in Google Earth to generate the KML file. It's actually pretty easy to do, and except for Google Earth, it doesn't require any special software. If you can create some KMLs for articles that lack them, that would be a good thing. I'm slowly trying to make sure that all Michigan highway articles get them, with emphasis on the FAs, As and GAs, but that's over a hundred articles to go. USRD has thousands of articles that need them eventually.
I would suggest that you start with a few shorter highways to get some practice at first and then branch out to longer ones. KMLs are easier to generate than the map graphics, and they can overlay the line in Google Maps, Bing Maps or the "WikiMiniAtlas" (that globe icon in the article is a pop up map) so that a reader can zoom/scroll around the location of the highway on and interactive map. Anyways, once you have the KML file saved on your computer, add {{ Attached KML}} to the External links section of the article and paste the file onto Wikipedia. (They can't be uploaded right now, but the tutorial covers how to add the file itself.)
As you might know, Georgia has the worst average article quality of any of the states; only Puerto Rico is worse. You can see that for yourself on WP:USRD/A/S, which is updated daily by the bot. We use WikiWork as a metric to compare each state. The table lists how many articles of each class (FA, A, GA, B, C, Start, Stub) for each state/territory and the metrics. The last column is the relative WikiWork, which is on a scale of 0 to 6. Lower numbers are better, because WikiWork measures what it would take to reach the theoretical goal of every article being an FA. Note: redirects, disambiguation pages, categories, templates, books, portals, lists and all of that other stuff is NOT factored into WikiWork. Michigan's WW right now is 2.373 (there's a "live" version of the table at WP:USRD/A/L), which means that the average quality of that state's articles is between a GA (2) and a B (3). Just making sure that a state's articles have RDs and JLs (which bumps it to a Start) can immediately impact the WW score. If all of Georgia's Stubs were bumped to Starts (easy to do with a paper map and Google Maps), the WW would drop to 4.970, and the state would fall between Rhode Island and Alabama on the table.
Back in 2008, I was challenged on IRC to get Michigan onto the "leaderboard" (the top ten listing of states for the project in the newsletter), and with some work, Michigan jumped from #26 into the top ten in a month. (Newsletters were monthly back then). Granted, MI has a lot of business routes, and there's the Former Michigan spur routes list, and merging all of those stubs got them "off the books" for WikiWork, but it also means that Michigan has less articles to maintain. (We dropped like 100 stubs just through mergers which also means we have 100 less articles to work on.) So I'm going to issue you a similar challenge: we have a newsletter that's due out this month and another in July. See how far you can get Georgia up the table before the summer newsletter, and we'll put a mention of your progress into the issue. Minnesota is the tenth place at 4.009, so if you could de-stub and de-start (remember the historical map archive link that's available for GA), the state could pass up MN to get into the top ten.
There's lots that you can do to help the project,. Imzadi 1979 → 17:21, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
Dough4872 ( talk · contribs) has a contest, User:Dough4872/GA by number, to challenge editors working on highway/road articles to get a Good Article for each number 1–99. A few of the numbers aren't possible for Michigan (The first M-4 is now M-134 and the second is part of M-10, M-7 is now M-86 and M-9 is now M-99, for instance.) M-92 is part of M-52, so rather than write a partially duplicative article, I can merge M-92 into M-52. As my #92 on the list though, I'm going to work on Georgia State Route 92 at some point in the coming few weeks. I encourage you to follow along with my progress to see what I'm going to do to expand that article and clean it up for a Good Article Nomination. Since I don't live in Georgia, and I've never been there, you'll see what I can do just based on FUTON (FUll Text On the Net) sources and maps. I'll try to document for you what I've done as I'm working on the article. That way you'll have a template for further GA expansions. Imzadi 1979 → 00:57, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
You can pick any numbered route to get to GA, as long it has its own article and is not a county route or has been improved to GA by someone else. Since you have indicated interest in working on Georgia articles and the state currently has no GAs, I would suggest picking state routes in Georgia to fill your 1-99 list. If an article you want is a redirect (for example Georgia State Route 4 redirects to U.S. Route 1 in Georgia), then look in another state for an article to improve. Dough 48 72 19:34, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Interstate 77 (1957-1958). Since you had some involvement with the Interstate 77 (1957-1958) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Imzadi 1979 → 16:08, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect U.S. Route 40 (California-Nevada). Since you had some involvement with the U.S. Route 40 (California-Nevada) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). LJ ↗ 09:49, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
It rarely is helpful to say something like "I don't get it!" in response to a lengthy comment. Surely Imzadi1979 isn't going to rewrite his entire comment, and also, it makes us doubt that you've even read it. Next time, please say what you don't understand so that we can get the issue resolved more quickly. -- Rs chen 7754 20:43, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
Why would a WikiProject want to include a long expired AfD in its project pages? -- Dweller ( talk) 22:04, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
Don't be dismayed about writing. The key thing is trying to find as much information as possible. I don't work much with road articles, but when I do, I try an find all sorts of nuggets of info that can be added. Try different Google searches to improve the articles :) ♫ Hurricanehink ( talk) 22:41, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
I've noticed you have a lot of questions regarding road articles. We have WP:HWY/IRC, which is a chatroom for Wikipedia road editors, where you can talk live to editors and get feedback from multiple people. To connect to the channel, go here and type "Morriswa" for nickname and "wikipedia-en-roads" for channels. I hope to see you on IRC. Dough 48 72 23:25, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect U.S. Route 91 (Arizona-Nevada-California). Since you had some involvement with the U.S. Route 91 (Arizona-Nevada-California) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). LJ ↗ 06:26, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
Hello Morriswa! I see that you've put yourself up for adoption – great idea! I'll be happy to adopt you because I enjoy working with others – especially to help them become a better editor on Wikipedia!
Take a look at my edit history; I usually work at Articles for Deletion, Articles for Creation, in new page patrolling, and in vandalism-fighting. I have been an editor on Wikipedia for a year, and have made over 15,000 edits to the encyclopedia.
I'm usually available on Wikipedia from 0:00 - 5:00 and occasionally from 12:00-16:00 (all times
UTC). I travel frequently, usually on business trips around the world. I'm so young, yet so busy.
If I adopt you, I promise I will provide you with the most friendly, easy, and convenient adoption service through my adoption school. But if you don't think I am the right adopter for you, that's okay – you have no obligation to accept, and I won't be in the least bit offended if you don't. If you think I am the right adopter for you, please let me know – then we shall get started! B music ian 07:40, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
Simple You can check your edit count on the English Wikipedia by going to Special:Preferences and on all Wikimedia projects by way of Special:CentralAuth/EXAMPLE. — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 03:02, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
Welcome!
You are now a student at my adoption school. Your official adoption page is located at User:Bmusician/Adoption/Morriswa.
In your first assignment (which I have already assigned to you) you will learn about the five pillars. Read the lesson carefully. You are required to answer questions about the lesson at the very end. You must answer all of them adequately in order to move on to the next assignment.
After you've completed all required assignments, you will then take an examination. If you pass the examination, you are permitted to either continue to study at the adoption school, or "graduate" from the school. (We'll talk about that when that time actually comes.) If you fail, however, you must stay at the adoption school until you finally pass an exam. Please note that you may leave the school at any time without graduating, but that means that you won't be awarded the "special barnstar" I give to my graduate students.
That's it; again I welcome you to my adoption school! Please me a message on my talk page if you have any questions regarding the school. B music ian 01:25, 29 April 2012 (UTC)