Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States/Archive 7

There has been conflict at American Left, largely (although not exclusively) about two sections:

Civil Rights, the War on Poverty, and the New Left

In 1958 the Socialist Party welcomed former members of theIndependent Socialist League, which before its 1956 dissolution had been led by Max Shachtman. Shachtman had developed a Marxist critique of Soviet communism as "bureaucratic collectivism", a new form of class society that was more oppressive than any form of capitalism. Shachtman's theory was similar to that of many dissidents and refugees from Communism, such as the theory of the "New Class" proposed by Yugoslavian dissident Milovan Đilas (Djilas). Shachtman's ISL had attracted youth like Irving Howe,Michael Harrington,^[1] Tom Kahn, and Rachelle Horowitz.^[2][3][4] The YPSL was dissolved, but the party formed a new youth group under the same name.^[5]

Kahn and Horowitz, along with Norman Hill, helped Bayard Rustin with the civil-rights movement. Rustin had helped to spread pacificismand non-violence to leaders of the civil rights movement, like Martin Luther King. Rustin's circle and A. Philip Randolph organized the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King delivered his I Have A Dream speech.^[6][7][8][9]

Michael Harrington soon became the most visible socialist in the United States when his The Other America became a best seller, following a long and laudatory New Yorker review by Dwight Macdonald.^[10] Harrington and other socialists were called to Washington, D.C., to assist the Kennedy Administration and then the Johnson Administration'sWar on Poverty and Great Society.^[11]

Shachtman, Michael Harrington, Kahn, and Rustin argued advocated a political strategy called "realignment," that prioritized strengthening labor unions and other progressive organizations that were already active in the Democratic Party. Contributing to the day-to-day struggles of the civil-rights movement and labor unions had gained socialists credibility and influence, and had helped to push politicians in the Democratic Party towards "social-liberal" or social-democratic positions, at least on civil rights and the War on Poverty.^[12][13]

Harrington, Kahn, and Horowitz were officers and staff-persons of the League for Industrial Democracy (LID), which helped to start the New Left Students for a Democratic Society(SDS). The three LID officers clashed with the less experienced activists of SDS, like Tom Hayden, when the latter's Port Huron Statement criticized socialist and liberal opposition to communism and criticized the labor movement while promoting students as agents of social change.^[14] LID and SDS split in 1965, when SDS voted to remove from its constitution the "exclusion clause" that prohibited membership by communists:^[15]The SDS exclusion clause had barred "advocates of or apologists for" "totalitarianism".^[16] The clause's removal effectively invited "disciplined cadre" to attempt to "take over or paralyze" SDS, as had occurred to mass organizations in the thirties.^[17] Afterwords, Marxism Leninism, particularly the Progressive Labor Party, helped to write "the death sentence" for SDS,^[18][19][20]which nonetheless had over 100 thousand members at its peak.

In 1972, the Socialist Party voted to rename itself as Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA) by a vote of 73 to 34 at its December Convention; its National Chairmen were Bayard Rustin, a peace and civil-rights leader, and Charles S. Zimmerman, an officer of theInternational Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU).^[21] In 1973, Michael Harrington resigned from SDUSA and founded the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC), which attracted many of his followers from the former Socialist Party.^[22] The same year, David McReynolds and others from the pacifist and immediate-withdrawal wing of the former Socialist Party formed the Socialist Party, USA.^[23]

1. [1]

   Isserman, The other american, p. 116.
2. [2]

   Drucker (1994, p. 269):

   Drucker, Peter (1994). Max Shachtman and his left: A socialist's odyssey through the "American Century". Humanities Press. ISBN 0-391-03816-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

3. [3]

   Horowitz (2007, p. 210) harvtxt error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFHorowitz2007 (help)
4. [4]

   Kahn (2007, pp. 254–255): Kahn, Tom (2007) [1973], "Max Shachtman: His ideas and his movement" (pdf), Democratiya (merged with Dissent in 2009), 11 (Winter): 252–259 {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |1= and |2= (help); External link in |issue= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |journal= (help)
5. [5]

   Alexander, p. 812-813.
6. [6]

   Jervis Anderson,A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait (1973; University of California Press, 1986). ISBN 978-0-520-05505-6
7. [7]

   • Anderson, Jervis. Bayard Rustin: Troubles I've Seen (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997).
   • Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 (New York: Touchstone, 1989).
   • D’Emilio, John. Lost Prophet: Bayard Rustin and the Quest for Peace and Justice in America(New York: The Free Press, 2003).
   • D'Emilio, John. Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004). ISBN 0-226-14269-8
8. [8]

   Horowitz (2007, pp. 220–222) harvtxt error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFHorowitz2007 (help):

   Horowitz, Rachelle (2007). "Tom Kahn and the fight for democracy: A political portrait and personal recollection" (PDF). Democratiya(merged with Dissent in 2009). 11 (Summer): 204–251. {{cite journal}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |journal= (help)

9. [9]

   Saxon, Wolfgang (1992). "Tom Kahn, leader in labor and rights movements, was 53". New York Times. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
10. [10]

    • MacDonald, Dwight (January 19, 1963). "Our invisible poor". The New Yorker.

      Reprinted in collection: Macdonald, Dwight (1985) [1974]. "Our invisible poor". Discriminations: Essays and afterthoughts 1938-1974 (reprint ed.). Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0306802522.

    • Sumner, Gregory D. (1996) Dwight Macdonald and the Politics Circle: The Challenge of Cosmopolitan Democracy
    • Whitfield , Stephen J. (1984) A Critical American: The Politics of Dwight Macdonald
    • Wreszin, Michael (1994) A Rebel in Defense of Tradition: The Life and Politics of Dwight MacDonald
11. [11]

    Isserman, Maurice (2009-06-19). "Michael Harrington: Warrior on poverty". The New York Times.
12. [12]

    Isserman, The other american, pp. 169–336.
13. [13]

    Drucker (1994, p. 187–308)
14. [14]

    Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS, pp. 22-25.
15. [15]

    Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS, p. 105.
16. [16]

    Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS, pp. 25–26
17. [17]

    Gitlin, p. 191.

    Todd Gitlin.The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (1987) ISBN 0-553-37212-2.

18. [18]

    Sale, p. 287.

    Sale described an "all‑out invasion of SDS by the Progressive Labor Party. PLers—concentrated chiefly in Boston, New York, and California, with some strength in Chicago and Michigan—were positively cyclotronic in their ability to split and splinter chapter organizations: if it wasn't their self‑righteous positiveness it was their caucus‑controlled rigidity, if not their deliberate disruptiveness it was their overt bids for control, if not their repetitious appeals for base‑building it was their unrelenting Marxism". Kirkpatrick Sale,SDS, pp. 253.

19. [19]

    Gitlin, p. 191.

    Todd Gitlin.The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (1987) p. 387 ISBN 0-553-37212-2.

    • Miller, James. Democracy is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994 ISBN 978-0674197251.
20. [20]

    Sale wrote, "SDS papers and pamphlets talked of 'armed struggle,' 'disciplined cadre,' 'white fighting force,' and the need for "a communist party that can guide this movement to victory"; SDS leaders and publications quoted Mao and Lenin and Ho Chi Minh more regularly than Jenminh Jih Pao. and a few of them even sought to say a few good words for Stalin". p. 269.
21. [21]

    Anonymous (1972). "Socialist Party now the Social Democrats, U.S.A." New York Times. p. 36. Retrieved February 8, 2010. {{cite news}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |url2= ignored (help)
22. [22]

    Isserman, p. 311.
23. [23]

    Isserman, p. 422.

Years by various state for 2014 back to 1861 have been created, but are all these categories necessary, in addition to the main category eg Category:2008 in the United States? The content is largely elections in the state for which there is already a series of categories by year. See say Category:2008 in the United States by state, where for 2008 while California has 10 pages; and Arkansas, Connecticut and Texas one page each (plus the elections subcategory), the categories for the remaining 9 states only contain one subcategory for elections eg Category:Alabama elections, 2008. Most of the content of the 19th & 20th century years seem to relate to one state, California. Hugo999 (talk) 02:23, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for raising the issue. Categories are not the only problem. So are accompanying articles. We're talking thousands here. With no outline nor structure for insertion. It's crazy to have a "see also" section referring to individual past elections (back to 1790? Ha!). So far, most election articles have been created by partisans having no idea, nor caring, about structure nor history nor how this will affect anyone attempting to use anything named "Elections in state" articles.

Somebody's going to need to get real smart about organizing these over the next few years or these articles (and categories) are going to get out of hand. Student7 (talk) 15:32, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

So, I have been informed that I should seek permission to add your banner to articles. Should List of United States Foreign Service Career Ambassadors be bannered with this project? 65.93.15.213 (talk) 04:22, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

I have nominated United States Marine Corps for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Brad (talk) 01:11, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

This notice is to advise interested editors that a Contributor copyright investigation has been opened which may impact this project. Such investigations are launched when contributors have been found to have placed copyrighted content on Wikipedia on multiple occasions. It may result in the deletion of images or text and possibly articles in accordance with Wikipedia:Copyright violations. The specific investigation which may impact this project is located here.

All contributors with no history of copyright problems are welcome to contribute to CCI clean up. There are instructions for participating on that page. Additional information may be requested from the user who placed this notice, at the process board talkpage, or from an active CCI clerk. Thank you. MER-C 07:22, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

For further info it seems to be Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20110727 that this discussion relates too. --Kumioko (talk) 13:34, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Hey Editors,

I have some edits to suggest for the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee article, and I came here because the talk page for the article is a ghost town. I've outlined a potential conflict of interest on my bio page, so I wanted to get approval from others before I make any edits.

My suggested edits include the addition of information in the controversy section involving the resignation of one committee member following complaints of a conflict of interest, plus a lawsuit filed by two tobacco companies. Also, I would add a new section about the committee's recent decision on menthol cigarettes. I've put a draft of how I think the page should look in my sandbox, if any of you would be kind enough to take a look. Thanks so much! Balloccoli (talk) 15:36, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

After reviewing your suggestions I see no problems with that. Thanks for being straightforward about the potential conflict of interest scenario. --Kumioko (talk) 16:38, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your help, Kumioko. Balloccoli (talk) 14:21, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Please comment here for the requested move for discussion of renaming to Aqua Teen Hunger Force to Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1. Thank you for your time. Regards, JJ98 (Talk / Contributions) 08:25, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Currently there are over 1700 Unassessed articles in the project (and growing) plus 976 in the South Carolina project and another 848 in West Virginia. I have been talking to one of the bot operators about running a bot to autoassess some of these so that we can reduce that somewhat and don't have to do them all manually. Here is what I have proposed that the bot do if the article is Unassessed:

1. If the article is assessed by another project then match that assessment
2. If the article has different assessments for different projects it will take the lowest one
3. If the article is not assessed at all and is below 1500 characters in length it will be marked as a stub. (I do not believe the bot differentiates between categories, persondata or infoboxes so I need to ask that)
4. If it is above 1500 it will be marked as a start.
5. The bot will add the |auto=yes, |auto=inherit, or |auto=length parameters to the articles it assesses so that we can manually review them if needed.

I understand that some editors do not like auto-assessing articles and that the process of a bot auto-assessing an article is an imperfect one however assessing articles is subjective between users anyway and this at least gives us a general idea of the grade of the article without having to manually touch each and every one of the 2000+ articles that are currently unassessed. IMO a bot assessing an article as stub is close enough to give us a general idea of the amount of work the article needs.

Does anyone have a problem with doing this? I will also leave notes on the Supported projects talk pages shortly. --Kumioko (talk) 17:58, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

 #4 seems problematic - an article cannot be rated as a "start" just because of its length. A start class article, among other things, must "satisfy fundamental content policies such as notability and BLP, and provide sources to establish verifiability." –xeno^talk 18:50, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Ok fair enough, I struck that one. Thank you for taking the time to comment. --Kumioko (talk) 18:57, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Yup, it will mark it as stub if it's below 1500 characters, not start. It's impossible to auto-assess articles as start because they must be checked for compliance to various policies, as Xeno said. - EdoDodo ^talk 20:56, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

And, regarding number 3, the bot does not differentiate. It will simply look at the entire wikicode of the article, as you see it when you press Edit. Both info-boxes and categories are counted. Oh, and you forgot to mention that the bot will also mark articles with a stub tag on them as stubs. Of course, any of these features can be disabled if that's how the project would like to proceed. - EdoDodo ^talk 21:11, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I have performed a review at Talk:United States Declaration of Independence/GA1. However, the nominator has exercised his WP:RTV. The article needs someone to adopt it and address my concerns in order to regain its GA status. I will allow seven days for someone to step forward.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 02:35, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi, is it possible to convert WikiProject San Diego into a task force into WikiProject California? I left a note at WikiProject San Diego for any concerns. JJ98 (Talk / Contributions) 18:45, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Support is fine with me. Raymie (t • c) 22:53, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

This article is rated "list class," but I just added information which I think moves it from a "list" to an "article." Could someone take a look and consider reevaluating it? Thanks! NearTheZoo (talk) 13:17, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I have nominated USS Kentucky (BB-66) for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Brad (talk) 05:48, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Why is this bot removing state and city wikiprojects from articles? Why are photo requests being removed from assessments? Why are wikiproject work lists being removed? Why are assessments being changed? Did this activity get discussed with the affected wikiprojects? Vegaswikian (talk) 18:36, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

It shouldn't be doing a lot of that. It shouldnt be removing any City projects, photo requests or work lists. It is removing some state banners but they should only be for the states that are being added to the WikiProject US banner (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming). The assessments being done should only be for the WikiProject United States banner. Can you provide some examples so we can get this fixed? --Kumioko (talk) 18:45, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, it is demolishing the Nevada assessments! Talk:Anderson Field (Nevada)‎ Talk:17th Reconnaissance Squadron‎ and Talk:2008 Nevada budget crisis‎ for starters. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:52, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Glad vegaswikian brought it up -- I was wondering what was happening but too new to know who to askNevadaresident (talk) 18:58, 12 August 2011 (UTC)nevadaresident

My apologies, It looks like the bot grabbed Nevada instead of Nebraska. Well get that fixed asap. I have already notifed the bot operator and Ill work with him to get the problem resolved. That answers the question of the state projects and assessments. After looking through the bots edits though I cannot find examples where its removing any city projects or REqphotos. Do you have any examples of those? I wanna make sure we get everything fixed. --Kumioko (talk) 19:02, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

The LV project is imbedded in the Nevada template along with photo requests, so when the Nevada project template was removed, it also removed any photo requests that were imbedded. So those are probably the result of removing the Nevada templates and not an additional problem. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:07, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

My apologies for the bot's malfunction. I'd mis-configured it, so it was replacing {{WikiProject Nevada}} instead of {{WikiProject Nebraska}}. The bot is stopped now and I've checked all the pages where it replaced the template and it looks they were all taken care of by Vegaswikian. Many thanks for cleaning up after the bot, and apologies once again for the misconfiguration. - EdoDodo ^talk 19:32, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

If there's no objections, I'll resume operation of the bot (with the correct configuration!) later today. - EdoDodo ^talk 19:45, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Articles on my watchlist, such as Aliante Station, that were tagged Wikiproject Nevada are now tagged Wikiproject Nebraska. I can take care of the ones on my watchlist, but it isn't a lot.Nevadaresident (talk) 20:17, 12 August 2011 (UTC)nevadaresident

Whoops, looks like there were another 56 articles that I'd missed. Should be all reverted now. Thank you for pointing it out. - EdoDodo ^talk 20:35, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I spotted new User:UMDSpecColl making spam-like edits to Maryland related articles so I welcomed the user and linked the spam page. The user seems to be interested in participating in a larger way so I thought I'd bring this discussion to members' attention. This could be an opportunity to work with a state library special collection in a very positive way for both the pedia and the collection. BusterD (talk) 21:22, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks that would be a good thing. --Kumioko (talk) 17:01, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

As you can see, someone from GLAM saw the opportunity and acted to make the connection. I'm trying to link up with local historical societies. I think they'd make natural allies to Wikipedia. BusterD (talk) 18:05, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

I think Glam is the perfect group to work with them but please let me know if we can do anything to assist as well. --Kumioko (talk) 18:20, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

They seem to only be semi-active as well, and might benefit from being added to this project. I swear we are not trying to upset our neighbors! Valfontis (talk) 16:52, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Ok thanks, Ill look into that. --Kumioko (talk) 17:01, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

How many km2 were in Great Sioux Reservation in 1868?--Kaiyr (talk) 09:50, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry not sure what km2 is. Could you clarify please? --Kumioko (talk)

That would be "square kilometers". --Orlady (talk) 13:51, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Lol oh sorry it just wasn't clicking. --Kumioko (talk) 14:25, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

There are proposals to eliminate the categories for volunteers in the Peace Corps and VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America, often called the "domestic Peace Corps").

• Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2011_August_18#Category:Peace_Corps_volunteers
• Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2011_August_17#Category:VISTA_volunteers

Briefly, one argument for elimination is that a 2 year experience is not an essential part of the individuals.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 23:08, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Do to my busy real life and the feverish pace the tasks the project is doing this month I didn't have time to produce the newsletter until this week so for anyone who might be watching this page and wondering where its at there will be no WikiProject Newsletter for August. The next newsletter will by in September and there will be a lot of information in it so I encourage everyone to read it. If anyone has comments about the newsletter; Style, Layout, length, frequency, etc. or if you have ideas for what it should contain I invite you to make comments and they will be incorporated into the next version. I am thinking about changing the format to be a bit smaller so unless anyone has objections to that the one in September will have the new format. --Kumioko (talk) 18:46, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I have nominated List of United States Navy ratings for featured list removal here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured list criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks; editors may declare to "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:26, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

I would like to do a bot run to tag some articles that start with United States, US, U.S. and American. Before I do this I wanted to give anyone interested a chance to discuss it and leave their comments. The links to the lists of articles are below:

1. U.S. = 4833 articles
2. US = 3062 articles
3. American = 8138 articles
4. United States = 10158 articles

A couple notes about these links:

1. I have attempted to remove all of the articles relating to the US Roads project but there might still be a couple in the lists
2. I have scrubbed the lists and removed a lot of articles that start with these prefixes that do not pertain to the United States but there still may be some false positives. It should be low though (Mostly in the American list).
3. There are quite a few redirects but there are a lot of articles as well
4. Some of the articles on these lists have already been tagged so the bot will skip them.
5. Feel free to remove links from these lists if you feel they should not be tagged.
6. Once this is done I will compile a list of articles that start with these prefixes but do not pertain to the United States for future comparison. --Kumioko (talk) 02:51, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi-with the addition of the /Section header and other subpages, something needs to be added to make the 'span' only 100% wide. The page is currently expanded out to the right quite a bit. I haven't been able to find which subpage yet needs to be fixed. Help is appreciated!! --Funandtrvl (talk) 03:21, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

I think it's fixed now by using div tags. Let me know if anyone else has a problem! --Funandtrvl (talk) 17:47, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Great thank you very much. --Kumioko (talk) 17:56, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) Some of you know me as User:Moonriddengirl. I'm not here in that capacity, though, but as one of my assignments under my contract for the Wikimedia Foundation, as its temporary community liaison. I've been asked to talk to a few projects and see if I can inspire some self-assessment: WMF wants to know what you think you guys are doing well and what might be improved. It would also be good if we can get some dialogue going on how projects can help welcome and nurture newcomers interested in their areas. User:Kumioko suggested that your project might be willing to help out. If you're willing, I'll set up a subpage so we can talk without overwhelming this one and keep the conversation concentrated in one area. That page will be included in my report to the WMF along with my summary of the conversation (which I will present for your approval before submitting).

Are you guys willing to chat? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:55, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I think this would be a great thing to do. --Kumioko (talk) 14:41, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I will put a blurb about it in the next newsletter but that won't go out until teh first couple days of September. --Kumioko (talk) 18:49, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll check back then and see if we can generate enough interest. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 11:11, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry it looks like this discussions kinda slow at the moment. Yuo might want to try US Roads, California, National Register of Historic places or Oregon. They are all pretty active projects and you might get more interest. --Kumioko (talk) 13:16, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

FYI-there is a new Category:WikiProject United States newsletters for organizing the newsletter-related pages. Also, I updated the colors on the project's navbox to match the tab header's colors. Hope you like it! --Funandtrvl (talk) 22:41, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

great thanks. --Kumioko (talk) 13:24, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Hey WikiProject United States members! I wanted to let you know that the Wikipedia Ambassador Program is working with a number of U.S. politics-related classes in the fall 2011 term, and we're looking for experienced Wikipedians with interest in the subject area to support some of these classes. If you're interested, please let me know.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:38, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

What are the qualifications required for such a position? --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 23:39, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Commonsense and a willingness to help newbies (commonsense is waiverable..:-)). You can find the guidelines here. --Kumioko (talk) 00:05, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:1st Filipino Infantry Regiment (United States)#Before FAR. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 21:48, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

The text of the following notice was written by Gerry D on my talk page. I'm reproducing here in the interest of seeking broad participation in the discussion. older ≠ wiser 13:53, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

I realize that category talk pages are not the usual place for discussions, but I think this is the best place for this discussion. It covers all of the townships in Pennsylvania. There has been much discussion lately about how township names in Pennsylvania should be titled. Some go for X Township, Pennsylvania. Others want X Township, Y County, Pennsylvania. Of course there are many Washington Townships in Pennsylvania so they and others like it will need to include the county name in the title. The townships in question are the unique ones like Horton Township and Plunketts Creek Township. I think it is best to limit this discussion to Pennsylvania. If other wikiprojects want to do it differently that is fine. The status of townships vary greatly from state to state. The original place the subject came up is Talk:Horton Township, Elk County, Pennsylvania A broader discussion of the topic is here Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names) The Category talk:Townships in Pennsylvania by county link. Gerry D (talk) 13:20, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

I would like a third party to take a look at. I have tried to edit it, but I am getting reverted by a possible WP:SPA named Mayor Smith (talk · contribs) that I feel is having some WP:COI issues.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 05:46, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

None of the major registries recognize Chihuahua as part of the Rat Terriers foundation stock. It is believed the Chihuahua been crossbred in as early as the 1980's and was done mainly to make a small easy to sale dog using the Rat Terriers good reputation. They are now part of what is being called "toy rat terrier", "tiny tot rat terriers" and "merle rat terriers" none of which are accepted by any of the major reputable registries i.e. AKC (American Kennel Club) or UKC (Uninted Kennels Club).

Rat Terriers was made mostly from working terriers. They needed them to be fast, strong and agile they also need that hunting instinct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Darlaknd (talk • contribs) 20:01, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Interesting, but is there a question in there somewhere? --Kumioko (talk) 20:10, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Mariano Laya Armington#Notability. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 15:35, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

I have nominated the article 1st Filipino Infantry Regiment (United States) for FA. The review can be found here. Comments from reviewers are needed to help determine whether the article meets the criteria for featured articles; all editors are invited to participate. Any assistance with this nomination would be greatly appretiated. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 00:38, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

• (Discuss) – America → America (disambiguation) – This move would allow the term America to redirect to United States.
• (Discuss) – Washington, D.C. metropolitan area → Washington Metropolitan AreaWashington Metropolitan Area Kauffner (talk) 05:19, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

The September 2011 issue of the WikiProject United States newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

 
--Kumioko (talk) 03:21, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Your attention is called to a requested change in name of the above article. Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 22:37, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

I really must protest the boilerplate being used to add information to U.S. communities. It is capitalizing white, which should be lower-cased, and it is giving the amount of the ocean or rivers or lakes or whatever to areas that are almost completely dry. Also it is using a percent symbol (%) in text when it should be in a word, percent. And it is substituting the governmental jargon "census-designated place" for the more normal and accepted "Unincorporated community." Now I have to go through all the articles I am watching and correct everything. I asked the operator of the bot how to protest this, but have received no reply. (I must say, though, that the boilerplate for 2010 is much better than the 2000 version.) Anyway, help, help and more help! is needed. Who decided on this boilerplate, and where is the WP:consensus? Sincerely, your pal, GeorgeLouis (talk) 02:40, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Can we get a little more info? Can you provide a link to this boilerplate thats being added or the bot thats addign it? --Kumioko (talk) 02:48, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Note that "census designated place" has actual boundaries. While it may contain "unincorporated communities" the exact population of those communities may be unknown or contained in the a higher level article on the CDP. But for the remainder of your statements, I have the same questions as Kumioko. Student7 (talk) 01:13, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I think that GeorgeLouis was concerned with edits like this one. That boilerplate is being used by one editor, not by an army. I have not seen discussion on any standardized way of adding US 2010 Census data. It's a worthwhile topic for this WikiProject to address.
I, too, am troubled when users delete all information about the unincorporated place and replace it with the census-designated place designation. CDPs are statistical entities. CDPs are supposed to correspond to places that have real local meaning, but for a variety of reasons they may not do so. Additionally, I doubt that anyone in the U.S. introduces themselves as residents of a CDP; most people are unaware of the designation. Accordingly, most articles about CDPs should describe both the place (vaguely defined as it may be) and the CDP. The only times a CDP article should be only about the CDP are (1) when the only information in the article is census data and (2) when there is solid evidence that the place name is not used locally (as is the case with Oxoboxo River, Connecticut).
I also agree that "white" should not be capitalized. --Orlady (talk) 15:15, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the example of the situation. I also agree that replacing the verbiage of unincorporated community with CDP is not the best. IMO it would have been better to say something like it is an unincorporated community and census designated place. Because you can have one without the other AFAIK, it seems appropriate we would want to tell our readers it is both. I also agree with your assessment that this is a good place to discuss it. Not only is the Census data in use on thousands of articles it affects pretty much every US related project. I know you deal a lot in NRHP's so do you have any suggestions on how me might address this? --Kumioko (talk) 15:41, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Please don't categorize me as someone who deals with NRHPs. I have far more interest in places than I have with NRHPs, but I found myself bumping into NRHP topics (including not only working on articles about them, but also contention over the relationship between places and historic districts) so often that I felt I had to join that WikiProject.
Seymour, Tennessee and Lake Tansi, Tennessee are articles that come to mind where distinctions have been made between the CDP and the place. Other interesting situations include that Oxoboxo River example (a CDP related to Montville, Connecticut and Uncasville, Connecticut) and Wakefield-Peacedale, Rhode Island (a CDP incorporating Wakefield, Rhode Island and Peace Dale, Rhode Island). I have found that there are some editors who are purists about topics like CDPs and historic districts, wanting separate articles for (1) a CDP, (2) whatever non-incorporated community is the basis for the CDP, and (3) any associated historic district. Peace Dale, Rhode Island is currently an example of an article that addresses both a village and the associated historic district (but not also the CDP, due to its different definition). Wauregan, Connecticut is an example of an article that covers all three topics. (There has been fierce edit warring over these articles, so the possibility exists that their scope could change at any time. The history of edit warring on topics like article splits/mergers, how to describe CDPs in lead sentences, etc., is a good reason to discuss the situation on this Wikiproject.) --Orlady (talk) 16:35, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Lol, fair enough. I just noticed your name a lot in NRHP articles so I guess I didn't form a distinction. So not being that familiar with the developement of location articles on WP (other than knowing that Lake Tansi, Tennessee is a rather beautiful place for a vacation and has a decent golf course) I'm still not quite sure how best to approach the topic or what the best course of action is yet. My gut instinct tells me we need to establish a standard of how to document these things that has some consensus but I'm not sure yet what that would be either. As I mentioned above I would lean towards clearly mentioning the different ways of classifying thge location (unincorporated community, CDP, etc) whenever possible. Since I also didn't participate in the previous discussions I don't know what the arguments and outcomes of those were either so if you had a couple links that would be great as well. Again, do you have any advice on what the best course of action is? --Kumioko (talk) 16:58, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to discuss this, but my internet service has become "intermittent" at best. Later. --Orlady (talk) 14:59, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

No problem, anytime. --Kumioko (talk) 22:01, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

My internet service is working again, so I'm starting a discussion. :-) --Orlady (talk) 18:54, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Now that users are adding 2010 Census data to various articles, there are numerous specific issues needing resolution on how to document the 2010 Census. Because they affect a diverse range of United States articles, this seems like the ideal place to discuss them. I'll start a couple of discussions here as subtopics of this topic, and start inviting other participants. --Orlady (talk) 18:54, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

This redirect is up for discussion. Please see WP:RFD#Wikipedia:Moon landing. Simply south...... creating lakes for 5 years 20:00, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I created a new template to display state economic data: Template:Infobox subnational economy. The idea is to eventually put this template on all the "Economy of ..." articles. So far I have the template up on Economy of Virginia. Please take a look at the template and give feedback on the template design, data fields, etc.--Bkwillwm (talk) 01:55, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I like the idea. Do you have a list of the articles yet? --Kumioko (talk) 02:35, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I added a list of all the state "Economy of..." articles that aren't redirects. Right now, 16 states have articles on their economies. The template could also potentially be used in US articles on cities (especially Metropolitan Statistical Areas) or in articles on other country's subdivisions.--Bkwillwm (talk) 03:27, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Please discuss. | ^help_dןǝɥ | 01:12, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Please discuss. | ^help_dןǝɥ | 01:12, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Jayhawker needs some attention from an expert - lots of unencyclopedic, non-NPOV comments have crept back in. - PKM (talk) 19:53, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

There is an article State governments of the United States and U.S. state that describes the general functions of all state government in an objective tone.

What is lacking is an article that describes real problems/powers/lack of power with various state governments. Right now there is no place for telling a foreign reader that each state registers vehicles, unusual for a sub-federal level government unit in most countries. No place to talk about extraditing accused citizens from another state. No place to discuss joint suits by various state attorneys general, etc.

Could be something like "Politics of State governments of the United States" except Americans get confused by the word "politics" (they think it is campaigns or elections) and, anyway, this title is a bit of a mouthful. Student7 (talk) 22:58, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Most of the topics you describe (for example, the role of state governments in matters like vehicle registration and registration of corporations, and the matter of lawsuits between states and by states against the federal government), could be incorporated into State governments of the United States. Note that these idiosyncrasies are based on the United States Constitution and result from the history of the "uniting" of separate "states", and are covered in part (or could be) in articles like Federalism in the United States and Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. --Orlady (talk) 23:34, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Some history would probably go a long way in explaining the role of the (several) states. Before the Articles of Confederation and the role the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention and the adoption of the United States Constitution the original Thirteen Colonies where actually 13 separate countries that guarded their new found freedoms jealously. Most importantly, the Constitution is mostly a set of rules placed on the federal government prohibiting the aforementioned government to partake in certain actions.

Excerpts from the Federalist Papers may prove to be of some help. Phoenician Patriot (talk) 00:45, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

PP's ideas are excellent, but a bit beyond me! I've placed the material where Orlady suggested. Thanks to both. Student7 (talk) 14:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Student7, that is not surprising. Much of the original meaning of the Constitution has been distorted over the last 70 ~ 100 years. The Constitution grants the Federal Government a total of thirty (up to 35, depending on how they’re counted) powers such as to coin monies and make war. The rest of the powers are supposed to belong to the states. However, it seems like everywhere you turn the Federal Government has their fingers in the pie.

The Tenth Amendment was suppose to be a warning to the Feds and a reminder to the states that the states the states have the final say in almost everything that happens in this country. Phoenician Patriot (talk) 05:22, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

• Post offices by established date: http://webpmt.usps.gov/pmt012.cfm
• Post offices by discontinued date: http://webpmt.usps.gov/pmt014.cfm
• Post offices by ZIP code: http://webpmt.usps.gov/pmt008.cfm

This helps with research of old post offices WhisperToMe (talk) 21:15, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Hum. All three links give errors. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:41, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Which kind of errors?

For the zip code ones, enter the first three digit of the first zip code and the first three digits of the last zip code. I.E. for 90210 enter "902" for both start and finish

WhisperToMe (talk) 04:42, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

They seem to be working now. There was an error about a bad page before. Vegaswikian (talk) 05:18, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

A user and I are in a debate over whether a select number of prisons should be listed in county templates.

To help the users of the WikiProject United States, I have assembled a series of facts to help with the understanding of the issue.

The following templates are affected:

• Template:Lincoln County, Arkansas (Cummins)
• Template:Sunflower County, Mississippi (Parchman)
• Template:West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana (Angola)

Relating to the following articles:

• Cummins Unit (Cummins) - GNIS page
• Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola) - GNIS page
• Mississippi State Pentientiary (Parchman) - GNIS page

As seen here, the US GNIS treats all three prisons as populated places and have GNIS ID designations as populated places.

Several state highway maps treat them as places too, designating points on maps of where the prison is, as if its a regular town. This is the case with Parchman, (See this page - and also see State of Mississippi Sunflower County Highway Map - Parchman is given the marker for "Other Cities and Villages") and Angola (On this map as "Cities, Towns of Villages") while in current highway maps this is not the case for Cummins ("Cummins" is not listed in the current Lincoln County, AR highway map).

These prisons have on-site housing for employees and dependents. Two of them have post offices. All of them have children (dependents of employees) who attend local schools. Several have their own sewage treatment plants. All have their own fire/EMS stations.

In Louisiana LSP is often referred to as "Angola, Louisiana" and in Mississippi MSP is often called "Parchman, Mississippi" - "Free world" people who live on those facilities say they live in "Angola, LA" and "Parchman, MS"

I argue that these prisons (only prisons with GNIS IDs as "populated places") should be treated as "populated places" and therefore listed on Wikipedia county templates because the GNIS is treating them as populated places. The other user argues that we should not do such a thing, because it is not possible for a place to be a prison and a community at the same time.

The GNIS designates a populated place as "Place or area with clustered or scattered buildings and a permanent human population (city, settlement, town, village). A populated place is usually not incorporated and by definition has no legal boundaries. However, a populated place may have a corresponding "civil" record, the legal boundaries of which may or may not coincide with the perceived populated place. Distinct from Census and Civil classes." - All three prisons are in unincorporated areas, and all three have permanent "free world" residents.

Now, the user suggested separating the "community" aspect of the prisons from the prison articles themselves (i.e. having "Parchman, MS" as a separate article). But I feel that this cannot be done unless one can write an extensive history of the place before it became a part of prison property and that the place name was used back then. As it stands now for all three the community IS a part of the prison (the housing is owned by the state, and all residents are employees or dependents of employees) - and the prison IS a part of the community.

See the talk pages:

• User_talk:WhisperToMe#Lincoln_County_template
• User_talk:Nyttend#GNIS

Thanks, WhisperToMe (talk) 02:48, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Due to the rather destructive upgrade of Wikipedia I am having an extremely hard time editing to include working on the newsletter and other project related functions. I will attempt to get the Newsleter completed and will continue to develop the project but it may be a couple weeks before the upgrade issues are worked out so its possible there may not be a newsletter for October. I will post back here with any updates. --Kumioko (talk) 15:00, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi! I would like to propose that WP US should establish a Memphis, Tennessee area task force.

It would cover the Memphis MSA, which would include territory in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Because the territory would be in multiple states, I propose making a Memphis task force the child of the USA project. Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 09:35, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

WP:NRHP is having a Fall Photo Contest running from Oct. 21-Dec. 4, 2011. I'd like to encourage anybody who enjoys photography, and anybody who is interested in historic places to participate. One way that an individual editor or a project can participate is to include their own challenge. For example, somebody here might want to include a challenge such as "A barnstar will be awarded to the photographer who adds the most photos of NRHP listed Post Offices to the NRHP county lists." To sponsor a challenge all you need to do is come up with an idea, post it on the contest page, and do the bit of work needed to judge the winner(s).

Any and all contributions appreciated.

Smallbones (talk) 02:35, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Your input is sought at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Kiefer.Wolfowitz --Elen of the Roads (talk) 21:31, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

• Benderly, Beryl Lieff. "The Real Science Gap." Miller-McCune.

This article argues that American science education is not causing lesser numbers of Americans to appear in university research positions, but instead the way the science job market is structured. WhisperToMe (talk) 14:24, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

A collaboration is being organized to promote this article to GA. Interested editors should join the discussion here. – Lionel ^(talk) 02:35, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

{{U.S. Senator row}} , {{Start U.S. Senator}} , {{End U.S. Senator}} , have been nominated for deletion. These are currently unused, however, it appears that lists of US senators by state table articles use plain wikitable code instead of templatized rows. So, is it preferable to use a template or plain wikicode? 70.24.251.158 (talk) 05:12, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:John Quincy Adams#WP tags. There are duplicate WP tags for the "Presidential elections" WikiProject, need input about which importance level should be assessed. Funandtrvl (talk) 17:51, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone know if there is work happening to 'bot' fix every US populated place article (state, county, city, town, township, village, etc, etc) with 2010 census info instead of the current 2000 census info that is present? Is this being discussed somewhere? Is there is techie to do this? Hmains (talk) 18:52, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

There is a Request for comment at Talk:First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Request_for_comment. Please do; constructive suggestions particularly welcome. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:02, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I recently created the 99 Percent Declaration article, and now it's been nominated for deletion and rescue. I have lots of possible sources on the talk page, but I would feel more comfortable if there were other editors. Would you please help improve it? Or at least chime in on the deletion discussion or respond to the questions on the talk page? Thank you. Dualus (talk) 19:34, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Orion (spacecraft). Since you had some involvement with the Orion (spacecraft) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). 65.94.77.11 (talk) 11:05, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I've just come across The Iran lobby in the United States, an orphaned article which looks potentially quite problematic - I don't know much about the topic, but it reads fairly one-sided, and may not be appropriate for a Wikipedia article. (Apart from anything else, a contribution by a user called "Minitrue Propdep" is faintly alarming). Could someone with expertise take a look? If need be, it may need deleting, or partially merging into Iran – United States relations.

Thanks, Shimgray | talk | 10:30, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Can someone with knowledge of Los Angeles, merge the two duplicate articles together, Los Angeles Fifth District and Los Angeles City Council District 5 ? I don't know enough about LA to know what parts of Los Angeles Fifth District should just be ignored, or if a simple conversion to a redirect should be done. 65.94.77.11 (talk) 04:46, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I will do it. GeorgeLouis (talk) 04:49, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Hello, project. Could someone please check if this assessment is valid? Many thanks,  Chzz  ►  20:13, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

We need a broader spectrum of opinion at Talk:Native_Americans_in_the_United_States#Strychnine with concurrent edits in the article. Thanks. Student7 (talk) 14:25, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I have nominated Rosa Parks for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Brad (talk) 03:36, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Due in large part to some of the new Wikipedia upgrades (it takes several minutes to load my Watchlist) and a very large increase of things in my real life I am not going to be able to participate as much as I used too. I have also grown a bit tired of the bickering and general attitude that many editors are displaying that they would rather do things individually than to collaborate and work together. All of these just make it too hard for me to edit and do the things that I think need to be done to help the project.

With that said if the members of the project want to continue to have a working project with a collaboration and newsletter then some folks need to come forward and make that happen. I just don't have the time to wait 5 minutes for WP to load a page and then have to fight about everything. If anyone has questions or needs assistance I would be glad to help out but until WP can fix the screwy new updates there's not much I can do. --Kumioko (talk) 15:35, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi! I found a source that discusses Hispanic assimilation in the USA and drinking while being pregnant. It says that as assimilation increases, drinking while being pregnant increases:

• Stoeltje, Melissa Fletcher. "Study links Latino assimilation, drinking while pregnant." Houston Chronicle. Sunday November 13, 2011.

Hope it helps WhisperToMe (talk) 13:18, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I have nominated Sunset Boulevard (film) for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Brad (talk) 05:56, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Check this out: Time lapse 12,225 mile journey around US in 5 minutes by Brian DeFrees FYI.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 19:27, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Southside Composite Squadron if anybody is interested in taking a look. Safiel (talk) 04:56, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

{{United States political party shading}} has very low contrast between text and background colours; technically, it fails WCAG AA luminosity tests, and thus breaches the relevant section of our manual of style. See discussion at Template talk:United States political party shading#Accessibility. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:11, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Ill be honest with you, I don't really like it either. Any ideas for how to improve it? Please bare in mind that changing this template will have a direct impact to a lot of articles because the colors used here are also used on a lot (and I mean tens of thousands) of articles. --Kumioko (talk) 14:37, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

This United States Virgin Islands work group of WikiProject Caribbean isn't very active anymore. It has only one member. I would suggest a to add this work group to the supported project here. I have begin a discussion at the work group's talk page for any comments. JJ98 (Talk / Contributions) 07:30, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Thats fine with me, lets leave a message on the projects talk page for a few days and see if anyone comments. --Kumioko (talk) 14:21, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean as a joint TF between WPCarib and WPUSA ? (dual banner flagging) 70.24.248.23 (talk) 05:38, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Thats fine by me as long as WPCarib is ok with it. --Kumioko (talk) 06:07, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I've dumped a notice to WPCarib. 70.24.248.23 (talk) 13:00, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

An editor has been removing the links to month-and-day articles, claiming that WP:LINKING (and specifically WP:LINKING#Chronological items) prohibits it. I say it clearly does not prohibit it, as this is an intrinsically chronological article. However, if the project doesn't want the links, you can say that you don't want them, and I won't object further. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:32, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

See the (misplaced) discussion at Wikipedia talk:Recent years#Date linkage in subpages. (I say, misplaced, because it should be at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Years.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:34, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

since i am the major editor of 2011 in the United States, with some 90%+ of the good faith edits associated with that page, i say days should continue to be linked--70.162.171.210 (talk) 22:55, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Good day. Two years ago, some users tried to merge all infoboxes of sub-federal states into {{Infobox settlement}}. Consensus ruled that doing so would not be a good idea because the sub-federal infoboxes purposefully do not include some of the features of {{Infobox settlement}} and do include other fields, such as the number of seats in the federal legislature and the date of joining the union. In those respects, the three infoboxes {{Infobox U.S. state}}, {{Infobox province or territory of Canada}}, and {{Australia state or territory}} are very similar to eachother, but they put fields in a slightly different order and look slightly different. In the interest of standardization, would you be interested in jointly creating {{Infobox federated state}} to make sure that the infoboxes for states, provinces, and territories of the U.S., Canada, and Australia all keep a common design? I think that the differences that currently exist between the three templates are small enough that we could come to an agreement about how to resolve them. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 19:45, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Seems fairly reasonable. They'd be easy enough to merge, the Canadian and Australian ones especially given that the form of government is the same. But any parameters that aren't relevant can be left blank or omitted from the markup entirely. I would suggest separate sets of markup in the documentation for each, so that parameters only relevant to one federation aren't copied to articles for another. But this probably isn't important—how often is a new state created? The transclusion counts are obvious enough: 8 for Australia, 13 for Canada, and 52 for the U.S. (the extras are Absaroka (state) and Jefferson (Pacific state)). Nightw 01:11, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I had to do the math in response to your question about how often states are created. The U.S. added 37 states in 235 years, Canada added 9 states in 144 years, and Australia added 2 states in 110 years. Put together, they will add a new state every 4.2 years. That's far more often than I would have guessed. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:20, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

I'd just like to point out that the three countries you've picked out are former British subjects, who all went along a similar line in forming government as they were a collection of semi independent colonies before statehood. But, there are many other federations that federated or confederated for similar reasons (protecting regional sovereignty), see Federal government, and that a unified state infobox should be robust enough to encompass all federal states, and this may pose a problem as different states have different structures and hence require different infoboxes. I'm not trying to poo-poo the idea, but pointing out that states are much wider used than in the English speaking former British empire, and the concept of a unified infobox should be wider than simply three Anglo nations, if it isn't I would oppose the idea, and continue allowing individual projects to determine how their infoboxes should look and what info they should contain. Liamdavies (talk) 07:00, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

How about the userbox be limited to countries generally defined as federal ones. Mexican states, for example, are similar to US ones. Hot Stop talk-contribs 07:14, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

If you look at the page I mentioned (Federal government) there are many federations/confederations with states/territories/provinces/regions/divisions/subjects/cantons; States and territories of Australia, States of Austria, Provinces of Argentina, Provinces of Belgium, States of Brazil, Provinces and territories of Canada, Regions of Ethiopia, States of Germany, States and territories of India, States and federal territories of Malaysia, Political divisions of Mexico, States of Nigeria, Administrative divisions of Portugal, Federal subjects of Russia, Cantons of Switzerland, U.S. state and States of Venezuela. All of these are countries defined as federated, and as such a "federated state infobox" should cover all of these states (and others that aren't listed at Federal government, if any), short of this I would find the proposal incomplete and oppose it. Liamdavies (talk) 13:53, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

May I suggest that we do it similar to how Infobox person is done with smaller module Infobox's that can be embedded in it. We could use one template that has the majority of the parameters and then we could use the others for anything that doesn't fit in the main one if needed. Also, looking at Category:Country subdivision infobox templates this is a much bigger issue than just the 2 or 3 infoboxes listed above. --Kumioko (talk) 14:27, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I would be okay with that. It wouldn't help reduce the number of templates, but it would ensure that fields were in the same order across countries and that the boxes all had a similar look and feel. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:20, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

It is going to require some coding changes to the templates and some of these templates are fairly complicated. I would recommend we approach this in three parts. I also think that we need to involve some of the other major WikiProjects that deal with these infoboxes such as Australia, History, USHistory and others.

1. First we should identify the templates involved (or at least the main ones we want to start with)
2. Next we should clean up those templates first. For example, Infobox settlement has several fields that I think are unnecesary and we should consider removing them. Parameters like Field size, field link and field alt (for alt text) could be eliminated by simply coding it as we do with the person infoboxes rather than breaking them into separate parameters. This would require adding code to allow infoboxes to be embedded modularly and to eliminate redundant fields from the subordinated infoboxes.
3. We would need to replace the infoboxes on the articles themselves, this could be done via a bot. --Kumioko (talk) 22:43, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

I just realized that if we are going to make the templates for each country's states feed off of a more general template, they may as well feed off of Infobox settlement. Doing that would standardize the order of the fields while still allowing each country to disable whichever of Infobox settlement's fields they don't want to use. By doing it that way, we also wouldn't have to replace the templates used on articles; we could just make the parameter names used now point to the corresponding parameter on infobox settlement. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 00:25, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Okay, at {{Infobox province or territory of Canada/sandbox}} I've tested a version of {{Infobox province or territory of Canada}} that calls {{Infobox settlement}} as a base. I've tested it at {{Infobox province or territory of Canada/testcases}} without changing anything from the original article Ontario (except fixing references). It works pretty well, except infobox settlement needs to add a section for representation in the federal government. If they make that change, then using Infobox settlement as the base for our own templates might be a better way to standardize all of the infoboxes for federated states. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 07:46, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Does that mean it'd also have to add a section for U.S. senate seats, etc? Nightw 08:08, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I think thats a perfect example of an Infobox that could/should be embedded. --Kumioko (talk) 20:58, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

To cover all of our bases, I think the section for representation in higher governments should have four parameters: representation in country upper house, representation in country lower house, representation in state upper house, representation in state lower house (a U.S. state or Canadian province would only need the first two). For each of those sections, you could name the body (e.g., Senate and House of Representatives), and you could choose between giving the number of seats, naming the seat, or listing the names of the current seatholders. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 09:01, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Makes sense to me as well. I think we would do well to group the parameters into like groups rather than one long continuous list of fields that may or may not be relevant to an article. --Kumioko (talk) 20:58, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Arctic Gnome, the mock up looks pretty good, but misses a fair few details and shows "Proportion of Canada" wrong (sorry to be picky). I've also found a much better list to work of to implement this new info box; Federated state it lists all states/territory etc etc so gives a pretty good idea of the scope of this project, and how robust the info box needs to be. I'm not to sure how this box should relate to some of the more odd territories Australia has, such as Norfolk Island which although a territory, has self government and has very little to do with Australia (although that is slowly changing), I guess it's kinda like our (Australia's) Puerto Rico. I was also wondering if this idea should be posted at Wikipedia:WikiProject Politics to get more input? Liamdavies (talk) 13:20, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Hold on. Unless I've missed one, all other federated state articles currently use {{Infobox settlement}} anyway, so the creation of supplementary templates for those is another matter. All that Arctic is proposing here is standardising the templates we already have, and integrating them into Infobox settlement. And dependent territories like PR and Norfolk should be using {{Infobox country}}. Nightw 14:01, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Most do use "Infobox settlement", but not all, a quick look though some of the states listed in Federated state and I've found "Infobox province" ( Argentina), "Australia state or territory" (Australia), "Infobox state" (Brazil, India, Nigeria and Sudan), "Infobox Province or territory of Canada" (Canada), "Infobox German state" (Germany), "Infobox Indian jurisdiction" (India, Union Territory), "Infobox division" (Nepal), "Infobox Russian federal subject" and "Infobox Russian federal subject2" (Russia), "Infobox Canton" (Switzerland), "Infobox U.S. state" (U.S.A.) and "Infobox Venezuelan state" (Venezuela). Liamdavies (talk) 15:30, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I've linked the extra ones that aren't redirects to settlement. The Indian is scheduled for deletion after it's merged into settlement, see TFD here. Nightw 01:42, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

The redirects Next great american city and The next great american city, which currently point to West Palm Beach, Florida, have been nominated for deletion or retargetting, possibly to Philadelphia. Your comments are welcome at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2011 December 1#Next great american city. Thryduulf (talk) 01:45, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I found a source, but I'm not sure if we have an article about British cultural perspectives of the USA...

• Gosling, Nigel. "An American Journey." The Boston Globe. November 26, 1967. A6.

WhisperToMe (talk) 03:41, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

The December 2011 issue of the WikiProject United States newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

 
--Kumioko (talk) 01:49, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

It has come to my attention that article United States Constitution, which formerly held a place of honor, has slipped badly this year and last, having become bloated with WP:FORKs of History of the United States Constitution and Philadelphia Convention and perhaps a few others. I would appreciate some help in distinguishing the parts that should move from those that should die. Jim.henderson (talk) 03:24, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion taking place at WT:HWY regarding the potential use of coordinates in highway articles. Your input is welcomed. --Rschen7754 01:42, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I've seen many articles that I'm involved with getting the WikiProject United States banner. Some were a bit of a reach (e.g. Calvin Rutstrum) a US author who wrote more about travels in Canada than the USA.) Also appears that any article that is about anyone who is an American is within the scope of these tags. I have no problem with any specific tags, but with this much of a reach / broad definition, it looks like you'll end up tagging maybe a 1/2 million articles as being in the project. Is that viable / do you really want that? Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:09, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

If you find it is a "stretch" then I would discuss it on the project page. I have not looked to see the overall goal but 1/2 million would be a "stretch". I am sure that there will be inadvertent inclusions and adjustments required. Otr500 (talk) 16:40, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I thought that this was the main discussion page. I really have no objection, it was just advice. My "1/2 million articles" was just a guess to bring out the potential issue of an unmanageably large amount of articles. North8000 (talk) 17:04, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

If the article was tagged with the WPUS banner its because it already falls into the scope of one or more of the projects that are being supported by WikiProject United States. In this case it was WikiProject Indiana. Although there are currently a number of US related projects being supported there are an equal number that are not (such as Oregon, New York, Texas, California and a lot of others). Additionally, although these articles and projects are "supported" by WikiProject United States these articles are also supported by the individual subject WikiProjects and although WikiProject United States is at the core of those the success of the overall project is dependant on these subject US Subject specific projects. So although the project may be large in the sense of number of pieces of content the specific projects will still maintain a critical role in the article improvement/management process. Additionally, many functions are being automated and streamlined to minimize the amount of time it takes to maintain them. I hope this helps to clarify. --Kumioko (talk) 17:31, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

the U/S for Political Affairs is no longer WIlliam Burns. It is now Wendy Sherman. Please update! 72.229.9.252 (talk) 15:20, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

If you have a reliable source, go ahead and Be Bold! and add it to the page. Achowat (talk) 15:48, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I went ahead and updated both her article as well as the Undersecretary article. I also added a couple redirects to her article and and added some things to it including an image. Both of the articles still need loads of work though.--Kumioko (talk) 17:49, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Template:WeatherRecordsByState

I have nominated Federalist No. 10 for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Brad (talk) 02:34, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Please see User:The ed17/NARA to brainstorm ideas and a structure on how we can help make the National Archives ExtravaSCANza a success, in the hope that such events will continue in the future. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 10:26, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I noticed today that User:Rreagan007 again removed the word "Commonwealth" from the bold titles, that's the first words of an article, from the pages about Virginia and Massachusetts. The user previously removed this from the title on those pages, as well as the other two commonwealths, Kentucky and Pennsylvania earlier this month on December 3, all with the edit summary of "formatting". This isn't the first time this has come up, and I'd like some feedback as to which way we should go with these articles' titles. One can note that commonwealth is the proper name of these places, but also that Wikipedia doesn't always go with the proper name. The policy at WP:BEGINNING does give editors ample leeway when it comes to these things, and the pages could also start "The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a..." with only the exact title bolded. Thoughts?-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 22:04, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Leave them as they are, with their proper names intact. We've been through this before. - Denimadept (talk) 22:25, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Okay here's my issue with this. I'm a big believer in consistency across articles. All states have a short form name and a long form name. The long form name of states is either "State of ______" or "Commonwealth of ______". If the 4 "commonwealths" start off their article with the long form, I believe all the other states should as well. Personally, I think it's enough just to have the long form name in the infobox and use the short form name as the bolded name in the lead. Rreagan007 (talk) 22:32, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

The "commonwealth" states are exceptions to the rule. Just leave them alone. Infoboxes are supposed to contain information contained elsewhere in the article, as a rule. - Denimadept (talk) 05:34, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Why are they exceptions? If you're going to start out the Virginia article "The Commonwealth of Virginia" then you should start out the West Virginia article "The State of West Virginia". Rreagan007 (talk) 16:24, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

They're exceptions because they're 4 out of 50. For why they're commonwealths, you'll have to find out what the difference is between a "state" and a "commonwealth", then ask them why they did that. I've never been interested enough to look it up. - Denimadept (talk) 19:43, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't see why there should be an exemption, just because they categories their governments as Commonwealths. More importantly what does MOS say regarding this? --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 19:52, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

How is bolding the full title any different than bolding United States of America when the article is only under "United States"? Hot Stop ^UTC 19:57, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

The MOS isn't as clear as it could be. (From WP:BEGINNING) "When the page title is used as the subject of the first sentence, it may appear in a slightly different form, and it may include variations, including synonyms." Not particularly clear. -Achowat (talk) 20:27, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Right, there's isn't a Wiki-wide policy on this, so I was hoping to get some sort of WikiProject decision we can point to if this comes up again. There are certainly ample examples like "United States of America" where the bold title is in a fuller or more formal style than in the page title. Lots of articles on countries do this, like Mexico starting as "The United States of Mexico" or at least including the full title in the first sentence with a phrase like "official the Federative Republic of Brazil...". I don't think either option is totally wrong, just that if we do it for one Commonwealth (U.S. state), we should do it for all four. Having watched this on Virginia for a few years, I'd say that editors there tend to put the word back when it gets removed, and no one raised hackles about it when the article was on WP:FAC or even WP:TFA.-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 21:26, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

I think you may be missing my main point. If the 4 "commonwealth" articles start out "The Commonwealth of Virginia is..." then the 46 "state" articles should start out "The State of Maine is ...". Rreagan007 (talk) 21:43, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

No, not necessarily. Take Costa Rica, it doesn't start out "The Country of Costa Rica" just cause others have a formal name and it doesn't. I understand the desire for constancy across a topic, but geography articles with a formal name that's still in use do tend to note it up front.-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 22:00, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)That is something I can agree to, that the formal name of the state be in bold and that it is done for all states, commonwealths, territories, and U.S. possessions. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 22:05, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Okay good. Now we're getting somewhere. So we'll start all state articles either "The State of X" or "The Commonwealth of X" depending on whether the state legislature has designated the state as a state or a commonwealth. Rreagan007 (talk) 22:15, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. The use of the word "commonwealth" is, per the "commonwealth" article cited above, often interchangeable with "state". It's just that four of our fifty states style it as part of their name. It's a proper noun issue. I can say my name is Ikjowejfoi3j209ucjakjlj@@@@ and pronounce it "Smith". Massachusetts, Kentucky, Virginia, and Pennsylvania decided to do this. I don't see what the big deal is, or why we need to change anything. It's not a consistency issue, excepting perhaps that we've already got it and now someone wants to mess with it. - Denimadept (talk) 23:51, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

"State of" is just as much a part of states names as "Commonwealth of" is. If we include one, we should include the other. Rreagan007 (talk) 00:41, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Repeating the same thing over and over doesn't support your statement. Why should we change this? - Denimadept (talk) 00:43, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Because it's logically inconsistent. Rreagan007 (talk) 00:51, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

You've said THAT before too, and we've continued the argument. Try something else. - Denimadept (talk) 18:21, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

As a person who lives and grew up in Virginia, we were taught in school the the full state name of Virginia is called the Commonwealth of Viginia. It is also written that way in Virginia's Constitution from our state's founding fathers. Neovu79 (talk) 02:16, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Most all state constitutions I have looked at use "State of X" as the name of the state, so the official long form state name for these states is "State of X" just like "Commonwealth of Virginia" is the long form name of Virginia. Rreagan007 (talk) 02:39, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Commonwealth (U.S. state) does not suggest that the terms are interchangeable when used formally, as the official name of the government or territory. The gallery at Seals of the U.S. states shows that almost every seal uses the language "State of Foo," except for three of the commonwealths and just plain "Alabama." Pennsylvania's actually says "State of Pennsylvania," while Kentucky, Massachussetts, and Virgina are in latin. The California Constitution uses "State of California" as the formal name or style of the state. It also seems that the other states do the same, as does Wikipedia in articles such as State constitution (United States). I agree that the 50 state articles should have a common style for their leads, and that they should either all start out with "The State of Foo is a state ..." or "The Commonwealth of Foo is a state...". "State" could instead be "U.S. state," as it is in the Virginia article. Virginia is one of only two states with FA articles. The other, Oklahoma, starts out "Oklahoma is a state located in ...". The current version of the Virginia article introduces "Commonwealth" as the short form for the state in the lead without explaining it--that certainly needs to change. Somewhere in each article we should have a sentence or two with links to explain the (lack of a) difference, as in Kentucky's lead: "Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth (the others being Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts)." Pennsylvania links to Commonwealth (U.S. state), but includes no discussion to explain its repeated use in the article.--Hjal (talk) 02:27, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm trying to stay neutral in this discussion, but I'm not sure that's really the case that other states would really call themselves "State of Maine" in the same way that Pennsylvania uses "Commonwealth of Pennsylvania". The commonwealths do tend to note their designation when they can, with things like the "Commonwealth's Attorney". Further I do worry that the desire for conformity amongst the topic is a goal that may not be possible or necessary. So while I think its fine to both include or not include "commonwealth", or to add a phrase like "Kentucky, officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky...", I would find it wrong to change the other 46 to "State of X". A change like that would be reverted from those states in short shrift anyways.-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 05:01, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

States will use "State of XYZ" as their name in very formal instances, the same way the 'commonwealths' use "Commonwealth of ABC" in very formal instances. 99 times out of 100 Virginia is just referred to as Virginia rather than the Commonwealth of Virginia the same way 99 times out of 100 Georgia is just referred to as Georgia rather than the State of Georgia. Rreagan007 (talk) 16:39, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Ok, like Neovu79, that's hasn't exactly been my experience in Virginia. But, back to the topic of the opening sentence, did you have an serious suggestion or compromise?-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 18:02, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, I would probably be okay with something like "Virginia (formally referred to as the Commonwealth of Virginia) is a U.S. state...". This would be acceptable in order to emphasize that the formal version of the state's name does not follow the usual "State of XYZ" format. Rreagan007 (talk) 19:31, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I would prefer the other way around, as in the "Commonwealth of Virginia, or commonly refered to as Virginia". Neovu79 (talk) 00:25, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

(undent) As the title of the article is "Virginia" I think "Virgina" should be first. Also, it would help maintain format consistency with the other state articles as they all begin with the common name rather than the more formal "State of..." title. In addition, now that all the state articles have the pronunciation parenthetical right after the bolded state name, I think it makes more sense to keep the short form name with the pronunciation parenthetical after it as close to the beginning of the article as possible. Rreagan007 (talk) 00:46, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

If its between which format to list first, I just looked at more articles on countries, particularly at the FAs and GAs, and see that the large majority of them did deal the issue of formal names by putting the short name first, like "Country, officially the Republic of Country...". I've actually only found a handful that start with the formal name, though it does include ones like United States, Mexico, France, and South Africa, but even Australia starts "Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia". So that's certainly a format I think many readers would be used to.-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 04:04, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

That doesn't appear to be a bad format, IMHO. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 19:43, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

I would like The Great Lakes Region to become a proper noun.

Uncapitalized, common regions can be created by anyone. Anyone can call anything a region.

Regions become proper in four ways: (1) formal political designation, the way the US Census has designated national "Regions" for both census and federal administrative purposes; (2) by becoming judicatories -- geographic designates -- of official bodies that include "regions" as one of their geographic divisions, such as "The Great Lakes Region" of the United Auto Workers; (3) by common usage, such as "The Midwest", which is commonly thought to include the American states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa; although no formal designation of the region by the federal government has ever been made following those boundaries.

I argue that The Great Lakes fulfills all three of these nominations.

The Great Lakes Commission implements the Great Lakes Compact for conserving and improving the water and ecology of the Great Lakes; and designates the region.

A number of athletic, corporate, labor, cooperative, industrial, and fraternal organizations include bi-national designations of Ontario and one, two or more American states within the Region.

And a number of scholars, managers and institutions have already so designated, notably Richard White's classic "The Middle Ground: Empires, Republics and Indians in The Great Lakes Region 1620-1815"; the standard aquacultural management manual about safe practices in The Great Lakes Region; and the Joyce Foundation's grant program for The Great Lakes Region.

Anybody agree? — Preceding unsigned comment added by GreatLakesdemocracy (talk • contribs) 06:14, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't have strong feelings either way on the question but your username suggests that you do. You must be careful that you don't have a conflict of interest in pushing perspectives like this. I note that your previous edits seem to be exclusively about this "region". Nothing wrong with that in itself. You're obviously well-informed on such matters. But it's good if you can keep personal feelings out of your editing here. HiLo48 (talk) 06:31, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I am inclined to disagree. The Great Lakes region is proper by capitalizing "Great Lakes", and by convention, region is more properly not capitalized. The seven regions of the United States, which the Great Lakes is not one, do not customarily capitalize region when similarly pared. IMO; By the way, I agree that your user name indicates you may be advocating a conflicted position. My76Strat (talk) 06:40, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

The only questions I have are 1.) Is there a source for the spelling change? 2.) Does this alteration make it easier or harder for the reader to understand the ideas presented? Achowat (talk) 13:42, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

The physiogeographic region of the Great Lakes (its catchment basin) is binational, so attention should be paid not just to American issues of naming it, but Canadian ones as well. 76.65.128.132 (talk) 13:31, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Several USN and CS Navy ship images have been placed for deletion as providing no source. The description pages show a claim of US government ownership of the images. See Wikipedia:Files for deletion/2012 January 3 -- 76.65.128.132 (talk) 07:53, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

This is a useful page for me. But the list of medical schools could easily be made more valuable by including a fixed column of line numbers so that the rank of a school according to any sorting would be immediately evident. I imagine this is easy to do although I would have to learn stuff to do it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.84.135.90 (talk) 05:05, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

This statement was copied from the talk page of United States Virgin Islands. Ive seen variations of this at other articles. Is there a specific place where "standards" are discussed or listed? or is this just meant to be a general pointer to this project? i removed the word "standards" from the sentence there, until i can get clarification. If replied to here, please drop a note at my talk page in addition. thanks.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 06:38, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

I found the U.S. Census Factfinder - It says it is ending on January 20, 2012. Please use http://webcitation.org to back up any and all citations from the 2000 U.S. Census Factfinder!

For example

• http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/MapItDrawServlet?geo_id=16000US2445525&_bucket_id=49&tree_id=339&context=saff&_lang=en&_sse=on
• Backed up: http://www.webcitation.org/64W1gPnqH

WhisperToMe (talk) 14:27, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

There's FactFinder2 and 2010 Census Data to replace FactFinder1 and 2000 Census Data. Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 14:31, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

But one issue is that I haven't found maps in PDF format - Meaning its harder to have something tangible cited. The new Map format is a "search" application.

Also municipal and CDP boundaries can and did change between the 2000 and 2010 censuses

WhisperToMe (talk) 14:38, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Since the reference maps are works of the U.S. government, they're public domain and can be uploaded to Commons if need be, so we can back up the ones that aren't used as references too. The biggest issue I see is what to do about all of the pages that cite the old Factfinder through Template:Geographic reference. It would take quite the effort to update all of the Census data on these pages in 12 days, especially when most of it has been unchanged in the year since the 2010 Census was released. It's also going to be hard to tell which pages are linking to it since there are seven other sources which can be linked to with that template, and most pages linking to the old Factfinder will also have links to another one of the sources. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 23:26, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Assistance is requested as a new editor is violating an MOS and is not responding to requests to talk. The new editor is also violating WP:NOTPROMOTION through attempts to edit as Filipino Americans & List of Filipino Americans in a way to enhance an individual's notability. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 00:26, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Filipino American#Spinout proposal. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 01:16, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

List of locations in the United States with an English name is a mess. There's no inclusion/exclusion criteria, and we end up with any place with an English-sounding name. For instance, Lincoln, Alabama is in the list, but that town was actually named for American army officer Benjamin Lincoln. The list of inaccuracies goes on and on.

How can we make this list actually useful? Require a reference for every entry? --JaGa^talk 19:54, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

To be honest I don't think we need that list at all. Its too long to be of any use, it will probably never be complete and if it was it would be prohibitively long and other than the name, that may or may not even be english, it doesn't have any meaningful data. Aside from that it will be nearly impossible to cite or prove them. Just my opinion though. --Kumioko (talk) 22:03, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Kumioko.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:51, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree w/ Kumioko as well, and think he summed it up perfectly.--JayJasper (talk) 05:34, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I've nominated at AfD. Thanks for the input! --JaGa^talk 00:01, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Hello, I wanted to drop a note here to let people involved in this project know about an open FA nomination for William S. Clark. His article is not currently part of WikiProject United States, but it probably should be. Clark was an American educator who helped establish Sapporo Agricultural College which became Hokkaido University and was a significant figure in East/West relations of that era. I hope that some folks from this project might be inclined to comment. The nomination can be found here. Thanks. Historical Perspective (talk) 14:26, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification. I tagged the article for the project. --Kumioko (talk) 14:50, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! Historical Perspective (talk) 19:22, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

This has led to a lot of articles, particularly Mississippi-, Kentucky- and Utah-related ones, being assessed as Top-priority that should probably only be Mid or Low here, as we generally agreed that broad umbrella topics or very important biographies or whatnot. This isn't the case right now; according to categorization, Egg Bowl is top importance here. I've started cleaning some of these up, but I'd appreciate some help Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 19:03, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Your absolutely right. Some of these inherited the importance from the other project and need to be cleaned up. Being top importance for Utah for example does not automatically make them top importance for the US project. --Kumioko (talk) 19:42, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

New template for Inline tags (tags added at the end of sentences) has been created that may be useful to project members.Moxy (talk) 22:42, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
{{Inline tags}}

I created the Biosecurity in the United States as a split from the biosecurity article. It needs work. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 07:30, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Hello, WikiProject United States/Archive 7! The Star-Spangled Banner has been selected as the United States Wikipedians' Collaboration of the Month article for January 2012 and we are looking for editors to help improve the article. You were identified as an editor or WikiProject with an interest in the article and we thought you might be interested in helping out. Thanks!!!

--Kumioko (talk) 20:11, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I have nominated Katie Holmes for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Brad (talk) 17:18, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Hello editors interested in Abraham Lincoln. I just created a proposal for a new WikiProject with a focus on Lincoln, similar to the WikiProject that exists for Barack Obama. Please feel free to comment on my proposal at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Abraham Lincoln‎. – Muboshgu (talk) 22:38, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Would you be open to creating more? Specifically, I think that Teddy Roosevelt should have one, considering his widespread impact on America and the world. 70.24.249.190 (talk) 00:52, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

This is really interesting — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.219.47.42 (talk) 03:49, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Are you referring to the Abe Lincoln project or some as of yet undescribed interestingness? --Kumioko (talk) 04:01, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

I would appreciate it if interested parties would have a look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Texas, specifically about the Redesign of the project's main page, and about it joining WikiProject United States. For all intents and purposes, this project has reached a comatose state of involvement. Editors are creating and contributing to Texas articles. But the project site itself has been pretty dead on its own for a long time. Anything anyone add to the current discussions on that page would be appreciated. Maile66 (talk) 21:07, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Is there somewhere on Internet some data about all US states by race and/or religion? --84.245.231.134 (talk) 17:13, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

The Census Bureau doesn't release that sort of information for, like, decades IIRC. Achowat (talk) 17:15, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

See Demographics of the United States#Breakdown by state.--JayJasper (talk) 17:20, 26 January 2012 (UTC)