Talk:Alamogordo, New Mexico/Archive 1

Restructuring this article per WP:USCITY
I've started restructuring this article per the WikiProject Cities/Guideline in WP:USCITY. About half of the recommended sections currently have no content, so I have left those out for the time being. Some other sections are obviously incomplete. We need much more content, so feel free to contribute it! Also place in this section any comments on the restructuring. Thanks! --Uncia (talk) 20:55, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll help out where I can. I think the history section (and several other sections) really doesn't need subheadings. Also, let's get rid of the Atari section! Postoak (talk) 00:20, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

We now have all the top-level sections recommended by WP:USCITY, except for Sister cities (Alamogordo has no sister cities so I have left that out). However Economy and Infrastructure are very incomplete. I will dig up more information for these and add it. The rest of the sections are not bad, I think, but the narrative flow is a little ragged and there are probably important items that have been left out. The article weighs in at 37 kilobytes right now. --Uncia (talk) 18:46, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I've plumped up Economy and Infrastructure with additional data. I would rate the current article as "more or less complete". It weighs in at 55 KB. The narrative is still a little ragged, and there are probably still things that are missing. I've listed the article under the New Articles section of WP:WikiProject New Mexico in the hopes that it will attract some reviewers and polishers. --Uncia (talk) 02:58, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Question from Boadicaea - NOR
Was the White Sands National Monument addition to Points of Interest removed because I forgot to sign? And the absolutely objective and verifiable misery of painting the "A"? Boadicaea (talk) 02:34, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Your additions were not removed; please look again. However, Wikipedia discourages "original research", that is, reporting things based on your own experience and observation rather than cited from published sources. Please see the policy at WP:NOR. Thanks. --Uncia (talk) 13:13, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Fastest man on earth?
Fastest man on earth? Or is it supposed to read "Fattest"? People have gone faster than the speed mentioned, and it mentions deceleration and the resulting weight. I recall reading mention of him before as experiencing the highest acceleration/deceleration ever (at least doing so and surviving), so that would make him weigh more than anyone else for the duration. --Fitzhugh 07:07, 14 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Gs don't add inches. Coloneldoctor (talk) 06:01, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Picture
I removed the picture, that is not a picture of the town that is a picture of a motel called the Satellite Inn. It's unfair to provide free advertising to a motel. And if it's an old picture and that motel isn't there anymore it's wrong to provide such an outdated picture. There must be someone in the town who will take a free picture of the town 63.26.80.187 (talk) 23:29, 2 July 2008 (UTC)eric
 * It's actually a photo of north White Sands Boulevard, and the motel is still there. I've reverted your edit. There are a number of photos of Alamogordo on Wikimedia Commons (see the link at the bottom of the article); one of those might be better than the photo you deleted. Also, please add new talk page sections at the bottom, not the top - you can use the "new section" button to do this automatically. Thanks. --Uncia (talk) 23:50, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Preparing for peer review
I'm preparing this article for peer review. As a first step I'm attempting to fix up everthing flagged by the automated peer reviewer. --Uncia (talk) 14:27, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I have deleted the Other topics section. WP:USCITY allows this section for special needs, but deprecates its use for lists of miscellaneous information. The old Other topics section had list of Points of interest (i.e., tourist attractions) and a list of Nearby towns and cities with routes for getting there. Neither subject is mentioned in WP:USCITY, and to me seems more suited to WikiTravel (which in fact contains this information) than to the encyclopedia. --Uncia (talk) 03:13, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I have deleted the section References in popular culture. Such lists are contentious; see some proposed guidelines at WP:POPCULTURE. The particular references that were in this section were to works that either made a passing reference to Alamogordo, or presented a fictionalized version of it. In either case they were not things that you would read or view to learn about Alamogordo, so I think they are not encyclopedic and so should not be included. If any of them had portrayed a realistic Alamogordo, it would have been a harder decision. --Uncia (talk) 04:50, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

whew! That was a lot harder than I expected, but the article is now ready for peer review; please comment at Peer review/Alamogordo, New Mexico/archive1. Thanks. --Uncia (talk) 23:36, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Concerns
My concerns reading the article are that a lot of the information from the history section involves things that happened at Holloman AFB. As far as I know Holloman is associated with Alamogordo, but it is not part of the city. The same with the economy; Holloman isn't the largest employer in Alamogordo, it's the largest employer of Alamogordo residents. Another example is the lead: "Skiing is available in nearby Mescalero and Cloudcroft, and gambling is available at the Inn of the Mountain Gods Resort & Casino in Mescalero." This reads more like an ad than an encylcopedic entry, plus it's not about Alamogordo (if anything it should be briefly mentioned in the recreation section, not the lead). I've heard other editors refer to this as "border creep" where an article will focus on things near a particular city as opposed to within a city. My understanding is that city articles are about that specific city, generally defined by its physical borders. For larger general areas, articles about a metro- or micropolitan area can be written. Yeah, we have to include things around it because they influence it, but there is a limit how much detail. For instance, talking about the impact of Holloman on Alamogordo is of course appropriate; however, detailed events that happened at Holloman aren't totally relevant to Alamogordo. A lot of the history I'm reading here from Holloman should be at the Holloman article rather than here unless they happened within the city limits of Alamogordo. The same is true with the atomic bomb testing. It occurred some 60 miles from Alamogordo. Should it be mentioned? Sure...it affected the city, but the great majority of the details about it should be elsewhere unless they are directly related to the city of Alamogordo, not the general area. The name of the Alamogordo Test Site isn't because it was in Alamo, it's because Alamo was the nearest town of any size. --JonRidinger (talk) 01:10, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree here. One problem with extending the article about a city into the greater area is that then you end up without an article about the city itself.  It makes sense to say that the city benefits economically from the Air Force Base, but details about the base itself belong in an article about whatever government entity it actually resides in, be it the county or something smaller.  The test range is an even more extreme case, 60 miles away.  At this point the only similarity is the name and shouldn't be included here any more than North Carolina would be included in an article about South Carolina.  --Beirne (talk) 01:36, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

First atomic test site
Apart from the fact that the sentence reads as if the device had been detonated in downtown Alamogordo, Trinity Site is about 50 miles from Alamogordo - as the crow flies. Using public roads, it's probably more like 100 miles, because you have to drive all around White Sands Missile Range, and also Trinity Site is only accessible twice a year these days, on the first Saturdays of April and June, respectively.--Cancun771 (talk) 23:42, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I have removed this bit from the lede. Remember that on Wikipedia you are encouraged to be bold and make changes yourself. --Uncia (talk) 15:29, 9 June 2009 (UTC)


 * The association with the Trinity nuclear test is, without doubt, the most famous fact connected with Alamogordo. Regardless of the distance from the town to the site, hundreds of books and tens of thousands of articles the past 60+ years have been written in dozens of languages which refer to this test site as "Alamogordo". Not having some mention of this in the lede is an encyclopedic failure. Inter lingua  23:48, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
 * What's the association? The city is called Alamogordo and so is the test site.  That does not really say anything.  The statement refers to its connection to the atom bomb, but the connection is assumed, not explained.  --Beirne (talk) 00:08, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

book burnings in history
We should consider the 5-10 most important events in the city's history. I suspect that the book burning is not one of them. Help consider if we left something important out and if the book burning should be reduced to a few sentences, not a sub-section. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 14:57, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The book burning is significant because it is one of the few times in history that Alamogordo got international attention. The incident is important enough that it gets a panel in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's traveling exhibition "Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi Book Burning". --Uncia (talk) 18:38, 17 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Good, so we'll leave it in. It is almost double the size of the atomic bomb tests which seems a bit unbalanced.  We'll see what we can do.  Maybe tightening up the book burning writing and seeing if any facts about the atomic test is not reported but should be. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 22:31, 17 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Even if it was mentioned in the news at the time it quickly faded into obscurity. Even if it is mentioned in a traveling temporary exhibit, equating one small church's burning of a few books with "Nazi Book Burning" is a huge exaggeration and not something that belongs in an encyclopedia. 68.88.81.17 (talk) 19:58, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

PreCheck
"PreCheck announced in 2009 that it would move its headquarters from Houston to Alamogordo." appears to be incorrect. PreCheck built a back-up facility in Alamogordo however the corporate headquarters remained in Houston. If fact, the company recently relocated the hq to a new building in Houston. . Postoak (talk) 21:14, 26 November 2012 (UTC) Alamogordo held it first annual skate park tournament to commemorate the new skate park for the locals. Also in entertainment in Alamogordo thers is talk about building a new family fun center over by the aviator ten.

Atari section
The Atari section is confusing at best and horribly written. Dump it or fix it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.129.189.225 (talk) 19:57, 8 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Removed, this article is about the city and not about the video game industry. Postoak (talk) 00:47, 20 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I added a link to the Atari video game burial in the See Also section. phfor (talk) 12:28, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I've taken the link back out; it's not really a statement about Alamogordo, so is irrelevant and doesn't belong in this article. --Uncia (talk) 13:59, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I think it might be time to reconsider this section; the site has been excavated. Dan (talk) 21:58, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on Alamogordo, New Mexico. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20090531132716/http://www.alamodawgs.com:80/sponsorus.htm to http://www.alamodawgs.com/sponsorus.htm
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20081217041336/http://oterohealthcouncil.org/resources/HealthProfileFY08.pdf to http://oterohealthcouncil.org/resources/HealthProfileFY08.pdf

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 22:29, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 07:00, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 one external links on Alamogordo, New Mexico. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20110531210815/http://www.naco.org/Counties/Pages/FindACounty.aspx to http://www.naco.org/Counties/Pages/FindACounty.aspx
 * Added archive http://www.webcitation.org/6YSasqtfX to http://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 02:07, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 8 one external links on Alamogordo, New Mexico. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20141210041242/http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/community_facts.xhtml to http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/community_facts.xhtml
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080101160345/http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/citytown.jsp to http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/citytown.jsp
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090614063731/http://www.southernnewmexico.com/southeast-new-mexico/alamogordo-city-of-the-fat-cottonwood to http://www.southernnewmexico.com/southeast-new-mexico/alamogordo-city-of-the-fat-cottonwood
 * Added tag to http://www.census.gov/geo/www/gazetteer/places2k.html
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080509163914/http://www.nmfilm.com/filming/incentives/ to http://www.nmfilm.com/filming/incentives/
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.alamogordonews.com/ci_13257076
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.alamogordonews.com/ci_13255114
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.alamogordonews.com/ci_13001677

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 06:35, 14 September 2016 (UTC)