Talk:Sebastopol, California

The article needs information on the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad and its importance to the town's development.

Council Majority
The article currently says that Sebastopol is "the only city in California to have a council majority of third party members." This statistic either needs a cited reference or a modification. I offer changing it to "one of the only cities in California..." as a solution, which would retain the statement's truth but effectively eliminate its need for a source. Soltras 04:50, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Charles Schulz
I seem to remember in a strip, the Peanuts character 5 once mentioned how he got his name. His father wanted to rebel against society, so he named all of his kids after the numbers in their zip code: 95472. Can anyone confirm this with a citation, and the date of the strip? This would also be a correction to the Peanuts article. -- The Photon 04:22, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

This entry has been vandalized
This entry contains the term "douchebag" at least twice and refers to Sebastopol's high-quality marijuana. All are likely spurious references and should be corrected.

Famous People
I do not believe that Shuggie Otis is a resident (on his own) of Sebastopol. He may be staying with his father, R&B pioneer Johnny Otis. The page should refer to Johnny Otis as the Sebastopol resident. I have never seen documnetary evidence prooving that Jerry Garcia ever lived in the area. Whilst Mickey Hart and Les Claypool do. However Claypool & Hart live in a different town (Occidental/Forestville area). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.169.164.107 (talk) 20:54, 1 May 2007 (UTC).

Just some corroboration
I live in Sebastopol. The zip code 95472 is correct. I think we have a green party majority here (it's a town of aging hippies). The marijuana thing is a local stereotype (I have mentioned where I live to a bunch of strangers and they asked me "do you smoke pot?" And in case you're wondering, I've never seen pot.) Jerry Garcia did used to live around here, as did Jack London, Charles Schulz, and others. This place has really great scenery and it's in wine country (term for a wine-producing region in the Medditterranian climate of northern California.) Who wouldn't want to live here? 67.180.200.204 18:03, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

adult grandaughter carley looking for nature related work in sebastopol
i would like to know if sebastopol is considered a good area for young folks to work in nature related jobs my grandaughter is an adult in the population i am referring to i will ask her to contribute to wikipedia with her experience and i will follow with a modest donation thank you grandma shrink reji —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.247.5.227 (talk) 23:04, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * This talk page is for discussing the article, not for discussing the city or its employment opportunities. If I were you, I would point my granddaughter to http://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/jjj/. Good luck to both of you.--Stepheng3 (talk) 21:41, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

pronunciation
A minor issue, but the IPA claims that the last syllable is pronounced "pole", while I remember from my Bay Area days people pronouncing it as in the name "Polly". If this is correct, someone should change the relevant section to look like this:. Benwing (talk) 04:46, 26 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I've been in the Bay Area for 28 years and the only pronunciation I have ever heard, anywhere, is the one currently indicated, ending in "pole", not "pawl". Binksternet (talk) 05:28, 26 February 2011 (UTC)


 * When I transferred mid-tenth grade to Analy High School, all the local kids said, as in Sebastopool. I thought it was weird and affected, but having just arrived in the North Bay I just went with it. — semi-anonymous ex-Sebastopudlian

Spelling Lessons?
The section about why it's spelled Sebastopol and not Sevastopol seems a bit confused. The real issue at root here is the pronunciation of Greek β, which used to be pronounced /b/ (hence a lot of imported Greek words have it) but is now /v/. In my opinion bringing up the visual resemblance between Cyrillic в and Latin B is kind of a distraction from the point. (Though rooted in the same Greek pronunciation change.) 50.0.164.5 (talk) 22:01, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree that the spelling lesson is misplaced, and should be deleted, in order to improve the article.

Possible plagiarism?
I've noticed strong similarities between the History section and text used elsewhere, specifically the Sebastopol city site. Lines like, "The apple industry brought a steady rural prosperity to the town" exactly mirror those on the City of Sebastopol history page. Unfortunately, the farthest back I can find a version of the text that isn't Wikipedia is 2007, though the Wayback Machine indicates the city had a history page as early as 2001, which predates this history page and would be plagiarism. But that history page was never captured, so it's only speculation. It's a chicken or egg scenario. Did they copy this page or did this page copy the now lost city page? Best to just rewrite it and be safe? It needs better citation anyway. Fuzchia (talk) 16:20, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Protecting cultural resources
Hello fellow editors,

Hope everyone's doing well. I have modified and moved a line which I found under the Geography section:

"The town currently sits atop several sites of Pomo Indian villages, and arrowheads are found in gopher holes with some frequency in the less disturbed areas of town bordering the flood plain."

This might seem innocuous, and I'm sure the original editor wrote this line with the best of intentions, but hear me out. This line unintentionally tells people where archaeological resources are, and how to find them. This isn't ethical for a couple of reasons:

1) It's illegal to collect artifacts on public land, and illegal to disturb human remains on any land, which means people can face material and financial penalty for getting caught.

2) Native people have been asking non-Native people to stop doing this for ages, because a) it violates cultural beliefs about the life history of artifacts, and b) it's not their cultural heritage to make those decisions about.

I understand that a doggedly determined artifact hunter will dig up the existing scholarly literature out there and seek out sites on their own. But I also think we have a responsibility to discourage this sort of behavior when we can, and protect the often-disrespected cultural heritage of marginalized peoples. It's a great idea to discuss the existence of village sites in the area, to shine a light on Native history, but it's a different story to tell people where they can go to violate the integrity of cultural resources. I really hope this doesn't come across as condescending, but I also hope that people take these sorts of concerns seriously. Mudchicken (talk) 06:16, 20 January 2021 (UTC)