Talk:Honokaa, Hawaii

Not much to see?
I added some pictures, but they are not very interesting. There is supposed to be a Historic District somewhere, but could not easily find it. Usual issue that the name has an okina in it, but the post office and census databases do not. W Nowicki (talk) 20:57, 22 June 2009 (UTC)


 * There could possibly be a Hawaii-designated historic district or a locally designated one, but I see no NRHP-listed historic district for this area in the list at National Register of Historic Places listings on the island of Hawaii. That list has a redlink for Chee Ying Society in Honokaa, though.  That must be a building, and as it is listed on the NRHP it is wikipedia-notable.  Info available by requesting the free NRHP application document from nr_reference (at) nps.gov.  Hope this helps. doncram (talk) 15:32, 8 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Right, I should have noted that I briefly drove by the area a couple of times and could not find it. Then noticed on the that the site Listed July 20, 1978, Chee Ying Society 78001014 building is shown as demolished (Delisted 6/30/2007) on the state listings. I added this info to WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/NRIS information issues but have not researched further. W Nowicki (talk) 18:03, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Okina War again?
I would like to revert the edit that took the okinas out. By my reading of the wikipedia policy, if this article is in the Hawaii project, then the Hawaii manual of style should apply, which would use the Hawaiian spelling for place names. The word "Honokaa" is not an English word, since it does not appear in normal English dictionaries. It is the Hawaiian word Honokaa spelling without one of its consonants. W Nowicki (talk) 19:25, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
 * According to the referring to a Board on Geographic Names Decision in 1999 the name with okina is the preferred one. --ThT (talk) 18:36, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The spelling with okina seems to be appropriate as the official name according to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names: "The U.S. Geological Survey developed the GNIS in support of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names as the official repository of domestic geographic names data, the official vehicle for geographic names use by all departments of the Federal Government, and the source for applying geographic names to Federal electronic and printed products." --ThT (talk) 20:41, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the source. So far I have not seen any reasoning behind taking the okina out. The only comment is that it looks odd to me having the name appear three times in the infobox. If it were me, I would just have it appear once with the okina, since it is pretty obvious that spelling it without is the same place, as is common practice on street signs, post offices, etc. For example, "Saint John's Road" would appear as "ST JOHNS RD" on signs and it would not need to have both names: the fully spelled one implies the simplified one. At least my taste it would look better with the just the one line in the infobox. W Nowicki (talk) 03:21, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Alas, it looks like Nyttend over-ruled the consensus on this talk page again and removed the okinas. I disagree with his only comment that this article is only about the CDP. Most encyclopedias do not have articles only on CDPs; they have articles about the town (or "populated place" or whatever you call it), and quote the CDP numbers as some of the facts about the town. We need to look into a way of escalating this edit war so that the style guide would not be over-ruled so often by limitations of a ten-year old database. W Nowicki (talk) 22:24, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * In my view it is not appropriate for an encyclopedia to emphasize on just one aspect of a quite complex phenomenon. A human settlement is not only there as a cause for a census or elections, but has social, historical, cultural and other connotations. Because geographical research and documentation covers most of these aspects, I thought relying on the GNIS would be appropriate. --ThT (talk) 00:13, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I Nyttend to discuss this here. --ThT (talk) 00:57, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * We must sometimes ignore the GNIS; for example, it gives "Brinkhaven" as the name of the populated place officially designated as Gann, Ohio. This is a census-designated place; unless you're willing to get rid of all geographic information except its location and all demographic location, this article is about the census-designated place, not the vague populated place noted by the GNIS.  Nyttend (talk) 00:09, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, but I don't understand the example of Brinkhaven and Gann, Ohio, because this is about two different names, not the different spelling of the same name like in the case of Honokaa. Does that mean, we had to split this article into Honokaa, Hawaii (the populated place with a history, culture, and other references) and Honokaa, Hawaii (CDP) (identified by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes, according to Census-designated place)? This would be a solution of the disagreement about the spelling of the name, but would this correspond with the idea of an encyclopedia (cf. What is an article?: A Wikipedia article is a page that has encyclopedic information on it.). In my view the geographic approach covers the more general information range than the statistical purposes, therefore I'd prefer the GNIS as the more general reference. Also I disagree, that the GNIS refers to a vague populated place, because as you can see in the, it corresponds with
 * Census Code 16450
 * Coordinates (One point per USGS topographic map containing the feature)
 * U.S. General Services Administration (GSA Code, the database for the U.S. is available as MS Excel file)
 * In my view this again covers a wider range of (linked) information, which is exactly about the same populated place with the indicated geographical coordinates. --ThT (talk) 02:38, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Agree with Tht, all databases can have limitations and outright errors, but in my opinion Wikipedia articles should try to have as much actual correct information as possible, not just be presentations of either database. Also note that the GNIS data is generally kept more up to date, since it is not ten years old by now. And of course the infobox has a GNIS code in it.

Has anyone checked to see if okinas will be in the 2010 census data? We already got and returned a form when we lived in what was the "Kahaluu-Keauhou" CDP but it did not have the CDP name on it. I suspect if you asked most people in Honokaa what they lived in, more would say "community" or "town" rather and "CDP". A reasonable compromise might be to keep the simplified spelling in the title and infobox as it is (consistent with the NRHP policy), but allow us to use the more modern spelling in the body, as the vast majority of editors have done. W Nowicki (talk) 03:40, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

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tree farms?
I don't have a source on hand, but we drove through this area and were amazed to see miles and miles of what I believe to be giant eucalyptus trees, probably Eucalyptus regnans or Eucalyptus deglupta, apparently being farmed. This might be a factor in trying to recover the regional economy, and these trees also trap a lot of atmospheric carbon. I'll look for some sources. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:58, 27 October 2022 (UTC)


 * this looks promising. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:02, 27 October 2022 (UTC)