Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Illinois/Archive 3

NRHP Frank Lloyd Wright collaboration
Definitely encouraging cross project participation here, as Frank Lloyd Wright is an Illinoisian through and through (even though he was "from" Sconsin :) ). Please consider particpating. IvoShandor 12:20, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

New locator maps
Please go over to the Springfield, Illinois article and see the new locator maps that VerruckteDan has created for us. I feel that these should be included with all cities, towns, etc, since they make it look a lot more professional. Thoughts? Comments? Let us know.--Kranar drogin 21:04, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

New articles
Dear Wikipedians, a list of possible Illinois-related articles found by bot is available at User:AlexNewArtBot/IllinoisSearchResult. Colchicum 14:41, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you for this notice, I will begin by putting them in their proper places.--Kranar drogin 14:57, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Mostly you are just pointing these out, I can include some cats and the group in the discussion area for now.--Kranar drogin 15:05, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Illinois place stubs
has become very large, so I've proposed a number of sub-cats based on the USCB statistical areas, plus the three most general regions by way of catch-alls. Please comment there if you have any thoughts on this. Alai 00:12, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Creation of all the templates is complete, of the form CountyNameIL-geo-stub. There's also a complete list, here.  Alai 22:50, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Importance
I am wondering if we need to include importance into our talk page header. Any thoughts on this?--Kranar drogin 01:18, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Assistance requested
I am requesting assistance on improving Donald Stephens, who, as many of you no doubt know, died yesterday. Any assistance in improving this article (and also improving Rosemont, Illinois) would be appreciated. (I have also made this request at WikiProject Chicago; while Rosemont is not Chicago, Stephens is Chicago-born and Rosemont certainly is within Chicago's sphere of influence.) Kelly Martin (talk) 15:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I tend to stay away from Chicagoland, so I won't be of assistance to you. The Wiki group Chicago would be your best bet.--Kranar drogin 22:34, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Peer review request
My most recent peer review request has gone ignored the last couple days so I thought I would post something here. I am attempting to bring the University of Illinois Experimental Dairy Farm Historic District up to GA, please chime in on the current peer review. IvoShandor 15:27, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Editorial Assistance
If anyone is interested in helping me bring Chicago Theatre to the WP:GA standards at WP:WIAGA please see the comments on its failed GA Review at its talk page. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 20:09, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Possibly useful map
I made a locator map for Illinois. Similar ones are in use in infoboxes in state park articles (for example Beall Woods State Park) or city articles (for example Springfield, Illinois). I hope this is useful, Ruhrfisch 15:46, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

WP:WPChi Collaboration notice
Soon after the clock strikes midnight (UTC) tonight I will update the WP:CHICOTW. This weeks project is a stubification drive that should benefit WP:WPChi, WP:Illinois, WP:NRHP and WP:WPARCH. This week we will be creating stubs for Chicago Landmark which includes about 230 Chicago Landmarks and about a dozen National Historic Landmarks that are not Chicago Landmarks. Only about 25% of the Chicago Landmarks have articles. In order to pursue a WP:FL we need to get at 50-60%. This week I posted stubification instructions Yesterday, I created Old Colony Building (Chicago), Fisher Building (Chicago), McGraw-Hill Building (Chicago), & Victory Monument (Chicago). These were pages that I had earlier discovered had some ambiguities (which you can see by the parenthetical names). These are all examples of what the most basic Chicago Landmark Category:Stub-Class Chicago articles should look like. Stubs can look better than this, but I hope each page will at least look like these. If you get adventurous you may also attempt to add Infobox Skyscraper, Infobox nrhp, and some images and take the article to Category:Start-Class Chicago articles. I will be adding such infoboxes in the coming weeks. We would appreciate any assistance you may be able to lend in the stubification drive. If you stumble upon something interesting nominate it for WP:CHICOTW by naming it with a 25 word or less explanation of its import here. Also, list all newly created articles from the stubification drive here: WikiProject_Chicago. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 17:42, 8 May 2007 (UTC) P.S.  If any of the landmarks is at least 12 stories please add it to Template:Chicago Skyscrapers like I did here. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 17:56, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
 * The only thing I have to add to this, could you use the Template:WikiProjectBannerShell template rather than the one you are using right now. This is A LOT easier to see each project, rather than having the thing expand to over half the page. Plus it shows the rating for each project. Having stubbed out so many townships (which I need to finish!), I support what you are doing. If I have time, I will try and assist you in this, but your best bet would be to ask IvoShandor if he would have time to assist you in this. If I have time, I will give ya a hand, but I don't know yet.--Kranar drogin 23:02, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Illinois Gubernatorial election data
I'm looking for 1972 Illinois governor's election info, specifically percentages and vote totals. The election was November 7, 1972, Daniel Walker (D) defeated Richard B. Ogilvie (R). A recent blog says victory margin was 77,494 (which I figure is between 1% and 2% of the total) but I was looking for something more reliable and the total number of votes cast. I thought the 1973-74 Illinois Blue Book might have the answer but I didn't see it there. Any links would be appreciated. Thanks. --Dual Freq 01:19, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
 * A side note of interest, the 2005-2006 Illinois Blue Book cites wikipedia on the last page of its biography of Governors. I know I've seen wikipedia cite that document, kind of a circular reference problem I would think. Too bad the blue book doesn't specify what they got from wikipedia so someone can make sure it was accurate. -Dual Freq 01:39, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
 * The publisher should be contacted to find out or that document should not be used as a reference. IvoShandor 01:50, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

List of Governors of Illinois
List of Governors of Illinois has 42 slots in it due to the fact that Richard J. Oglesby served in three non-contiguous terms. Rod R. Blagojevich's Illinois bio says he is the 40th governor of Illinois and other sources agree with this numbering placing Blagojevich as 40th. Unfortunately, most of the wikipedia articles are two off, listing Blagojevich as 42, Ryan as 41, Edgar as 40 etc. I may have done some of these, using the incorrect List of Governors of Illinois, but not all. I wanted to get a second opinion before changing the affected articles by two numbers. --Dual Freq 16:47, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, since his official bio lists him as the 40th, it should be changed. Not only that, but I think the numbering is how many different governors there have been. So my say is to change everything by two numbers.--Kranar drogin 20:00, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Another wrinkle is the 1969 Illinois Blue Book] (page 52) calls Richard B. Ogilvie the 37th Governor. That conflicts with the Ogilvie=35 number that the "Blagojevich = 40" numbering system would indicate. Since it messes with the number in the infobox, I'm not sure how to address this. I think I'll stay with the Ogilvie=35 and Blagojevich = 40 unless someone else has an alternative. --Dual Freq 20:59, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

List of unincorporated communities in Illinois
I think we are going to have to break down and create this list. It is going to be tough, but most can be found on NACo. I have done my first attempt here with Gilson in Knox County, Illinois. I simply titled it a hamlet, since I did google hamlet and Illinois in relation to each other and it seems they do work together. And really, I didn't know if I just go with Unincorporated Community instead. Let me know what you guys think.--Kranar drogin 19:59, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Hamlet might be a bit too cute for an encyclopedia, recommend unincorporated community, settlement, or similar. IvoShandor 20:29, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I changed it to just "Unincorporated". That way it isn't too huge, but gets the point across if someone wants to click that. I am wondering, is there a complete Illinois list of all the unincorporated, or CDPs in Illinois? That would make making this list so much easier. Otherwise Will have to do it through NACo.--Kranar drogin 01:10, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
 * http://factfinder.census.gov type CDP and Illinois, but there a only about 15 CDP's there. USGS GNIS, selecting Illinois and Ogle county using a feature class "populated place" yields 58 locations, though it includes things like Loose Pulley Junction, Prairieview Estates and Rolling Greens Mobile Home Park. Or you could try the cities towns list from http://www.rootsweb.com/~ilgwrefs/ --Dual Freq 02:09, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I think it would just be easier to pull them from NACo. There is a lot of clicking going on with the other sites. Yeah, Rolling Greens is not a Unincorporated place! lol, it is actually part of Davis Junction. There would be too much to sift to compared to Adams County and highlight the places down below.--Kranar drogin 02:22, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I have created the list, but I have found the Category:Census-designated places in Illinois, which I think are the same thing. So these should be listed under unincorporated also, correct? Or is there a difference?--Kranar drogin 11:03, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * It looks to me that a Census-designated place is an Unincorporated community but Unincorporated communities are not necessarily CDPs. As I mentioned above there are only 15 or so CDPs in Illinois, but there are way more unincorporated areas than that. Does Seymour, Illinois or White Heath, Illinois fit the Unincorporated community category? They don't have data in the census and are not CDPs, but have their own zip codes. --Dual Freq 11:24, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, so I will add those CDPs in with the Unincorporated communities. One problem I see already, is that there is a list of unincorporated on there, but I don't see a few of these on NACo. Well, I think I am going to start compiling this list.--Kranar drogin 03:00, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm a bit unclear on what constitutes an unincorporated area that is worth making an article for. One group of unincorporated areas is similar to Seymour, Illinois, with a post office, fire station and most things a normal village would have only it is not incorporated as a village. I can see making articles for those. However, another group of "locations" would be basically a grain elevator and a name on a map, for example, Rising, Illinois located in Hensley Township, Champaign County, Illinois (there is a picture there of th grain elevator). It is basically a grain elevator next to rail road tracks with a road named after the locality. Maybe there is one house in the immediate area, but basically population zero. I don't know if Rising was ever a town, or if it is a ghost town, but it doesn't even have its own zip code. It is listed in GNIS and shown on topo maps. I think I'd have a hard time justifying one of those articles about the second group in case of an AfD. --Dual Freq 23:47, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, here is the definition Unincorporated area. Basically, an unincorporated area is anything that isn't a town or vilage, but does have a name. At one time, it may have been a very important area. Who knows, Rising could have at one time have been a very important town, but buildings were destroyed or torn down. I am simply creating a list, of everything that is in NACo. We don't have to create an article, but I am listing them out. Oh, and just so you know too, Rising isn't even on NACo's list. Rising Sun is, but not Rising.--Kranar drogin 00:03, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I noticed it wasn't on Naco, that was kind of why I used it. I wanted an example that was not listed there, but was listed in GNIS / USGS topographical maps. This USGS topo map shows Rising and this image, Image:Rising Illinois Elevator.jpg, shows the elevators owned by the Rising Farmers Grain Company, 3412 N. Rising Road, Champaign, IL. This is but one example, I'd say dozens of similar locations, centered around grain elevators, exist in central Illinois alone. Is this the sort of thing you are looking for in the list? --Dual Freq 02:03, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I would say that as long as we have sources showing that it is an unincoporated area, it could be added. The reason I am creating this list, is because people are going to add these places no matter what. The biggest reason I have started it right now, is not only to list them, but to see what ones have been created so far. I have found about 5-10 so far, that I have cleaned up, and moved into the correct category. So the way I look at it, is that if we at least get them started, then it will be the way the project would want them. I haven't started any lately, but I see another has been created Ingleside, Illinois. I will be getting to cleaning it up once I get to the "I"s. (Ingleside is on NACo)--Kranar drogin 02:31, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Aurora, IL
I would like to know why the article on Aurora, IL is totally overlooked compared to cities similar in size. Elgin, IL, Naperville, IL, and Rockford, IL all are much larger and more detailed. Seeing as Aurora is the second largest city in IL, it deserves a much nicer wiki page. --71.194.25.150 05:33, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
 * May want to contact WikiProject Chicago too, they are more likely to collaborate on an article about any given suburb (which is probably why Aurora is so oft overlooked as such a large community - because of its suburban nature). Of course if you have any improvements please add them but bear in mind Wikipedias policies on original research, reliable sources and neutrality. IvoShandor 06:01, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I suppose I could stub out the sections like I did Peoria, but Aurora does fall more into the Chicago project than it does with us. We tend to focus on the rest of the state so WP Chicago can focus on Chicago and its suburbs.--Kranar drogin 10:28, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh okay, I figured I should post it here since it says its part of WP:Illinois on its talk page. I will bring it up with them. --71.194.25.150 00:12, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Portal
Hey, guys. I've started an Illinois portal at Portal:Illinois (shortcut (P:ILL). Feel free to contribute at your whim. Teemu08 01:36, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Barack Obama FAR
Barack Obama has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.Sandy Georgia (Talk) 20:38, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Page tagging SatyrBot
Just wanted to let you all know, that SatyrBot will be tagging articles that are in Category:Illinois with WikiProject Illinois if it doesn't have the Illinois tag, soon as they are able too. If for some reason there are any problems with pages that have been tagged, please let us know here. Most categories have been tagged with WikiProject Illinois (Category), but some of the college alumni and faculty pages have been tagged with WikiProject Illinois (NA) so the bot won't tag those articles. Hopefully everything will run smooth.--Kranar drogin 22:13, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

WP:GA/R notices Gustavus Franklin Swift and Gordon Griffith
I am notifying you that both Gustavus Franklin Swift and Gordon Griffith are being placed at WP:GA/R.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 22:52, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

The Reputation Good Article review
One of this project's Good Articles, The Reputation, is under Good Article review (here). Members of this project are welcome to contribute to the discussion and hopefully edit the article to avoid it being delisted form GA status. Drewcifer3000 22:13, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Class
Hey all. I am making a push to assess our currently 6,000 articles that are unassessed. You can simply follow the link here Category:Unassessed WikiProject Illinois articles, and start assessing, or you coudl do it through AWB. I would also like to do the importance at the same time, that way we will have less later on. Let me know here if you are willing to do a few or even do a lot.--Kranar drogin 01:11, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Just an update for those who are assisting. We are now below 5,000 articles that are unassessed 10 days into our push. At the current rate we should be done in a month. Keep going!--Kranar drogin 15:27, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Here is another 10 day update. We are now down to 3826 article. That is about a drop of 1100 articles in 10 days. Another 30 days at this rate and we should be done. Thanks to anyone that is helping.--Kranar drogin 03:34, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I seem to be about the only one responding to this. A day late, so 11 days later we are now down to 2080 articles, with that being a drop of 1746 articles. Hopefully it won't take much more than 15 more days and we will be completely caught up on unassessed articles!--Kranar drogin 02:20, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The push is complete. There are only two more that need "assessment" because our template does not recognize Feature List yet. Once that is done, then we should be good to go. Just a matter of maintaining now.--Kranar drogin 03:11, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Importance
I have requested a bot to make the changes to include the importance to the project. Most that haven't been rated yet will be rated Low, while some will be rated as the following: As we go along, we can always fix the importance, this is just to get it cleared up. Questions should be put here.--Kranar drogin 05:59, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Category:Cities in Illinois could you rate these as High
 * Category:Villages in Illinois could you rate these as Mid
 * Category:Towns in Illinois could you rate these as Mid
 * Category:Registered Historic Places in Illinois could you rate these as Mid
 * I already rated several Illinois city/village articles. I did the ratings based mostly on population, and concentrated mostly on Northern Illinois.  My assesment went something like this:
 * 100,000+ = Top importance
 * 50,000-100,000 and located in Chicago 7-County = High importance
 * 25,000-100,000 and located outside Chicago 7-County = High importance
 * 5,000-50,000 and located in Chicago 7-County = Mid importance
 * 5,000-25,000 and located outside Chicago 7-County = Mid importance
 * Under 5,000 = Low importance
 * And there are always a few exceptional places under 5,000 that could be classified as "Mid" (i.e. Rosemont).
 * But now that we have a bot involved, things seem to be getting all messed up. It seems kind of odd that a village of 250 people and a village of 75,000 people would be classified the same under this system.  Also odd that I found these small towns were being rated "mid" while entire regions of the state (Northern Illinois, Central Illinois) and Lake Michigan were being rated "low".  I really don't think a bot should be doing these classifications.  If they are, we need better criteria. Abog 20:12, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Query
Someone posted this query about Manteno, Illinois at WP:CHICAGO that I think you guys may want to address.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 00:05, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Jane Addams
In light of the recent renaming of the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway, I think it might be a good idea to try to do something about the relatively sad state of the Jane Addams article, itself. There is actually more about Addams in the article about the Jane Addams Burial Site than there is in her biography, which is really pretty sad. Perhaps this could be made a focus article for a time? Kelly Martin (talk) 23:39, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Task forces
This is something I have thought about for awhile. I would like to split the state up into task forces, but not sure how we should do it yet. Some cases people live in a certain city, so we could create some city task forces (such as Springfield for example), but then should we split the rest of the state up into regions? Grouping a bunch of counties together? What is everyone's take on this? I will let this go for a few days, and then we can make a decision.--Kranar drogin 16:30, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Right now, I am thinking of modeling the task forces similar to like:
 * Northern
 * Western
 * Eastern
 * Central
 * Southern
 * With then we can make a few city ones possibly such as:
 * Rockford
 * Springfield
 * Peoria

to name a few. We don't have to do cities, unless there are going to be a few people that are going to specialize in only that city and nothing else. Otherwise people can just do regions then. Other thoughts or ideas?--Kranar drogin 22:24, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I like the idea, I think it needs more input. The big question, is project participation high enough to justify the work that will be put into this? Kranar and I have some things in our user spaces that could easily be moved or merged into the project space as part of the task forces. I, for one, would like to see some more input on this. IvoShandor 22:27, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I think this is a good idea as well, but I hope there are enough active participants in each of the regions to make it work. For example, I imagine a lot of people are from Northern Illinois (since that's where 75% of Illinois reisdents live) and would want to work on the Northern Illinois task force since they have the most experience in that area.  As a result, if there aren't enough people in Western or Eastern Illinois, those areas may not see much progress being made.  Maybe be more broad, and do Northern (north of I-80), Central (I-80 to I-70), and Southern (south of I-70), along with Chicago/Cook County, Collar Counties, Rockford, Peoria, Springfield.  I don't know.  A good idea though. Abog 02:51, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I think the broader idea might be better to split the state in three with a fourth being Cook County which would basically be a redirect to the Chicago project. If that project ever folded, the page would be there to take it all in (which I really never forsee happening). So maybe four task forces to start out would be the safest bet to do for the time being. That is why none of the pages have been started yet.--Kranar drogin 03:15, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * How will the Cook County task force relate to WP:CHICAGO? I imagine most projects parented by WikiProject Cities are part of larger geographic areas which may have projects.  I don't feel we should be swallowed by your project.  I do feel like most of what I do will be contributing to this task force.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 17:15, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * All we're talking about, is just not having a Cook County task force, every article in Cook County falls under your project, so we just want to have a redirect to the WP:CHICAGO page, and not really have any organized effort at Cook County articles, of course, we will contribute, like always, where we can. That's all we're talking about here, not swallowing your project, not sure how you read that. IvoShandor 17:21, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. It sounds more like we are an officially recognized affiliated effort in that case.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 18:58, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Absolutely, as the Chicago Project is most likely group of editors to be able to deal with Chicago related pages and issues. We want to work together, the best way to do that is to avoid tromping on anyones toes with a "scope war". This is why I feel it is best to defer Cook County to the Chicago Project, as the main group. Not implying any OWNership issues here just saying as far as project scope goes. It wouldn't make sense for us to have a task force for Chicagoland when a project already exists. As we move down the line I think you will like our direction. IvoShandor 20:24, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

List of Registered Historic Places in Illinois
Well, next project I am going to start and any assistance would be great, is to work on making List of Registered Historic Places in Illinois a Feature List. I have changed it to a table now, but there are MANY red links that will need to be taken care of. So, I am hoping that I could get some help on working with this article. Currently Ivo is working on a lead, and I will work on getting the links of current articles fixed up. Once that is complete, I hope to start pumping out the articles.--Kranar drogin 03:27, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Spoken Illinois
To make myself part of the project, I am going to record major Illinois-related articles for the Spoken Wikipedia. I want to make it as easy as possible for anyone to read or 'listen' to our articles. i have noticed Chicago was done, and i have begun on Illinois. anyone can jump on board. not only this, but im also doing Spoken Wikipedia for all 50 states. Drumlineramos 01:21, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, this will be a great idea. One thing I suggest though, is that you start with like the GAs and the FAs for Illinois. That would prolly be the best since they are the best quality. Let me know if you have other questions.--Kranar drogin 22:12, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

School pages
I have just deleted a bunch of Illinois elementary-school pages. All were marked as stubs, most had tags noting concern about notability, all had expired notices. It's been months that the pages have had some editorial notes, and five days since the pages had huge warnings of impending deletion, and nobody came to their rescue. The general feeling I've seen on various WikiProjects and results from WP:AfD discussions is that only high schools are inherently notable enough to deserve their own pages. Lower-level schools need actual cited notability claims. How about having unified pages about various school districts that have a list of schools and/or to have education information in various township/city/whatever pages? DMacks (talk) 19:31, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I dunno, I'm fairly new to wikipedia, and when I took on my hometown's wiki page as my first real project I stubbed out the education section, only to get a couple notes on my talk page for it...now, I'm not saying that middle and grade schools meet some kind of notablility requirement, I'm not saying they don't. But once you start having wiki pages titled "List of Middle Schools in Illinois" it begs the question. If only notable schools are to be listed then shouldn't the list be "List of Notable Middle Schools in Illinois"? Certainly there should be no harm in the information being availible, if its a good idea or not per some other consideration is another question. I actually shudder to think at some of the things that could qualify a school as notable... I also don't see whats so inherently notable about a high school...its an artificial line, but it was drawn by consensus apparently, so thats fine, if a bit illogicalPreciousRoi (talk) 20:15, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Geoboxes
Kranar and I (well, SatyrBot) have been working on adding Geobox to Illinois cities, towns, and villages. I've gotten a couple notes that the "red dot" for the images is showing up in the wrong place - see Metcalf, Illinois and McCullom Lake, Illinois where the dot's aren't even in the right state. I don't have any experience with these locater dots, so if someone could look in to whether the image is calibrated correctly, I'd appreciate it! Thanks, -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 22:32, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I attempted to fix the coordinates per the USGS, and it didn't fix it. That is Edgar County right there, so maybe the map is off-set to the left too much. I will contact the map creator.--Kranar drogin (talk) 23:38, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Template:Geobox locator Illinois is for Image:Illinois Locator Map.PNG You need to use Template:Geobox locator Illinois2 for that map. Different maps use different calibrations. Change them to map_locator = Illinois2 and it should fix it. (I'm not a Geobox expert, but that seems to be what the problem is.) --Dual Freq (talk) 00:11, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm starting to get complaints on the maps now too. Someone is going to have to do a bot run to change the map_locator = Illinois to map_locator = Illinois2 for the geoboxes that use the different map. map_locator = Illinois2 points to Template:Geobox locator Illinois2 which is the new map. --Dual Freq (talk) 22:17, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
 * It will get fixed. People complain when there isn't a geobox, they complain when there is, sheesh. Just getting the bugs fixed is all on my end.--Kranar drogin (talk) 01:09, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll run the bot tonight and fix that. Thanks! -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs)  01:11, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry to nag, I was was afraid I would have to figure out some way to do it with AWB. --Dual Freq (talk) 02:02, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Its not a nag at all. I think they should all be fixed now, phew. Now comes the task of converting all the infoboxes to geoboxes.--Kranar drogin (talk) 09:40, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

USS Illinois (BB-65)
At the moment this article is a current Featured Article Candidate; why it has not been mention here is anyone's guess. At any rate, the FAC is open and all editers here are welcome to comment. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:47, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Just a notice. The FAC has passed, and I've added it to your featured content section on the project page. -MBK004 06:19, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Abraham Lincoln assassination GA Sweeps Review: On Hold
As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing sweeps to go over all of the current GAs and see if they still meet the GA criteria. I have left this message at this WikiProjects's talk page since the article falls under its scope and so that any interested members can assist in helping the article keep its GA status. I'm specifically going over all of the "World History-Americas" articles. I have reviewed Abraham Lincoln assassination and believe the article currently meets the majority of the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. In reviewing the article, I have found there are some issues that may need to be addressed, and I'll leave the article on hold for seven days for them to be fixed. Please consider helping address the several points that I listed on the talk page of the article, which shouldn't take too long to fix. I left messages for the other WikiProjects/task forces and the main contributors to the article so that the workload can be shared. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 21:32, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Adam Siczek
My great-grandfather Adam SICZEK came in 1913 from Poland to Chicago. He was carpenter and died on 10th January 1932 in Bremen Township, Cook County, Illinois. I found his name in Illinois Statewide Death Index:. Can somebody help me? I search for his grave, and I don't know what I have to do :( Please help me! Where could be his grave? My email: rks@interia.pl . I'll be grateful. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.242.236.249 (talk) 20:35, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Township maps
Recently I've been applying some updated township maps to the township articles in some Illinois counties, such as Vermilion County, Illinois and Iroquois County, Illinois, and adding them to some that didn't have any yet. Kranar drogin wisely suggested that the color scheme for the new ones should be taken from existing maps such as Image:Illinois Locator Map.PNG. These maps are SVGs and show populated places and major highways for added context, as well as some details from neighboring counties. The process is automated per-county, so the rest of the state can be done quite quickly, but I just wanted to make sure the other project participants were aware. Omnedon (talk) 02:51, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I made a half hearted attempt at a township map at Sidney Township, Champaign County, Illinois as a test, but it was too labor intensive the way I was doing it. If you have a fully automated method, is it possible to have a locater map like the ones you are making now and a township only map like the second map on the Sidney page? I for one greatly appreciate the maps you are already making and I don't want to exponentially increase your workload, so if you can't do it or don't want to spend a lot of time on it, I won't be offended. Thanks for your help and the maps you've added look great. --Dual Freq (talk) 03:17, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
 * First of all, thanks for the positive feedback; I appreciate it. As for making more detailed maps for individual townships, that's certainly possible to integrate into the process without much difficulty.  It would result in a large number of maps, of course...  But I'll set up the code and you can see what you think of some initial test runs.  Omnedon (talk) 03:33, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Most of the township articles are barely stubs, so don't burn yourself out doing it if its too much work. --Dual Freq (talk) 03:45, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

RfC: Mirth & Girth and importance to Harold Washington
Posted from WP:Chicago - Hey everyone... I'm requesting comments on Talk:Harold Washington regarding Mirth & Girth. Your input is appreciated. Thanks! &mdash; Rob (  talk  ) 21:56, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Portal removal candidate
The Illinois Portal is currently listed for having it's featured portal status removed. It has not had an update in months, minus a couple minor edits. Please voice your comment at WP:FPRC.  Soxred93 | talk count bot 21:14, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Roads in Illinois
I have added the article Stagecoach trail, and the categories Category:Roads in Illinois and Category:Illinois road stubs to contain the article. I also populated both categories. I had been working on the Jo Daviess County articles the last weeks. Editing, adding new images through wikicommons and adding content. Be welcome to take a look. gidonb (talk) 14:22, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Need "reflist" in all articles
The existing articles have proper citations in the text, but these are not visible to the reader. This specifically includes the sections "Geography" and "Demographics". The simple solution is to include the following two lines near the end of all articles:
 * == Notes ==

This will automatically grab and make visible any uses of the "ref" tag. You can confirm this with a simple article edit, then hit the "Preview" button to see the effect. Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 23:10, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Good call -- I have worked on many of those articles and somehow never noticed that there was no list of references. That should be fixed now. Omnedon (talk) 05:43, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Hillary Clinton at WP:GAR
Hillary Clinton has been at WP:GAR since Feb. 11.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 06:18, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Radio Stations
I am currently in the process of going through the established list of radio stations in Illinois and creating articles for any that are currently noted by red links. I will create the articles using the basic Radio-Locator templates and any basic information that I can find, but I would greatly appreciate any members of WikiProject Illinois that might live in the broadcast areas of these radio stations contributing any relevant, verifiable information to the articles, once I create them. Thanks! --InDeBiz1 (talk) 06:18, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Potentially useful images
commons:User:Dori dropped me a note that there are some potentially useful images for Illinois at commons:User:Dori/gallery/Champaign-Urbana (most recent ones are part of commons:Category:Registered Historic Places in Champaign County, Illinois). I'll see if I can find a place for them, but I thought I would drop a note here so others can use the images if they have an article to place them in. --Dual Freq (talk) 23:24, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Calling all Illinois editors ASAP
Oy! Your state has just had a very important special congressional election, and the article is in serious need of expansion. Please do what you can. Grand master  ka  15:03, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
 * And thank goodness it's over. I'll get on it, although I'm a 6th districtian myself. &mdash; Rob (  talk  ) 01:20, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Illinois: Articles of unclear notability
Hello, there are currently 56 articles in the scope of this project which are tagged with notability concerns. I have listed them here. (Note: this listing is based on a database snapshot of 2008-03-12 and may be slightly outdated.) I would encourage members of this project to have a look at these articles, and see whether independent sources can be added, whether the articles can be merged into an article of larger scope, or possibly be deleted. Any help in cleaning up this backlog is appreciated. For further information, see WikiProject Notability. If you have any questions, please leave a message on the Notability project page or on my personal talk page. (I'm not watching this page however.) Thanks! --B. Wolterding (talk) 15:10, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Illinois Images
I revised Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Illinois as set out at WikiProject_Illinois. I also changed Template:WikiProject Illinois to include an "in:" parameter that lets the editor place the image request into a specific Illinois county. That way, Wikipedian photographers living in or near that county will know that a photo request is for that location and be more likely to take that photograph. GregManninLB (talk) 02:35, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Missing articles
We have two state parks that are missing articles, they weren't linked from Template:Protected Areas of Illinois but I added them. Lowden-Miller State Forest and Banner Marsh State Fish and Wildlife Area both lack articles. I don't think there are any others according to the DNR website, but that site is known to be inaccurate. For instance, they still haven't added Kishwaukee River State Fish and Wildlife Area to their page, although it was set aside in 2002. IvoShandor (talk) 12:09, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Talk archives
I discovered that the archives of this WikiProject's talk page were sitting in the User talk: namespace rather than the Wikipedia talk: namespace. This is now fixed! --RFBailey (talk) 02:44, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

School District Pages
I am not part of WikiProject Illinois, nor am I from Illinois at all, but I have been leafing through the overwhelming number of redlinks on the List of school districts in Illinois page; I have put a decent amount of time into writing articles concerning the school districts. Is notability going to be a problem that will reverse the hours I've put into this? I'd like to know. --Starstriker7 (talk) 16:26, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Satyr
Have you replaced User:SatyrTN's User:SatyrBot? We at WP:CHICAGO are looking for a replacement since he is no longer active. Please respond at my talk page.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 18:43, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Important discussion on Illinoisans Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko
How much information should Obama's bio article have on his embarassing associates -- Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Tony Rezko? The Barack Obama Featured Article, part of this project's scope, now has an important discussion about this on its talk page (at Talk:Barack Obama). Every one of these people is from Illinois, so members of this project may have a particular interest or expertise that could be valuable to that discussion. But just an open mind and an interest in the subject will do. Some editors here think that when a U.S. presidential candidate is embarassed by someone associated with that candidate, no information about it should be mentioned in the WP biography article, even if the campaign (and therefore the person who is the subject of the article) was affected. Others think WP should only mention that this person was controversial and leave a link in the article to the WP article on that controversial associate. Still others (including me), think we should briefly explain just why that person was controversial in the candidate's life, which can be done in a phrase or at most a sentence or two. Other examples: Whatever we do, we should have equal treatment, so anyone interested in NPOV-, WP:BLP-compliant articles should look at and participate in the discussion. We've started the discussion by focusing on how much to say about former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers in the Barack Obama article. Noroton (talk) 16:06, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Hillary Clinton and Norman Hsu
 * John McCain and John C. Hagee
 * Rudy Giuliani and Bernard Kerik
 * On some other pages where I've posted this, people have been responding only beneath the post, which is fine, but won't help get a consensus where it counts. So please excuse me for raising my voice, just to make sure I get the point across: Please respond at Talk:Barack Obama where your comments will actually affect the consensus!!! Sorry for the shoutin'. I promise not to do it again (on this page). Noroton (talk) 18:22, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

GAR debate on buildings under construction
There is debate on whether buildings under construction are stable enough and complete enough to be WP:GA. Currently, Chicago Spire, Joffrey Tower, and 108 North State Street are GAs. Thus, the debate is important to our project. Comment would be useful at Good article reassessment/Trump International Hotel and Tower (Chicago)/1.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 20:33, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Trump International Hotel and Tower (Chicago) FAC
Trump International Hotel and Tower (Chicago) is at FAC.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 17:43, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup
Currently, 2618 articles assigned to this project, or 14.9%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 2008-06-18.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 11:55, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme
As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS. Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles. Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot  ( Disable )  21:04, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
 * The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
 * A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Levi Williams
I dispute the neutrality and factual basis of this statement in the Levi Williams article. "At trial, Williams and four other defendants were acquitted by a jury of the murders." Please either correct this statement, or provide a credible reference to verify this statement that Williams and four other defendants were acquitted "by a jury of the murders". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Slu2com (talk • contribs) 07:44, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

History of Northwestern University
I've been working on the History of Northwestern University and have taken care of most of the pre-WWII history and a smattering of topics since then. I would welcome other editors' assistance in expanding the article, getting it assessed, and nominating it for GA and FA in the coming months. Madcoverboy (talk) 17:12, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Photo request: British consulate in the Wrigley Building
Hi! I understand that the British Consulate in Chicago resides in the Wrigley building. Does anyone wish to photograph the entrance to the consulate (as in the entrance on the 13th floor) - If required, see if you can seek permission to take the photograph. See: http://www.britainusa.com/chicago/ WhisperToMe (talk) 01:13, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
 * By the way, as Kransky said on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject International relations page: "I would like to caution people to exercise judgement when choosing to take photographs of diplomatic premises. Many missions are highly security conscious for good reason."

John Marshall Harlan II at WP:GAR
John Marshall Harlan II has been nominated at WP:GAR. See Good article reassessment/John Marshall Harlan II/1.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 05:16, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Ernest Hemingway GA reassessment
Please see Talk:Ernest Hemingway/GA1.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 07:32, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Blues FAR
Blues has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.

FLRC
Chicago Bears seasons is a Featured list removal candidate. BUC (talk) 19:02, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Cloud Gate at WP:GAR
Please contribute to the discussion at Talk:Cloud Gate/GA2.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 01:27, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Grand Central Station (Chicago) at WP:GAR
Come comment at Talk:Grand Central Station (Chicago)/GA1--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 19:20, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

WP:CHICAGO attempt to become fully active
Be aware of WikiProject Chicago/members and CHICAGO/leadership.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 06:36, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Chicago Meetup
Information and discussion at Meetup/Chicago_3.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 06:38, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Illinois historic sites and parks in the news
List of the 11 Illinois historic sites and 13 parks up for closure, in the news now, at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places. Help create articles to fill red-links, or find articles to set up redirects? doncram (talk) 04:26, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Quincy, IL Knights of Columbus BBQ
I came across this while disambiguating Adams County. This page seems to have been created partially as a joke. While the event exists (or did happen while I was living in Quincy), some of the info is quite dubious. Is this a candidate for deletion, or is it important enough to keep? Please advice. Thanks. --Tesscass (talk) 23:40, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I put in a request for Speedy Deletion. Will do it myself in a day or so. --Ljmajer (talk) 18:58, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

O F Hunziker
The O F Hunziker article recently received GA status. It is listed as a WikiProject Illinois article but currently with an importance scale rating of low. If the rating is to remain at "low", can and should the article be removed from WikiProject Illinois? (I would prefer to have it removed if it remains at low importance.)--Rpclod (talk) 14:35, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The article appears to be within the scope of WP:Illinois, so no, it should not be removed. The importance doesn't reflect how important the subject is, just how important the article is to the various projects. WikiProject_Illinois/Assessment has some details on importance, if you feel it should be higher importance than elevate it to mid. I don't think it would be a high importance article for this project and I don't think it should be removed either. It doesn't explicitly say so in the article, but he did live and work in Illinois from 1917 until his death (also in Illinois) in 1959 right? I would think it would be at least a mid and maybe a high importance article to the Agriculture project though. --Dual Freq (talk) 15:35, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for WikiProject Illinois
Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7. We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Release Version Nominations. A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible. We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:26, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Barack Obama FAR
Barack Obama has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 03:46, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Image needs replacement
Hello all... The image used in the Downers Grove, Illinois article, specifically Image:1839 Lyman Home.JPG, has a little bit of a licensing issue. The image was uploaded back when the rules around image uploading were less restrictive. It is presumed that the uploaded was willing to license the picture under the GFDL license but was not clear in that regard. As such, the image, while not at risk of deletion, is likely not clearly licensed to allow for free use in any future use of this article. If anyone has an image that can replace this, or can go take one and upload it, it would be best. You have your mission, take your camera and start clicking.--Jordan 1972 (talk) 00:10, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Congressional district summaries need work
Perhaps project members would find it interesting to expand all of Illinois's congressional districts in a manner similar to what I just did for Illinois' 5th congressional district. 68.165.77.21 (talk) 14:46, 6 November 2008 (UTC).

Friendly Notice of an Article for Deletion
The article Paul LaVinn is being considered for deletion. You may participate in the discussion at Articles for deletion/Paul LaVinn. This notice is intended to make editors aware of the discussion and to help make Wikipedia a better place, not to influence the discussion in question in any way. Please notify the discussion group that you came to the group from this notice. If you feel this notice is a violation of Canvassing please let the posting editor know.--Paul McDonald (talk) 19:34, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Illinois articles needing geographic coordinates
 articles in Category:Illinois articles missing geocoordinate data do not have geographic coordinates. Coords are useful for making the article appear on Google Maps & many other mapping services; and they allow our users to click through to see the article subject location on a map. There's a short guide to on how to add geocodes to articles ... it really is very easy to do. I hope you'll take some time to ensure that Illinois is as well represented as it can be on wikipedia by fixing up the listed articles. thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:09, 26 November 2008 (UTC)