User:Stepheng3/Archive8

Articles with toponyms
As a manner of speaking, articles are used when describing or referring to the Silicon Valley. Its always been "The Silicon Valley", not just Silicon Valley. "Capital of Silicon Valley" isn't accurate. Its "Capital of the Silicon Valley", or "The Capital of Silicon Valley". The article is there, and I know wiki gives deference to the localized manner of speaking (colour v. color, etc). I'll leave it as is for now, but if you can cite sources that say articles aren't necessary when referring to the Silicon Valley, that'd be greatly appreciated. 67.137.68.210 (talk) 09:53, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Until you edited the page, I'd never seen this particular name take an article. On the other hand, I have a book here by David A. Kaplan, The Silicon Boys and their Valley of Dreams (1999), over 300 pages, which mentions Silicon Valley repeatedly and consistently omits the article.  What are your sources, if I may ask?  —Stepheng3 (talk) 16:29, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, after visiting the official webpage of the City of San Jose, i concede permanently. Right there in the subheader "Capital of Silicon Valley". Ugh. I went to the wiki page for "San Fernando Valley" and they have articles there. THIS IS WHY I CANT HAVE NICE THINGS. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.137.68.210 (talk) 11:17, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Gracefully conceded—thank you. I myself got tripped up a few years ago when what used to be "The Ukraine" became simply "Ukraine" for no obvious reason. My sympathies, —Stepheng3 (talk) 18:35, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Coord precision
Hi. Ah, I thought about it, whether I was shortened or not and then forgot. This time unfortunately it turned out: copy/paste/forget, instead as usual: copy/paste/shorten :-) It can happen, I thought a lot of other things. Bye --Vhorvat (talk) 18:54, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I understand. Thanks for the reply.  Cheers, —Stepheng3 (talk) 20:10, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Category:Military Units of the United States Army in Europe
Please see Category:Military Units of the United States Army in Europe for my proposal to delete it. Hugo999 (talk) 04:43, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Charley Patton
I'm not sure why I added that. My guess is that I came across a song of his entitled "Rag". I will remove the category. Happy editing!Hoops gza (talk) 23:58, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

BLP
Tvoz / talk 19:52, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you!
Thank you for the template for California's 2nd District, represented by Mr. Huffman! That's fabulous. I saw you have a project to reduce the pages in "Category:California articles missing geocoordinate data" and to say thank you for your help with that template and all the time it took to update all our towns/cities in Humboldt, I've poked at 3 more of our mystery places this morning and will make a special effort to remove all that can possibly be removed from that category. Is there some special tag to put when the location has been lost to history? For example several Indian villages and Camp Weeyot have washed away entirely in floods, making current location of where they were impossible. Thank you again! Ellin Beltz (talk) 17:49, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Four Counties Finished

 * Don't worry; I'm watching your talk page. —Stepheng3 (talk) 20:43, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Notice of Dispute resolution discussion
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John A. Elston
Currently, only in-line ref (linkrot) is regarding his grave. Other info also needs a in-line refs. Regards, --Klemen Kocjancic (talk) 06:57, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
 * The template you applied implies that the article contains information which can't be verified from the provided sources. The Find A Grave link and the Bio Directory link both work for me; I'm not sure why you mention linkrot.  I'll add an inline cite for each paragraph and remove the template.—Stepheng3 (talk) 15:02, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

elevations
Houston, we have a problem. Three, actually. Apparently, the elevation footnotes were repeated in a template; I'm in the process of determining the scope and fixing that. Good catch. Second problem is that USGS changes its elevation data from time to time. Don't know why, but for CDP's border changes are a likely reason or just a newer survey with better equipment - in any event, this applies to all the US places (populated or not). Don't know how to address that, but it's there. Third problem is that gnis was changed such that parameters with leading or trailing blanks screw up the call to the USGS website. See Spring Valley, Lake County, California. This modification was done after these articles were created and needs to be fixed so as not to undo the current install base of links - or a bot needs to fix the install base and documentation needs to be provided at the template that leading or trailing blanks are verboten. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:24, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
 * GNIS elevation data isn't very precise to begin with, since they come out of NED, which is trying to provide continuous coverage. The changes over time are likely to be small ones.  One way to address it might be to put an accessdate on each GNIS citation, but my preference would be to either find a better source or fix discrepancies as they're noticed.  I'll see what I can do about getting GNIS fixed to accept leading and trailing whitespace. —Stepheng3 (talk) 18:31, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Apparently, the issue was limited to new CDPs from Butte County through Humboldt County - darn template didn't substitute that field for a dozen or so CDPs, but only the new ones. Tell me if you find others. As for precision at GNIS; I'm not sure what uniform source for the whole US there may be and accuracy for places spread out over a few to a few dozen square miles is in the eye of the beholder (where is it measured? is it the highest or lowest? etc.) Think of San Francisco which ranges from Mt. Davidson down to sea level but GNIS will give a single number: 52 ft. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:45, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree there's an issue with trying to reduce a populated place to a single elevation. For many places (such as Berkeley, California) our articles provide a range of elevations in the infobox.  Off-hand, I don't know a convenient source for max/min elevations which covers a significant number of populated places in the US. —Stepheng3 (talk) 18:53, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

California requested articles
yeah, 2 were completed, as i had copied these from the larger lists from "edit" mode and didnt see the bluelinks, and was too tired last night to remove them. thanks for noticing my list and helping, i was probably going to trim them out later today. I hope it helps the project. too bad sooo many requested articles give no context, just a single red link. "CA" also is common, or neglecting to mention the state entirely. Dont know why people cant say a bit more, for articles they claim to want.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 16:40, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I hear you. —Stepheng3 (talk) 16:41, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Template
Please post queries regarding my Colusa County, California with User:Frietjes. I use her code.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 04:16, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

WP Geographical Coordinates in the Signpost
The WikiProject Report would like to focus on WikiProject Geographical Coordinates for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Multiple editors will have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions, so be sure to sign your answers. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Have a great day. –Mabeenot (talk) 02:06, 15 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi. Just to let you know, we now have a couple of reposnses (including myself) to the interview -- would you be interested in adding another? It would be great if we could have a third, or more... -- The Anome (talk) 10:48, 24 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm distracted by other projects these days. I'll be back someday, but right now this is not a priority for me. —Stepheng3 (talk) 02:28, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

US units come first?
In a comment for an edit you recently performed to Clifton Court Forebay, you said, "US units come first in articles about the US". Don't you mean British or Imperial units? Why would we want to use British units in articles about subjects in the United States? The use of the metric system was made legal in the United States by the Metric Act of 1866 (Public Law 39-183). There is absolutely no reason to cling to the British system of weights and measures anymore, which is even being abandoned in Great Britain. By the way, "United States" is abbreviated "U.S." in the United States, not "US", the way the British do. — QuicksilverT @ 23:45, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Hydrargyrum, I'm puzzled as to why you contacted me. Are you asking me to revert my edit to Clifton Court Forebay?  Or are you asking me to use a different style in future edit summaries?
 * Since I don't know you, Hydrargyrum, I'll simply assume you're seriously concerned about these issues and try to address all of them.
 * The general issue of how measurements are presented in enwiki is addressed by the WP:UNIT style guidelines, which state that In non-science US-related articles the main quantity is generally expressed in US customary units.
 * When I wrote "US units", I was referring to the traditional system of measurement commonly used in the United States. This system is derived, though slightly different, from the traditional system of measurement used in England.  To the extent that the two systems agree (as in feet) it makes just as much sense to refer to them as "US units" as "British" or "Imperial units".  In the context of the style guidelines, the phrase "US customary units" is used, so it seems reasonable to use similar terminology when referring to those guidelines.
 * You're quite right that the Metric System is legal for use in the United States, but I don't see why that matters here. Wikipedia is an international project, so its style would not be dictated by U.S. law, even if U.S. law specified a single system of units.  (And it doesn't; the United States has been officially bi-unitary since the 1970s.)
 * In my experience "U.S." and "US" are used interchangeably, even in the United States. Not that this should matter in an international project like enwiki.  I notice that WP:ACRO admits either form of the initialism in enwiki articles.  What's acceptable in articles should certainly be acceptable in edit summaries, which tend to be more terse.
 * I hope that addresses your concerns. —Stepheng3 (talk) 18:41, 18 September 2013 (UTC)


 * No disrespect intended, but I found your edit and summary amusing. No, I'm not asking you to revert your edits, but on the other hand, I wouldn't give slack to individuals who groan and complain about the metric system being "too difficult".  From your user page, I see you're a retired engineer, so I doubt that you have any difficulties with the metric system. &lt;g&gt; I wouldn't go out of my way to swap the order of metric and imperial units, even if metric came first in a topic concerning the United States.  Some things, such as automobiles built in the United States, went 100% metric over two decades ago, and the day is approaching when even the most reluctant among us will have to embrace the metric system in everyday life.  When I perform copyedits, I'm more concerned that the order is consistent from beginning to end of the article and that the conversions aren't patently ridiculous.  For example, I often see acres (sq km) in Wikipedia articles, when someone more familiar with metric units would never consider measuring small land areas in square kilometres; they'd use hectares (ha) as the conceptual equivalent of acres.  I also replace any use of the undefined undefined template in the lead paragraph with straight text, as inline templates mess up tooltip previews of articles. As for preferring "U.S." vs. "US", there's a good reason to use periods.  Text-to-voice programs would read "US" as the word "us", but would probably not mangle "U.S."  By adhering to such rules, it makes Wikipedia more accessible to persons with visual impairment.  Dropping punctuation seems to be a British thing, probably stemming from laziness and/or ignorance on the part of British journalists.  Because people frequently see this laziness in print, they seem to think that's now the norm, although if one picks up books typeset in England in the early 1900s, these practices are much less in evidence.  Considering that most of my contemporaries who migrated to journalism in high school were the mediocre academic performers, I have little confidence in their opinions on grammar, punctuation and vocabulary. — QuicksilverT @ 22:00, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
 * You know so little about me. Please don't assume you know my opinions on the Metric System.
 * I have no data on how often tooltip generators and text-to-voice software are used with enwiki. However, it seems to me that if they can't handle templates and common initialisms, they are seriously flawed, and enwiki should not be edited simply to work around such flaws.
 * It's fine with me that you have informed opinions on Convert template usage and dots in initialisms. However, your opinions do not seem to reflect a consensus of active enwiki editors.  I encourage you to discuss them on the appropriate talk pages, such as Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Abbreviations. Also, you may want to avoid tarring large groups of people as mediocre or lazy; such generalizations tend to get in the way of building consensus. —Stepheng3 (talk) 04:43, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Looking for a graceful way to handle legislative redistricting
Hello! The edit history for shows your name as the most recent editor, and I assume the creator of this useful template. Unfortunately, it seems that redistricting has caused this to generate unexpected results. For example, the Murphys, California article states the following:


 * In the state legislature, Murphys is in the 8th Senate District, represented by Democrat Leland Yee,[11] and the 5th Assembly District, represented by Republican Frank Bigelow.[12] Federally, Murphys is in California's 4th congressional district, represented by Republican Tom McClintock.[13]

If I understand correctly, in fact, Murphys and the rest of Calaveras County is currently a "deferred area" that has no elected state senator during 2013 and 2014. The county is currently covered by Tom Berryhill until the 2014 election. Until the end of 2012, the county was part of California's 1st State Senate district, represented by Republican Ted Gaines of Rocklin. From 2014, the county will be part of California's 8th State Senate district under the new district lines.

This raises several significant problems for many chunks of California (not sure if this is similar in other states):
 * Redistricting in general causes problems for the template, even if it's all done at the same time. However, in that scenario (e.g. new Senate districts from Jan 1 2013), it ought to be possible to coordinate the dataset changes so that the template only flips to show the new representatives and districts on the effective date.
 * Where there's a staggered implementation, then the dataset changes may need to be staggered as well, so that (in the case of the California Senate) the new odd-numbered districts take effect from Jan 1 2013 and the new even-numbered districts take effect from Jan 1 2015.
 * Of course, particular communities move from odd-numbered districts to even-numbered ones (like Calaveras and Amador counties), or from even-numbered ones to odd-numbered ones (like much of San Francisco). For these, it's really difficult to find an automatic way to handle the "deferred" and "accelerated" areas during 2013 and 2014. Perhaps you could expand the list of district parameters referenced in each dataset to add parameters that allow correct handling of these transitional districts. I'm thinking of allowing values such as "d-1-14-8" that would imply a deferred district removed from the 1st (senate) district, temporarily covered by the 14th district and scheduled to be included in the 8th after the 2014 election. Using that approach, the wikitext would return something like the following:


 * In the state legislature, Murphys is without an elected state senator during 2013 and 2014 because of redistricting, and is represented by Republican Tom Berryhill from the California's 14th State Senate district. After the 2014 election, this area will be part of California's 8th State Senate district.

There are lots of ways to handle this, with more or less detailed info. Obviously there's a grammatical problem if we have to expand the transcluded text to run into full sentences. But I do think a good aim would be to avoid factually incorrect statements such as Leland Lee representing Gold Country voters and I'd appreciate your ideas on an elegant fix.Rupert Clayton (talk) 00:46, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I understand the problem you're referring to. Adding parameters for deferred and accelerated areas would be an acceptable solution.  Another solution would be to stop using the template in those areas.  I'm not very active these days, but I'll try to support or assist you as best I can. —Stepheng3 (talk) 16:33, 15 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reply. At least it seems that this is a real issue that may need some attention. Seeing as I don't have the skill or experience to edit the template directly, maybe it would be best to copy the above comments to the template talk page and see if I can enlist an editor with those skills. Thanks. Rupert Clayton (talk) 16:44, 15 October 2013 (UTC)