THE U TURN
 A look back at recent news and developments from WikiProject Australian Roads
WikiProject Australian Roads
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Talk page (WT:AURD)
Portal (P:AURD)
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Resources (WP:AURD/R)
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Discussions Library (WP:AURD/L)
Advanced Permissions (WP:AURD/P)
The U Turn (newsletter) (WP:AURD/NEWS)
Parent projects
Wikiproject Highways (WP:HWY)
 • A-Class Review (WP:HWY/ACR)
 • Chat (WP:HWY/IRC)
 • Route markers (WP:HWY/RM)
Wikiproject Australia (WP:AUS)
 • Notice board (WP:AWNB)

The U Turn is the WikiProject Australian Roads project newsletter. The current edition is transcluded below. Drafts of future issues will be collaborated on at the Next issue subpage, where anyone can contribute, and past issues can be found in the archives. To sign up for notifications of new issues, add your username to the subscribers list (otherwise just watch out for messages posted to the project talk page).

January 2014 edit

Welcome to 2014 – a new year and new opportunities, in the real world and on Wikipedia. While you are celebrating the future, don't forget the past... take a look back with the second issue of The U Turn from WikiProject Australian Roads. – Evad37, Issue 2 Editor

Features edit

News summary edit

  • There is a now a portal for Australian roads, which you can contribute to!
  • The projects has a new article standards department, covering the project's advice on article content and style.
  • The AURD shields department has closed down, with requests for shields are now undertaken at the new global WikiProject Highways Route Markers page. Recent request that have been fulfilled include:
    •    Standard numbered tourist drives, and one non-numeric route
    •    Old Brisbane and Melbourne freeway routes
  • Our project was featured in The Signpost on 9 October 2013! (Read the interview)

New and improved edit

The spring months have seen a number of article spring up the assessment ladder. The project also achieved it's first Featured Article, which was quickly put onto the Main Page! Thank you to all contributors and reviewers of the project's latest batch of recognised content.

  Kwinana Freeway, nominated by Evad37 (t c), was promoted to A-Class on 12 August 2013, was promoted to Featured Article on 14 September 2013, and appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's Featured Article on 22 September 2013

Kwinana Freeway is a 72-kilometre (45 mi) freeway in and beyond the southern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia, linking central Perth with Mandurah to the south. It interchanges with several major roads, including Roe Highway and Mandjoogoordap Drive, and is the central section of State Route 2, which continues north as Mitchell Freeway to Joondalup, and south as Forrest Highway towards Bunbury. A 4-kilometre (2.5 mi) section between Canning and Leach highways is also part of National Route 1. The northern terminus of the Kwinana Freeway is at the Narrows Bridge, which crosses the Swan River, and the southern terminus is at Pinjarra Road, east of Mandurah. Planning began in the 1950s, and the first segment in South Perth was constructed between 1956 and 1959. The route has been progressively widened and extended south since then. The last extension was completed in 2009, with the section north of Pinjarra Road named as part of the Kwinana Freeway, and the remainder named Forrest Highway. The freeway has been adapted to cater for public transport: bus priority measures were introduced in 1987, and in 2007, the Mandurah railway line (pictured) opened, constructed in the freeway median strip.

  Guildford Road, created by Evad37 (t c), appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 21 December 2013.


  Great Eastern Highway, nominated by Evad37 (t c), was promoted to Good Article status on 28 November 2013

Great Eastern Highway is a 590-kilometre-long (370 mi) road linking the Western Australian capital of Perth with the city of Kalgoorlie. A key route for vehicles accessing the eastern Wheatbelt and the Goldfields, it is the western portion of the main road transportation link between Perth and the eastern states of Australia. The highway was created in the 1930s from an existing system of roads linking Perth with the Goldfields. Though the name Great Eastern Highway was coined to describe the route from Perth to Guildford on the northern side of the Swan River (modern-day Guildford Road), it was actually used for the road through Belmont, south of the river. This section was constructed in 1867 using convict labour, with the road base made from sections of tree trunks.

Departments report edit

Assessment edit

  • Graphs of our progress (and the raw data) can now be found at Google Docs spreadsheet, maintained by Evad37 and update once a month: [1]
  • As well as the newly improved content listed above, a reassessment push in December saw a slight upwards trend in quality in the lower-class article. The percentage of articles classified as stubs has now dropped from 60.75% in July 2013 to 56.68% for January 2014, with the relative wikiwork factor decreasing from 5.51 to 5.45 over the same period.
  • Pages can now be assessed as Redirect-class, Disambig-class, and Portal-class. In the assessment banner, pages classified as redirects or disambiguation pages will automatically be marked as map not applicable and KML not applicable without having to set the |needs-map= or |needs-kml= parameters

Resources edit

Miscellaneous edit

Credits edit

Comments edit

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