Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Illinois/Archive 1

A warning / reminder
I just thought I'd point out that unlike the federal government, Illinois state government work products are protected under U.S. copyright law. Johndodd 07:03, 21 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I believe that you are correct; however, I haven't been able to locate any information about this. Can you point me in the right direction?  Thanks in advance.  Squideshi 04:01, 29 March 2006 (UTC)


 * 17 USC s. 105 expressly places only federal works in the public domain. And as close as I can come without hopping on Westlaw: 25 Ill. Comp. Stat. s. 145/5.09 asserts copyright in materials published online.  Copyright notices appear on most state publications. Johndodd 03:11, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

WOCH-LP
Made The Article For WOCH-CA Channel 41.--User:wwe_stacykeibler_fan

Added Geography of Illinois link to Illinois page. Had better add information before it gets deleted. --Marcusscotus1 02:36, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Closeapple has too much to-do (and a list to prove it)
I have a boatload of items in User:Closeapple. About half of them are related to the Peoria area. It's outlined properly, but I think I might split the to-dos off into multiple subpages soon, so that people interested in specific categories can look at things without clutter. Anyway, anything on my list has struck me as needing work at some point. --Closeapple 10:42, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I finally ended up moving my to-do list to User:Closeapple/to do and splitting it into sections. There are about 90 items in my to-do, not counting railroads or radio stations, which may not be notable, or articles about Spain.  Peoria-area articles are mostly separated out in the list; there are other Illinois-related articles sprinkled throughout.  I've also added most Peoria-related articles to Category:Peoria County, Illinois or other appropriate county. --Closeapple 09:45, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

School information
For anyone who wants to do mundane research: Maybe I should repeat this in the discussion for those categories, but it's late and I'm tired and dumb. --Closeapple 10:52, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
 * List of school districts in Illinois is outdated. School districts are consolidating by the dozen each year now; I see a couple sets of districts to merge already.  Also, some of the school district names are strangely abbreviated, like Peoria Heights.  It would be nice if each county had which Region of Education it's in also, since school district numbers are only unique within an RoE.
 * WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/High schools/US/Illinois has errors for sure; for example, it seems to include schools that were specially run whether they've been high schools or not.


 * Although you have to look into the history of the List of school districts in Illinois page to see it, I was the one who essentially created the current page when I replaced the then-existing entries with a "complete" list. What I did was copy the "Illinois Public School Districts by County - School year 2004-2005" list from the Illinois State Board of Education  into an Excel spreadsheet.  I I spent a couple of hours cleaning up the list, including trying to replace as many of their odd abbreviations as I could.  The 2005-06 list is now available on the site. I certainly welcome corrections. -- DS1953 talk  17:54, 23 December 2005 (UTC)


 * O'Fallon, Illinois, school district information is currently up to date. Rklawton 02:25, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Columbia College article cleanup
Hello everyone,

Columbia College desperately needs expansion and cleanup. For being the largest arts and communication school, and for its significant downtown presence, the article could use some help. Please vote for it or go to the article and start expanding! -- Un sogno modesto 20:08, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Recent changes
I encourage all participants to use the Recent Changes. It quickly shows changes to pages tagged with the project template. As opposed to keeping an article on your personal watchlist, the recent changes pages show each change every day, not only the most recent. The list will need to be manually updated to allow it to find pages that have been tagged at later dates. So far the list of tagged pages is fairly short. Good luck. Rmhermen 21:17, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * If a page gets altered and then tagged, that change won't show up on the list. As I found out because I edited the state supreme court article and then tagged it.  Ooops.  Now we know. Johndodd 07:03, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Supreme Court of Illinois
I think the article Supreme Court of Illinois is an important one and should be worked on. Dan
 * It's now a part of the tribe project. For future reference, tagging the article's talk page with will put it on the list of articles encompassed by the project.  ~

Requests for Photographs
I figure one of the things I can do over spring break (in two weeks, give or take) is get some photos for the Project. I'm thinking a day in Springfield (Supreme Court Building, at least) and a day in Peoria (Cat H.Q., Peoria Lake, Upper Peoria Lake and the Journal Star building). I'll probably be up in the Chicago area for the opening or closing weekend, as well. Let me know if there's anything you think I should make an effort to get.

Johndodd 00:56, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

School Districts
For anyone looking for something to do, let's try and get as many blue links in List of school districts in Illinois. (I'm sort of partial to DuPage districts, and specifically CCSD 93 and Glenbard (87) cause i went/go to them. Currently my focus is on 87.) &mdash; Ilyan  e  p  (Talk)  23:16, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

This could take awhile. I do live close to Golf Dist 67 and if my friends want to, I can get the Skokie schools articles wikified. Loompyloompy313 00:22, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team cooperation
Hello. I'm a member of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing articles using these criteria, and we are are asking for your help. As you are most aware of the issues surrounding your focus area, we are wondering if you could provide us with a list of the articles that fall within the scope of your WikiProject, and that are either featured, A-class, B-class, or Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Do you have any recommendations? If you do, please post your suggestions at the listing of all active Places WikiProjects, and if you have any questions, ask me in the Work Via WikiProjects talk page or directly in my talk page. Thanks a lot! Tito xd (?!? - help us) 18:46, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Cities & Government Project Divisions
I propose, under project divisions, that "Cities" be renamed. Cities are only one type of municipality in Illinois. The other two types are villages and incorporated towns; and all three together are more accurately called "Municipalities".

In Illinois, Counties and their subdivisions--civil townships, which are simply called townships--are not municipalities.

All together, counties, townships, municipalities, and districts are called local government:


 * Counties (State Subdivisions)
 * Townships (County Subdivisions)
 * Municipalities
 * Cities (Municipality Type)
 * Villages (Municipality Type)
 * Incorporated Towns (Municipality Type)
 * Districts (School, Park, Library, Sanitation, etc.)

"Local government" itself can be considered a subcategory of "government". Squideshi 04:43, 29 March 2006 (UTC)


 * There do not seem to be any objections. Is this correct?  Squideshi 17:10, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

The reference to Cities is boilerplate stuff I copied from WikiProject Wisconsin/Cities. There isn't a subpage linked to it in the Illinois project. I was just helping to set up the project infrastructure and copied from the Wisconsin project. Name it whatever you'd like and create the subpage with city material that will help you and others contribute to the project. --Dual Freq 22:05, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Illinois State Routes founded
FYI for all, I'm not an active member of this particular WP yet, but as of March 20, 2006 there is a WikiProject Illinois State Routes in existence for roadgeeks. It builds upon the experience of previous state highway WPs (and tries to avoid the carnage currently ongoing in Washington/California).

There's two active contributors, but we've got most of the state covered; not so well covered are SE and NW portions of the state. Thanks! &mdash; Rob (  talk  ) 18:38, 29 March 2006 (UTC)


 * WP Illinois has plenty of room for more people and there is a subpage that covers transportation at:WikiProject Illinois/Transportation. Feel free to add the sub-pages here, I'm not sure there is a need for a sister/sibling project dealing only with State Highways. --Dual Freq 23:24, 30 March 2006 (UTC)


 * It's mostly an outgrowth of the WikiProject U.S. Roads project, which branched off into 12 or so state projects. The format is based off the California / New Jersey state route wikiprojects. But I'll see where the two can cooperate here when I'm more awake. &mdash; Rob (  talk  ) 08:34, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Bloomington-Normal category
FYI I have created a category for all Bloomington-Normal related articles. I tried to add every article I could find, but if you find one missing please add it. Thanks. Jtrost (T | C | #) 00:53, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Is Category:Bloomington-Normal, Illinois intended to contain only things inside the municipalities of Bloomington and Normal, or is it intended to be a metro category with surrounding area? How does it compare with Category:McLean County, Illinois? (I'm asking this last question because I don't have a Bloomington native's understanding of what's "part of" the B-N metro.) --Closeapple 05:29, 31 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I'll make the B-N category a subcategory of McLean county. The B-N area has a population of about 115,000 people and includes both towns (side note: it's growing so rapidly that within the next five years nearby towns such as Downs, Illinois and Towanda, Illinois will also become a part of the cities).  Basically I included any articles about people who were born or died in the area, notable places, and the 6 interstates and state highways that pass through the cities. Jtrost (T | C | #) 13:16, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Missouri
I'm currently working on WikiProject Missouri and I was tagging articles in Category:St. Louis, Missouri. Since St. Louis covers both Missouri and Illinois, I only tagged the ones that were in Missouri. I noticed that some of the Illinois articles were tagged with WikiProject Illinois, but some were not. You might want to go through that category and all its subcategories to make sure you get everything. Just trying to help, and sorry if you were already aware of this. Amalas 15:24, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Featured Article
I've added the Illinois article to the 'raise article to the level of a Featured Article' section of the todo list. Skimming the featured article list, there doesn't appear to be any other states on this list to compare to, except Rhode Island which is listed as a good article. Abraham Lincoln is an example of a featured article. --Dual Freq 22:51, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Illinois has been promoted to a Good Article. Note the todo list on Talk:Illinois if you would like to help it reach Featured article status. Thanks. --Dual Freq 00:28, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Illinois article is up for peer review. Peer review/Illinois/archive2, hopefully it is on its way to featured article status. --Dual Freq 04:49, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Registered Historic Places
Should we make an effort to list these sites in the appropritae city, state articles, too? It should be a snap for the short city articles. It'll require more care and attention with the larger ones. By doing this, we may even find sites that already have articles (I already found one tonight). Thoughts? Rklawton 07:05, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I've completed Adams county as per my proposal above. I did this to solicit comment by way of example. Note that Quincy is a pretty big city. It has a separate article for historic locations, and that's were I put the national registry information. I did what I could to merge with existing information, but I had to leave a note on the Talk page requesting help with Quincy's historic districts - they have several and I didn't know which went where. Rklawton 20:47, 19 May 2006 (UTC)


 * As a rule of thumb, I think that local historic sites are worth putting in the municipality article, unless there are many. I wouldn't list historic districts if they're redlinked (then again, my hometown has half-a-dozen districts, which is unusual).--Dhartung | Talk 02:07, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Alison Krauss
I'm not a member, but I'm going to go ahead and tag Alison Krauss as a Wikiproject Illinois article (she grew up in Illinois). I felt like I should let you folks know I'm working heavily on her article, and any help anyone could lend would be appreciated. Thanks! Staxringold talkcontribs 02:32, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

History buff needed
Please check out List of current and former capital cities in the United States and make sure that Illinois' capital cities are listed accurately. A word of warning: the page does contain quite a bit of complicated wiki formatting, so if you're not comfortable editing it, just post your changes on the talk page and someone more experienced will apply them to the article. JEK   19:48, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Nominate articles for Portal:United States
I've worked for the past month to update Portal:United States and keep it better maintained. Though, I think the Portal:United States would be even better with broader participation. One way to do that is instead of choosing the "selected article" myself each week, if others would nominate articles and help make decisions. (same goes for pictures, though these are stocked up through July 29) If there is anything related to Illinois (or anything else related to the U.S. - culture, music, literature, geography, history, politics, ...), please nominate. I'd also like people to weigh in on the nominations and help select what should be featured. Thanks. --Aude ( talk contribs ) 23:20, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

New "People from [city]" Categories
Hello, everybody. I am the bozo who just recently created the new subcategories in the "People from Illinois" category. I thought that some of you might want to know why they were created, and why they often have so few pages in them.

The majority of the states have "People from [state]" categories which have at least 200 entries, sometimes over 1,000. This is clearly an unworkably large number for anyone wishing to use the category for research purposes. In 8th grade in Rapid City, South Dakota, the social studies class asked us to write, over the course of the year, reports on two or three people who were or had been residents of the city. Because of that, I have reason to believe that they could be used and probably are used for research purposes. To make such research easier, I looked at the list of metropolitan statistical areas and basically entered in one new category for each metropolitan statistical area.

I know that many of these categories might well be, in the eyes of you who know more about the cities in question much better than I do, misnamed or otherwise faulty. I apologize for any mistakes I may have made along those lines, and I would welcome any corrections, including deletion, that any of the rest of you might choose to make. With that in mind, I have also generally populated the categories with only one or two names, to ease in the process of deletion or renaming.

I thought you all should know why these categories were created, and felt some degree of responsibility for letting your know. I wish you all the greatest good fortune in making the coverage of your state in Wikipedia of the greatest scope and quality possible, and I hope that I haven't annoyed too many of you by my recent actions. Badbilltucker 13:24, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 00:25, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

State protected areas
I made this template for Illinois state protected areas, DNR areas anyway, recreation areas, state forests, state parks, natural areas, and fish and wildlife areas. Maybe someone could formalize it. Let me know if you like it.

A mcmurray 03:34, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Invitation to new WikiProject
A new WikiProject has been started, and may be of interest to members here. It is WikiProject National Register of Historic Places. It covers all listings on the Register, in all states and territories. Should you be so inclined, please feel free to join. And spread the word to any other interested parties. -Ebyabe 19:40, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Project directory
Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 18:59, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

CHICOTW
I am trying to get interest in the Chicago Collaboration of the Week. I was wondering if anyone would have a problem if I posted the Chicago Collaboration of the week below the US Collaboration of the week. TonyTheTiger 16:24, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Being Bold I added it, but will remove it if it is a problem. If a problem also respond to my talk page. TonyTheTiger 16:29, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Etymology
There is some dispute about the history of the word Illiniwek, as you can see from that page and its talk section. I suggest that both possibilities (the Algonquian meaning and the Ojibwa meaning) be listed in this section. See Illinois State Museum Society. L Glidewell 19:35, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

This was posted on Talk:Illinois, I'm posting it here for a wider audience. --Dual Freq 20:24, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 22:07, 29 December 2006 (UTC)