Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Indiana/Archive 1

Thanks to everyone!
I just wanted to express my appreciation for those involved with the WikiProject Indiana. Your hard work is much appreciated and is beneficial for us to provide articles of the highest quality. I understand that we are involved in a wide range of tasks, from page maintenance (which is what I do) to stub creation--and everything else in between. Keep up the good work!Wikichange 02:36, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Contributions
I don't have much description or history to add, but for the past few months, I've been adding aerial photos to various Indiana towns I fly over. My hope was to spur others who noticed the changes to those pages to contribute. I don't know if that's what sparked this project, but I'm happy that something did. Just last weekend, as it happens, I drove around and shot ground photos of the local towns of Bourbon, Nappanee, Wakarusa, Lakeville, La Paz, and Walkerton. You can see all of my Indiana aerial photos on my aerial project page. --Tysto 03:52, 2005 August 23 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot! I'm trying to get my USB scanner working so I can scan in various photographs I've taken of southwestern Indiana and the rest of the state (no digital camera).  And yeah, I've seen the aerial photos on many of the city pages I've been taging!  Kurt Weber 14:42, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Hey, I moved to Montpelier about a year and a half ago, and have taken up digital photography out of boredom. I'm not terribly interested in editing wikipedia, mainly due to the politics: about three years ago I tried to make one minor edit and started a riot on the page. However, I have put some photos up on my flickr page for Blackford Co (which will probably also include Grant, Jay, Delaware and Wells counties). I've tried to pick a reasonably liberal license for all of them, and if anyone wants to they're welcome to help themselves and add them to relevant pages. As per the notice below, I'll try to get photos of the county courthouses as I visit them. If the licenses I've picked are incompatible with Wikipedia, get in touch with me somehow and I can probably change them. Elggawf 17:12, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Goals
Perhaps it would help for us to set some goals to work towards--it'd be an easy way to measure progress (although, of course, we'll never be finished with the project altogether, and the nature of a wiki means that some goals that were reached may become un-reached because of future changes). For our first goal, I'm suggesting getting all the articles in the various Indiana categories and subcategories tagged as well as the category pages themselves. Comments/suggestions/ideas/abuse/hate mail? Kurt Weber 14:40, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Agreed, also it might be a good idea to just pick and Indiana related topic to work on each month(or topics to avoid loss of interest). Falphin 23:08, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Great...any suggestions for a topic? Kurt Weber 22:00, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Lets make the November contribution something like Evan Bayh(decent but would be cool to expand), or former Governor Frank O'Bannon. Falphin 01:54, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Subjects related to rail transport
I noticed one of your project members just added WikiProject Indiana to some of the railroad pages that I monitor. WikiProject Trains is actively adding and updating information related to rail transport, and we've agreed on some standards for articles about railroad companies. While we haven't put these down in a style guide yet, the standards that we've developed (for example, in article titles, we use the word "and" instead of the character "&" and include the word "Railroad" or "Railway" where appropriate) have been discussed on the Trains project talk page. If you have any questions, feel free to discuss there or ask me directly. slambo 22:57, August 24, 2005 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I tagged the articles referring to Amtrak routes that stopped in Indiana or to railroads that were based or operated primarily in Indiana. Naturally, I'm willing to work with y'all on areas where our projects overlap.  Kurt Weber 14:00, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * A few maybe, the list of school districts could be complete, and/or a few cities could be expanded and pictures added like Fort Wayne. Falphin 21:41, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Can somebody please help with Jim Jones?
See talk:Jim Jones. Jones, originally from Indiana seems to be a mythical person and untruths and myths keep creeping in and I can not keep the article "clean" alone. Please help to find references and revert bad edits. Thanks. Andries 14:36, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

West Side Nut Club Created
I was tired of seing this on the "to create" list. I have no firsthand knowledge of the club, so if anyone out there wants to guide it in teh right direction, it would be much appreciated! Indiana Fats 04:02, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

County courthouses
I added a request to the project page for pics of county courthouses. I've been snapping photos of courthouses in my travels in northeastern Indiana and western Ohio. I've now photographed all the courthouses in northeastern Indiana and a few in central Indiana, including Indy and added them to the town pages and county pages. I know this is not the best time of year for municipal photography, but please keep this request in mind when the snow melts and the decorations have come down. --Tysto 22:53, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I've just uploaded a picture of the courthouse in my hometown of Princeton, Indiana...I've got another one I took at the same time, and it would be a better picture except for the power lines coming across the picture (I didn't have a wide-angle lens so I could stand on the other side of the lines and still get the entire building in the picture). Anyway, if I can figure out how to edit those out I'll upload it; otherwise, I'll just wait until I get a new lens.  I'll also take some pictures of other southwest Indiana courthouses as I get around to it.  Kurt Weber 18:04, 5 November 2006 (UTC)


 * The Scott County and Washington County courthouses are also uploaded on WIkipedia.--Bedford 18:11, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Indiana-stub
You may wish to propose a stub type for articles relating to Indiana. This would enable persons who are part of WikiProject Stub Sorting to identify stub articles that might be of interest to your project. Since the stub would have an associated WikiProject it would require according to the Stub Sorting guidelines only 30 or more stub articles exist that would qualify for the stub in order for it to be readily approved. Caerwine Caerwhine 22:30, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Ethnic Makeup?
Most pages for large cities have a few sentences in regard to the biggest ethnic populations in the cities (i.e. Boston's Irish and Italian populations). Has anyone considered adding this for Indy? Jvadnais 18:37, 1 March 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)

Chesterton, Indiana
Hello, everyone. As a quick introduction, I'm from Chesterton. I would love to contribute to this WikiProject. I was wondering what exactly should I do first? I was thinking about either making the page for our high school or for the Wizard of Oz festival we had (...or, at least used to).

Um, perhaps if anyone could point me in the right direction? That would be quite lovely. --thisJude 01:39, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

List of cities in Indiana by population
I made a page for the list of cities in Indiana by population. I borrowed the format from a similiar page of Arizona. The populations are of the cities themselves rather than metropolitan area. I listed the cities by population rather than alphabetic. I only went down to cities of 25,000 people because I could not find complete information after that. Have a look and make any change that you feel would be necessary. Jablair51 03:52, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Project userbox
I updated the project userbox User WikiProject Indiana so that it adds participants to Category:WikiProject Indiana. I also added it to the list of project templates here and the list of geography project userboxes. Rfrisbietalk 17:05, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Hinkle Fieldhouse
I recently discovered that the relatively in-depth Hinkle Fieldhouse article was copy-and-pasted from Inside Indiana Business and it has been replaced with a stub. If anyone has in-depth knowledge about the fieldhouse the article could use some attention. --HonztheBusDriver 02:36, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

State Capitol building(s) from 1821 to 1888
Does anyone have any information about where the Indiana General Assembly met from 1821, when the capital was moved to Indianapolis, until 1888, when the current building was completed? I have searched the web for such info, but as of yet have not found anything. I think this information would be a good addition to Indiana State House. --rogerd 04:05, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I just found this and added some content to the article. --rogerd 01:54, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Flags of Indiana cities
I have recently added the flags of Speedway, Evansville, and Fishers to the wikipedia database. It would be nice if we could get the flags of all of the cities above 50,000 people. If anyone can find good representations for the flags of South Bend, Gary, Bloomington, Muncie, Lafayette, Anderson, Terre Haute, and Elkhart please let me know or feel free to add it yourself. Jablair51 06:49, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

History buff needed
Please check out List of current and former capital cities in the United States and make sure that Indiana's 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   19:49, 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 Indiana (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 ) 23:21, 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 Indiana" 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 13:25, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Various Pictures
I've uploaded a picture of the George Rogers Clark Memorial that I took, as well as a picture of the Knox County courthouse. The GRCM picture is [[Media:George Rogers Clark Memorial in Vincennes, Indiana.jpg | George Rogers Clark Memorial in Vincennes, Indiana.jpg]], and I put it on the GRCM page. The courthouse picture is [[Media:KCIC_01.jpg | KCIC_01.jpg]], but I'm not sure what to do with it. Have at it. I should also have the Pike and Daviess courthouses photographed within the next month.--Agentmoose 03:57, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Phoenix Theatre
Just created an article on the Phoenix Theatre. Scottandrewhutchins 17:59, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Now I've added one for Indiana Repertory Theatre as well. Scottandrewhutchins 00:03, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Invite
Wanted to let you know that WP:BIOGRAPHY has added a "work group" called Politics and government, and so wanted to invite you to participate on any biography-type articles. The section for Indiana is here and if there's interest, we can beef it up to look like the newly-created Virginia one plange 05:22, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Version 1.0 assessments
I set up the basic template, classification categories, and page for the Version 1.0 assessments. For more information about Version 1.0, see WP:1.0, WP:WVWP and this project's assessment page. Rfrisbietalk 00:25, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

City & town importance ratings by population & location
I'd like to suggest a rough population and location rule of thumb to rate Indiana city and town articles by importance. Feel free to adjust individual cases as you see fit. Rfrisbietalk 15:40, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Metropolitan areas: Top
 * Micropolitan areas: High
 * Populations over 10,000 and suburbs: Mid
 * Everything else: Low
 * Counties, townships & school districts: Match the highest rating if their cities & towns

(from talk:Indiana) I think if a city has historical importance, it should rank higher than population would dictate. Corydon is a prime example of this.--Bedford 15:42, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Of course, I'm just suggeting a "starting point," since the project has over 1,300 unassessed articles these days. Corydon would rate higher on an "Indiana history" criterion. Any "article" should be given the highest importance rating based on all criteria that apply. I also moved this topic to the more appropriate WikiProject Indiana talk page. I started it here by mistake. :-) Most of the discussions about article classification and importance probably should talk place there. Rfrisbietalk 16:22, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Draft WikiProject Indiana importance scale
I started a draft WikiProject Indiana importance scale to help us fine-tune those ratings. I based it on the main topics in the Indiana article. It includes some city & town population suggestions to get the ball rolling. Suggestions for other topics can be added as well. Rfrisbietalk 19:18, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Tagging talk pages and assessing articles
Hi. If you still have work to do tagging talk pages and assessing articles, my AWB plugin might be of interest to you.

The plugin has two main modes of operation:
 * Tagging talk pages, great for high-speed tagging
 * Assessments mode, for reviewing articles (pictured)

As of the current version, WikiProjects with simple "generic" templates are supported by the plugin without the need for any special programatic support by me. I've had a look at your project's template and you seem to qualify.

For more information see:
 * About the plugin
 * About support for "generic" WikiProject templates
 * User guide
 * About AWB (AutoWikiBrowser)

Hope that helps. If you have any questions or find any bugs please let me know on the plugin's talk page. --Kingboyk 13:33, 20 September 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 18:38, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Indiana Climate
Surely, there must be something notable about Indiana's weather/climate worthy of mentioning in the article ? Jcam 20:54, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Indianapolis
Hi guys...just wanted to bring it to your attention that I've come across the fact that as of right now, you actually have two separate categories dedicated to Indianapolis: one's called Category:Indianapolis and the other's called Category:Indianapolis, Indiana. I've temporarily slapped a categoryredirect tag on the one without the state name in it, but I'm going to leave it up to you guys to decide which of the two categories should actually be used, and merge the two. Thanks. Bearcat 07:31, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Across Indiana
Up for deletion, see Articles for deletion/Across Indiana. Not my doing or my gig, but I thought y'all might want to know. Tubezone 05:53, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Notre Dame Dorms
It is certainly impressive that every ND dorm has its own page, but realistically it would be more reasonable to combine many of the least notable ones into a "List of Notre Dame Dormitories" or something like that. Otherwise, every notable college and university... and then EVERY college and university... will want to have an article on every dorm, even if it is some ghastly concrete edifice put up two years ago. I AFDed a dorm at Penn State, and someone in fact raised the issue that "every dorm at ND has an article, why not Penn State?" Could someone perhaps go through and prune back the ND dorm articles? --Brianyoumans 18:15, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Update: after placing merge tags on the articles and getting the OK of the author, I have combined many of the articles into List of Male Dorms at Notre Dame and List of Female Dorms at Notre Dame, removing much of the trivial content. Brianyoumans 21:18, 19 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 22:00, 29 December 2006 (UTC)