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The Center Line
Volume 8, Issue S1 • September 2015 • About the Newsletter
In this issue


This is an auspicious month! Ten years ago, the U.S. Roads WikiProject was created. While there had been some state-level highway projects already, as well as WikiProject Highways, it was in September 2005 that USRD was created. In celebration of our tin jubilee, we are publishing a special issue of The Centerline to highlight the past decade of the project.

Like any endeavor involving multiple people, our project history has not been without growing pains over the years. Through various rocky periods over the last 10 years, USRD has emerged from those controversies to become the project that it is today. We have been recognized by others on Wikipedia over the years for our drive to create the best collection of articles that we can muster. In this issue, you'll find republished articles from past issues of the newsletter along with new content appearing for the first time. Regular features like the leaderboard, state updates and portal selected content will return for our next regular issue due out in November.

As the primary editor for The Centerline, I'd like to take a personal moment here to thank everyone in the project who has contributed content to the newsletter over the years. We are one of a small grouping of projects who actively produces a newsletter, and without your efforts, I could not assemble and distribute a quarterly publication like this. We always welcome new contributions at our newsroom. ❖Imzadi1979



USRD through the years

Contributor: Rschen7754
Excerpted and updated from an editorial originally published Winter 2012
The USRD logo debuted in 2010.

On September 18, 2005, I founded the U.S. Roads WikiProject as a simple project designed to "adopt" the states without a state highway WikiProject and allow for new WP:WSS stubs to be created with a lower minimum number of articles.

I'd like to briefly recap the history of USRD. We currently have 26 archive pages of WT:USRD, and I neither have the time nor space to mention everything. But I'm going to give a very brief summary. I've organized it into four "eras" of USRD:

  • Before 2006: the "unorganized" era. Before 2006, the road articles were highly unorganized, as was much of Wikipedia during this time. A lot of the articles were created between 2004 and 2006. Highway articles would quite frequently get sent to AFD, with mixed results. There were only state WikiProjects, and very few; the USRD project was created towards the end of this era, as a "shell project" to theoretically serve as the next higher level above the state projects, although almost all of the editing activity took place at the state level. There were very few FAs, and GA didn't exist in its present form for most of this time. This era began to draw to a close with the events that led up to the first Highways arbitration case and WP:SRNC, when the project divided over how to name articles.
  • 2006–2008—the beginnings of USRD—After SRNC, we spent the next few months repairing relationships and catching up with the mess that our articles had become in the meantime. However, towards 2007, many of the USRD facilities that we take for granted today developed, such as assessment, IRC, IH, USH, most of the state highway WikiProjects, ELG (which would become RJL), the shields task force, MTF, and ACR. We formed this project newsletter in January 2007 to respond to issues that were taking place and to unify the project. We began to get our first GAs as a project. The development of {{U.S. Roads WikiProject}} took place; while most collaboration took place at the state level, the USRD project was beginning to form. This era ended in early 2008 with the second Highways arbitration case, when internal disagreements led to an arbitration case, which had very few remedies and did little to resolve the internal problems.
  • 2008–2012—the transition period—After the second arbitration case we entered a transition period, where we slowly went from over 30 state highway WikiProjects to one national WikiProject. A race began to get FAs and GAs, and to reduce WikiWork and the number of stubs through two stub drives. The county challenges and USRDCups played a major role in this as well. The newsletter was eventually decommissioned in 2008, but resurfaced in 2010, after attempts at a project blog failed. The switch to {{Infobox road}} took place, and our notability guidelines developed. The focus of USRD switched from quantity to quality, as we worked on making higher-quality articles. Many events transpired that drew us together, such as the Racepacket arbitration case, the geocoordinates debates, and the revisions to RJL and {{Infobox road}} to make it international. This era recently ended with the consolidation of nearly all the state highway WikiProjects into task forces of USRD. While this happened officially in 2012, this had unofficially been taking place for years as standards merged and editors networked. As our editing base has declined, it is easier to maintain one national project. In addition to this, there are few state-specific variations of standards, and the projects were eventually seen as redundant. New York initially remained its own state highway WikiProject after the transition.
  • 2012–2014–rebirth—Now that our project has been unified, we are moving forward as one unit. A few of our primary editors from earlier eras returned, and the project underwent a renaissance. We expanded across Wikimedia to other projects, including Wikidata, Meta, Commons, and Wikisource. We gained several featured articles, many of which went on the main page. In addition to this, we developed standards for lists, and overhauled many of our templates to use Lua, improving page rendering times. The New York state highway project was merged back into USRD.
  • 2014–– While some of our primary editors have become less active due to real-life commitments, there have been a few who have kept the project running while creating quality content.

But this leaves a great opportunity for you, the reader of this newsletter. There are several opportunities to get more involved in the project. Thus, I encourage you: Be part of the turnaround... now become part of the solution! To learn how, feel free to ask questions at our main page, WT:USRD, or in the IRC channel.

Article assessment over time

USRD's article assessment since 2007

Collaboration

Contributor: Rschen7754
Collaboration, our core purpose

I have been an administrator on the English Wikipedia since December 16, 2005. However, I only remained semi-active as an administrator for many years, instead focusing on the development of this WikiProject.

In 2012, I felt a desire to get involved in other areas of Wikimedia. I started by getting more active in administrative work on the English Wikipedia. Pretty soon, by the end of 2013, I had become a Wikidata administrator and oversighter, an English Wikivoyage administrator, a sockpuppet investigations clerk, arbitration clerk, and a global sysop.

By early 2014, I had gained enough experience and motivation to become a Wikimedia steward, the highest user right a volunteer can have, with complete access to the interface on all public Wikimedia sites, including handling CheckUser and oversight matters. I planned to remain a steward for at least a few years, seeing that I knew how to use the tools effectively and felt like I was truly making a difference.

Stewards are considered to be the "most trusted" members of the Wikimedia community; the elections are announced on every Wikimedia site for three weeks, and over two hundred people vote in them. Most of them have served for years in this role and in other highly trusted roles across Wikimedia. And yet, I soon found myself disappointed when working with some of my colleagues, finding that while they were technically competent, they were difficult to work with. By the end of my first term, even though I would likely have been reappointed, I realized that the additional stress was unhealthy for me, and I decided not to continue, even resigning a few days earlier than planned due to yet another fight on the steward mailing list that had turned into bickering.

So why do I mention all of this on our tenth anniversary?

Because over the course of that experience, I grew to appreciate working with my fellow road editors. It is true that in the past, we were known for causing drama that had to be resolved by outside parties. But over the years, we have learned how to work as a team despite our differences. We disagree quite often, but we respect each other’s opinion, and work towards a solution that is agreeable to everyone. And when hard work needs to be done, there are always those willing to step up and do want is necessary, since back in 2007 when we first assessed the few thousand articles in our scope. As a team, we turned these articles from the ruins that they were post-SRNC into what they are today with our standards and framework, which outsiders have criticized, but which have proven to be successful. Thus, I think the overarching success story of the U.S. Roads WikiProject is not the number of GAs or FAs that we have created. Instead, it is that we have been able to create a team that serves as a model of the collaborative experience that Wikimedia should truly be like, in a greater environment of increasing polarization and a declining editorship.

Admittedly, my activity is decreasing due to increasing outside commitments, and I don't know how much longer I will be able to remain a regular editor. But my time at USRD is something that I will always remember. I am grateful to have had this experience, and it will be something that I am proud to have been a part of.

Our valued contributors

Vaoverland, in 2008
Contributor: Fredddie

Through the years, many users have contributed to the U.S. Roads WikiProject; at any given time we have had a core of about 15 editors. We wanted to find a simple way to say thank you to those who stuck around for a little while and became part of the USRD community. To attempt this, the editors of this newsletter have attempted to make a list of those people. Because we have never required a user to add him or herself to the participants list for the project, or the state-level subprojects, this listing is unfortunately incomplete. To anyone inadvertently left off the list, we still extend to you the same thank you that we send to everyone listed below.

Some of the editors listed below have moved on to a different project or have retired from Wikipedia completely. We ask those editors who have moved on to check in sometime and say hello. Sadly, not all of our regular contributors are still with us. In 2011, USRD was saddened to learn of the passing of Vaoverland (pictured). To him, and all others who have left this mortal coil, we send out an extra thank you.

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