User talk:Dcmacnut/Archive

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Question on Senate committees
First, you've been adding a lot of good info on the congressional articles. Thanks! Second, do you know how is the size of the majority on House and Senate committees determined? In the next Senate, I assume the Dems will have just a 1 vote majority on each committee. How big would their overall majority have to be before they would get a 2 vote majority on the committees? Is there a set formula somewhere? Or based on precedence? Or just negotiated every two years? Same question for the House. And if this info isn't in Wikipedia somewhere (I couldn't find it on a quick check), it probably should be. Thanks. You can answer either here or on my talk page. Simon12 15:40, 22 November 2006 (UTC) Thanks!Simon12 17:41, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Fixing my sandbox
Hey, thanks for fixing my little sandbox page with this edit! Just to let you know, it's usually best not to touch a page in someone's user area (meaning it begins with User:). I personally don't mind - esp. when it's to fix my mistake - but someone else might have gotten upset. :) —Wknight94 (talk) 18:02, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I noticed it was your user page after the fact (wasn't paying close attention). I figured that might be frowned upon, but one cannot take back a click once clicked.

Welcome, fellow registered user
Hello Dcmacnut, remember me? Glad you've decided to become a registered user. Just wanted to drop by and welcome you aboard. Welcome aboard. GoodDay 23:55, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Exclusion from the federal budget
Dcmacnut, the statement you removed from the House Committee on the Budget's article was technically correct as some programs are not included in the budget, including several approriations made for the war in Iraq. The statement probably needs to be reworded, but the point of the statement was factual. --Daysleeper47 20:59, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Gwoyeu Romatzyh‎
Having seen your name as a participant on WP:WPW, I wondered whether you might like to have a look at Gwoyeu Romatzyh, which I've been trying to bring up to scratch (GA/A/FA?). Any comments appreciated. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 14:51, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I can take a look, but not sure how I can contribute other than general clean up. I was trained in Pinyin romanization when I took Chinese. I had heard of Wage-Giles, but this is the first I'd heard of a third romanization system.Dcmacnut 16:39, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

WPW newsletter
This is the project's first newsletter. If you have any questions, comments, or ideas about it, feel free to post it on WT:WPW. Thanks. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 23:11, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Defunct committees
What do you think about putting categories in redirects? Specifically, see this. —Markles 13:43, 6 March 2007 (UTC)


 * That works for me. I had thought of that, but wasn't sure if it was appropriate to categorize redirects. I'll start doing that to one's I come across. Also, what do you think about restored committees that were defunct at one time. United States House Committee on Education and Labor and United States Senate Committee on Indian Affairs are examples. They have predecessors that are defunct, but the committee themselves are not. I would recommend removing them from the defunct list and addressing the history in the main article. Thoughts?Dcmacnut 23:29, 6 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd keep them. I like the idea of having them on the list, with the discontinuity noted.  —Markles 02:08, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Kumar P. Barve photo
If the photo is the Associated Press' then it will likely be removed. Use of State Legistlator publicity photos created by their state government also will not withstand the current interpretation of fair use by the more legalistic (some say paranoid) group of editors that are stripping wikipedia down to free use images only. I have had several State Government produced photos made for publicity purposes for House Members of the State of Minnesota removed with that reasoning.--Wowaconia 01:44, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Senior Senator
Hey. I do not know you, but i see you are a member of North Dakota Wikiproject. Please, could you answer my question. I would like to point out that in 1992, Kent Conrad retired, and Byron Dorgan won. Dorgan is still in the Senate. And then Conrad ran and won a few years later. Wouldn't this make Dorgan senior senator from North Dakota??

Thanks, Politics rule 23:00, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you for re-plying on my Talk page. I've asked a lot of North Dakotinas, and each time, I get more info, that helps me. Thanks again for your help. So far, you've summed it up the best!

Regards,

Politics rule 01:38, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Fixing the two seantors pages
I took a brief look at Conrad's pages history, and saw your edits. I am tired, and I am going to bed, but from what I saw, I would give you 100%. I will take a lot of time tomorrow, and give you my final thoughts! But from what I saw, it looked good!

Thank you for wanting my input!!!,

Politics rule 02:00, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I went through, spent about an hour, looking at Dorgan, and conrad's pages. They look very good, and the making understandable about the part that Conrad was ingurated on the 14th, and Doragn on the 15th. However, when I took a look at the history of Dorgan's page, MatthewUND fixed a mistake of yours. You used the word office back-to-back. MatthewUND fixed it.

I believe 100% that Conrad and Dorgan's articles are more understandible on this matter!

Thanks for taking your time for fixing it!! =)

Politics rule 11:32, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Look
Could you look at the change I made on Governor Stinner page, about him encouraging Conrad to run. I add something called "Governor Years". Politics rule 12:34, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok. I'll look around at some stuff, and see if I can find anything.

Thanks for the response! Politics rule 21:35, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Hey
Hey. I haven't seen you in a while, and was just check-in!

See ya,

Politics rule 21:20, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Senate staff & Rules question
Thanks for your compromise on the U.S. Congress page. I'm eager to hear for whom you worked in the Senate and to test your Senate rules knowledge with a question surrounding a motion to divide the question. If you're interested in sharing, reply back and I'll watch your talk page. If not, no worries. Thanks again. JasonCNJ 17:58, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I worked for the Democratic Leader until 2005. I was a bit stumped by the "motion to divide the question." That's more of a House parlimentary maneuver, not something usally done in the Senate. The House is very strict when it comes to parlimentary procedure (with 435 members you need a lot of rules) rather than the more laid back atmosphere of the Senate, where unanimous consent is the most common approach. A quick google search yielded this article on Robert's Rules of Order which indicates that a question (i.e. a motion or amendment) can be divided into independent parts that are able to stand completely on their own. See this from the House Rules Committee how it applied to a particular House vote issue. There were two amendments being debated, but rather than voting on the motion to proceed to both together, the motion was divided to be voted on separately. Hope that helps.Dcmacnut 00:15, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Official Congressional Directory
I was noticing your efforts at Alabama's 8th congressional district. Where did you find a copy of the "Official Congressional Directory? I've been looking for a source to give the boundaries of the district but couldn't find anything. I knew it had to exist but didn't know where to look. Thanks JodyByak, yak, yak 11:20, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I first stumbled upon them through Google Book Search. Just search "Official Congressional Directory" and you get several versions from the 1800s and early 1900s. Be sure to click "Full View" to get the most. Google is refusing to post full versions of anything after 1913, even though they are not copyright protected being federal works. For the more recent years, I went to my state library and found several from 1950 and up. I've been going through them looking at district boundaries for various states. The counties as well as Census data are listed alongside the congressman's biography for that district (for later ones) are listed (the hard cover books have maps; some of the on-line versions from 1890 on do as well). Alabama was just the first one I stopped at. I'm working on the rest of the Ala. districts in my sandbox.

Another good source, which I'm waiting for through an Inter-Library Loan, is the Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States. It has district information all the way back to 1789. Since I haven't been able to find a copy of the Directory between 1913 and 1933, that's proably my best hope for getting anything on District 10.Dcmacnut 13:49, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Sandbox
Hey, I love the stuff in your sandbox. When are you going to put them up in the article namespace? —Markles 19:38, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
 * The new defunct committee list is a work in progress, though the Joint Committees is as complete as it is going to get, so I could post it anytime. The Alabama CDs are still incomplete, so I've put them on hold. As far as the committee comparision list and the Exclusive/Non-exclusive and A, B, C committees for the House and Senate, I started those a long time ago and really couldn't decide where they belong. Any suggestions? I was thinking the congressional committee article, as that discusses what Exclusive and A, B, C means as far as membership rules.

I've run into a bit of a jam with the rest of the defunct committees. I have the listings from the Walter Stubbs compliation, so that's not a problem. I'm running into a question of article naming and alphabetizing. There are a lot of "committee to investigate, study, examine," multiple "campaign" investigation committees, and others that even handled complaints of just one person or group of persons. So I want to put more thought into proper display. At the very least, I think for the defunct committee list to be accurate, it needs to include all committees, even thoughs that lasted a few months or a few days, to be complete.Dcmacnut 21:36, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Craig resignation
Thanks for reverting me on the 110th Congress regarding the Larry Craig resignation. I jumped the gun.—Markles 23:41, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
 * No problem. Given it was you, I figured you wouldn't mind, and it was quicker than posting on your talk page.Dcmacnut 02:42, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

"Passages"
Yeah, I kind of stopped in the middle because my reference works were showing errors, and until I could get a better one (I may have the chance in a couple of months) I didn't want to keep putting effort into it. Since then, I've come up with what I think is a better method, used in articles like List of Governors of Alabama et.al., using refs for the footnotes. When I started those articles, that wasn't an option. I may hop back in. I simply used the term 'passages' to show the unusual passage of the office from one holder to another, no special meaning. --Golbez 23:51, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Party Color Shade Template
I've been adding rosters to the New England congressional districts and have been trying to get some consistency in the early districts. Democratic-Republicans seem to have been worked out. There is some ambiguity with National Republicans. The key shows both Anti-Jacksonians and National Republicans listed in the key. Adams representatives also fall under this party listing. I've followed the arguments of leaving sub-groups out (ie Democratic-Republicans as the sole heading for Jeffersonian, Adams-Clay and Crawford Republicans), so we should probably remove Anti-Jacksonians as well, leaving National Republicans the sole list header for Adams and Anti-Jacksonians. We could also list all the sub groups..........Either way, we should be consistent. I prefer leaving them all out. I'll take the Anti-Jacksonians out of the National Repub color shade. Pmeleski 22:35, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I saw your earlier comments at User_talk:Stilltim. I'm not entirely sure we can just call them National Republican. I'm more comfortable calling them "Adams" or "Anti-Jacksonian" in the party key, since there is the related "Jacksonian" party field and that is what the parties were official known as in Congress. The key is mainly for identifying the parties of elected congressmen and senators, and the National Republican's technically never elected a single member to Congress. The only official National Republican candidate was Henry Clay in his 1832 presidential race.


 * Also, since the name of the party should be included whenever the color is used, we can always add "Adams Republican" or "Anti-Jacksonian" or "National Republican" as the case may be.Dcmacnut 23:22, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Adams Party (United States)
Hi.....Comments I've sent to Markles, what do you think?????? Will respond on Markles page.Dcmacnut 02:41, 21 September 2007 (UTC) I guess I would have no problem with Adams having their own party color, since the Jacksonians have their own, but I think it's better to assign all three the same color, and just make the appropriate notation in the text. All three (Adams, National Republicans, and Anti-Jacksonians) had one common purpose: opposition to Andrew Jackson. Party organization changed, but not the underlying political beliefs. Another point I've made is that National Republicans technically never elected a member to the House, according to the party statistics for the time period. They may have ran as National Republicans in their respective states, but according to the House historical record, they are Adams or Anti-Jacksonian. In this regard, the Wikipedia articles for the 19th through 24th Congresses that list Democrats and NRs are wrong, and I'm working on fixing them. Anti-Jacksonians first appeared in 1829 with the 21st Congress, and ultimately became the Whigs starting in 1837 (25th Congress), which is when the Democrats also first appeared.Dcmacnut 03:04, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I've read some more about the era around 1824 and have finally figured things out, I think. Adams-Clay Repubs should be identified with the D-R's since the party hadn't fell apart yet. After 1824, the D-R's fell apart and were distinguished by factions (instead of parties) of which Adams was one.  I apologize and shouldn't have called Adams as an Adams Republican.  I should have simply ID'ed it as Adams.  Since the National Republicans haven't been formed yet, I think the Adamses should stand alone as a seperate group (similar to the Pro and Anti-Admin Parties which also weren't official political parties).  The Adams faction was pretty large with a base in the Northeast, but with allied members in every state at that time.  Does that work? And what about a seperate party shade?????? Thanks for any commentsPmeleski 22:17, 20 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I dont mind keeping the party color for the Adamsites the same for the Anti-Jacksons or the National Repubs. I thought the National Republican article needs to be updated (slightly) to explain the Adams affiliation just a little bit better. Otherwise you have the Adams faction affiliated with the National Repubs prior to the party organizing. It could leave someone confused. So I changed the article sightly which I think clears things up.   It makes the party affiliation work, the party shading key work, and the timeline work. I also think the National Repubs had more to their agenda then simply opposing Andrew Jackson.  They did have a platform as the National Repub article states.  My suggestion, then, is to call the party shade National Republican, and leave the Adams and Anti-Jacksons out of the shade box.  The tie in for both would be their inclusion in the National Repub article. If you leave it as it is now with no changes,it leaves the Adamses out there, and risk someone being confused how they fit. What do you think???????Pmeleski 22:52, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Good changes. That's one reason I moved the short Adams party article into National Republican. However, I think as far as the party key is concerned, we need to still say National Republican"/Anti-Jacksonian. The Anti-Jacksonians were the main opposition party after the National Republican Party disbanded, and since there's a key for Jacksonian, we need that additional piece for clarity. I've added specific mention of Adams and Anti-Jacksonian in the opening sentence.


 * One thing I recently found that throws a wrench in all of this is while the House doesn't list any National Republicans in office, the Senate does. See the 22nd Congress heading here. However, it only lists two NRs and 22 Anti-Jacksonians. But the Wikipedia article for 22nd Congress lists 22 NRs and 2 Nullifiers (which must be the what the Senate site references). So in the end, there's no one good source to use. But the one thing I think is that for our purposes, National Republicans had a limited official "party" presence in Congress, and Adams, Anti-Jacksonians should be part of the main article, but they shouldn't be the primary identifier for the party in the key. Does that make sense?Dcmacnut 01:30, 22 September 2007 (UTC)


 * If it was up to me, I would identify the National Republicans as the party of choice for the Party Shading Key. Thats the article you are referred to when you try to access through the key. The opening line highlights all the coalitions to hopefully avoid further confusion........What do you think???????......Pmeleski 19:47, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I still disagree. No member of Congress is listed as "National Republican," and the purpose of the key is to easily identify the member's party. Including Anti-Jacksonian addresses that. If you're suggestion were followed to its fullest extent, then technically there shouldn't be a "Jacksonian" party key either, since Jacksonians were technically "Democrats." But that wouldn't work, since Democrats were a later creation that evolved from Jacksonians. The same applies to Anti-Jacksonian/National Republican.Dcmacnut 20:13, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * That wasn't where I was going with my argument. My argument was the article the Anti-Jacksonian key forwards to is the National Republicans. I think the key should reflect the aticle it refers to, not name the key after how many reps are with a particular faction. For example, the Jacksonian key forwards to Jacksonian democracy, the Democratic-Republican key feeds to the Democratic-Repulicans,etc.  I'm expecting to be led to the Anti-Jacksonian Party rather than the National Republican Party (as the large header title indicates) if I access through the key as it stands now . (How many people are actually going to do that is another question-probably not many).  Now I know the National Republican group doesn't fit into any tightly organized grouping as the other parties do, and there will always be some ambiguity. And from my previous post that this group includes more than simply people who were against Andrew Jackson (The Adamses had reps FOR JQA and his platform). The National Republican term kind of serves as that all encompasing middle ground term which sort of includes both the Pro-Adams and Anti-Jacksonians agendas ..........But it's not worth getting into an edit war over since its pretty small potatoes we are disagreeing over.  Just letting you know I prefer something else based on the above argument.  Mind if I move this whole discussion over to the National Republican discussion page?.....Pmeleski 11:46, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Go ahead and move it. I've love to see what others think. You may want to cross post at Template_talk:Party shading key as the party key folks may have other views to share. I definitely understand where you are coming from on this, but the key is more than just a link back to individual party articles. It's a color coded identifier of "this color=this party." Anti-Jacksonian was separate from National Republican in that the National Republican party only lasted from 1828 to 1832 by some accounts, but Anti-Jacksonians were in Congress long after that. Mentioning Anti-Jacksonian's in the National Republican article helps avoid duplication. I've added National Republican back to the party key alongside Anti-J to reflect the dualism of both parties.Dcmacnut 15:44, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Featured List nomination
109th United States Congress has been nominated for Featured List status. Please comment here. —Markles —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 12:43, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Re: speedy delete requests of several templates
My apologies. I put those up for deletion as they were text-only names incorrectly (I thought) placed in the template namespace. I saw they weren't being used (only in your sandbox), and thought they weren't needed. I'm not familiar with the system your using, so I'm not sure if there's a better way, but I've never seen this before. If you say you need them, then it's cool. I've removed the deletion requests. Again, I'm sorry for not looking into the purpose of these more. Best regards, Rocket000 00:55, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

us political parties
Most leftist US political parties were already only in the Leftist US political party category; I completed this work. I also created a Rightist US political parties category and moved relevant parties there. Creating/populating subcategories is normal WP work and not an extreme change. Categories help in understanding and navigation. Thanks Hmains 19:09, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Metrology, not Meterology
Hi Dcmacnut, I think your recent removal of a wikilink on United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation was well-intentioned, but is not correct. Metrology is the science of weights and measures (indcluding distances) -- read the intro to the Wikipedia article and look at the greek root for the word. It is not even close to Meterology. Thus, I think the wikilink to measurement that I had put in the article is, in fact, correct. But it's not very important to me, and I didn't want to run the risk of a wikiwar over a misunderstanding of a rarely used word, so I'm making the comment on your talk page rather than just modifying the article. Cheers. N2e 14:01, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * No, my apologies. I have selective dyslexia on occasion, and having never seen the term you used in that way, I added an extra "e" when reading it. I will revert the edit back. Thanks for the note.Dcmacnut 14:32, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * You are welcome. And thanks for conscientiously fixing it!  N2e 21:55, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

U.S. House races 1822-1825
Thank you for the note. I appreciate your work.

First, I would like to caution against using the US House Clerk's work as the authority on these earlier elections. The information for the 1822 election, which I also changed at Wikipedia, divides U.S. Representatives into political parties that did not exist during the congressional campaign of 1822-1823. No one was elected as a Jacksonian or as a Crawford Republican in 1822-1823, regardless of what the Clerk says.

Second, the election data on the page was derived from CQ's Guide to US Elections, a source that has been superseded and should not be referenced today. The appropriate reference is Michael J. Dubin's U.S. Congressional Elections 1788-1997. Dubin's information in North Carolina is partially based upon primary source data I collected in the NC Archives, which was printed in the book North Carolina Election Returns 1790-1866, printed in 1991.

The North Carolina election was held after the Contingent Election of 1825. The NC race was waged on the basis of how the lame duck members of the 18th Congress voted in the Contingent Election. I changed all "Adams" candidates to "National Republican" because by the time NC voted in 8/1825, they were administration supporters. In CD-07, both McNeill and Culpepper were Federalists, regardless of how Culpepper voted in the Contingent Election. Lewis Williams supported Crawford in 1824 but thereafter was consistently an Administration man and was a leading Whig in NC. John H. Bryan was an Administration man, not a Jackson supporter, so I don't know any reason to list him that way.

I am willing to work with people to achieve a better recap of the election, and I apologize that I messed up some things. Chronicler3 20:59, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Reply

That sounds fine. I agree that consistency is needed.

The problem I have with CQ is that their staff will not include research conducted by others with experience in primary research when they produce later versions of their books. Their information for Presidential primaries is based on work by James W. Davis, who collected stats from newspapers. Many state manuals provide the official returns. For the 1912 primaries, CQ left out several states altogether. I have researched a lot of these and posted the certified totals at Our Campaigns. I also went to the state archives in New Jersey and found their certification of presidential primary results.

CQ deliberately rejects elections before 1824 (though in later updates they included races for Governor back to 1789). The ICPSR data is clearly deficient in many states, particularly New Jersey, in providing names of candidates. It would have been nice if CQ had at least stated how many votes were cast for candidates who received less than 5% of the vote. In one cast in NC, a candidate received 40% of the vote but was not listed.

Also if you really want to know, I can give you more information on mistaken attributions, miscalculated statewide totals, use of the name of the wrong candidate, and more in CQ's work.

One thing that I like about CQ is its use of markers. A check means that no returns are known to exist for a particular race or that the party affiliation changed. An asterisk indicates an incumbent. I like these markers and hope that we can incorporate them into the tables at Wikipedia.

In general I believe that Wikipedia is a general reference for this kind of information. By contrast, OurCampaigns is a website for detailed information. OC's information is far more likely to be sourced or to have a primary source than Wikipedia. I don't say this to criticize Wiki - just as an explanation of what I see is the difference between the two. Each can do what it does better and reference the other one.Chronicler3 21:42, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:American politics/party colours/Labor Party/row
A tag has been placed on Template:American politics/party colours/Labor Party/row requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (&lt;noinclude>&#123;{transclusionless}}&lt;/noinclude>).

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:57, 3 March 2008 (UTC)