Talk:Willamette Falls Locks

Untitled
Aren't the locks also historical for electrical power and/or long-distance transmission? Jason McHuff 21:44, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Expansion ideas
Could use traffic numbers, maybe amount of water used, time it takes to go through the locks, size/weight of doors, hours of operation. Aboutmovies 20:37, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Annoying citation nitpicks
I have a few (annoyingly trivial) comments about the citations in this article that I feel obliged to share with you: Basically, citation info should be about verifiability—if the information doesn't better enable readers to retrieve the source, there's no reason to include it. In fact, including this superfluous information is actually detrimental because it makes the citations harder to parse and makes the meaningful info harder to identify. Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 23:06, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
 * As described in the cite news template documentation, the publisher parameter refers to the company that publishes a newspaper. For several citations in this article, however, you've used the parameter to refer to a person who published a newspaper. This is not necessary. Do you really think telling readers that DeWitt Clinton Ireland was the name of the guy who published The Weekly Enterprise has any value? Does it improve verifiability or provide any other meaningful information? In most cases, providing the name of the publishing company isn't even necessary. In particular, there's no need to include a newspaper's publisher if its name is substantially the same as that of the newspaper (e.g., "Willamette Farmer" and "Willamette Farmer Publishing Co." in ref 16).
 * Volume/issue information is not needed for newspaper cites. The publication date is enough to track down a specific volume and issue.
 * Location info is not needed for sources such as The Oregonian that already provide such information in their name.
 * There's no need to have a separate references section if short citations aren't used in the notes section. As far as I can see, most of what is in the references section is redundant. If there any sources that don't have inline cites, they should be moved to a further reading section. The others should be removed.

I perhaps should have said this first, but thank you for work expanding the article! It's very interesting reading. The number of primary sources you were able to find on this topic is impressive. I think it's really cool how much stuff there is just waiting to be discovered in primary sources if anyone would take the time to look as you have. Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 23:13, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your kind remarks. I must respectfully disagree as to your comments as to citation format.  Template:Cite news calls for the volume, issue number, publisher and editor. It is appropriate to include those. Whenever possible I have included a direct link to the source, so there should be no confusion as to the authority for a statement.Mtsmallwood (talk) 03:53, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
 * The cite news template documentation does not call for any of the information you listed. It simply lists the most commonly used parameters—whether or not it is appropriate to include extra cite info is left up to the discretion of editors. I have made an argument as to why I think including this extra information is superfluous (in my view, detrimental), and I'd prefer that you respond with an argument of your own rather than simply stating the opposite position without any substantiation. To briefly reiterate: including more information than is necessary to retrieve a source is not a good thing because it adds clutter and distracts from the information that is actually critical for verifiability. There really isn't a lot of information you need to include; I challenge you to find a news source similar to the ones cited in this article that is unverifiable with all of the most commonly used cite news parameters filled out (author, date, title, work, location, and page number). See the references of 1918 Spanish flu quarantine in Portland, Oregon for an example of the more streamlined format I'm advocating for. Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 06:18, 22 July 2018 (UTC)


 * My, what a lot of discussion about something introduced as annoyingly trivial :) I think some of it's worth sorting out. Let me paste one of the citations in question below, so it's easier to consider:




 * Taking 's points in order:
 * Certainly it could be valuable to somebody to know the name of the publisher. There are reasons that many Wikipedia articles about newspapers list the name of the publisher. Given that the Weekly Enterprise has no Wikipedia article, nor even a Wikidata entry, I think the citation is as reasonable a place as any to capture potentially useful information like the name of the publisher. I think a better approach would be to create a Wikidata entry for the Weekly Enterprise and put the info in there, but this is a reasonable enough step toward that. (Side note, we're actively working to develop some standards and practices for U.S. newspapers at WikiProject Newspapers, please drop by if you'd like to discuss further.)
 * Volume/issue information: I disagree. It's not mission-critical, but I don't think it hurts anything to include it, and it potentially could help somebody track down the information, e.g. in a database that's organized by volume rather than by date.
 * Location: Same, and keep in mind that Wikipedia articles might be printed out or used offline, so relying on the link to another article isn't a good reason.
 * Redundant sections: I agree there is opportunity for tidying here. I haven't reviewed the edit history in detail, but this article has been built by many people over many years...if there's a reason to single out Mtsmallwood on this point, it's not apparent to me. If you want to clean it up, go for it -- and I don't mean to lay it all at your feet, I'd be happy to pitch in. But I might need a little more detail about how you want to approach it, so we don't end up working at cross purposes. -Pete Forsyth (talk) 17:06, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Oops, I just noticed the major article expansion of May 2018, that explains it. I had overlooked this. I agree that a list of full citations, with short footnotes linking to them, is a nice format...I'm not too familiar with building those out, but would be happy to give it a shot. And yes, Mtsmallwood, very nice work in expanding the article! -Pete Forsyth (talk) 17:13, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Oh, one thing I forgot to mention -- in the citation above, I don't understand the distinction between the "date" and "publication-date" parameters. Any insight, ? -Pete Forsyth (talk) 17:07, 9 August 2018 (UTC)