Talk:List of islands of Maine

[question]
How will this list reconcile with the existing list at List of islands of the Northeast United States which includes a List of islands of Maine? ElijahBosley (talk &#9758;)  18:44, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Informational boxes
What do other editors feel about expanding the table to include whether the islands are inhabited year round, inhabited only in summers, or uninhabited; whether they are privately owned, national or state parks, or parts some of each; whether they are independent jurisdictions like Frye and Chebeague, or part of a neighboring town; and lastly (with permission from the Maine Island Trail Association) whether they are included on the Maine Island trail? ElijahBosley (talk &#9758;)  13:53, 21 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I feel like all of that information is completely relevant. By the way, we don't need to ask the MITA for permission for anything. Go for it.--TM 13:58, 21 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree, add whatever columns of data might be useful. To add a column like "Habitation", just add "!| Habitation" in the section at the top, and add " || " to every listing, so that the columns are matched.  Another useful column might be Area. Jllm06 (talk) 14:05, 21 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay thanks for your views. Since it will require lots of little keystrokes and mouseclicks and data entry and concomitant mistake correction I think it prudent to leave this table as it is for people to add islands as they come across them, and create a Subpage to work on a table with expanded entries. I'll do so shortly. ElijahBosley  (talk &#9758;)  15:14, 21 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Started experimenting with the expanded table in the Sandbox. I find myself typing a lot of question marks since the linked Wikipedia articles are inconsistant in describing islands, particularly bad about stating their size. I need to find a reference book to get all this information for each island. ElijahBosley  (talk &#9758;)  16:15, 21 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I am pleased to say the Island Institute is going to send me a four volume series by a fellow named McLane which should offer detailed descriptions of the islands, so I can get back to work on the expanded table. ElijahBosley  (talk &#9758;)  18:33, 27 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay. The Island Institute very kindly sent me McLane's four thick volumes on the Maine Islands. Turns out he concentrated on the inhabited, or habitable islands, of which there are hundreds.  He says "The Maine Island Registry identifies for this same region [Mid-Coast Maine]  approximately a thousand separate islands."  I will assign to others the task of getting hold of this Maine Island Registry. For now the question is: do we list in the table every named Maine island (thousands and thousands and thousands of rock outcrops and single-pine tree supporting hummocks) or every habitable island (300-400, some still populous, some with only one or two cottages,others now empty parks)?  ElijahBosley  (talk &#9758;)  17:37, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes I think we do list every island that exists. Anything else would be quite subjective. Besides, Wikipedia isn't just about today, but obviously includes ample amounts of history. Most of those islands, many of which are now uninhabited, have played an important role in Maine history.--TM 17:43, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * *sigh* I was afraid you'd want all of them. This Maine Island Registry then will be the best go-to resource. Since many islands share the same name the Registry gives each an identifying number. Bar Island in Somes Sound for instance is 59-265, while Bar Island off the town of Bar Harbor is 59-194. I will create another table entry for the Registry number. But we do need that Registry.  I don't think it is online.  ElijahBosley  (talk &#9758;)  19:47, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Automating table creation
I have just received through the kindness of the Maine Department of Conservation a table listing all the named Maine islands, known as the Coastal Island Registry. It includes the name, registry number, acreage if known, ownership, county and town. In short, everything we have been laboriously compiling by hand, is all in this one table. There are LOTS of named islands, I am guessing about a thousand, and many repetitions of names. About ten named Raspberry Island for instance; over forty named Ram Island. I cannot retype all this by hand. Is there a way of automating the task of transcribing a table in .xls format into Wikimarkup language? ElijahBosley (talk &#9758;)  19:23, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I have no idea how to do that, but I applaud your efforts on this topic. The efforts to acquire non-digitized sources is tremendous.--TM 21:22, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * With the kind help of an editor on the Wikipedia Village Pump technical page I found a solution to the problem of transcribing a large table, saving months and months of tedious effort. Having transcribed the entire table, what remains to be done are: adding Wikilinks for islands that have their own article (not all are notable enough to have one) and expanding the description to include the natural features when available.  Like uninhabited, birch forest, meadows, summer cottages, inhabited year round with post office, grocery store and school, etc. I will move the vastly expanded table from the Sandbox over to the List of Maine Islands page, unless somebody has an objection? ElijahBosley  (talk &#9758;)  14:36, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I would ask that you wikilink every name and then go through and determine which are simply 3 foot rocks with a tree and ones which may be notable. For the three foot wide rocks, I'd suggest we add that they are indeed that size and in the appropriate location on this page. Otherwise, thanks for the work.--TM 15:22, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Um. I'll start in on the process of Wikilinking. But I'd have to think about Wikilinking every name: we'd end up with a lot of redlinks inviting the creation of pages for islands that aren't notable. All these named islands are bigger than a three foot ledge, but many are just a few trees and rocks, maybe one summer cottage--not really notable.  I'll certainly Wikilink the two dozen or so I know have webpages, and leave it to you to decide if you really want to add that many redlinks. ElijahBosley  (talk &#9758;)  17:20, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Finished the heavy lifting. There are more Wikilinks to be added, but editors can do that at their leisure now that they have a full table to work with. I deserve a cup of hot chocolate, and I am going to go get one. Maybe two. ElijahBosley  (talk &#9758;)  19:14, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * What is up with the /?--TM 01:02, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
 * A leftover from the way the State of Maine coded its apostrophes in the .xls format. We can safely delete it. ElijahBosley  (talk &#9758;)  13:17, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Awash in Redlinks
Sorry Namiba but I am unpersuaded--so there isn't yet a consensus--on Wikilinking ALL the islands. Open to persuasion of course, but as yet I haven't heard the argument. A redlink signifies a notable topic that doesn't have an article yet. Not all these islands are notable. Named, sure, remembered and beloved by somebody no doubt, but not notable enough for a Wikipage. I won't undo redlinks on the assumption those islands already linked do need articles, but when adding a redlink please summarize why a particular island is notable in the "why" box of the edit. In the meantime I will continue to post information on island characteristics, and--if I add a redlink--it's because I found something significant, an indication to myself or future editors that this particular island warrants its own Wikipage. ElijahBosley (talk &#9758;)  13:14, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Redlinks are incredibly useful on Wikipedia. Most though not all of the articles on here are notable. Existing is enough for notability in geographic terms. We need to redlink them all and if we can find enough to create an article then we will more easily be able to do so.--TM 16:11, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I have posted a question on this topic at Village pump (policy)/Archive 81--TM 16:22, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the head's up--I threw in my two cents. We'll see what they think. ElijahBosley  (talk &#9758;)  17:38, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Found this, your thoughts?
http://www.portlandmonthly.com/portmag/2009/06/dream-islands/ Most of the information doesn't come from a reliable source (real estate) but I think it can be useful in creating stubs/adding info here. Thoughts?--TM 04:46, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes that is very useful info. While real estate ads do need to be taken with a grain of salt, or a whole salt shaker, still hard facts like acreage and current use can be reliable. There is a  way to define a footnote so you can refer back to it repeatedly: I need to look that up and then we can use this reference for cites on multiple islands. PS-tempted though you may be, don't buy an island.  I know somebody who lives on one. He discovered his mistake, he says, the first time he tried to order out for a pizza.  ElijahBosley  (talk &#9758;)  14:48, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Too many footnotes
The footnoting is getting out of hand. I must have over a hundred links to one book (a huge four volume book but still . . . ) By the time I am through it could be a thousand. Any objection to my getting rid of all those repetitive links and just saying "unless otherwise noted, the source for the island descriptions is McLane, etc."? ElijahBosley (talk &#9758;)  21:10, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

GNIS and coordinate data
I'm thinking of adding columns for the GNIS feature ID and lat/lon coordinates. Any objections? —Steve Summit (talk) 12:28, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Support. Great idea. Hearty endorsement (from the editor who substantially created this page). Only problem is, it is hard to locate a lot of the smaller islands that share the same name. There are about 3,000 islands on the list. Lots of GPS data  to add. I'll try to help but I don't know much about correlating GPS locations with place names. ElijahBosley  (talk &#9758;)  15:55, 23 March 2013 (UTC)


 * The GNIS file I have for Maine includes 1906 named features in category "Island" and 989 more in category "Bar", all including latitudes and longitudes. And of those 2895 names, something like 959 are a trivial match with one of the 2290 names we have here.  So that's a pretty good start, without doing any manual correlation at all.


 * What columns does the XLS file you got from MCIR have? Does that data have anything approximating a geographical position?


 * Here's a fragment of my first correlation attempt. (The wikilinks and references are broken, but I'm working on a way to properly preserve those.)  Not sure what the relative ordering of the two newly-inserted columns should be -- any ideas? —Steve Summit (talk) 04:39, 29 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Took me a while to have a look but now that I've seen it, this looks like an excellent format to me. Putting the coordinates first is a good choice, since the county/city/plantation column is not always useful for reasons stated on the list page itself. ElijahBosley (talk &#9758;)  22:23, 15 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I've been away from this page for a while, too. When I have a chance I'll dust off the program I used and see about rerendering the entire table in this format.  Is there any way you can make available that xls file you got from the Maine Department of Conservation, so I can double-check a few things against it? —Steve Summit (talk) 01:30, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
 * XLS file--I deleted my copy once I had transcribed it. But if you need another copy you can certainly ask them, they were very kind and prompt about providing it to me. Thank you for following up on the GPS coordinates. I think that will be exceptionally useful. I would not worry about having coordinates for each and every island – so many of them have the same name, and not all of them are easily differentiated even with the information in this table. ElijahBosley  (talk &#9758;)  20:09, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

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