User talk:Nghtownclerk

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More personal welcome
Hi, I live in Walden, not too far away, and did most of the writing and photography for a lot of the articles about places and things around here (and still do). Almost a decade ago I was the Mid-Hudson Times town and city of Newburgh beat reporter ... I remember covering one of your predecessors in the job, Alisa Williams, quite well (wild times, wild times). I'm glad to see you are here and concerned with the accuracy of the information.

We organize ourselves into little groups called WikiProjects to coordinate efforts on articles about particular subjects. Some of us are trying to get a Hudson Valley subproject going within the mostly dormant WikiProject New York State. You're welcome to join.

Just some comments on your edits so far:


 * : The Gomez Mill House stuff is best left in the article on the house itself. Maybe one sentence or two in the town article about how it's the oldest Jewish residence (that tricky phrasing that the Gomez Foundation came up with to accurately describe the house's historic status). Anyone wanting further information can click the link.


 * Newburgh Bay: There should be a reliable source somewhere online for the bay's depth we can add. I assume creating the table graphics was unintentional? (accidentally hitting one of the top toolbar buttons? I do it too). I'll be undoing that.


 * Route 747. I wrote this early last year right after the Record reported on the new designation. As such there have remained a great deal of uses of the future and present tense that had not yet been changed to the present and past. You may have taken care of the last one. As for the buildings on the remaining stub of Drury, we don't need to go into the detail of saying exactly how many there are. I think I'll take the stuff about the ramp and the wetlands issues out entirely, since as it's written it sounds too speculative, and we don't allow that. I had been told that by some guy at the site I was talking with during construction, but as you noted that's apparently not the case. Best not to mention it all then.

Any questions you have about anything, please feel free to ask me. I've been editing here since early 2005 (three years now .... AAAAAGHH!) and I got made (:-)) an administrator last summer, so I know a lot about how to do things around here. Daniel Case (talk) 03:15, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for writing back (I prefer new messages to be at the bottom of my talk page, just to let you know) and for the compliments and the memories. I'm glad we understand each other.

You will be interested to know that I recently created Powelton Club and have submitted a hook for the "Did you know?" section on the Main Page, which I contribute to a lot (in this case it concludes "...that three of the 18 holes on the Powelton Club's golf course had to be redesigned a year after they were built when the land they were on was taken to build U.S. 9W"?) It had a very rich and well-written NRHP application ... I never thought I would be writing so much on it (and I had always thought the listing was for the clubhouse itself, not the entire property).

I also have some pictures I'm waiting to process and upload — one of where you work, and another of Chadwick Lake, which I'll be starting an article on. Speaking of which, you had mentioned the belief that Orange Lake is the largest in the county ... I think that if you rephrase as "entirely within Orange County", that's correct. I have found sources old and new that give its surface area at 400 acres (1.6 km²), which seems pretty large compared to what might be other contenders (Tomahawk, Washington and Beaverdam. All of which also have some artificial expansion to boot. Daniel Case (talk) 06:48, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Sockpuppet explanation
"Sockpuppetry" is the all-too-common Internet phenomenon of one person using separate accounts on a forum or website for whatever purpose (usually to create the impression of greater agreement with their position) and pretending they're different people. See Internet sockpuppetry.

Wikipedia takes a very dim view of the practice, and anyone doing it gets blocked. It keeps us admins very busy. Daniel Case (talk) 15:40, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Maragaret Truman
I have never yet seen a situation where a celebrity death wasn't announced where the page had not already been updated. I wonder if some people just troll the AP wire for these stories? It's a little weird. Daniel Case (talk) 20:57, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

references problem
OK. Another user, my good wikifriend Ruhrfisch, took care of it. What you need to do is create a "references" section with either reflist or. I like to use the latter at first, since it generates normal-size text, until there are about 20 notes or so then switch to the former, which produces small text. A lot of other people prefer using reflist first; I guess because it's a template rather than some HTML tag.

Speaking of refs, I love what you've done with the town article, especially since you kept it very encylopedic, but could your citations be to something a bit more specific than "clerk's office"? That bit about the 12550 ZIP Code is interesting, and I'd like to see a newspaper article or some other document cited as the source. Something verifiable, even if not necessarily by me.

That works two ways, too. Once our then-car insurer's website sent us to a place up in the Rossville area to get our car photos taken since it was in the Wallkill ZIP Code, supposedly not too far from us in Walden. Only a computer ... And you didn't even get into the school district confusion that, thankfully, doesn't occur too much in Newburgh (but more here in Montgomery, where Pine Bush and Wallkill claim some of the town. I know some people who live in the Orange Lake area (thus paying taxes to your colleague the receiver), send their children to Wallkill schools yet have a Walden telephone number.

I have some old pics (as in, a couple of summers back) taken from the Cronomer Hill observation tower that might make a nice panorama of the town for the geography section (it goes nicely with the panorama of the city taken from the bridge. Something like this, but from multiple photos stitched together in Photoshop. The expanded article offers great possibilities for illustration with existing photos. But one problem with the Town of Newburgh is that, IME, there's no one picture you can take of something or somewhere that really represents the whole town (In fairness, this is a problem with many towns — particularly those with neighboring cities or villages of the same name — in New York. I have a great "skyline" infobox image for the Village of Goshen, as well as an "overview from high place" pic, but nothing that would do for the town of Goshen). So Town Hall is as good as that gets, I think. I wish there was less shadow; maybe I'll take another one in the spring. (Oh, an exception to this lack of a town signature image problem: Denning, in western Ulster County. But that's a special case. Only the Catskill towns have those natural skylines and almost no habitation. Around here, anyway).

The Kings Hill I was thinking of is probably better referred to as USGS BM Garrison, here. At 820 feet, I have never found a higher point in the Town of Newburgh, and this is also the Town of Montgomery's highest elevation (I'm into hiking and climbing to highest points of counties, among other forms of peak bagging, and I even drew up a list of the highest points of the towns of Orange and Ulster (as well as cities within them)). I looked over the maps closely and I have no doubt. Marlboro Mountain seems to get no higher than 700 feet. And yes, I've actually been to that benchmark. It's on private property but some guy's building a house nearby and you can drive almost to it. Daniel Case (talk) 05:27, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Two new town-related articles for your perusal
Quassaick Creek and Chadwick Lake. Sort of a related subject. Daniel Case (talk) 04:14, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Short reply to a long post
Sorry to have not been able to write back for a while; I have been busy working on some articles about Supreme Court cases, mainly having to do with pro sports and antitrust. Started with Flood v. Kuhn and just snowballed.

I do recall having read about the consolidation of the school districts at some point ... at least about how Roseton didn't want to be part of it because they knew how much they were coveted for the power plants. And that's why they're part of Marlboro instead. It will be interesting whenever I finally get around to writing an article on the NECSD.

As for that jury summons problem, like I said it's going to take a computer system with very adroit layered GIS information.

Thanks for Gedneytown Creek; I think it is used on the map but I missed it. I hadn't realized that about Chadwick Lake; it makes sense.

I have to go make dinner now. Daniel Case (talk) 23:25, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Book recommendation
Don't know if you've read about it here but I'll recommend it to you: Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, by John Broughton. There's an excellent review (with a link to ordering info, unless you want to go down Route 300 to Barnes & Noble and plunk down the 30 bucks). For once all this stuff is available between two covers offline. I can quibble with some things in it but I'm learning a few things I didn't know. Daniel Case (talk) 22:38, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Town of Newburgh
I was in the process of fixing up some of the Orange County towns, when I got to Newburgh. Nice work and nothing much for me to do. Maybe you can work on some of the other towns, too. Stepp-Wulf (talk) 02:12, 20 August 2008 (UTC).

Hey Nghtownclerk, thanks for the work you are doing to improve Newburgh (town), New York. Any chance you can be more specific with your citations than just "Property records on file in the office of the Town Assessor, 1496 Route 300"? Like maybe which property record you are referring to? --JBC3 (talk) 20:47, 25 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Good suggestion and I will definitely strive to do that. I am doing my best to keep "Town of Newburgh" up to standards but a lot of it I simply do not understand.  For instance:  if we are referencing another wikipedia article which has citations, are we expected to REPEAT those citations?  (Just wondering.)  Thank you for you help and critique. Nghtownclerk (talk) 14:21, 7 July 2009 (UTC)


 * A fair question. According to WP:CIRCULAR, a subsection of Wikipedia's verifiability policy, "Wikipedia itself is self-published. Therefore articles and posts on Wikipedia[...] may not be used as sources." Instead, verifiability policy tells us that "[articles] should be based upon reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." So even if another Wikipedia article has the citations, we are required to repeat those citations. Aside from the problem of citing self-published material, suppose the other article were to be deleted or vandalized, removing the citation. I hope that answers your question. I'm happy to help if you have anything else you wish to ask. --JBC3 (talk) 22:40, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

That was a wonderful answer which makes total and complete sense and I thank you for taking the time to post it. I will continue working to refine, revise and perfect the "Town of Newburgh" article (as time permits!) and appreciate your help and advice.Nghtownclerk (talk) 15:39, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Poughkeepsie, New York
Hello Nghtownclerk. I just wanted to let you know that I reverted your recent edit to Poughkeepsie, New York because it was unsourced. All content that is challenged or likely to be challenged requires a citation from a reliable, third party published source so that other editors can verify it. I know you to be very resourceful, so I look forward to seeing the information restored with a citation soon. Also important when adding a person to a list of people:
 * kindly maintain alphabetical order by name;
 * be sure the individual meets the notability guidelines for people;
 * be sure to state the relationship the individual has to the article's subject. Regards, --JBC3 (talk) 17:31, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Third parties
Sure, go ahead. You actually won an election for town clerk, after all :-).

BTW, I didn't make that Thomas Vonn edit ... I usually only edit that section of the article to remove someone's vanity edit. Daniel Case (talk) 07:29, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not beating myself up, really. She was a strong candidate, very likable person who knows the job — probably drew more crossover votes than anyone else on the ticket (not least because of the choice of ballot lines) — and I was distracted by the need to finish my upcoming book and other issues during that time. Plus, it was not really a Democratic year. (I did accomplish one thing, though, IMO ... establishing the minimum amount of votes a Democrat can expect in this town. FWIW). Daniel Case (talk) 18:29, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

The Dick Clark Show
Thanks for noticing. I started this one when I was looking at the article with charts of US television seasons for various years, and noticed a few shows in red (i.e., no article) &mdash; The Dick Clark Show popped right out at me. TV.COM gives credit to David Seville for being on the show, but you could be right, given all the lip-syncing going on. It's also possible the show was broadcast live locally and filmed for the other time zones. And 'Top Ten' might be a refinement Dick Clark added to Top 40 &mdash; the article Late Show Top Ten List indicates another origin for Dave's lists, though. GlennRay77 (talk) 20:59, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Why Harry Porr got fired
Funny you should make that edit now that we did something similar here over the weekend.

I wrote that whole history section at a time when we were less insistent on sources than we are now, and frankly drew on my own memories of that reportage. My article on the firing would be "City Council fires Porr" in the April 12, 1999, Mid-Hudson Times, if we could use that as a source for the official reason. I know the proximate reason was Harry's supposed deceptiveness to James Taylor, but the underlying issue was his refusal to go along with the garbage-barging plan. Daniel Case (talk) 19:02, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

James Taylor was, at the time, the city Republican chair (He has since moved to Marlboro. At least last I knew). Yes, I do think the difference in the vandalism levels reflects local politics (See these:,). And people's vanity additions of themselves. Daniel Case (talk) 21:45, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Newspaper references
The newspaper citations you have added to various articles, including NY 300 and NY 17K, do not include the title of the newspaper article, which is arguably the most important part of the citation. Without a title, it makes it difficult at best for others to find the article and verify its content. Could you add the titles to the citations? –  T M F 21:19, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for adding the titles. A few pointers, though:
 * Please double-check the titles to make sure they're correct. When I attempted to look up one article that was cited on NY 17K, I was unable to find it just by searching for the title because the actual title of the article varied slightly from what was given. Also, another article's given title had different casing than the actual title.
 * There is a template (cite news) that quickly and consistently formats a citation for a newspaper article. I've converted the references on NY 17K to use the template, and that leads into my final pointer:
 * The preferred practice is to place the citations where they're the most relevant. On NY 17K, the three newspaper article citations were placed at the end of the paragraph, making it impossible to tell which information came from which source. I'd move the citations myself, but I have no access to the article from The Sentinel since that paper doesn't have archives of their articles. If you could specify what parts of the paragraph came from that article, I could probably figure out the rest. Thanks. –  T M F 21:40, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

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The Balmville Tree no more
Thank you for adding that information. I have since sourced it to the Record's article today and updated the article and the associated list.

I understand why it was done, but I can still only express my emotions thus: I remember writing about that tree for the Mid-Hudson Times around the time of its tricentennial celebration. Of all our local landmarks I loved it the most. It was one of the first Newburgh-area landmarks I wrote a Wikipedia article on, including the picture we still use (I will be out to do the grim but necessary task of taking a picture of what's left later and updating the article with it in the next day or two. I don't want to, but I have to).

I'm pretty sure that, among the handful of NRHP-listed trees nationwide, it was the only one in New York. Daniel Case (talk) 20:26, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

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