Talk:Constitution of the United States/Miscellaneous

Move historical info?
Should much of this historical information be moved to Constitutional Convention (United States)? -- Zoe

Constitution under copyright?
An odd question... is the text of the U.S. Constitution copyrighted? --Dante Alighieri 01:09 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * No. The original text is out of copyright and any modifications since have been work by the US federal goverment and thus are in the public domain. --mav

Splitting article
Now that Wikipedia supports tables of contents for the headers within articles, I'm somewhat dubious about the merits of splitting the article arbitrarily in two like this. Is there any reason why stuff is over in United States Constitution:Part 2 aside from simply making the individual pages shorter? If not, I'm going to splice them back together. If this page is to be broken up it should be broken up in a more meaningful manner. Bryan 05:57, 16 Oct 2003 (UTC)


 * I completely agree. Making "part x" daughter articles is a brain dead way of making things appear to be a manageable size (sic like an encyclopedia article should be). It is much better to have a really big page and to work on creating real sub-topic articles by spinning off content, in stead of that. --mav 07:02, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Amendment articles?
It almost seems reasonable to made all of the Article X of the U.S. Constitution articles redirects to U.S. Constitution. The amendments are significant enough to be directly linkable, but I would say that it's pointless to discuss them outside the context of the document as a whole. -Smack 18:24, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Move?
Move to Constitution of the United States like all the other List of national constitutions? The article title already has it in this format. --Jiang 12:37, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * I'd vote for Constitution of the United States of America, which happens to be the common name of the document. --Blair P. Houghton 00:19, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * I disagree with either, as well as the contention that "Constitution of the United States of America" is a common name. US/United States Constitution gets over 4,000,000 hits, while "Constitution of the United States" gets under 700,000 hits and "Constitution of the United States of America" gets 124,000. Naming conventions (common names) clearly states that the most common name should be used. Niteowlneils 23:14, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * that's sleight of hand there. the real comparison is between "Constitution of the United States" and "United States Constitution" (the current title), not a mythical google search of US/United States Constitution and its "over 4,000,000 hits" (two separate searches, with the results added together). today the score is 765,000 hits to 959,000, respectively &#8212; a winner for the current title, but not the blowout painted above. "Constitution of the United States" does have hidden potential for future gains in that it hits on "Constitution of the United States of America". SaltyPig 00:34, 2005 May 15 (UTC)

"since 1791"
If the statement were "since the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791," then the number would be 17. Since the statement is "since 1791", it's 18. The meme being expressed is how many times the Constitution was amended, and when emendation began. So, in lieu of recasting the meme, the number is 18.
 * Blair P. Houghton 17:15, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * I have rewritten that badly written paragraph. Mateo SA | talk 17:50, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)
 * Not bad, but I'll have my go at tightening it up...
 * There. How's that? I took out some redundancies, smoothed the flow, and left the 1791 meme (Mateo SA had taken it out, rightly) until the discussion in the section below.  Maybe I even NPOV'ed it better. Blair P. Houghton 19:53, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hmm. Blair P. Houghton 03:32, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * by the states is explained elsewhere and just fluffs the sentence here.
 * relatively small is no different from small except in that it brings up the question "relative to what?" Just saying small is more concise and implies a relativity anyway.
 * why take out the alternative theory for the small number of amendments?