Wikipedia:WikiProject United States/Newsletter/May 2011

The WikiProject United States Newsletter
May 2011

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:
Note:Articles pertain to one or more of the WikiProjects relating to United States topics but not necessarily WikiProject United States.

New featured articles:

New featured lists:

Project article statistics for April 30, 2011
WikiProject United States assessment table

Current statistics

Project news

We are happy to report that the project continues to grow every day with several more editors joining the project this month. We welcome them to the project along with all the other editors who have joined since the relaunch of the project in January.

This month at least five articles relating to United States topics were promoted to Featured article status and at least nine articles have been promoted to Featured list. Additionally, there are multiple articles including the USS Chesapeake (1799), Jefferson nickel and Frank Buckles, the last American World War I veteran who recently died, pending review for Featured article status. The full list can be found here. There is also a large selection of Lists pending featued list status here including several relating to sports and music, List of tallest buildings in Austin and List of U.S. state horses. We continue to look for editors interested in reviewing these articles so any help no matter how big or small is greatly appreciated.

After nearly two months of discussions and preperations WikiProject United States Government has joined the family of WikiProjects supported by WikiProject United States. The initial phase of including this project have already begun and should conclude in the next couple weeks. This project represents a core topic relating to the United States and collaboration between the two projects will make both stronger.

Portal

The portal is really looking good and a lot of things have been put in place to make the portal work in a semi automated fashion but it needs help with filling in some of the Anniversaries pages. Most of the days up to mid May have been started but there is still work to be done from the middle of May through December. More help is always appreciated with new events as they occur so any assistance there is also appreciated.

Collaboration
The collaboration for May 2011 is Wall Street

A lot of improvements were made to last months collaboration, Chesapeake Bay so thanks to all who helped with that. The collaboration for May is Wall Street. Tomwsulcer has already done a major rewrite and expansion of the Wall street article while it was a collaboration candidate and with just a little more work I believe we can get it to GA.

The current articles up for vote are:

  1. Lake Erie
  2. Thanksgiving (United States)
  3. United States Bill of Rights
  4. United States dollar
  5. FBI Academy
  6. List of Medal of Honor recipients

Activity in the collaboration has slowed this month and we continue to look for editors to submit their suggestions for articles they would like to see collaboration on and we continue to seek editors interested in improving those articles. Whether they are designated as the collaboration of the month or they are just a candidate editors are encouraged to edit any of them and make improvements. Please take some time to submit and vote for the article(s) you think should be the next collaboration for June.

Over the next couple of months we will be implementing some bot tasks to automate some of the things that are currently done manually in the Collaboration. If anyone has a bot or wants to start one and is willing to take on one of the tasks please let the project know by leaving a note on the projects talk page.

Things you can help with
  • Ideas for next months newsletter
  • Help with the Anniversaries in the portal
  • Help with the assessments
  • Help with the Collaboration
  • Comments in active discussions

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!

To stop receiving this newsletter, or to receive it in a different format, please list yourself in the appropriate section here.