The WikiProject United States Newsletter
February 2011

Happy February to you, and I hope that your experience with WikiProject United States has been a good one since joining and that since the project relaunch in October 2010 you have helped it to grow and thrive. This is the first of what will hopefully be a monthly newsletter about articles and events relating to United States topics. Although this newsletter was built and is primarily maintained by WikiProject United States, many of the items that will be profiled here pertain not only to this project but to some or all of the 200+ WikiProjects relating to United States topics. This will include information about new changes to Wiki policy, features and events; featured content for the month such as Portal:United States, the US Wikipedians Noticeboard, the US Wikipedians collaboration of the Month and other topics. For this reason I encourage anyone interested in United States topics to sign up to receive it and participate in its developement regardless of your affiliation to WikiProject United States.

Scope and Mission of WikiProject United States

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

Articles of note

This section highlights US related content that has been promoted to Featured Status in the last month (may not apply directly to this project). To view all Quality content for the project check out our Quality content page.
New featured articles:
Governor of Kentucky  • New York's 20th congressional district special election, 2009  • Sigi Schmid  • Thistle, Utah  • Monadnock Building  • Hill 303 massacre  • Interstate 80 Business (West Wendover, Nevada – Wendover, Utah)  • Battle of Sio  • Painted turtle  • 1955 MacArthur Airport United Airlines crash  • M-6 (Michigan highway)  • Walden–Wallkill Rail Trail  • Action of 1 January 1800
New featured lists:
Grammy Award for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance  • Unreleased Britney Spears songs  • Nashville Vols all-time roster  • Philadelphia Phillies all-time roster (C)  • Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation  • Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album  • List of 1948 Winter Olympics medal winners  • U.S. state dog breeds  • Boston Reds (1890–1891) all-time roster

Article statistics

United States articles by quality and importance
Quality	Importance
	Top	High	Mid	Low	NA	???	Total
FA	10	70	198	782		2	1,062
FL	2	32	49	353		1	437
FM					1,155		1,155
A		3	30	51			84
GA	18	141	564	4,230		27	4,980
B	113	762	1,907	10,792		529	14,103
C	41	745	3,187	34,986	1	5,438	44,398
Start	5	846	6,858	147,807	28	17,905	173,449
Stub		126	2,156	149,190	68	7,835	159,375
List	3	155	1,037	12,582	209	1,853	15,839
Category			3	142	155,784		155,929
Disambig		1		46	1,598		1,645
File		1	2	37	24,905		24,945
Portal					3,044		3,044
Project		1	1	3	1,561		1,566
Redirect		39	211	5,127	42,182		47,559
Template		2	17	118	21,990		22,127
NA						1	1
Other						3	3
Draft				369	1,096		1,465
Assessed	192	2,924	16,220	366,615	253,621	33,594	673,166
Unassessed			1	425	46	7,212	7,684
Total	192	2,924	16,221	367,040	253,667	40,806	680,850
WikiWork factors ( ?)		ω = 2,053,456			Ω = 5.17

Collaboration and Portal

With a redesigned project, mission and scope; tools to help manage the project and the content it supports; a strong group of active editors covering a wide array of US topics whats next? To create a way for those users to Collaborate and work together to improve content and to have a place to make that work visible to others. With that in mind several editors worked to redesign and relaunch three tools: Portal:United States, the US Wikipedians Noticeboard and the US Wikipedians collaboration of the Month. I recommend adding all three to your watchlist. Along with this new monthly newsletter these three tools will allow editors to work together, to stay informed about changes and information relating to US topics and to present articles and content to our readers.

1. The United Sates Portal will be instrumental in presenting High class (Featured and A-class) content, links to the US-related projects and portals and other information relating to US topics in an organized graphical format. Help is needed on keeping the portal updated and fresh with new content and updating the On this day and Did you know sections as new topics are made available. Thanks goes to RichardF for rebuilding and updating the layout and for recently stepping forward and doing so much work in the last month to get this moving back to featured portal status.
2. The US Wikipedians Noticeboard was restarted as a way for information to be passed and discussed. This Noticeboard will be a good way for the projects and editors to discuss issues between projects in a central and neutral location.
3. This newsletter was created to pass important information to the Projects and editors who want it and to keep them updated on the status of the project, the portal, the noticeboard and the collaboration.
4. The Collaboration of the Month was restarted as a way to build up articles and allow editors to help decide which one will get special attention for that month. This has been very successful with the first new collaboration article being chosen. Special thanks to Casliber for volunteering to rebuild this and get this going as well as their ongoing support. The Collaboration of the Month article for February is:

Project news

There are several active discussions occurring on the project's talk page that will have a long term effect on the project and will in some form affect its members. If you haven't done so already, I would like to encourage you to add your voice to the discussions.

1. A proposal was made to rewrite the Mission statement of WikiProject United States and better define its scope and focus. Members of the project along with editors from outside the project discussed the new mission and scope and when a consensus was reached, they were implemented.
2. There is a proposal to draft a communications plan and establish when and how messages are sent out as well as clarifying who should receive them.
3. There is a proposal to clarify the criteria for determining the importance of articles as they relate to the United States and its history including specific language for biographical articles.

Things you can help with

We are looking for additional help in several areas including tasks relating to the project such as:

1. Helping to maintain this newsletter
2. Designing a new banner for WikiProject United States to be displayed on the Project page and newsletter
3. We need help with cleanup issues such as eliminating Unreferenced BLPs and fixing maintenance tags. If interested, details can be seen by clicking on the To do tab of the Project page.

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

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