Talk:Mount Airy, Philadelphia

Sedgwick Theater hyperbole toned down; headings & organization continue to improve
i lived in mt airy for 18 years and never noticed the sedgwick theater. this is possibly because it's been out of commission since before i lived there. the mention makes it seem like this is a really important feature of mt airy (and that business is still conducted there), and to my knowledge, it really only serves the function of linking to the theater entry. who else wants to delete it?

also, need to put sections in this entry. Clown 21:20, 24 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Both of these issues have subsequently been addressed. Article has headings (which I edited more tonight), and the Sedgwick Theater mention is now under "Notable institutions" (no longer singled out as "one of the most interesting things along the Avenue" or whatever hyperbolic thing it was before). — Lumbercutter 03:19, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Link farm
Having removed a substantial and fairly random list of links to various entities within the neighborhood, several were returned with the explanation: "surely some of these links have a place, either mentioned in the article or provide further background info..."

The links in question are two civic associations, two religious organizations, a CDC and a business association.

All of these fail Links normally to be avoided:
 * # 13 "Sites that are only indirectly related to the article's subject: ... a website on a specific subject should usually not be linked from an article about a general subject". The neighborhood is the general subject, entities within the neighborhood are much more specific.
 * # 19 "Links to websites of organizations mentioned in an article". - Sum mer PhD  (talk) 03:47, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Discussion of shopping and culture / community as possible section headings
Hi there, since we were starting to get into a longer discussion, I thought I'd bring it over to the talk page. Your comment was: /* Shopping and Culture: shopping has NO place in an encyclopedia, and you say "community" is too much about people, but then say "shopping is important because its where people meet" - that sounds like community, no?) /* I'd disagree that "shopping has NO place in an encyclopedia", because if you're talking about a place where people live, shopping is one of the things that people do there, and their options have a significant impact on their quality of life. I'd say it's at least as relevant as say, transportation. When we first moved to Philadelphia, one of the things that we were told *repeatedly* was "You have to join Weaver's Way" (the food co-op) and joining it had a significant impact on our lives and various decisions we made, some large, some small. We've also seen the neighborhoods in question change, and seen the impact that specific stores can have on the economic health of the area and related quality of life. So I see those things as related. That said, I'd agree with you that the section in question should be about MORE than just shopping; that's why I suggested the title "Shopping and Culture" and have introduced some new materials that connect the two. I've generally tried to retain materials that previous editors included, and I'd like to include more about local arts and culture organizations in Mt. Airy. My concern with a heading like "Community" or "Culture and Community" is that I see community as something much much broader than shopping, arts and culture, and worry that renaming the section that broadly could include almost anything (and so become meaningless). Many aspects of the local culture and community are already covered elsewhere in the article. Thanks, Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 23:55, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Nice use of bold, however wikimarkup does not make your arguments any more cogent. Almost all of the "shopping" section was irrelevant and OR. Look at any other geographic entity and tell me how much shopping info there is. There might a few paragraphs about major commercial areas but Germantown Avenue is not one, and even if so, then it is likely to be couched in a section with a title like "Culture", "Community", "Lifestyle", etc. not on its own and not with such a lowbrow title as "Shopping". The shopping section for Mount Airy was laughably larger and out of context for the article if anyone, local or otherwise were to compare it to, say, off the top of my head two of the most famous shopping districts in the world, such as Champs-Élysées or Fifth Avenue.
 * I'm also ignoring entirely your personal anecdote about someone told you to join Weaver's Way. What a ridiculous notion to think that's the basis for inclusion in an encyclopedia. Please read Tutorial and learn how to contribute in non-COI, neutral, and well-cited ways to making the Mount Airy article and wikipedia as a whole a better place for scholarship and learning, not where you can wax poetic about the great deals on bulk quinoa. JesseRafe (talk) 02:48, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Excuse me? Please note, I didn't put any of my personal anecdotes on the article page (in the encyclopedia), I put them on the talk page, in this discussion of what's a useful heading for the section, as an illustration of how commerce and culture can interact. And I'm not arguing that "Shopping" is the most desirable heading for the section, rather that "Community" may be too broad -- which point you aren't addressing.Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 13:01, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Yet you used it as the basis of your rationale for inclusion. If you want to illustrate how commerce and culture can interact, I'd suggest the commerce or culture pages would be good articles to start, rather than test-drive your theory on Mount Airy's page. Community etc and the other headings I suggested were intentionally left broad, so that the section could include further information, not just be pigeonholed into "shopping". JesseRafe (talk) 21:19, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

JesseRafe, I just noticed that you moved items pertaining to Mount Airy residents' religion, educational attainment, and sexual orientation from the Demographics section relocating them into the newly created Community and Culture heading. While I think I understand your intention, looking at Wikipedia's Cities Guidelines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Cities/US_Guideline#Demographics) I think that these items would probably be better off left where they were originally. Those guidelines mention, for instance, religion as falling under the Demographics heading. I also think that Mount Airy's significant lesbian demographic is just that before it is a cultural or community factor (even if it may well be those things too). Can-o-worms POV potential here. I do recognize that neighborhood wikis differ from city wikis with more flexibility for formats. Still I thought I'd mention it. All that said, I'm leaving your reorganization as is. Mtairyresident (talk) 21:10, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

I'll also add that I was completely comfortable with a "Shopping" heading so long as its content wasn't written to advertise particular businesses (which most contributors have so far been generally mindful about). Shopping information is useful in giving readers a flavor of the community's businesses and business districts which play a significant role in defining a neighborhood. I too am concerned that the terms "Community" and "Culture" are broad and vague enough that they could prove to be a pandora's box going forward. Mtairyresident (talk) 21:53, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Hey there! The Hare Krishna center, for instance, is a cultural institution. There's no mention and no data if Mt Airy has more than an average number of adherents, either due to its presence, or before the choice to locate there. The shopping section was abhorrently rife with OR and trivia, and, most important, an undue proportion of the whole article itself was focused on the topic. Look at any other neighborhood or even city page, and see how big their "shopping" section is. It probably doesn't even exist. As I linked above, two of the most well-known shopping districts in the world -- in the world -- Champs-Élysées and Fifth Avenue, have articles about them as neighborhoods, and check out for comparison the amount of weight shopping gets there. It was undue focus. For me, anything that wasn't strictly demographic goes into the cultural and community area. Museums/galleries and seminaries are both, in the same way, cultural institutions. So I made a judgment call. Demography seems to me a hard-science type of section, ages, ethnicities, incomes, languages, etc. whereas musings and "soft science" type sociological facts of interest belong more in a section with cultural or social interests. If you wanna put it back and have the MOS for it, no problem, but I definitely am sure that if the undue burden on shopping and petty local business banalities return, an outside admin would vote to ax the whole section. JesseRafe (talk) 23:52, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified (February 2018)
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Notable Residents, verifiability
JesseRafe, you just reverted my revision to the Notable Residents section which added 2 notable musicians living in Mount Airy: Kurt Vile and Strand of Oaks (Timothy Showalter). Your basis for doing so was "Not attested on their Wikipedia pages, need to be cited there or here, otherwise it's OR."

By that standard, a majority of Mount Airy's "Notable residents" entries must be removed from the Mount Airy article because their Wikipedia pages do not specifically mention the Mount Airy neighborhood, nor are citations provided there or here. In other words, you are enforcing a standard inconsistently. I have little doubt that with a little Googling that all, or nearly all, existing Notable Residents entries are readily verifiable from reliable sources as past or current Mount Airy residents. However, if you're a stickler for citations (and it's entirely reasonable if you are) then editing those entries with the [needs citation] tag would be a far more courteous first good step for you to take if you have a verifiability concern, rather than immediately purging good-faith entries, especially from known long-time editors of the Mount Airy wiki. Either way, at least be consistent about it. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mtairyresident (talk • contribs) 22:58, 28 September 2018 (UTC)