Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States/Archive 7

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New Monthly newsletter for February

I am working on the new monthly newsletter that I hope to get out by the end of the week. As a warning I still have a lot to do IMO so try not to be too critical but specific wording. Any comments would be greatly appreciated. There are a couple of specific areas I would like comments on if possible.

1. When I send it out should I drop the actual newsletter or just a blurb with a link to it? For the first iteration I was thinking of dropping the whole thing so everyone can see it and know that it exists but then only if the users want it. Otherwise it would just be a statement with a link to the newsletter.
2. Does anyone else have anything that they would like to see added to it?
3. This is a very very important one. Since very few US related projects do a newsletter, should this be for only WikiProject United States or should we allow other projects to contribute to it as well? This would only be if they wanted it and only if they request it. This would not be an indication that they fall under WPUS or that WPUS controls them. It would simply be a collaborative effort shared between them as is the Portal, noticeboard and collaboration are. Since the Newsletter will frequently have updates to the Portal, the Noticeboard, the Collaboration of the Month, and other US centric areas of interest, all of which are open to all projects and not just members of WPUS, and because there are only a couple of US related projects that actively do a newsletter, I though this might be something some may want as well.

Please let me know if you have any ideas, questions, comments or concerns. --Kumioko (talk) 20:51, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

We have achieved consensus on the mission statement. Perhaps we should actually include the new language in the newsletter or even incorporate it as a permanent part of the newsletter.

I think that probably a brief blurb would be the best approach. It could have a link to the entire newsletter as well as brief descriptions of each section and a direct link to each section. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 15:55, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok so I think the newsletter looks pretty good for the first edition. There might need to be some minor tweaks and wording changes but I think mostly its done. If anyone wants to take a look and see if I missed anything before I release it or if anyone has any comments now is the time. Once all the comments are addressed and problems corrected I will release it sometime Friday or Saturday. Again here is the link to it: February 2011 Newsletter. --Kumioko (talk) 04:42, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Checked out the newsletter. Good job! Looks professional.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:56, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I only have a general comment (not necessarily to the newsletter but to the whole project) and it's the beauty of simplicity. That is, part of the overall benefit of this project to me is to help me focus on important stuff. So, for me, less is more. Too much extraneous information makes it harder for me to target the good stuff. Too many pages, noticeboards, talk boards, etc makes it hard to focus on what's important, and makes it harder to monitor things. Ideally I'd like one or two pages at most for the entire project but I realize this might be too difficult, but any efforts towards making things simpler -- well I will appreciate it.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:56, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks and I think I understand and I am open to any suggestions you might have for elimination (it sounds like you have a couple in mind) but I don't readily see much we can or should drop with regards to this project unless you are talking about just the multitudes of US topics in general. I tend to agree with the minimalist mentallity myself and have tried to use it as much as possible with the project but organizing a project is going to require. I totally understand targetting the information you want, the problem we run into is that there are 184 members who also have targetted areas of interest as well. --Kumioko (talk) 15:54, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Hey Kumioko, I appreciate the great work you've done to restore the project. I really do!!! Good job! I realize it's hard work and there are numerous agendas in play. (My comment was only meant as a kind of guide for a general direction for the future, that is, if possible, make things simpler). But overall, you've done a SUPER JOB!!!--Tomwsulcer (talk) 17:01, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks a lot I really appreciate it and I really didn't mean to sound defensive if that was the impression. I just reread it and it kinda sounds like it so I wanted to clarify. I am completely open to making things simpler if you have any suggestions. I know there are still a few areas that could be automated by bot that hasn't been done yet (updating the Quality content sections, doing various tasks on the Collab and portal, etc). I don't want to make the project into Skynet but I do want to make sure that its as low maintenance as possible. --Kumioko (talk)

17:17, 3 February 2011 (UTC) I would keep this to just WPUS. What happened between the Jan 28 draft and this? Racepacket (talk) 06:11, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

New WikiProject United States Newsletter: February 2011 edition

Starting with the February 2011 issue WikiProject United States has established a newsletter to inform anyone interested in United States related topics of the latest changes. This newsletter will not only discuss issues relating to WikiProject United States but also:

1. Portal:United States
2. the United States Wikipedians Noticeboard
3. the United States Wikipedians collaboration of the Month - The collaboration article for February is Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
4. and changes to Wikipolicy, events and other things that may be of interest to you.

You may read or assist in writing the newsletter, subscribe, unsubscribe or change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you by following this link. If you have an idea for improving the newsletter please leave a message on my talk page or the Newsletters talk page.--Kumioko (talk) 20:24, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Peer Review for General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark

I just noticed that a Peer Review for the F-111 started today. All editors are welcome to participate. Thanks for comments and any help! --Kumioko (talk) 21:51, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Periodicals

I have started a page at Wikipedia:WikiProject United States/Periodicals listing periodicals which are at least partially available through online databanks, and will be adding to it as time and circumstances permit over the next few days and weeks. John Carter (talk) 17:38, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Good job, thanks for doing this. --Tomwsulcer (talk) 12:21, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

About how few USA residents travel abroad

Here is a source:

• Avon, Natalie. "Why more Americans don't travel abroad." CNN. February 4, 2011.

WhisperToMe (talk) 11:41, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

thanks for posting. What article or topic is this in relation to?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 12:21, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

It could refer to several articles. Maybe on traveling statistics of various passport holders, or an article addressing tourism related to the United States, or an article about traveling habits of Americans. WhisperToMe (talk) 03:04, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll keep this in mind when working on related stuff. I've always kind of wondered about the lack of the travel urge, so I found the CNN article interesting. I'm American; to some extent, this syndrome affects me somewhat, like I could have traveled more in my lifetime, but didn't, although I've been to India, France, Belgium, Britain, New Zealand, Panama, Japan, Philippines, Germany, Venezuela. And more trips to Canada. I see by your user page you've traveled extensively, so perhaps we're atypical. There are real benefits to traveling, often indirect, but substantial, like you get to see things with a new pair of eyes. I think the lack of traveling is more peculiar given how wealthy, in a relative sense, Americans are. I sense there's some cultural variable deep in the American psyche that kind of turns it back on the rest of the world, or maybe that Americans have had the luxury of being able to do this, and still get along. I wonder how this variable is related to citizenship.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 03:52, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Is this the best place for discussing systemic issues about US city/town articles?

I've gnomed through quite a few. Is there a specific WikiProject where people discuss those articles? I have some queries about the infoboxes and about the formulaic way the (census-related) race stats are set out. Thanks. Tony (talk) 14:17, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps. What specific ideas do you have? Can you point to a specific infobox showing how it is, and how you'd like it to be?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 17:18, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

There are at least three issues I would like editors to think about, aside from my view that these articles are on the prefabricated side of where WP content should be.

• First, in the prefabricated sections on the racial composition of settlements (something that many non-Americans would not think of including), almost every racial category has a separate piped link to the same article on US census (race), or to very general articles on race. This is not good linking practice. At the very least, the census race link would be better in the lead sentence, without blue-carpeting the whole list of percentages and giving readers the impression that each link is to a separate article, or at least a separate section. I do wonder why "whites" and "blacks" need to be linked in the first place. It's all a bit weird.
• Second, the time-zones need proper minus signs, not hyphens, according to MOSNUM and standard practice. It's a pity that this incorrect typography has been virally duplicated in tens of thousands of articles. Some climate sections use minus signs for negative temperatures. Words such as City are routinely linked in infoboxes. Why?
• Third, the use of images in some articles, especially of the bigger towns/cities/state capitals, needs proper auditing. I found one yesterday with images forced down to 160px, and left-side images not only cluttering the appearance, but ruining the bullets for screen-readers. Often there are just too many images, and very ordinary pics sit adjacent to notable pics. Higher standards are needed, and updating for the new guidelines on image use I believe is a priority. Often, images are just messy, and you get the feeling editors don't test their arrangements for a range of window widths on their monitor.

I'm trying to locate where this prefabricated template for town/city articles arose in the first place, and how improvements might be prompted. It's hard to find the "community" of editors. Tony (talk) 06:44, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

If you call using the ASCII symbol on your keyboard "-" a virally reproducing incorrect negative sign, people will start grousing about how pendantic you are. You cannot type a "−" with a normal keyboard in a normal way. If you find a generic - in place of a minus sign, then correct it, do not expect that editors will use symbols that do no exist on their keyboards, for you will be just tilting at the windmills. 65.94.47.11 (talk) 08:10, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

You are expected to use a minus sign. It can easily be typed in: − or the button for it under the edit boxed clicked. Easy. See Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Common_mathematical_symbols. Tony (talk) 06:31, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Tony, this wikiproject has been inactive AFAICT for a few years, predating alot of firming up of editing/MOS guidelines I would think. It has only just become active again recently and is finding its feet. I suspect some sort of geography wikiproject might have been the venue in the past, but otherwise I think all these articles have just grown in an ad hoc manner over the past few years. The strike rate for material to reach GA/FA level was lower than some other wikiprojects I've worked on (hopefully this will change this time round...) Casliber (talk · contribs) 08:00, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Featured portal candidate: United States

Portal:United States is a current featured portal candidate. Please feel free to leave comments. -- RichardF (talk) 05:55, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Bizarre categorization

The categories Category:WikiProject United States and Category:United States WikiProjects are categorized under each other. I don't know how the relation should be, but it surely should not inclued a closed loop of categorization. My suggestion would be removing Category:United States WikiProjects from Category:WikiProject United States. Huon (talk) 13:11, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Bebe Zeva

This is an article about an American fashion blogger; there's another contributor quite set on deleting this article which is currently a few days into a PROD; I'm more on the fence -- sorry to be so wishy-washy -- there are references but I don't know how good they are. Plus the article is well trafficked (50 readers/day). So if others want to weigh in on this, please have a look.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:27, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

new wikiprojects

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/United States Law and Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/NAIA for two newly proposed US wikiprojects. 65.95.14.96 (talk) 07:54, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

The newsletter and other things

I am not going to be around much longer so I wanted to suggest that if the project wants to continue to have a newsletter then someone should step forward and keep it going. I'm not going to be around much to support after my ANI concludes. --Kumioko (talk) 16:09, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

NHL Winter Classic → NHL outdoor games

It has been proposed to move NHL Winter Classic (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) to NHL outdoor games to better cover the contents, and both Classics (Heritage and Winter). 65.95.14.96 (talk) 01:00, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Bot to update census data?

So the 2010 Census results have started to be released (see press release), with everything scheduled to be released by April 2011. Is anyone aware of a bot under development to update articles with current statistics? Thanks. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 22:35, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

This is the most recent discussion of which I'm aware, but as far as I know it's only talk at this point. User:Ram-man was the programmer of the original bot that did the 2000 Census; he hasn't edited since June of last year. If he's not around we have a lot of capable programmers able to take on the task, which may be a rather complicated one (possibily requiring manual intervention on most articles). Definitely needs to be addressed though. Antandrus (talk) 22:51, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 16:21, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Supplementing US census data with state census data

I've gathered decennial population counts from 1850 through 2009 for all 351 municipalities in Massachusetts from US census records. Unfortunately municipal population counts for all US municipalities in the three decades between 1900 and 1920 are not available from the US census; municipalities with a population below 1000 do not have their population count recorded. This is odd given that the US censuses between 1850 and 1900 include counts all municipalities (as do censuses after 1920).

In the case of Massachusetts -- and I suspect many other states -- there are state census records that could fill these omissions in federal census records. Would it be reasonable to supplement population counts of municipalities with data from state census records if the US census data for that municipality for that year is missing? One of the destinations of this data would be in tables of historical population count in Wikipedia articles on municipalities. Presumably, one could simply add an asterisk to the rows containing state census-supplemented data, and add a brief explanatory note in the table footer. Emw (talk) 13:11, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Why can't you use the 1920 census data? Get it here and look at the chapter 2 PDF, page 146 of the PDF. This shows the 1900-1920 population total for each city and town. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 16:01, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Great, thank you! Do you know if there are pre-1850 US census documents with population counts for all municipalities, and if so where I could find them? Emw (talk) 03:48, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Chris, you linked to http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/41084506no553.zip. I've looked around in that file's parent directory, http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/, for more census records but all of the .zip files there are cryptically named. Was there a more user-friendly front end page through which you found that link? Emw (talk) 11:50, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Happy to help. This page is a guide to the old census data and indexes into those documents: [1]. I was using the 1870 census for 1850-1870 data. [2] Before that, it doesn't look like everything was scanned. In later census documents they usually have a table of previous census populations for major cities and counties, but not all municipalities. Let me know if you do find a source for this, I would be interested in using any New Jersey data you find. Thanks. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 18:32, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

The Census Bureau has published historical data in three volumes. The most recent, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, was preceded by Historical Statistics of the United States, 1789-1945 and Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957. These are all available through U.S. Government Printing Office and probably through the Census. The GPO recently started making most of their documents available for Google so you might find them in google books. If you look at the bottom of this page there are a pile of references that might help. --Kumioko (talk) 18:50, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, but I wasn't able to find county subdivisions in the "Historical Statistics" series. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 21:20, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Data visualization of municipal population changes in Massachusetts

I've put together an animated SVG showing population flows within Massachusetts for each decade between 1850 and 2009, available at http://toolserver.org/~emw/Massachusetts_municipal_population_flows.svg. I've also uploaded it at File:Massachusetts municipal population flows.svg. If anyone reading this uses Chrome, Opera or Firefox 4 (beta), then I would appreciate feedback on how the animation could be improved. I would like to eventually put the animation (possibly ported to .ogv video format) into the article space including any improvements suggested here. Emw (talk) 17:03, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Wow, impressive. A couple thoughts:

1. There is no indication on whether you are measuring proportional growth or absolute growth. (i.e is solid green +50k people or +100% of previous population?
2. Have municipal borders been unchanged since 1850?
3. The fade-in/fade-out effect seems hard to follow. I think it would be clearer if the fade was shorter and the color was held for some time period. The current year being displayed should appear as text somewhere.
4. The slider bar in the bottom doesn't seem to be synchronized with the color changes. (Chrome 9.0.597.98)
5. Is it possible through some JS scripting to make the slider draggable? I'm not even sure this is possible with the current state of SVG in browsers.

It looks really quite good though. Can you give some background on how you did it? Thanks --ChrisRuvolo (t) 00:30, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I'll respond piecewise:

1. The color transitions indicate proportional change. That is, they map to the percentage population change of a given municipality. I'll add some bars in the color gradient key to clarify.
2. Municipal boundaries have indeed changed. Gathering and encoding this data will be a significant effort in itself, but thankfully the US censuses indicate when boundaries have changed and sometimes give maps showing exactly what the changes are. It'll probably be necessary to implement this before the animation can reasonably be moved to the article space.

• County boundary changes should probably also be encoded, although it isn't as necessary to complete before moving this particular animation into the article space. If this animation and its associated population count data set were to be scaled to include other states, though, it would be very nice to be able to see less granular population flows, e.g. counties instead of municipalities.

• Another consideration is change of municipal boundaries by virtue of the town or city's dissolution. An example is the municipality of Roxbury and its complete annexation into Boston in 1868. Another different and more unique example is that of Enfield, Massachusetts, which was one of the four entire towns discontinued to make room for the Quabbin Reservoir. Those four towns effectively disappeared from the map: their populations moved elsewhere, and what little land wasn't flooded was annexed to surrounding municipalities. Emw (talk) 05:27, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

1. I'll shorten the duration of the transition. I'm also going to add a version that replaces the slider bar with a prominent year that fades in and out.
2. Noted, will fix.
3. I haven't implemented a prototype, but I'm pretty sure that would be possible. Another useful feature would be tooltips that pop up as the user hovers over a municipality, which would contain the name of the town/city, raw data on population counts for that year, percent change from the previous decade, etc. Unfortunately, Mediawiki automatically removes any scripting embedded in SVGs, so any work here would be futile for the purposes of Wikipedia.

Some background: before making the animation, I spent quite a while gathering population counts for the 351 municipalities in Massachusetts for each decade since 1850. I did this by manually transcribing into a spreadsheet municipal population counts for Massachusetts from scanned PDF copies of US census records: 1850, 1860, 1870, 1890 (also contains 1880 counts), 1920 (also contains 1910 and 1900 counts), 1950 (also contains 1940 and 1930 counts), 1980 (also contains 1970 and 1960 counts), and 1990. Thankfully 2000 and 2009 counts were already in a spreadsheet.

After compiling the raw population count data in a .csv spreadsheet, I took a pre-existing SVG map of Massachusetts municipalities (File:MA_cities_towns.svg) and labeled each SVG path element that corresponded to a municipality. Note that the existing labels in MA_cities_towns.svg had to be removed and replaced with the labels just mentioned; there was otherwise no feasible way to programmatically link the municipal labels that existed in that map to the municipal polygons. For more information on this see here.

I then wrote a Python program to add to each SVG municipality-labeled path a set of SVG animation elements that encoded the color transitions. For parsing and manipulating the XML of the SVG, I used the BeautifulSoup library for Python (which wasn't ideal and made some manual post-processing necessary). Emw (talk) 02:19, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Scaling up

The method summarized above may be scalable to other US states. Animations for population changes within states could be stitched together to show interesting intra- and inter-regional demographic trends. The underlying population data could also be used by a bot to automatically add to articles on municipalities a detailed table of historical population counts over time (expanding their existing coverage).

I think the main obstacle to this would be gathering decennial population counts for municipalities. Taking the scanned data available in .pdf files available from the US Census Bureau and converting that into programmatically manipulable text is difficult. The task is both extremely tedious, and infeasible to automate given the poor print quality of available scans and the current state of OCR technology.

The best approach would probably be to distribute this massive data entry task among many people. Given the task's tedium, scale, and embarassingly parallel nature it sounds like an ideal project to use Amazon Mechanical Turk. The work could be distributed into "human intelligence tasks" (HITs, as Amazon calls them) where the Mechanical Turk worker (turker) would be provided A) an image of the scanned US Census record for a given decade for a given state and B) a browser-based spreadsheet template listing all municipalities in that state (for that year) with blank fields that the turker would fill in with population counts.

To ensure accuracy, turker-transcribed population counts could be done multiple times for each state/decade and cross-checked against each other and county- and state-level population counts. And turkers could learn more about where there work would end up through a brief text explanation and link back to a Wikipedia page with more information.

I'm not aware of any other Wikipedia-related work that has involved Mechanical Turk. If possible I'd like to get opinions on how feasible this sounds and any problems that seem likely to pop up. Emw (talk) 05:01, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

@wikimediaus on identi.ca and twitter

I have accounts for @wikimediaus (on identi.ca) and synced with @wikimediaus on Twitter. Perhaps someday there will be a US Wikimedia chapter to use this, but now we have subnational chapters (NYC) and one forming for DC. For now & the future, I would like the account to be used for outreach in the US, highlighting things like US COTM, meetups, etc. If anyone wants to help maintain the account or has suggestions of things to tweet., please let me know. Cheers. --Aude (talk) 18:30, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Kumioko is gone

FYI, Kumioko is gone and so...I guess we just have to go on? --Highspeedrailguy (talk) 15:06, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, we must soldier on alone, in the darkness, perhaps observing a moment of silence for our fallen leader.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 20:25, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

This is terrible. I haven't seen another editor do more for the US WikiProjects than anyone else. However, I can totally understand being "....ed off" and/or unfairly critiqued by other editors, it's happened to all of us. --Funandtrvl (talk) 20:47, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Agree fully. I've been there myself. It's something how WP is structured, possibly, that causes battling and frayed nerves? Like football versus ice hockey -- there's usually no ill feelings after football, but in ice hockey, fights break out all the time. Like, Wikipedia is a rink of sorts.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:04, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I am happy to do the housekeeping for the collaboration...well, anyone can do it really. Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:25, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks everyone and sorry I left you high and dry. I just got tired of the constant drama by many (although not all by any means) editors who are no longer interested in making an encyclopedia. I truly hope that you and the project will continue to thrive and grow. --71.163.243.16 (talk) 01:05, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Aid for census maintenance

I've made a suggestion that might aid census maintenance at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Use_bots_to_maintain_census_figures. Your comments are welcome. Student7 (talk) 13:21, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Draft boilerplate for census data

I've put a possible boilerplate for census data on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_United_States/proposed census boilerplate. Note that we will change and discuss changes on the same page. Student7 (talk) 19:21, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Removal of flags

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:List of Asian American astronauts. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 12:38, 11 March 2011 (UTC) (Using {{pls}})

template:American English

{{American English}} use of the flag is in question, see Template talk:American English

184.144.160.156 (talk) 06:24, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

request review for state reptiles

 Done - The article has since been promoted. --Kumioko (talk) 11:25, 21 March 2011 (UTC) Could I please get a project person to review this article? TCO (talk) 08:46, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean? Are you trying to ready it for a GA or FA? --Tomwsulcer (talk) 12:19, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

here Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:37, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Infobox representative

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Asian American#Missing Vietnamese American Representative. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 13:40, 18 March 2011 (UTC) (Using {{pls}})

Looking for comments about redirects

There are several active discussions in various places about redirects and because many of these relate directly to WPUS related articles I wanted to bring it up here and see what the project thinks. Using United States as an example there are dozens of redirects to United States from other languages many with multiple variations to account for misspellings and slang as well as accounting for misspellings of United States such as Untied States that I would like to gather some comment on.

IMO there are pros and cons to keeping and removing some of these and here are some that I can see:

Pro

• Redirects are cheap
• accounts for misspellings
• accounts for people who don't read or write english well
• potentially makes the article more available
• could be a contributor to the very high hit rate the United States article gets

Con

• Typos when linked will appear in blue and may lead the reader/writer to either miss the typo or believe they are correct
• If the people can't spell United States then the likely won't be able to read the article either
• could make the article less available to some readers (including the cross wikilanguage links at the bottom of the articles)
• We have links to some languages but not others (should we link to all)
• linking to all langauges and potential variations could lead to an overload of redirects in the order of millions
• Wikipedia is not a dictionary

Note: Not all redirects to United States are currently listed in the link above because I have submitted some for deletion already so they don't show in the redirect listing. Here are links to those: Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2011 March 22, Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2011 March 20, Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2011 March 19.

Again I used United States as an example but this applies to many other articles as well. Basically I am trying to determine if there is consensus to keep all these myriads of links and if so where to draw the line. Please let me know what you think. --Kumioko (talk) 18:03, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject United States Government

After speaking with a few of the members of WikiProject United States Government there seems to be interest in bringing WikiProject United States Government into the family of projects that WikiProject United States supports. I would like to suggest pursuing the possibility of including this project in the family and wanted to solicit comments before doing so. As with other projects like Washington DC and Superfunds the project would maintain its own independence but I believe this would benefit both projects by grouping the government related articles under this topic. Does anyone have any comments or concerns about this? --Kumioko (talk) 20:40, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Mexican-American War

Mexican-American War and Battles of the Mexican–American War are up for renaming, in opposite directions. See Talk:Mexican-American War and Talk:Battles of the Mexican–American War.

This is a dash-hyphen war, with MOS vs Original-Research arguments being forwarded, along with consistency arguments. 65.93.12.101 (talk) 03:34, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Template:Class A article up for deletion

{{Class A article}} has been nominated for deletion. As this wikiproject uses A-class as a quality rating, I thought I'd let you know. 65.93.12.101 (talk) 07:39, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Asian American article scope

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Asian American#South Asian Americans are not considered Asian Americans. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 16:34, 28 March 2011 (UTC) (Using {{pls}})

United States Bill of Rights is a candidate for the U.S. Collaboration of the Month

The United States Bill of Rights article has been submitted as a possible candidate for the U.S. Collaboration of the Month. --Kumioko (talk) 16:20, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

April Newsletter for WikiProject United States

April Newsletter for WikiProject United States

Archives The WikiProject United States Newsletter April 2011
Scope and Mission of WikiProject United States Welcome to WikiProject United States on the English Wikipedia! We are a project dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of topics related to the United States, with an emphasis on subjects with regional and national significance. This project was formed to coordinate the development of United States related articles and help maintain the United States Portal. Some project goals are to help list and categorize United States related articles, develop quality standards for articles and build templates that help users browse the articles that fall under this project. This project also provides a place for Wikipedians to share information and resources regarding improvements to United States related articles. Here, editors can ask for help with certain articles and bring otherwise overlooked articles and problems, to the attention of other editors. For more information of the role of WikiProjects, check out WikiProject guidelines.	Articles of note This section highlights US related content that has been promoted to Featured Status in the last month: Note:Articles pertain to one or more of the WikiProjects relating to United States topics but not necessarily WikiProject United States. New featured articles:  • U.S. Route 30 in Iowa  • 1950 Atlantic hurricane season  • History of the New York Jets  • Grand Coulee Dam  • Warren County, Indiana  • Morgan dollar  • Leslie Groves  • Luke P. Blackburn  • L. Ron Hubbard  • 2010 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup Final  • USS Constellation vs L'Insurgente  • J. Robert Oppenheimer  • History of Sesame Street  • Kennedy half dollar  • Sacagawea dollar  • 2009 World Series New featured lists:  • Grammy Award for Best Contemporary R&B Album  • Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals  • Grammy Award for Best Rap Album  • Grammy Award for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration  • Grammy Award for Best Rock Song  • Grammy Award for Best World Music Album  • List of Alabama Crimson Tide football head coaches  • List of Baltimore Orioles first-round draft picks  • List of Cincinnati Reds first-round draft picks  • List of Governors of Washington  • List of New England Patriots seasons  • List of New York Cosmos all-stars  • List of New York Cosmos seasons  • List of Oakland Athletics first-round draft picks  • List of Oakland Athletics managers  • List of Pittsburgh Pirates first-round draft picks  • List of Tampa Bay Lightning seasons  • List of WWE Divas Champions  • Philadelphia Phillies all-time roster (E–F)  • Philadelphia Phillies all-time roster  • The Simpsons (season 13)  • U.S. state reptiles Project article statistics for March 31 2011 WikiProject United States assessment table Current statistics United States articles by quality and importance Quality Importance Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total FA 11 74 205 808 11 1,109 FL 2 33 51 369 3 458 FM 1,170 1,170 A 3 30 56 89 GA 18 144 574 4,441 42 5,219 B 122 818 2,010 11,528 762 15,240 C 44 801 3,401 37,288 4 6,159 47,697 Start 6 804 6,828 152,292 32 20,024 179,986 Stub 124 2,087 149,756 67 9,250 161,284 List 3 171 1,072 12,898 205 2,100 16,449 Category 164,382 164,382 Disambig 1,700 1,700 File 25,476 25,476 Portal 3,044 3,044 Project 1,610 1,610 Redirect 42 219 5,385 43,741 49,387 Template 25,767 25,767 NA 101 101 Other 3 3 Draft 1,385 1,385 Assessed 206 3,014 16,477 374,821 268,684 38,354 701,556 Unassessed 2 329 12 7,689 8,032 Total 206 3,014 16,479 375,150 268,696 46,043 709,588 WikiWork factors (?) ω = 2,114,666 Ω = 5.15
Project news Since the last newsletter was sent there have been a number of significant discussions and events that pertained to the project and United States related articles in general. WikiProject American television has joined the family of WikiProjects that have agreed to share {{WikiProject United States}}. This project was started to improve Wikipedia's coverage of American television and the articles relating to that topic. If you are interested the project could use your help. There is an active discussion on the talk pages of WikiProject United States and WikiProject Government about the inactive project WikiProject United States Government being added to the list of projects supported by WikiProject United States. With the recent release of the 2010 US Census there have been multiple active conversations about how to update all the articles affected. If you have any ideas or want to help in this effort please leave your comments on the WikiProject United States talk page. The tagging of articles continues and we have added several thousand articles to the count since the last newsletter. We still have approximately 1300 articles in the project that need to be assessed so any help you can provide with assessments is greatly appreciated. Even 1 or 2 a day would be a big help. A bot request was submitted to tag the remaining 500 pages of Portal United States with the United States banner. The project already has over 1700 of the portal pages tagged so this would be just to finish off the remaining ones.
Portal Thanks to RichardF and a few others the United States portal is getting ever closer to achieving Featured portal status. The portal needs your help in filling in the Anniversaries (formerly known as On this day). Any help you can provide to help fill these dates in would be greatly appreciated. If you have any ideas or comments about the portal please feel free to leave them here.
Collaboration The collaboration for April 2011 is Chesapeake Bay The monthly collaboration is now in its third month since reactivation. The first article Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was improved significantly in February, as was George Washington (the second one) in March. Although the latter article was not nominated for GA, enough work was done for contributors to identify remaining content areas needing improving before an attempt is made, which is great progress. Thus anyone keen on reading up on Washington's role in the American Revolution and the presidency is most welcome to review and contribute. Magicpiano (talk · contribs) is planning on buffing material for the American Revolution segment by focussing on the daughter article, George Washington in the American Revolution first. Anyway, Chesapeake Bay is the new collaboration picked for April and anyone is welcome to work on it. For choosing new candidate articles for May and beyond, editors should think about articles which have a range of issues that a variety of editors can help with, from content (primary school to university level research) to copyediting. Having a look over current and past ideas (which can be seen here and here (even older ones). So folks have a think about which articles are in most in need of fixing, or alternately, have a clear pathway to GA or FA status.
Things you can help with Ideas for next months newsletter Help with the Anniversaries in the portal Help with the assessments Help with the Collaboration Comments in active discussions
Got a suggestion? A correction? Something you'd like to see included in a future issue? Drop a note at the Tip Line with your ideas!
To stop receiving this newsletter, or to receive it in a different format, please list yourself in the appropriate section here.

Soccer in the United States

Soccer in the United States has been requested to be renamed. 65.93.12.101 (talk) 04:47, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Requested task

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval#Petan-Bot_task_4 Petrb (talk) 17:19, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Just a note. The project already has all the other 1751 pages of the portal tagged as associated to the project so I submitted to have the other 500 or so tagged as well because they were recently created in an effort to get the portal to Featured status. --Kumioko (talk) 17:38, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Southwest Airlines Flight 812

The Southwest Airlines Flight 812 article has been nominated for deletion. Mjroots (talk) 05:24, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Football in the United States

The usage of Football in the United States is under discussion, see Talk:Football in the United States

65.93.12.101 (talk) 17:54, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

This is currently a disambiguation page. American football is currently located at American football in the United States. 65.93.12.101 (talk) 02:57, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

question about white house china collections

Hello. I'm trying to help someone represent their white house china collection, and was wondering if what I'm doing is within the scope of this project. Basically a private collector has amassed one of the largest white house china collections, and is looking to chronicle the history of how they were acquired and why they are important. Comments anyone? And please, comments like "go read this wikipedia article" are not helpful. I've already read and bookmarked many of the wikipedia guidelines. These items, among others in his collection, are of great historical significance (such as FDR's cape from World War II), beyond just their appraised monetary value.

Thanks 71.237.43.126 (talk) 16:30, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I personally don't have a problem with it as long as the article is written to Wikipedia guidlelines and there is sufficient documentation available to chronicle the history of the collection. Not including original research that is. I tend to agree that there is enough historical value to have the article though provided it meets those criteria. I would recommend starting by using the Article creation wizard. --Kumioko (talk) 16:48, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

US related pages lacking Template:WikiProject United States

I have compiled a list of several thousand US related pages that currently do not have Template:WikiProject United States. I have made every effort to exclude most of the other US projects and most of the links are red indicating there is no talk page and no banner of any kind. Many are redirects but there are also a lot that are not. Either way I think that these articles should be tagged with a project even if they are redirects so that someone can monitor for things like commments, redirects for deletion, etc. Here are links to the pages I have compiled so far:

• User:Kumioko/US articles needing banners (American)
• User:Kumioko/US articles needing banners (Lists)
• User:Kumioko/US articles needing banners (U.S.)
• User:Kumioko/US articles needing banners (United States)
• User:Kumioko/US articles needing banners (US)

I am also leaving these links on a couple of the more active projects to see if they want to account for them or if they want me to go ahead and throw them under this project. My question to all of you is, does anyone have any comments or concerns related to adding these articles to this project? I would like to get a bot setup to do this task in the next couple weeks if possible. --Kumioko (talk) 04:00, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

In addition to the above there are 517 new pages under Portal:United States that have not yet been tagged by the project. I previously tagged the others but these were created recently in order to get the portal to featured status. I would like to get these submitted in the next couple weeks so any commments would be greatly appreciated. --Kumioko (talk) 14:36, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Heya, it's possible for me to have a bot tag those pages as you also requested for portal talk! Petrb (talk) 18:09, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Get a bot?

Should we get a bot to deliver the newsletter? Seems like it'd be easier that way Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 02:11, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

You would think so and in principle I agree. The problem is that its such a long term hassle to get bot approval for even the most trivial task that for 200 users its just not worth it. Normally I can knock it out in an hour or less but today i had some computer troubles that caused it to drag out. Its all done now though. --Kumioko (talk) 02:19, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I'd be willing to help you get one approved. Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 03:23, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, its not so much a matter of needing help getting approved. I just didn't want to wait 2 or 3 months for the BAG to approve it. Unless you already have a bot approved or the task is a recurring one with thousands of articles or your a member of BAG its just not worth the hours of debate. The approval rate for new bots for members outside bag, especially AWB ones is extremely low. By the time the task got approved for one months newsletter we would be 2 months past it. They also seem to have a special dislike for AWB bots. There are a couple of newsletter bots already that we might be able to use though and your right that we should look into doing that for the next month. --Kumioko (talk) 12:46, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Kumioko alluded to existing newsletter bots -- EdwardsBot may be a good option. Instructions on how to use it are here: User:EdwardsBot/Instructions. Emw (talk) 12:54, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't work like that my bot is also already flagged but you need approval for task not account. Petrb (talk) 18:11, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Navbox coloring

I would appreciate any comments at Template talk:Omaha#Orange. Thank you. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 19:17, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Asian American article Undue template discussion

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Asian American#Undue tag. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 23:49, 11 April 2011 (UTC) (Using {{pls}})

Image:Battle of Los Angeles LATimes.jpg

File:Battle of Los Angeles LATimes.jpg has been nominated for deletion. 65.93.12.101 (talk) 04:11, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

request for feedback

Hello, I am part of a team involved with the WikiProject United States Public Policy. My team and I would appreciate your comments and suggestions on our article Benefits for United States veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jgrandfield (talk • contribs) 00:26, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

"Bear Flag" Ensign

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Flag of California#State Ensign. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 23:44, 18 April 2011 (UTC) (Using {{pls}})

Renaming Instant-runoff voting

Instant-runoff voting has been proposed to be renamed Alternative Vote (apparently, the British term), see Talk:Instant-runoff voting. The current name is indicated to be the American term... 65.94.45.160 (talk) 03:48, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Undue?

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Rosie O'Donnell#Does the "Chinese language parody" merit inclusion or not?. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 21:36, 19 April 2011 (UTC) (Using {{pls}})

Dickshooter, Idaho

Some users at DYK have expressed the view that Dickshooter, Idaho is not a valid article (discussion here). Could we have some opinions from users experienced in U.S. geography articles? Thanks, Gatoclass (talk) 05:24, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Need ideas for Next months Newlsetter

If anyone has ideas or thoughts about the newsletter for next month please speak up so we can get working on them. I am sure that some folks out there have some great ideas of projects they are working on are interested in that could use more help and this is how to get the word out there for others to assist.

I have added a tab to the WikiProject for the Newsletter to help Market it to anyone who might stop by the page. This is a good tool for us to communicate with each other. It contains infomration about the Portal, the Collaboration of the Month, New featured articles and other bits of information but it needs more voices than just me so any advice, comments, suggestions or assitance is greatly appreciated and welcomed. --Kumioko (talk) 20:27, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Should Rosie O'Donnell be a part of this Wikiproject?

Could someone from this project please let us know if Rosie O'Donnell should be a part? And remove the template if not? Jnast1 (talk) 22:35, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Rosie O'Donnell#Removal of templates from Wikiprojects

IMO Its fine. She is a major celebrity in the US and her article gets a lot of hits and a fair amount of vandalism. The more eyes the better. --Kumioko (talk) 23:33, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough, thank you for the response. Jnast1 (talk) 23:36, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I strongly oppose. We can't have every celebrity in this WikiProject if they're in a child WikiProject. If this belongs here then where's the line for what doesn't belong? Royalbroil 01:12, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I would say major ones like Rosie, Oprah and Johnny Carson are ok. John Wayne or Elvis even. I would say lesser ones not so much. I don't really care all that much either way though I just don't mind them being there. I do think we need some bounderies though like they won X number of Grammies or the article gets X hits per month (something fairly high like 50, 000).--Kumioko (talk) 01:36, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Oppose. Bios which properly belong under this project include: 45 Presidents, maybe a 1000 senators, possible several thousand congressmen, at least 1000 ambassadors, hundreds of cabinet members, 100 appointed territorial governors, more than several hundred justices of supreme and lower federal courts, several thousand flag officers, etc. This should keep the project occupied for awhile.

The questioner was trying to "officially" discover why someone had put a series of apparently unrelated banners/projects on the O'Donnell' article. When I see unrelated banners, I just rm them, having been around awhile. It may not be vandalism, but it often poor judgment, at best. Since O'Donnell is not a clear candidate, her "membership" in this project should be dropped. No "show person" should be here, except Ronald Reagan, and him for a different reason. Student7 (talk) 13:23, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I admit I don't really feel strongly about her being included one way or the other. There are a few though besides Reagan, but as you suggested for reasons other than just show business. --Kumioko (talk) 22:15, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

St.Louis

Should there be an article on the April 2011 St. Louis, Missouri storm ? I notice that Lambert Airport currently has a "current" tag on it. 65.94.45.160 (talk) 12:28, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

There could be an article I suppose. A lot of folks are pretty wrapped up about notability so I'm not sure what makes the storm more notable than other storms. --Kumioko (talk) 12:39, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think Rosie has reached the stature of the others mentioned above and should not be included. — DocOfSoc • Talk • 01:06, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Declaration of independence

There is presently a debate over whether the list article Declaration of independence ought to include a hatnote pointing specifically to the United States Declaration of Independence. Those in favor argue that historical, demographic, and practical factors justify this treatment, while those in opposition argue that no country's document should receive special treatment under any circumstances. I am bringing the discussion to your attention because United States Declaration of Independence is included in this wikiproject. Please see here if you are interested in weighing in on the matter. Thank you. —Bill Price (nyb) 17:45, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanksgiving

The usage of Thanksgiving is under discussion at Talk:Thanksgiving, with the proposal that US usage should be placed at the primary location. 65.94.45.160 (talk) 10:15, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Page move discussion

Please comment at Talk:Rod_Blagojevich_corruption_charges#Requested_move on moving Rod Blagojevich corruption charges → United States v. Blagojevich.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 18:05, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Reliability of source

You are invited to join the discussion at WP:RSN#sandiegostreetcars.org. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 01:37, 28 April 2011 (UTC) (Using {{pls}})

Image:Lolo Soetoro Ann Dunham Maya Soetoro-Ng Barack Obama.jpg

File:Lolo Soetoro Ann Dunham Maya Soetoro-Ng Barack Obama.jpg has been nominated for deletion. 65.94.45.160 (talk) 05:37, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject United States Government

There is a final discussion taking place here about WikiProject United States supporting WikiProject United States Government. All editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks. --Kumioko (talk) 02:35, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Hayley Smith

The usage of Hayley Smith is under discussion, see Talk:Hayley Smith (American Dad!). This is a character in "American Dad" and "Home and Away" (see Hayley Smith (Home and Away)). 65.93.12.8 (talk) 05:57, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Subject ethnicity dispute

You are invited to join the discussion at WP:BLPN#Leroy A. Mendonca. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 18:10, 3 May 2011 (UTC) (Using {{pls}})

Wall Street has been selected as the United States Wikipedians' Collaboration of the Month for May 2011

Wall Street, a page within the scope of this project, has been selected as the United States Wikipedians' Collaboration of the Month for May 2011. All editors interested in improving this article are encouraged to participate. You can also vote for next months article of the Month here. --Kumioko (talk) 20:43, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

May 2011 Newsletter for WikiProject United States

The May 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) 01:39, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Natural born citizen clause of the U.S. Constitution

There is a content dispute currently going on at Natural born citizen clause of the U.S. Constitution over whether material in Emerich de Vattel's work The Law of Nations may, or may not, be cited as an influence (or a potential influence) on what the framers of the Constitution meant by the phrase "natural born citizen". The question has given rise to various different opinions, as well as some edit-warring, and I'm unsure of whether a credible consensus for any position can be reached at present with only those editors currently involved. Participation from others (no matter what side they might end up taking) would be helpful. Richwales (talk · contribs) 18:08, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

List of U.S. states by date of statehood at FLRC

I have nominated List of U.S. states by date of statehood 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.--Cheetah (talk) 02:02, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I went and looked at the submission. Most of the identified issues should be easy enough to fix. I see a few other things that could use some tightening up as well I'll take a look at. --Kumioko (talk) 02:17, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Splitting up US Gun Laws by State

There is currently a discussion which is leading to compartmentalizing the US gun laws by state article into individual state articles. If any members are interested in voicing opinions on the matter please do so. It seems like a resounding support at the moment. If we do decide to do this, it will be a fairly large undertaking that would require the assistance of WP:GUNS to complete, that is for sure.--Jax 0677 (talk) 19:25, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Redirect into article

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Asian Hispanic and Latino Americans#Change from Redirect. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 16:56, 19 May 2011 (UTC) (Using {{pls}})

Immigration Navbox

In looking for information about immigration to the United States, I noticed that the navigation box is titled Illegal Immigration to the United States and related topics, whose neutrality in the main article is under dispute. I would suggest that the navigation box be retitled to Immigration in the United States (or something similar) and that the navigation box be reordered to reflect the change. While I could just change it, I wanted some consensus before doing so. --Enos733 (talk) 18:20, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

A new class for Featured media

I would like to gather folks input on creating a new class for featured media. This new class would be for Featured Sounds, pictures, videos (currently listed under featured sounds) and potentially topics that relate to United States. I believe that WP now has enough featured media that a category and class would be beneficial. Since these content types have relatively few items individually however (maybe a thousand total at most would pertain to US) I do not think we need separate categories for each. Currently some of these are tagged as File, however this would give us a better understanding of what media is currently featured.

I have already spoken to CBM who programs the bot that updates the assessment tables and he indicated that it could be done. Before I suggest this to a larger audience via the Village pump I wanted to start a discussion here to see how the members of our project felt about the idea first.

A few notes about the idea.

1. Will help us identify the featured media so we can start identifying other media that could be promotable to featured status.
2. Will allow us to see if one of these is vandalized, deleted, recommended for deletion or demotion, etc. via the Article alert bot
3. Will help promote the use of these items
4. There are currently about 364 featured sound/videos (not all pertain to US).
5. there are about 2747 featured pictures (again not all pertain to US) --Kumioko (talk) 20:02, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Filipino American image infobox

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Filipino American#Changing of Pictures. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 11:49, 23 May 2011 (UTC) (Using {{pls}})

Naphtha launch

See talk:Naphtha launch where it is said that this article should use British English, but the article says that these kind of boats are only used in the USA... Seems weird that you should use Brit-speak for American things. 65.95.13.213 (talk) 06:15, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, its not usually a big deal though. The rules of British English are just a bit more formal than American English and tend to be more favored as Encyclopedic. --Kumioko (talk) 11:28, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

British invention, or possibly Swiss, and they only found favour in the US owing to a bizarre US legal loophole. The reason for the language choice is primarily because that's what it was originally written in. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:14, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Politics related navigational template nominated for deletion

The navigational template {{Political neologisms}} has been nominated for deletion. Please see discussion, at Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2011_May_25#Template:Political_neologisms. Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 17:52, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Mfd notice of Wikipedia:WikiProject Bluegrass Region

I have nominated Wikipedia:WikiProject Bluegrass Region for deletion at WP:MFD. Please comment here for any concerns. Thanks, JJ98 (Talk) 01:40, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

wikiproject task forces

What if any, pre-existing WikiProjects have been subsummed as Task Forces of this WikiProject?

This project doesn't have any task forces currently. There are a couple of WikiProjects that are supported by the project though. I would say that perhaps the US counties could be considered a task force and maybe Superfunds but they are still consideered projects of themselves. --Kumioko (talk) 13:19, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

I ask as there are very few active editors in one of My WikiProjects, and perhaps if it were a task force of this WikiProject, it would draw more editors to the articles which fall under its scope. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 14:22, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh ok. I just wasn't sure what the goal of the question was. Feel free to post a discussion out here and see what everyone thinks. I would say if its related to US then its probably ok but we need to start a discussion and see what comments come out of it by the members of both projects before we just move it over. Even if knowone responds over a couple weeks that's a comment of sorts in itself.

Regarding the projects supported by WPUS I hesitate to call them all task forces of this bigger project or say that they belong to this project but several other US related projects have been added to the WikiProject United States banner and are supported by the project. This collaboration allows all of them to use the same bots, banners, newsletter, collaboration, member list, etc. so it reduces the project maintenance through collaboration.

So far those projects are US counties, US government, Superfunds, American Television and District of Columbia. Library of Congress was created under this project and is sorta shared by GLAM. The most recent to be added was US Governors which was added yesterday and not all the articles have been switched over yet. I would consider Superfunds, US counties, US governors and Library of Congress to be more of a task force if I had to make the determination due to the limited scope of them.

I have also been encouraging some of the other active WikiProjects to pull in as sub projects or task forces inactive or low activity projects that relate to them. For example US roads has pretty much assumed the state Highway related projects, WP Washington has pulled WP Seattle and Eastern Washington in as task forces, etc. Some projects have been also been compeletely eliminated for several reasons. You can see much of this on the WikiProject Embassy tab of the WikiProject United States project.

There are currently discussions for including 5 or 6 more in the project as well as a few being added to other projects (cities into state projects, Universities into higher level active projects, etc) but only for those that aren't active. I have also been going through and tagging content that were previously unassigned to a project (articles starting with Untied States to United States for example).

Reorganizing the more than 200 US related projects I believe will allow us all to collaborate more easily together so we can focus more on building up content. I hope to get through the reorganizing of the inactive projects and unaccounted for articles and setting up the bots (article alerts, newsletter, collaboration and portal related, in the next couple months so then we can start focusing on some content and membership drives. Unfortunately it has taken a long time for us to do all this because there was so much to do.

I hope this rather long reply helps to explain things a bit but please let me know if you have any more questions. --Kumioko (talk) 15:04, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, this does help. The project that I am talking about is WP:WikiProject Asian Americans. I appear to be the only active editor who continues to edit within the scope of its articles. It appears to be a child of WP:WikiProject Ethnic groups, but gets little to no support from it.

Articles within its scope, IMHO, automatically fall under the scope of this project, therefore, the possibility of it becoming a task force of this wikiproject, IMHO may benefit it by drawing more editors to articles underneath its scope. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 17:46, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree. I noticed this project a while back and wondered much the same thing but hadn't gotten to it yet. I saw you left a note on the talk page of the project and if noone objects in the next couple weeks we can move it over. --Kumioko (talk) 18:18, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Say it does occur, what happens to the talk page, and other related items? How do we deal with those, will it as a task force under WPUS also still remain a child WikiProject of Ethnic Groups? --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 18:49, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

What has been done before is we keep the talk page and most of the project pages in tact. We add that project to the WPUS banner and then after we move all the articles in its scope we either delete or redirect the old WikiProject banner template. We could consolidate the member list and some other things if thats desired but we usually just keep things intact. That way if the project wants to break off at some point it won't be too difficult. --Kumioko (talk) 19:18, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Reorganizing projects on US politics

WP:US Government has already been included in WP:US's banner. Should the semi-active/inactive WikiProjects for US politicians, governors, and presidents be merged into the WP:US banner as well? I'm almost inclined to think governors and presidents should be reduced to task forces of either the government or politicians project. Any thoughts? -Mabeenot (talk) 22:24, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable to me. I did some checking and there are no articles associated to WikiProject US politicians and there doesn't appear to be a template anymore so I am not sure if that particular one is still needed. As for the other 2 there are about 3700 articles between them and about 3100 are not yet in the WPUS scope. Aside from that they could be added as task forces rather easily. --Kumioko (talk) 02:14, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

After thinking about it a little more I am going to go ahead and start on adding the Presidents and Governors projects to the project as task forces under Government in the next few days once I wrap up a few other tasks. Since its such a broad topic and would relate to so many other projects (presidents, congress, government, FBI, etc) politicians seems like a bit of a redundant project and IMO we can probably just leave that one as inactive. IMO Presidents and Governors are narrow enough that they fit nicely under the broad Government umbrella and identify them as politicians without overcluttering the template. Does anyone else have any opinions on this? --Kumioko (talk) 16:57, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Let me make this statement which probably everyone has heard before. Americans and some others get really confused about Politics. We all seem to know that Government is what the constitution allows and how the government is supposed to run. Campaigns and Elections are what the general public thinks of as "Politics." They are wrong. Politics is the result of elected officials using the rules under "Government" to produce legislation, like legalizing abortion or restricting it, or whatever. I think you understand that and am just hoping that any changes reflect that understanding. Thanks. IMO, the less said about politicians, the better (since they are unavoidably all over Election articles), but we can't avoid using governors names and names of legislative leaders. Student7 (talk) 19:47, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not really sure what you are trying to say in the context of this discussion but, it appears that your opinion is that we should resurect the defunct politicians project and associate the projects politicians and political themed items into that rather than lumping them into the broader US Government scope. Does that seem accurate. If so I have no problem with doing that. This proposal IMO is simply a matter of realigning 2 or 3 inactive projects (and the articles associated to them) to fall under WikiProject United States or Under WikiProject United States Government (which the WPUS project supports) as task forces. My only conern is overcluttering the WikiProject Banner with multiple duplicative banners (US Government, politician, Governor, President, etc). Using the previous example all politicians would have the US government, all presidents and governors would also have US government and politician, etc. so the banner could get really full. I don't have a problem doing it I just want to make sure that its needed first. I think that most people would Conclude that a Governor and a President are politicians so the politician one be inferred. With that said we have a few thousands others (congressman, senators, ambassadors, etc) that could be added to the politician topic as well. --Kumioko (talk) 20:29, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

After reviewing all three of the projects submitted above I am going to start moving forward on the governors project first because it contains a sizable amount of content and it appears to be the most inactive and I believe we can move through this one rather quickly. I have left a notice on the projects talk page indicating the desire to pull it into WikiProject United States and I will contact any users who are still active that have edited the project page or the talk page. This will lay the ground work so we can move forward.

U.S. Presidents seems to have a few users who are still active so I will do that one after governors if they are interested. I will begin contacting the active members of the project and start the ball rolling on this one as well. If anyone has any comments, suggestions or concerns please let us know. --Kumioko (talk) 13:58, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Merge away. I've marked US Politicians as "defunct" with links to the projects that made it obsolete. Another project that might be worth merging is US State Legislatures. -Mabeenot (talk) 23:28, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Ok thanks, Ill take a look at that one next. --Kumioko (talk) 00:25, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

US Governors has been merged

I have added WikiProject US governors to the WPUS template and the US template documentation. I also created importance categories because the former project didn't employ them. This will help to focus efforts on the more important characters first (former presidents, Famous actors turned Governators, etc) as well as standardize the structure of things across projects. I will start transitioning the articles in the next few days but it may take a few days to do because I have a lot going on in the next couple weeks. I will start with the articles that have both the WPUS and WPUSGovernors templates and then pull in the rest. Right now its a full blown WikiProject but if the determination comes to downgrade it to a task force then we can do that. --Kumioko (talk) 18:49, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Filipino Americans second or third largest ethnicity of Asian Americans?

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Filipino American#second or third. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 15:02, 28 May 2011 (UTC) (Using {{pls}})

Request for NPOV review

• Recently an editor has raised concerns regarding NPOV with some articles I had worked on prior to an extended wikibreak.
• I have committed to no longer edit or watch these pages.
• However, I would appreciate it if others could look them over with NPOV in mind, and discuss on their talk pages and make appropriate changes if need be.

Here are the articles:

1. Joel Anderson
2. Jose Peralta
3. Hiram Monserrate
4. Corbin Fisher
5. Everybody Draw Mohammed Day

I will not object to any changes proposed, discussed, or implemented.

Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 20:46, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Please tag the articles in question with the Template:POV-check; I am in the process of looking at Jose Peralta. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 20:53, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Philippine cuisine in the United States

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Tambayan Philippines#section idea. I have begun a discussion that members of this WikiProject maybe interested in joining. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 00:53, 30 May 2011 (UTC) (Using {{pls}})

Request for comment

Discussing rename of prejudicial term "Chink" to more appropriate article title06:39, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

United States Bill of Rights has been selected as the United States Wikipedians' Collaboration of the Month for June 2011

The United States Bill of Rights, an article within the scope of this project, has been selected as the United States Wikipedians' Collaboration of the Month for June 2011. The goal this month is to get this article to Good Article standards by July 4th, 2011. All editors interested in improving this article are encouraged to participate. You can also vote for next months article of the Month here. --Kumioko (talk) 16:01, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Myrtle Beach is up deletion

I have placed WikiProject Myrtle Beach for deletion at WP:MFD. Please comment here for any concerns. Thanks, JJ98 (Talk) 01:21, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Request for comment - Santorum (neologism)

• Santorum (neologism)

Request for Comment discussion started, please see Talk:Santorum_(neologism)#Proposal_to_rename.2C_redirect.2C_and_merge_content.

Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 14:31, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Contradiction in content between Filipino American & Indian American articles

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Filipino American#June 2011. This is the second event regarding similar content. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 22:25, 4 June 2011 (UTC) (Using {{pls}})

Dust Cave

--98.230.112.170 (talk) 04:18, 7 June 2011 (UTC)topographical map of Dust cave; anyone have one. Growing up in this area I may, or may not have knowledge of an unknown, or as you would say, an as yet undiscovered opening into this cave system. I believe three are currently listed. Please advise.

Unfortunatly any edits without confirmation from a reliable source would be considered original research and would be deleted. If you present your findings to a reliable source, and they publish it, your findings can be added to the relevant article. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 20:34, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Featured Sounds

There are quite a few Featured Sounds that I am going to tag as FM of this project. If you feel anything is outside your scope please contact me. cheers --Guerillero | My Talk 19:46, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Great thanks. Will do. --Kumioko (talk) 20:02, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Thunderbirds

The usage of Thunderbirds is under discussion, see Talk:Thunderbirds (TV series) and WP:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2011_May_27#Thunderbirds, for the two discussions underway. As the Thunderbirds are the USAF performance aerobatics team, I thought I'd let you know. 184.144.166.87 (talk) 06:03, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Portal:Super Bowl

{{portal|Super Bowl}} Portal:Super Bowl has been nominated for deletion. 184.144.166.87 (talk) 06:47, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Get all the states featured?

WikiProject Elements is working to turn the Periodic Table to all featured. What about turning the map of the 50 states to all featured? They are both high profile, but defined in number (not like all the chemistry articles or all the US project articles). And I think now theses articles drive from the individual states. But lots of people have lived in more than one state. And once you do an FA of one state, probably can do an FA of another.

They are probably even tougher than element articles in terms of the amount of content and in that people can judge you easier than on a technical topic.

Still...these are the most important articles and would be stellar to have them all starred.

P.s. The Elements crew has a really cool colored Periodic Table that shows quality status. You could do that with states! Maybe get one of them to code it for you.TCO (talk) 05:52, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

That seems like a good idea, same thing with the presidents. I think several of both groups are already featured but I would need to take a look. Let me take a look and see what the status's are. I do think that some are going to be hard. --Kumioko (talk) 11:34, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Presidents might be easier.TCO (talk) 12:56, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree but I think your suggestion is a good one too. Both groups are very important in my opinion and will need to be done at some point. After doing some checking it looks like WikiProject U.S. Presidents already has a list of Presidential articles and the statuses listed. I'm not sure how active that project is but I recognize a couple of the folks on the member list and they are very active in working on at least specific presidential articles. It has in fact been suggested that the US presidents project be included in the WPUS family of supported projects based on the appearence of limited activity.

In regards to the states suggestion there are a lot of states that say they are B class but look more like C or Start (missing citations mostly but some have other problems too). Some are FA's, and GA though. I think the goal here should probably be to get them all to B class or better, then GA and then push for FA. If we do this one we definately need to involve the state projects too so there is an extra logistical step involved. I don't think it'll be a problem for most of them, just somthing we will have to keep in mind. Some states are more resistent to outsiders though and may perceive it as a hostile takover. Additionally, some states are very active (like Oregon, California and New York) so I imagine we should be able to find at least a couple that would be interested in many of the state projects. --Kumioko (talk) 13:54, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Good points. Elements has been through the thing of needing to downgrade some also. I just really like their visual representation of the periodic table with colors for quality. this would work great with states as well. Plus the subject are similar in size (not thousands of articles, but not 4 either) and unquestionably important. Yeah, you would need to figure out the state projects. Really to be honest, just the visual depiction of current status would be compelling. Would see if you can get whoever does it for Elements, or some picture expert to make it for you. It takes a little wikicode, since it would be good to have the states clickable. Hmm...I could reach out? TCO (talk) 14:10, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Hows this look. I just threw it in under my User space for now but if theres interest we can move it over. I was thinking a while back that doing a topic of the month/quarter might be good to generate interest and participation as well. Several have told me they are not comfortable doing the Collab of the month because most of the articles are pretty well developed and they don't know where to start. This would give a broader allowance for folks. As you can see a lot of these articles are pretty well developed already and just need some tightening up. Several have been through GA or FA reviews already so there are some comments we might be able to use there. --Kumioko (talk) 15:08, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Excellent research. Would differentiate the GA and B color more. (I like blue for F, green for GA, yellow for B, red for C) TCO (talk) 15:16, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree that some of the colors are a little close but these are the standard colors in use for each of the class types so there isn't much I can do to change them. I still need to add some more comments about each state but this is a start. --Kumioko (talk) 15:34, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Prime Minister of the United States

Prime Minister of the United States has been nominated for deletion. 65.94.47.63 (talk) 06:04, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

253 Area Code

I would like to see more information provided on the 253 area code. To include a map depicting the borders of the area code in relation to the geographic representation of the Earth's surface for "Tacoma and surrounding areas". I feel this would help give a better understanding of just how large this area code is. I already realized it encompassed the area South of Metropolitan Seattle in the Southern Puget Sound areas, to include Western Pierce County etc. Just something to think about I would like to see all of this information further developed nation wide; not just this (253) area code. I'm almost certain Seattle's area codes would already have a map depicting how the different area codes correlate, giving a visual depiction of said area codes on a map. Thank you for your time, I hope this may help some if any, to whomever it may concern. Jasonbrooks1984 (talk) 07:15, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

I partially agree with what you are saying but I would recommend building up the List article that covers all the area codes in Washington frist, possibly redirecting the individual codes to that article. I think the available references are going to make it difficult to develop a good article on these codes individually but adding them all together into one article will allow us to tie them together and give the reader a better understanding of the codes in the context of the state. I also do not think we need to list every community that falls into the code in the article. Just the major cities and the ones that are important for something on a historical or other reason. Does this sound reasonable? --Kumioko (talk) 14:11, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

I expanded the list as I mentioned using the info from the individual articles and it looks a little better, it still needs a lot of work but I think this shows what I am talking about. --Kumioko (talk) 14:30, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Template:WPLA

{{WPLA}} is under discussion, see WP:Redirects for discussion/Log/2011 June 15 . 65.94.47.63 (talk) 09:45, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Portal:Houston nominated for delisting as a Featured Portal

Portal:Houston has been nominated for delisting as a Featured Portal at Wikipedia:Featured portal review/Houston because it is no longer maintained. It is likely to be delisted speedily unless immediate action is taken. Bencherlite^Talk 10:39, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Created new portal = Supreme Court of the United States

• Portal:Supreme Court of the United States

I've created a new portal for this topic. Collaboration and help would be appreciated, just drop a note at Portal talk:Supreme Court of the United States. -- Cirt (talk) 17:07, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Image:Didrikson.jpg

File:Didrikson.jpg has been nominated for deletion. 65.94.47.63 (talk) 07:08, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Portal:Supreme Court of the United States at peer review

A new portal Portal:Supreme Court of the United States is now up for portal peer review, the review page is at Wikipedia:Portal peer review/Supreme Court of the United States/archive1. I put a bit of effort into this and feedback would be appreciated prior to featured portal candidacy. Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 17:50, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

coin images up for deletion

three US coin images from coins of 200, 150, 120 years old have been nominated for deletion. See WP:Files_for_deletion/2011_June_19

65.94.47.63 (talk) 10:26, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject United States in the Signpost

"WikiProject Report" would like to focus on WikiProject United States for a Signpost article to be published on the Fourth of July. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Is anyone willing to be interviewed? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Other editors will also have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions and responses may be trimmed if the final article becomes too long. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. --Kumioko (talk) 16:57, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

User:Michael J/County table

User:Michael J/County table is a useful page.—Wavelength (talk) 17:46, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

B-Class Checklist for Template:WikiProject United States

The suggestion has been made to add the B-Class checklist functionality to the WikiProject United States template. Since this is a significant change I wanted to take the opportunity to allow for comments about this from the members of the projects. If you have any comments, ideas or suggestions plesae take the time to participate in the discussion. --Kumioko (talk) 15:42, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Franco-Americans is up for deletion

I have nominated WikiProject Franco-Americans for deletion at WP:MFD. Please comment here for any concerns. Thank for your time. JJ98 (Talk / Contributions) 18:14, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Also note, WikiProject Library of Congress Country Studies and Template:WikiProject Georgia are also up for deletion at WP:MFD and WP:RFD. JJ98 (Talk / Contributions) 19:50, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Daniel Webster FAR

I have nominated Daniel Webster 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) 00:53, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

International Space Station

I have nominated International Space Station 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. Penyulap _talk 14:36, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Tagging articles with the WikiProject United States banner

There is a discussion about my tagging articles relating to WikiProject United States. Because this discussion relates directly to the project, its scope and the association of United States related projects I felt it important to notify the project in this fashion. Please take a moment to comment on this discussion so that all (including myself) will be clear on what the project wishes its scope to be.

The notice below was copied from my talk page.

Notice of noticeboard discussion

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Bot-like addition of WikiProject United States tags. Thank you.--Kumioko (talk) 01:56, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Supported WikiProject proposal

As was open for discussion there was no opposition posted to the idea of having WikiProject Asian Americans, being either a task force or a supported WikiProject. I imagine the difference between Task Force and supported WikiProject is the level of integration and independence; and that point itself hasn't really been discussed. Since the previous discussion has been auto archived, I am renewing the discussion. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 03:32, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Elmelindo Rodrigues Smith

Asian or not? See talk page discussion. Since it has been shown that DEOMI isn't always reliable. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 01:37, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

A-class question

Hey WP:US people, do you (or will you, I suppose) accept WP:MILHIST A-class ratings in your project template? An example of this would be here at James B. McCreary. Milhist's A-class criteria are located at WP:MH/A. Regards, Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 07:32, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Support - I think thats a great idea personally. I think Milhists standards are very well developed and very well respected in the community. We already have the A class rating and a number of articles in it (many of them Milhist related). --Kumioko (talk) 13:27, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Nomination as a United States Wikipedians' Collaboration of the Month candidate

The Hope Diamond, an article within the scope of this project, has been nominated to be a future United States Wikipedians' Collaboration of the Month. All editors interested in improving this article are encouraged to participate. You can vote for this or other articles article of the Month here. --Kumioko (talk) 19:35, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Content removal discussion

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Philippine cuisine#Philippine cuisine in the United States. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 16:45, 1 July 2011 (UTC) (Using {{pls}})

United States Wikipedians' Collaboration of the Month for July 2011

United States dollar, a page within the scope of this project, has been selected as the United States Wikipedians' Collaboration of the Month for July 2011. All editors interested in improving this article are encouraged to participate. You can also vote for next months article of the Month here. --Kumioko (talk) 18:58, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

San Diego is up for peer review

I have listed San Diego for peer review. Please comment here. Thank you. JJ98 (Talk / Contributions) 00:46, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

International Space Station

There is a discussion at Talk:International Space Station about which dialect of English the article should be using. It is currently using British English; however there's no British module (there's a European module with British contributions, and a Canadian module, plus several American modules, of the English speaking countries involved) 65.94.47.63 (talk) 07:30, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject English

Wikipedia:WikiProject English has been nominated for deletion. As this project was proposed for maintaining national varieties of English on how articles are written/formatted/spelled, you may be interested. (essentially, maintaing WP:ENGVAR compliance on articles) 65.93.15.213 (talk) 04:59, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

"American Indians"

Native Americans in the United States has been requested to be renamed. See Talk:Native Americans in the United States for the discussion. 65.93.15.213 (talk) 05:30, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Timorese American

Should there be an article regarding, Timorese Americans? There are two reliable source references which I have found. One indicates that there are about 40 Timorese immigrants in the United States, the other indicating that there is at least one American born Timoran.

• Larry Luxner (6 June 2006). "East Timor, Only Four Years Old, Struggles With Poverty, Obscurity". Archived from the original on 25 May 2011. Retrieved 9 June 2011. Pinto certainly doesn't need a big staff to look after the Timorese-American immigrant community: He says that no more than 40 Timorese nationals live in the United States.
• Pinto, Constâncio (1997). East Timor's unfinished struggle: inside the Timorese resistance. Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press. p. 236. ISBN 9780896085411. Retrieved 9 June 2011. We named her Tima, for Timorese American. {{cite book}}: More than one of |pages= and |page= specified (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

There might not be enough, as there wasn't for Malaysian American, but that doesn't mean that we as a community of editors cannot contemplate it. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 07:30, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Using the above data, should I produce a stub quality article, to begin with? --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 02:14, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

• People in Timor born in the US and people in the US born in Timor should be trated as two seperate articles. They are distinct groups. On the other hand, there is no reason for the purposes of articles to limit the group to people in the US born in Timor, people in the US with parents born in Timor could also be included. However if there are only about 40 Timoreans who have emigrated to the US, it seems that this might be better treated as part of an article like Timor or Timorean people with a section titled "Timorean people who have moved to other countries". You could link Timorean American to that section as a redirect. If more Timoreans come to the US or they become the subject of significant scholarly study in the future this could be made a seperate article, but for now it hardly seems worth seperating.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:49, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

"People in Timor in the US"? Was what was meant to be typed "People of Timor born in and residing in the United States"?

Is there sufficient reliable sources to create a Timorean Diaspora article? Perhaps that would be a good article which to send a Timorean American article? Is it be Timorese or Timorean?

Perhaps we are not the best individuals to answer that, I shall invite editors from WikiProject Southeast Asia to this discussion. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 15:50, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

July 2011 Newsletter for WikiProject United States

The July 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) 03:25, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Portal:Supreme Court of the United States at Featured Portal candidates

• Portal:Supreme Court of the United States

Portal:Supreme Court of the United States is a candidate for Featured Portal, with discussion at Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Supreme Court of the United States. — Cirt (talk) 16:03, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Elmelindo Rodrigues Smith

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Elmelindo Rodrigues Smith#Asian American. Discussion regarding ethnicity and whether certain sources are reliable. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 20:56, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Historiography of the United States has been nominated as the United States Wikipedians' Collaboration of the Month for next August 2011

Historiography of the United States, an article within the scope of this project, has been nominated to be the United States Wikipedians' Collaboration of the Month for next August 2011. You can vote for this or other articles to be next months Collaboration of the Month here. Project Messenger Bot 19:37, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Democratic Party (United States) has been nominated as the United States Wikipedians' Collaboration of the Month for next August 2011

Democratic Party (United States), an article within the scope of this project, has been nominated to be the United States Wikipedians' Collaboration of the Month for next August 2011. You can vote for this or other articles to be next months Collaboration of the Month here. Project Messenger Bot 19:38, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Bonfire Night (disambiguation)#Requested move

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Bonfire Night (disambiguation)#Requested move. Trevj (talk) 23:35, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Bonfire Night#Requested move

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Bonfire Night#Requested move. Trevj (talk) 23:35, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

National Archives featured article contest

The Charters of Freedom on display at the National Archives' rotunda.

I would like to announce the first featured article contest for the National Archives project. The National Archives has graciously provided us with prizes to give out to winners, including National Archives publications, tote bags, and other swag. The first contest is a challenge to get any of the articles on the three documents on display in the National Archives building's rotunda—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights—featured (in any language).

There is a one-month timeline for this contest, with the deadline tentatively set for August 20. Please read more about how to participate here. Good luck! Dominic·t 20:45, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Census pointer

Just found a census pointer for those of us who monitor that sort of thing. By counties with cursor, by state on the left. http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/map?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=thab1 If there is a govt (one-pointer-meets-all) link, ignore this one! Student7 (talk) 22:57, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

American Left

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, Tom Kahn, and Rachelle Horowitz. The YPSL was dissolved, but the party formed a new youth group under the same name.

SocialistA. Philip Randolph led the 1963 March on Washington at which Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his speech "I have a dream".

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.

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. 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.

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.

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. LID and SDS split in 1965, when SDS voted to remove from its constitution the "exclusion clause" that prohibited membership by communists:The SDS exclusion clause had barred "advocates of or apologists for" "totalitarianism". 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. Afterwords, Marxism Leninism, particularly the Progressive Labor Party, helped to write "the death sentence" for SDS,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). 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. The same year, David McReynolds and others from the pacifist and immediate-withdrawal wing of the former Socialist Party formed the Socialist Party, USA.

Social Democrats, USA

Main article: Social Democrats, USA

Version A

Bayard Rustin was the national chairperson of SDUSA during the 1970s. SDUSA sponsored a biannual conference that featured discussions, for which SDUSA invited outside academic, political, and labor-union leaders. These meetings also functioned as reunions for political activists and intellectuals, some of whom worked together for decades. SDUSA also published position papers, e.g. opposing many of the G. W. Bush administration's domestic policies. From 1979–1989, SDUSA members likeTom Kahn organized the AFL–CIO's fundraising of 300 thousand dollars, which bought printing presses and other supplies requested by Solidarnosc (Solidarity), the independent labor-union of Poland. SDUSA members helped form a bipartisan coalition (of the Democratic and Republican Parties to support the founding of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), whose first President wasCarl Gershman. The NED publicly allocated 4 million USD of public aid to Solidarity through 1989. Because of their service in government, Gershman and other SDUSA members were called "State Department socialists" by Massing (1987), who wrote that the foreign policy of the Reagan administration was being run by Trotskyists, a claim that was called a "myth" by Lipset (1988, p. 34). This conspiracy charge has been repeated and even widened by journalist Michael Lind to assert a takeover of the foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration by former Trotskyists; Lind's "amalgamation of the defense intellectuals with the traditions and theories of 'the largely Jewish-American Trotskyist movement'" was criticized by Alan M. Wald, a professor at the University of Michigan who has written a history of Trotskism and neo-neoconservatism, The New York intellectuals.

Version B

The Shachtmanites, called the Realignment Caucus, in the SP-SDF argued that since organized labor supported the Democratic Party, they should join the Democratic Party and transform it into a left-wing party, with the Republicans becoming a right-wing party. Further, they argued that they should support the War in Vietnam to stop Communist expansion. In 1972, they supported Senator Henry Jackson for the Democratic presidential nomination, and re-named the party Social Democrats USA (SDUSA), dropping the term "socialist". While they retained membership in the Socialist International, they supported Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election and had moved sufficiently right by 1980, that many of their members served in the Reagan administration.

• Busky, Donald F. Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2000. ISBN 02759688

Request for help

Second opinions would be helpful. Thanks!  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 05:46, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Years by State

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)

List of United States Foreign Service Career Ambassadors

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)

USMC listed at FAR.

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)

Copyright concerns related to your project

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)

Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Panel - proposed edits

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)

Renaming to Aqua Teen Hunger Force to Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1

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)

Bot run to auto assess some of the Unassessed articles

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)

United States Declaration of Independence article needs to be adopted

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)

Changing WikiProject San Diego into a task force of WikiProject California

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)

Arizona

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

Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives

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)

USS Kentucky FAR

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)

DodoBot

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)

University of Maryland institution staffer wants to participate in Wikipedia

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)

WikiProject Washington

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)

Great Sioux Reservation

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)

Delete the categories for volunteers in the Peace Corps and VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America)?

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)

WikiProject Newsletter

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)

List of United States Navy ratings list nominated for review

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)

Bot run to tag additional articles

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)

Tagging for supported projects

In addition to this task I would like to start doing the same thing with several of the supported projects, starting with the states. I will compile a listing of the related articles that start with or contain the names of the various states (such as Colorado, Idaho, etc.) for tagging. I will leave a message here and on the projects talk page as I complete each list. --Kumioko (talk) 17:59, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Extra width on main pg needs narrowing down

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)

Willing to talk about your project?

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)

New category for the newsletters

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)

Looking for Online Ambassadors interested in U.S. politics

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)

Request for comment from supporting WikiProjects

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)

Naming conventions for Townships in Pennsylvania

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)

WP:COI issues with Scott Smith (mayor)

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)

Rat Terrier History

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)

Questionable notability of Mariano Laya Armington

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

FAC for 1st Filipino Infantry Regiment (United States)

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)

Open page move discussions

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

September 2011 Newsletter for WikiProject United States

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)

List of American gentlemen's clubs

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

Census boilerplate . . .

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)

Describing/naming census designated places

The census designated place (CDP) is a unit that is, as far as I know, unique to the U.S. Census. The 2010 Census saw a great increase in the number of CDPs in some parts of the country. In some cases, there was an existing article about the populated place that has now been designated a CDP, but in other cases, new articles are being created for CDPs to hold the census statistical data for the newly designated entities. As alluded to above, there is a history of edit-warring over the terminology for CDPs. I hope we can prevent some future edit wars by adopting some semi-standard conventions regarding how to name, describe, and cross-reference CDPs. To get discussion started, I suggest the following typology and conventions for CDPs (numbered solely for convenience in discussion):

Typology

• Type 1: CDP is a populated place listed in GNIS (search page at this link) as a "populated place" and as a CDP. This has two subtypes:

• Type 1A: The article contains sourced information about the populated place (for example, its history or the place name's association with an active zip code and postal address) that is independent of the census data.
• Type 1B: The only sources of information in the article are GNIS (including maps that are presumed to be related to GNIS) and the census (for example, Central, Tennessee). Type 1B status is presumed to be temporary, since these CDPs could become Type 1A in the future if additional sourced information is obtained.

• Type 2: CDP name appears in GNIS as a CDP, but not also as a populated place.

• Type 2A: The article contains sourced information about the place that is independent of the census data and identifies it as a place that is recognized in some context other than the census.
• Type 2B: The CDP is documented to be a combination of two or more populated places that are covered in separate articles (for example, Wakefield-Peacedale, Rhode Island, which consists of the villages of Wakefield and Peace Dale)
• Type 2C: The CDP has been found to correspond to a named populated place with some other name that is not covered in a separate article. (Example: Apparently this is the situation with Chester-Chester Depot, Vermont, which addresses a CDP within the town of Chester, Vermont that is listed in GNIS as "Chester Census Designated Place" and includes discrete places known as "Chester" and "Chester Depot".)
• Type 2D: The CDP is not a subdivision of any other populated place and has not been found to correspond to any populated place with another name.
• Type 2E: The CDP is an artificial subdivision of a populated place whose name is not used in any other context and that does not correspond to a populated place with another name (for example, Oxoboxo River, Connecticut, which is a subpart of the legal town of Montville, includes discrete sections of that town including the historical village of Uncasville, but is not mentioned in the town's current comprehensive plan)

Proposed conventions

• Type 1A - The article lead sentence should use one or more nouns to describe the primary nature of the place, followed by an indication that it is also a CDP. Some examples:

• Blountville is an unincorporated town and census-designated place (CDP) in Sullivan County, Tennessee, United States.
• Crugers is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) located in the town of Cortlandt, Westchester County, New York.
• Lake Tansi is a resort community in Cumberland County, Tennessee, United States, recognized by the U.S. Census as a census-designated place (CDP).
• Seymour is an unincorporated community and a census-designated place (CDP) in Blount and Sevier counties in the U.S. state of Tennessee, United States.
• White River Junction is an unincorporated village and census-designated place (CDP) in the town of Hartford in Windsor County, Vermont.

The article title should be in the form "Placename, State" or "Placename, Countyname, State," if there are multiple instances of the place in the state. If it is necessary to disambiguate from another place of the same name in the same county and the place is identifiable as a hamlet, village, former incorporated place, etc., then names such as "Placename (village), State" are preferred over "Placename (CDP), State." When CDPs are associated with neighborhoods and places best described only as "unincorporated community," the articles should be titled as "Placename (CDP), State."

Listings in county or state templates should identify the place by its given name, with parenthetical modifiers (as above) only when needed to distinguish from other entities in the same template.

• Type 1B - In general, the article lead sentence should identify the place as a CDP. Any needed title disambiguation should use forms such as "Placename (CDP), State," until such time as the article is expanded to Type 1A. Templates should list the name of the CDP as a placename.
• Type 2A - Handle like Type 1A.
• Type 2B - Article lead sentence should identify the place as a CDP and name (with links) the associated populated places. For example: "Wakefield-Peacedale is a census-designated place (CDP) in the town of South Kingstown in Washington County, Rhode Island, United States that includes the villages of Peace Dale and Wakefield."

Title in the form "Placename, State." If title disambiguation is needed, use the form "Placename (CDP), State."

• Type 2C - If the CDP corresponds to multiple populated places, consider whether it would be appropriate to separate the place articles from the CDP article in order to handle this like Type 2B. If that is not feasible, the article lead sentence should separately name the populated place(s) and CDP, describing each with appropriate nouns (this would be a variant of Type 1A). Article title needs to be addressed on a case-by-case basis, with preference for the current common name for the place.
• Type 2D - Handle like Type 1B.
• Type 2E - Article lead sentence should identify the place as a CDP (like Type 1B).

Title should correspond to the nomenclature found in GNIS and in Census data. For example, the Oxoboxo River CDP in Connecticut is listed in GNIS as "Oxoboxo River Census Designated Place" and in factfinder2.census.gov as "Oxoboxo River CDP," so the article title should be "Oxoboxo River CDP, Connecticut".

Template entries under headings other than "CDPs" should include the word "CDP" (for example, "Oxoboxo River CDP"), but entries under the title "CDPs" should omit that element (for example, "Oxoboxo River").

--Orlady (talk) 18:54, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know of this discussion. I dislike any title with "CDP" in it for a few reasons: 1. abbreviations should be avoided in titles 2. few people outside of those specifically attuned to the subject have any idea what CDP means 3. most people looking for a place may not know its status vis-a-vis the census (a status which may change each census) 4. it just lacks simplicity, elegance, and permanence

If the name is one that the Census folks pulled out of thin air, then there will be no confusion in calling it Thin Air, State; if there is another Thin Air in that State, if it is the more prominent (or say, incorporated) then it gets Thin Air, State and the other gets disambiguated; if neither is obviously the major use of the term, then Thin Air, State can be a disambiguation page, and we then disambiguate articles the normal way (by county, parish in Louisiana, borough in Alaska), so Thin Air, County 1, State vs. Thin Air, County 2, State.

If there was an unincorporated community that was made a CDP, it is handled in the same manner. For example: Rolling Hills, California is the city in Los Angeles County - the primary use of the name, and Rolling Hills, Madera County, California is the CDP in Madera county, hatdabbed at the city article, but not Rolling Hills CDP, California because before 2010 it wasn't a CDP and may not be in 2020 (WP:CRYSTAL).

Carlossuarez46 (talk) 19:19, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

While the US Government is charged (constitutionally) with counting people, it is the individual states that charter or create municipalities, provide services or devolve them to counties or localities, etc. Let's look at the extreme, Orlady's category 2E. The existence of the article on Oxboxo River, to use the example in play, is kind of marginal. I won't argue that it should not exist, but rather that something like Orlady's description actually be the lead or second sentence: "Oxboxo River is a census designated place, an artificial subdivision of a populated place whose name is not used in any other context than for statistical purposes by the US Census Bureau, and that does not correspond to a populated place with another name" Jd2718 (talk) 19:38, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

LOL. I agree that the article Oxoboxo River, Connecticut seems pointless. However, I've long since learned that there are some dedicated Wikipedians who strongly believe that if a set of topics (such as CDPs) is regarded as notable, then all instances of that topic must be separately documented in the encyclopedia. --Orlady (talk) 19:51, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Reply to Carlossuarez46: I think I share your general dislike for calling things "CDPs", but I also dislike the idea of describing places as "census designated place" when they are known to exist as actual places. For example, I don't like the fact that the lead sentence of the Hilo, Hawaii article identifies that place only as a "census designated place." CDPs are primarily statistical constructs, while Hilo is a place that most people would consider to be a "city," but for the technicality that it is not an incorporated municipality. I think Wikipedia should follow the principle that other nouns besides "census designated place" should have primacy when other nouns are available to describe a place.

As for titles, there currently are numerous articles that use "CDP" as a disambiguation term. For example, Middlebury (CDP), Vermont has that title to disambiguate from the legal town of Middlebury, Vermont in which it is located. Under my proposal, it could be renamed to Middlebury (village), Vermont, although since the article is almost entirely about the census data, the current title might be retained.

Your solution to the hypothetical "Thin Air, State" may seem logical, but it would not resolve the ongoing edit warring at Template:New London County, Connecticut. One editor has been insisting there that the CDP named "Oxoboxo River" (not to be confused with the actual river by that name) and another similar CDP must be treated as if they were normal populated places, while another editor has been trying to include "CDP" in the template to distinguish them from the normal populated places in the template.

In parts of the country where I mostly work, CDPs seem to persist from one census to the next -- and new ones were added in 2010. Apparently, that's not the case in California. Could you elaborate on the California situation? --Orlady (talk) 19:51, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

CDPs do come and go. In Michigan (and I expect elsewhere) in the 1990 and 2000 census some CDPs were no longer included in a subsequent census and new CDPs introduced in 2000 and 2010. A CDP is purely a statistical entity that might often, but not necessarily, have some correlation with an existing populated place name. The degree of correlation is variable. Even CDPs that persist from one census to the next may vary in the area covered to reflect changing population density or annexation by municipalities. I don't like using "CDP" as a disambiguating term in article titles precisely because it is rarely used outside of census products (or products derived from census data). I think I mostly agree with Carlossuarez46 approach to naming articles. But I also very much agree with Orlady that actual localities should be described first as such (whether unincorporated community, or hamlet or village -- whatever the local nomenclature) and only secondarily that it is also a CDP. older ≠ wiser 20:16, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

The term "CDP" is currently used as a disambiguator in the names of some articles for the 6 New England states, New York, and New Jersey, as well as one article for Maryland. In some of these instances, the article could be renamed to identify the topic as a "village," "hamlet", or whatever. In most other instances, it probably would be logical to include the CDP census information in the article about the larger entity (typically a town) of which the CDP is a part. However, when that was done in the past, there have been objections from Wikipedians who feel that every CDP should have its own article. If the only purpose of the article is to provide census information for the CDP, I suppose there would not be much of a downside from calling the article "Anywhere (CDP), State," since it's likely that the only people interested in the article are people who know what CDPs are. --Orlady (talk) 02:41, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

If we are talking about not-real-places maybe it is worth reopening that discussion? Back to Oxoboxo River, Connecticut, it could redirect to Uncasville, where the CDP topic is already adequately covered (one sentence). Jd2718 (talk) 02:58, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

In most, but probably not all, of the northeastern U.S. instances where a CDP and another entity have the same name, the CDP is a subarea of the other entity, which is a legally constituted local government. It would make good sense for the demographic data for the subarea to be included in the article about the legally constituted entity. Similarly, since Oxoboxo River is wholly contained in the legal town of Montville, it would be appropriate to include the CDP information in the Montville article. For various convoluted reasons, the Oxoboxo River page should not be redirected to Uncasville (an article I created very recently after realizing that there were hundreds of backlinks to Uncasville that were redirecting to the article about the Oxoboxo River CDP). --Orlady (talk) 04:33, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps rather than than naming an article X (Village/town/city/CDP), Y an article should be simply X, Y with whether it is incorporated, unincorporated, CDP, etc. in an entomology/terminology/designation section. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 17:05, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

For the record, there are thin air places in California, but rarely are they duplicated in name with some on the ground place also in California, and in each of those cases, which appears to be different from the New England morass, they are in different counties, so can be easily dabbed that way. CDPs also exist which combine several real-world places, some of these are hyphenated (brilliance in the beltway), and some are not. And then, some CDPs take in any number of small unincorporated places that real world people never thought were amalgamated; and, of course, the CDPs still places people thought were unitary in nature. While "CDP" in the title is used in New England to disambiguate two places essentially in some Venn Diagram relationship with each other, such use while strictly not optimal may not be avoidable. That said, it needn't propagate into areas where it is avoidable (California, which I'm most familiar with, for example). Given New England's and some of the Mid Atlantic states' (NY, PA, NJ) use of hamlets, villages, townships, cities, towns, CDPs, which all overlap, form various subsets, supersets of territory, and complicated municipal structures, however disambiguation is done will be challenging. Western states rarely use townships (many were created in the railroad days, but often serve no modern function; many aren't even marked on modern maps, even detailed ones) and some of these problems don't occur. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 17:16, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

In New England the duplication of CDP and town names typically occurs when the Census Bureau wants to tabulate only the urbanized civic center of a town. In cases like these, any cultural or historical information would already be covered by the town article and the CDP article will basically end up as a placeholder for census data (Massachusetts currently has a whole bunch of these). In cases like these, I would suggest merging the census data for the town center as a subsection of the town article. This has already been mostly done for New Hampshire and Connecticut where the town center article has not been expanded for years. In cases where the CDP name corresponds to a village name with a different name from the town, the CDP aspect should be only secondary and CDPs should also not be separated in county navigation templates (they should be lumped with other unincorporated communities). There is still the problem of CDPs that correspond to multiple distinct villages. --Polaron | Talk 17:30, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Polaron's idea of including the CDP information in the town article should work when the CDP that has the same name as the town and is the only discrete village or CDP in the town. That's good! I see several situations, however, where it wouldn't work:

• When a town includes one CDP that has the same name as the town and additional CDPs/villages with different names. For example, Great Barrington, Massachusetts includes a CDP/village named "Great Barrington" and a second CDP/village named Housatonic. Both are well-defined villages with characteristics and histories that are different from each other and different from the more rural parts of the town; both of them have post offices (with different zip codes). Housatonic clearly needs to be documented in an article separate from the town article -- and it does not make logical sense for it to have a separate article while the town's main village is lumped in with the town article.
• When the CDP is not part of the town of the same name. (Example: Canaan (CDP), Connecticut is not in Canaan, Connecticut, but in the adjacent town of North Canaan, Connecticut)
• When a CDP includes multiple distinct villages -- this is the example Polaron mentions.

Fortunately, I think that in the first two of these cases, disambiguation of titles could be accomplished using forms like Canaan (village), Connecticut and Great Barrington (town center), Massachusetts. In the third case (the CDP that contains multiple villages), I think the demographics of the CDP could be discussed in the town article, while each of the villages could have a stand-alone article.

What have I missed here or oversimplified? --Orlady (talk) 03:55, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

(Not answering Orlady's question which needs answering!). As Polaron has said, we have a "town" with two incorporated villages in them in Vermont. Each village has a census. The town including the two villages also has a census. This is handy and very accurate.

In Florida, we have a small town. There are unincorporated communities outside the town (in the South="in the county") that share the same zip code and the same "town identity." There is a census for the town AND a separate census for the zip. Lazy, I included them in the same article, identifying which was which. This is accurate, but politically strange since the people are definitely not part of the town. I'm hoping since I made it clear in the article, it's not encyclopedically strange! And there is really nothing else under which the town-outside-the-town can be listed except "neighborhood" and frankly, we aren't ready for that yet. Calling them "neighborhood (county)" or whatever, would sound really strange, though politically accurate. If they were a separate article, we'd have to say "town (not in town)" which is preposterous! Student7 (talk) 19:22, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

The situation of a the name of a discrete place becoming the postal address for a larger area exists all over the U.S., although the details differ. I live in a state where nearly half the population lived outside of incorporated municipalities in 2000, and where many of the unincorporated "places" where people will tell you that they live (including many places with post offices) aren't designated as CDPs. This is one reason why many named unincorporated places are documented in Wikipedia articles, but it is often difficult to get reliably sourced information about places with no legal existence.

Uncasville, Connecticut is one article where I very recently wrestled with the problem of separately documenting an actual community and a postal place in the same article. The post office uses the name Uncasville, Connecticut (a small village with no legal existence) for a big chunk of the legal town of Montville, including the Indian reservation that is not in Montville's legal jurisdiction and is the site of the Mohegan Sun casino resort. One result is that the Uncasville article has hundreds of backlinks from articles about boxers, rock stars, etc., and people following those links need to understand the zip code situation because they are not interested in the small village of Uncasville. Another example that might be useful to someone else is Sevierville, Tennessee, which contains the following text:

Due to its hilly terrain and the relatively poor roads of 19th-century Sevier County, a number of smaller communities developed independently along the outskirts of Sevierville. These include Harrisburg and Fair Garden to the east and Catlettsburg and Boyd's Creek to the north. In addition, the United States Postal Service associates the name "Sevierville" with ZIP codes for much of Sevier County, including the town of Pittman Center and other geographically extensive areas located outside Sevierville's city limits.

Be cautious about describing demographic data for a zip code. The Census Bureau does not actually tabulate official census data for zip codes, but the Bureau does try to approximate zip code boundaries (using the nearest boundaries of census units) to create "Zip Code Tabulation Areas." Data for these ZCTAs might be pretty rough... --Orlady (talk) 14:13, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Just speaking more about the New Hampshire situation, we merged most of the CDP articles (thanks to Polaron's initial suggestion) into their respective towns a few years ago, after it became clear that people were starting to add duplicate material to the CDP and the town articles. We had one case (Conway, New Hampshire) where the Conway CDP was smaller than the North Conway CDP, so the Conway CDP article was kept separately. I would support changing the article name to "Conway (village), New Hampshire" in this case. With the 2010 census, a few more cases of this sort have arisen (Goffstown, for instance, versus Pinardville), where I have simply redirected a new Goffstown CDP article title to the town article. I'd be open to converting the Goffstown CDP redirect to a "Goffstown (village)" article if that's where we're headed. As for the "Oxoboxo River"-type name that no one uses, we have an East Merrimack, New Hampshire that is of that type. I would prefer we stick with the existing article title, as it is the simplest way to name it, and simply mention the usage or non-usage of the name within the article, as is currently the case. --Ken Gallager (talk) 12:45, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

The WikiProject Colorado handling of CDPs can be seen at Colorado census designated places.  Buaidh  21:45, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Can the phrase "The population was spread out...." be replaced?

With new census data, the demographics sections of the US named places articles will need to be updated. Is there a way to remove this phrase? I think it is borderline non-English; it is certainly not meaningful. Jd2718 (talk) 19:15, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

The phrase appears to occur in the vast majority of our articles. Jd2718 (talk) 19:16, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

That language came from a set of bot edits done circa 2002. Not only is the language peculiar, but it's not clear that the information that was reported in those bot-created Census data sections was the "right" information to distill from the Census. The "spread out" section related to age and sex. If there's a desire to describe the age-sex distribution, age pyramids would be better (they were added to some articles more recently). On the other hand, humans might want to decide what parameters to report. I suggest that median age is a good single parameter to report for all communities, and additional age data could be included at the article developer's discretion. I'd be interested in hearing what other Wikipedians think. --Orlady (talk) 23:44, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

"distributed by age as follows.." Student7 (talk) 22:40, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

That would work fine. --Orlady (talk) 14:07, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. The simplicity is attractive, and it is English. Jd2718 (talk) 03:51, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Sources for 2010 Census information

I have found it challenging to cite the 2010 Census, since there don't seem to be good ways of linking to any page at the new http://factfinder2.census.gov/ website, other than the home page. I've thought about listing the name and number of any data report I cite (for example, the geography-specific "DP-1, Profile of General Population and Housing Characteristics: 2010 Demographic Profile Data" is the source for most of the data that Wikipedia typically reports). One source that looks handy -- and seems to provide stable links for specific geographies -- is this University of Missouri data compilation. That source currently has total population counts and ethnicity data for the total population.

Has anyone else found good data sources and/or ways to cite factfinder2? --Orlady (talk) 12:10, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Extracting geographic area data for the 2010 Census?

Increasingly, reliable secondary sources of 2010 Census dates, like that U. of Missouri site, are popping up. However, one thing I have not seen yet is a source for the geographic areas of "places" in the 2010 Census. States and counties can be assumed to be geographically the same as they were in 2000, but municipalities and CDPs are likely to have changed due to annexations and redefinitions. I don't know how to extract this information from Factfinder, and I have a hunch that the 2000 values were developed from GIS output by a tech-savvy Wikipedian. Does anyone here have insights as to how that was done -- or who did it? --Orlady (talk) 14:03, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Hurray! Ken Gallager found the answer to this question. I've copied the relevant items from his talk page below. --Orlady (talk) 15:19, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Copied content begins here

I just found in AFF2 the G001 table ("Geographic Identifiers"), which gives land and water area in unspecified coordinates. (It appears to be square meters.) I'm still wondering when someone with script-writing skills will pull all this together for a nation-wide update.--Ken Gallager (talk) 15:07, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

By George (or should I say "By Ken"?), he's got it! I agree that the table gives areas in square meters. The 2000 version of the same table even labeled the units. To my consternation, I find that the official area of my county seems to have changed slightly since 2000 (the land area declined, the water area increased, and the total area declined by a wee bit), which is something that generally isn't supposed to happen. I suppose that the change in total area can be written off as GIS-related error, but it's still disconcerting.
As for finding a script-writer, I think we need to agree on what the scripts should do before we recruit one. Participation in the discussion I tried to start at the US Wikiproject has been productive, but anemic.... --Orlady (talk) 15:40, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

You mentioned the slight change in area for your county, which reminds that I expect we'll see similar slight changes everywhere, regardless of actual changes to municipal boundaries, because the Census Bureau upgraded their GIS base data between 2000 and 2010. It's supposed to be a lot more accurate now, but it does mean that probably every number will change somewhat. Oy. --Ken Gallager (talk) 15:44, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

How to incorporate Census 2010 data into articles

Heading inserted by Orlady to clarify change in topic

Much of the 2000 data for municipalities, CDPs and administrative divisions was created for Wikipedia by User:Ram-Man using Rambot. I think I'd like to see the census data presented more concisely, perhaps in one or more tables. Seems this could be done with templates -- though another option might be to create pseudo sub-pages which could be transcluded into other relevant articles. One appealing aspect of sub-pages could be to make them as semi-protected. While I generally strongly support Wikipedia's "anybody can edit" policy, one common form of vandalism involves making subtle (or not so subtle) changes to the demographic or geographic data -- it seems that once the accuracy and presentation of the data can be agreed on, there should be very little need to update them. older ≠ wiser 15:36, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I also think the subpages idea is a good one. It should make things easier to update and maintain while keeping the coding and documentation fairly simple. --Kumioko (talk) 16:24, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Boilerplate language for Demographics sections

We still need to define standard boilerplate for these sections. To start discussion, here's some slightly streamlined language for reporting the same information that was reported for 2000:

As displayed

As of the census of 2010<citation for data>, there were [insert number] people, [insert number] households, and [insert number] families residing in the [insert place type]. The population density was [insert result] people per square mile (yyy/km²). There were [insert number] housing units at an average density of [insert result] per square mile (yyy/km²).

The racial and ethnic makeup of the population was as follows: _% white, _% black or African American, _% American Indian or Alaska native, _% Asian, _% native Hawaiian or other Pacific islander, _% some other race, _% two or more races, and _% Hispanic or Latino of any race. The white non-Hispanic population was _% of the total.

There were [insert number] households, of which _% included children under the age of 18, _._% included married couples living together, _% had a female householder with no husband present, and _% were non-families. _% of all households were made up of individuals and _% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was _._ and the average family size was _._.

The population was distributed by age as follows: _% under the age of 18, _% from 18 to 24, _% from 25 to 44, _% from 45 to 64, and _% 65 or older. The median age was __._ years. For every 100 females there were __ males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were __ males.

As entered

As of the [[2010 United States Census|census of 2010]]<citation for data>, there were [insert number] people, [insert number] households, and [insert number] families residing in the [insert place type]. The [[population density]] was [insert result] people per square mile (yyy/km²). There were [insert number] housing units at an average density of [insert result] per square mile (yyy/km²).

The [[Race and ethnicity in the United States Census|racial and ethnic makeup]] of the population was as follows: _% white, _% black or African American, _% American Indian or Alaska native, _% Asian, _% native Hawaiian or other Pacific islander, _% some other race, _% [[Multiracial American|two or more races]], and _% Hispanic or Latino of any race. The white non-Hispanic population was _% of the total.

There were [insert number] households, of which _% included children under the age of 18, _._% included married couples living together, _% had a female householder with no husband present, and _% were non-families. _% of all households were made up of individuals and _% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was _._ and the average family size was _._.

The population was distributed by age as follows: _% under the age of 18, _% from 18 to 24, _% from 25 to 44, _% from 45 to 64, and _% 65 or older. The median age was __._ years. For every 100 females there were __ males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were __ males.

Note that I've eliminated the offensive capital W on "white", simplified some wording, eliminated repetitive links, and delinked Marriage. --Orlady (talk) 23:51, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Will changes mess up the bots at all? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 00:58, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Moon landing

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)

State economy template

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)

Merge of 4 World Trade Center and Four World Trade Center

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

Merge of 5 World Trade Center and Five World Trade Center

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

Help with article

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)

Practical article needed to describe real functions of states, collectively

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)

New postmaster finder links

• 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)

Prisons and populated places

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." [3] - 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)

Newsletter and project related things

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)

Proposed task force: Memphis area

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)

Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Fall 2011 Photo Contest

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)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Kiefer.Wolfowitz

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

Editorial on science education in the United States

• 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)

Sarah Palin

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)

US Senator list templates

{{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)

Discussion at Talk:John Quincy Adams#WP tags

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)

2010 US census facts for each populated places in the US

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)

Comments requested

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)

99 Percent Declaration

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)

Orion (spacecraft) listed at Redirects for discussion

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)

Problematic article

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)

District 5 for Lalaland

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)

Template:Healthcare in the United States

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

Opinions needed

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)

Featured article review for Rosa Parks

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)

Need some members to help out

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)

About Hispanic assimilation and drinking while pregnant

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)

Featured article review for Sunset Boulevard (film)

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)

Road trip around USA

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)

AfD Notice

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

Template: United States political party shading

{{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)

United States Virgin Islands work group

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)

2011 in the United States

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)

A standardized infobox for federated states

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)

Next great American city

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)

British cultural perspectives of the USA

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)

December 2011 Newsletter for WikiProject United States

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)

Constitution too big

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)

RFC on coordinates in highway articles

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)

Scope

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)

Undersecretary for Political Affairs outdated

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)

Weather records

Template:WeatherRecordsByState

Featured article review for Federalist 10

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)

NARA on-wiki ExtravaSCANza participation

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)

"Commonwealth" in bolded title

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)

Should The Great Lakes be a Region (instead of a mere region)?

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)

US and CS Navy ship images up for deletion

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)

List of medical schools in the United States

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)

"Wondering how to edit this article? Wikipedia:WikiProject United States standards might help."

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)

U.S. Census 2000 site ending January 20, 2012/Back up citations!

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)

New editor violating WP:HEADINGS

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)

Article spinout proposal

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

Article redesign ideas?

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)

William S. Clark

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)

Merging of projects and importance

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

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}}

See also: Template:Tools and Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup

Biosecurity in the United States

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)

January 2012 USCOTM - The Star-Spangled Banner

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)

Featured article review for Katie Holmes

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)

WikiProject Abraham Lincoln proposal

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 interesting

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)

Wikiproject Texas

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)

Population

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)