Talk:Alaska Purchase

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 19 January 2021 and 7 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): NicholasSkwarko.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 13:44, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Link “United States” in lead?
Apparently this issue is not going away, so a discussion is in order. In the meantime I have asked for page protection while we discuss it in order to stop edit warring.

My take is that readers of an English-language encyclopedia are already going to know what the United States is, and therefore WP:OVERLINK is the relevant policy. Anyone else? Beeblebrox (talk) 01:11, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with Beeblebrox. Rjensen (talk) 11:41, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Disagree. As an administrator you should know that many people use wikipedia to help learn and (sigh) practice english. Taken to extremes we should delete the link to General Motors on the Chevrolet page, or NASA on the moon landings. But beyond all that, logically there should be a link to all three fundamental parts of this article; seller, buyer, and property. 50.64.119.38 (talk) 17:23, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Strongly agree -- the link to US is useless for all readers and suggests the readers are stupid. Link to Seward or History of Foreign Policy maybe. Rjensen (talk) 18:22, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * is a terrible policy in general. The entire purpose of an online encyclopedia is to facilitate linking. Of course the US should be linked at least once in the article. — Llywelyn II   08:10, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Alabama Claims
The article should have a much more thorough discussion of the Alabama Claims dispute. Nearly the entire reason Seward was interested in the purchase of Alaska was because he expected that negotiations would soon connect Oregon to the new territories with ceded land. — Llywelyn II   08:10, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Area
The article says that the purchase added 586,412 square miles to the U.S., but the present-day land area of Alaska is 571,951 square miles. What happened to the difference, namely 14,461 square miles? The language in the treaty between the US and Russia describes a border that sounds a lot like the present-day border, including the meridian on the eastern border at 141° W. Was there a surveying change, a land sale, a change in ownership due to some other treaty (maybe with Britain), or what? The difference might be worth mentioning if anyone knows what it derives from. DKMell (talk) 19:45, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
 * For the record, new topics should be at the bottom of a Talk page. No big deal, I fixed it.
 * As for the question, that's probably better asked on the Reference Desk. This page is more about making edits to the article itself. It's hard to say when anyone who knows the answer will stop by here, but the RefDesk is patrolled all the time. &mdash;  The Hand That Feeds You :Bite 21:06, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Where is the Bidding War?
I thought the Russians wanted to start a bidding war between Britian and the Americans but the British showed no interest. What happened to that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.204.144.50 (talk) 07:40, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes. that is a great question. I thought the Russians were starting a bidding war too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.39.128.90 (talk) 04:51, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Cost per area unit.
Third paragraph of intro section contains the line: "In modern terms, the cost was equivalent to $133 million in 2020 dollars or $0.37 per acre (approximately $0.21 per hectare)."

Since a hectare is larger than an acre, why would it be cheaper?

($133 million divided by 151,880,000 hectares would be roughly $0.8757 per hectare. $133 million divided by [586,412 x 640] acres would be roughly  $0.3544 per acre.) 96.8.177.85 (talk) 20:59, 30 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Someone recently added the per hectare figure and I have reverted that change. The way I've commonly heard it expressed is 2 cents per acre, but that would be at the time of the purchase, without inflation adjustment. (all approximate of course)
 * $7.2 million divided by (586,412 x 640) = $0.019 per acre ($0.05 per hectare).
 * Adjusted for inflation, as you've said: $133 million divided by (586,412 x 640) = $0.354 per acre ($0.88 per hectare).
 * The article uses inflation-converting templates and since we are just plucking that 133 million from the output, there are likely significant rounding errors going on with our calculations. The article Alaska phrases and presents it with different conversions, but it could be better if it was more clear the '2 cents per acre' is without inflation. DB1729 (talk) 01:00, 1 July 2021 (UTC)


 * ...If you really want the correct hectares conversion in the article: $ (maximum precision from the inflation template) divided by 151,880,011 hectares = approx. $0.878 per hectare. So it seems the 88 cents per hectare is a fairly decent approximation. But for the record, I'm fine with leaving it the way it is currently. DB1729 (talk) 02:14, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

George Pomutz
Can someone add this in please? I don't have time to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Pomutz This guy was key in negotiating the Alaska Purchase. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.122.248.155 (talk) 11:13, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Claims by Russia
I've restored a section in this article that provided quotes of Russian offials that Russia could someday claim Alaska. Wether this claim is valid or not is not my point. I'm now wondering, are the Business Insider and The Moscow Times reliable enough to support adding this quote? I think it is a bold claim and we should get it right in terms of what has been said, independent of the validity of the claim. Thanks for your opinions and happy editing! RealLifeRobot (talk) 14:08, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
 * The issue here isn't really verifiability, so much as WP:DUE. It's a political, polemic statement by the Russian officials that was covered by reliable sources... but it was a tempest in a teapot. No one took it seriously, and it disappeared from the news cycle almost immediately. Thus we'd be giving undue weight to the statement by including it in the article, and that's why we should leave it out.
 * That said, the IP needs to stop claiming that everything stated by a Russian official is "propaganda" & reverting on sight. That's not helpful. &mdash;  The Hand That Feeds You :Bite 15:14, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree that it is undue weight and "recentism". This was a silly saber-rattling remark with no basis in reality. The civilian population could push back any attempt by Russia to invade, let alone the massive military presence here. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:40, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
 * As someone who seldom edits on Wikipedia and submitted the edit, admittedly I'm not familiar with Wikipedia's best editorial practices, of which there are many. I think we can all agree that it's probably best to remove per the cited WP:DUE and I have done just that. The IP was not interested in removal for legitimate reasons independent of site wide policy. JustMayes (talk) 09:36, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it should be added now? https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-stokes-tensions-with-us-declares-1867-sale-of-alaska-illegal/ar-BB1h1lcT Victor Grigas (talk) 20:47, 22 January 2024 (UTC)