Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Michigan/Archive 1

Untitled comments
I created Template:WikiProject Michigan but it needs a Michigan icon. --Fang Aili 16:48, 2 September 2005 (UTC) Keeperoftheseal 23:39, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Also Template:MichiganWikiProject-Member. --Fang Aili 16:52, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I created a userbox (not so large and intrusive as the original template: type for . --Fang Aili 19:27, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I too created a Userbox for Michiganians
 * Shouldn't that be 'Michiganders'? 18.245.0.103Anon

Michigan icon created. Templates are complete, unless anyone has an objection. --Fang Aili 19:18, 2 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your help. I spilled water on my laptop a while back, and have since only able to edit for short periods on my wife's system. older&ne;wiser 22:13, September 2, 2005 (UTC)

Scope of Project
What sorts of articles should be tagged with the teplate and added to the recent changes watch? WikiProject Wisconsin includes cities, towns, counties, Wisconsin categories and other things. So far I and others have mainly tagged list articles, lakes, rivers, geographic/cultural areas, bridges, Indian tribes. Should we tag all the Michigan roads and highways with articles? All the towns, townships and counties? Politicians? Important historical figures? Famous living people with Michigan connections? Rmhermen 14:49, 11 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm not entirely clear on how the infobox works, but if it's placed on the main article, it's usually big and intrusive. But, if it gives us some organizing abilities under the hood, it isn't useful to put it in just the talk pages. There would be a lot of township and village articles which would nearly be dwarfed by the infobox. Could someone explain how it works? &mdash;dcclark (talk) 15:37, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I was wondering about the use of the temmplate which always goes on the talk page. Rmhermen 17:04, 11 October 2005 (UTC)


 * That's a good question. I almost think it might be worthwhile to have separate sub-project templates. I mean there are an awful lot of city, township, village, CDP, etc. articles. And for related changes, I think the List of cities, villages, and townships in Michigan should have all the populated places, so the template isn't really needed for that purpose. But for the purposes of letting people know that there is a WikiProject, it may still be useful to have the template on those pages as well. But perhaps priority should be given to those places that are listed on the Michigan Infobox template, which are the largest comunities and all the counties. I guess where I'm going with this is that unless someone wants to fire up a bot to add the template to the talk pages for ALL of the place name articles, I'm not sure it's worth the effort to do them all manually. I think it is kind of similar for roads--while there are not so many of them, they are kind of a special interest subcategory. Certainly the major roads, or those with half-way decent general interest articles might benefit from being on the Related Changes watch. But, it might be a little inappropriate to claim something like Interstate 94. While it is a major road in Michigan, that is only a small part of the total article. Same for people. While some people are very strongly identified with Michigan, like say Henry Ford, and could very justifiably be part of this project, for others, like say Madonna, Michigan plays only a relatively minor role in their notability and so might not be as relevant for the project. I'm not sure whether we could have clear criteria for inclusion (or that its needed). I'm mean, I'd probably include Michael Moore and Eminem because of the strong identification of their notability with Michigan. But someone who merely happened to be born here or spent some time here but became famous for reasons unrelated to Michigan--that's a little more tenuous. older&ne;wiser 00:28, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I sorted the list to make it easier to see what types of things are linked to recent changes. And a found a couple duplications in the process. Rmhermen 14:38, 14 October 2005 (UTC)


 * The more I work with the Related Changes feature, the more I think I'd like to see anything Michigan-related listed there. I have a lot of stuff on my Watchlist, but a huge advantage of Related changes is that it also shows changes over a period of time. Watchlists only show the most recent change, so I often end up first looking at the diff for the last edit and then either cycling through Older edits or else going to History and viewing a bunch of changes. Related Changes is much neater, IMO. I'm inclined to encourage slapping the project template on the talk page of any Michign-related article that anyone on the project has an interest in watching.


 * However, I'm not sure how easy it will be to maintain WikiProject Michigan/Michigan recent changes as a categorically-sorted list though. I think it may be easiest to just periodically 1) collect everything that links to the WikiProject page, 2) remove user page and other Wikiproject links, 3) remove the Talk: prefix and reformat into links and then 4) optionally, do an aphabetical sort. older&ne;wiser 20:20, 30 October 2005 (UTC)


 * What about schools in Michigan? Primary and secondary that is, not universities. -Kalium 06:29, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Hey folks...as long as it doesn't get out of hand, I don't see any problem with tagging pretty much everything that has specifically to do with Michigan as part of WP:WPMI. In that light, I've tagged Talk:Menominee Township, Michigan as part of the project before I realized that there was some question about the extent to which such tags are appropriate...I think it would be grossly inappropriate to tag Madonna (entertainer) as part of WP:WPMI, but at the same time, tagging some national figure whose notability is in some way directly related to their origin or experience in Michigan (political figures like Kwame Kilpatrick, whether of national reknown or not, for example, or Henry Ford ).  I really don't see any problem with township articles[' TALK PAGES!] being tagged with WikiProject Michigan.  If anything, doing so will bring attention to the wikiproject itself.  The "server strain" argument only holds sway if you can demonstrate, in this case, that people who read articles on individual townships are prone to obsessively check the talkpages for those articles. [good luck with that :-p]  So anyways, what really brought me to the talk page was to just say, thanks for the amazing compliment you've given those of us involved with WikiProject Wisconsin by copying practically everything verbatim.  It's nice to know someone out there thinks we're doing something right on our side of the lake. :-)  If you have any innovations you'd like to share with us, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wisconsin :-)  Cheers,  Tom e rtalk  07:47, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Detroit, Michigan - a suggestion
Given that the Super Bowl will be coming to Detroit early next year, I was wondering if anyone would be interested in improving the article (e.g. formatting cleanup, verifying information). I believe that when the Super Bowl comes along, people from the media and elsewhere will refer to this article for information on the city. Pentawing 02:04, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a good idea to me! If I get some time away from school I'll see what I can do to help spruce things up! --Martin Osterman 18:34, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Requests for Photos
I am working on the article Michigan State Capitol and need non-copyrighted photos of the interior of the state senate and house along with an exterior shot of the capitol building and the interior of the rotunda. Many thanks to anyone who can assist. Jtmichcock 22:24, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

MSU Peer Review
I am submitting the Michigan State University article for peer review. Feel free to leave comments on the MSU talk page. &mdash; Lovelac7 05:37, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Lighthouses
Michigan has more lighthouses than any other state, over 130 (list can be seen at Lighthouses_in_the_United_States. There is now a template for lighthouse articles at Template:Infobox_lighthouse should Michigan's lighthouses become a focus for improvement within your project - currently only nine Michigan lighthouses on the list have articles. KillerChihuahua?!? 00:11, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


 * template now located at: Template:Infobox Lighthouse. --Dual Freq 06:30, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Question on additional articles
If I wanted to add a "WikiProject Michigan" tag to an articles Talk page, is there a centralized location where all the project articles would appear? I would like to propose the Bath School Disaster article as one with a lot of potential for further exposition. Anyone else agree (or disagree)? Jtmichcock 20:41, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
 * WikiProject Michigan/Michigan recent changes lists which articles have the template. It is manually updated from the "What links here" for the main Wikiproject page and enables the Recent changes feature to work. Rmhermen 23:53, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I have updated. Jtmichcock 00:36, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

History of MSU peer review
I've started a peer review of the article History of Michigan State University after getting the main article on Michigan State University featured. I would now like to get this daughter article in shape to be a Featured Article. Please let me know what you think. &mdash; Lovelac7 07:08, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I did some copyediting and I think you're nearly ready to move into Featured Articleland. One addition I can recommend is to have a chart of the University Presidents included on the page with wikilinks to their individual articles (looking for a source now).  Also, a deciennial census would be appropriate to show the growth of the school over the years.  I figure that we need to get Raul moving on putting the (soon to be three) WP:Michigan articles pending in the requests for FA for front page coverage is to move as much as possible into the FA queue.  Jtmichcock 00:34, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Presidents added. Nice shade of green, if I do say so.  Jtmichcock 00:59, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Lovelac7 seems to not have made any contributions since 1/28. The last message indicated an address change, but a return by the following week. Nonetheless, I think the History of MSU article is ready to be nominated for featured article. Unless there are objections, I will submit after the weekend. Jtmichcock 18:44, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Bath School Disaster
I have revised the above article substantially and would like to get some input on the project and to identify this as an article that can be brought up to feature article standards. I am in contact with the Bath School historian and am in the process of getting GDFL photos of the memorial park and museum to add to the photos already there. The anniversary date of the Disaster is coming up on May 18. I will insert this on the template on the first page unless there are serious objections raised. Jtmichcock 04:00, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Bath School Disaster
The article has been submitted to Peer review for review in anticipation of submission to Featured Article status. Any feedback Project members can supply would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Jtmichcock 03:43, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Bath School disaster has been sent for Featured Article candidacy. Discussion is here. Jtmichcock 15:27, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Government section in county articles
Starting with the "big three" counties (Wayne, Oakland, Macomb), I have added a Government section, as is called for in the WikiProject U.S. Counties guidelines.

I have noticed that some counties have a heading for "Elected Officials". What I have been doing is making that a subhead under "Government", headed with a brief explanation of the role of counties in the Michigan system of local government. Note that I used the same text in Oakland and Macomb; Wayne, of course, is a bit different.

So far, in the big counties, I have left the names of the officials as red links. Since these are officials serving around a million or more people, and several have served as state legislators or even been statewide candidates, most of these so far are probably notable enough and should get their own articles eventually. However, below some arbitrary threshold of county size, I assume it will make more sense to list the county officials as unlinked text.

In the course of this work, I created new pages for drain commissioner and vital records; earlier, I expanded existing pages for county clerk and recorder of deeds (and I redirected "register of deeds" to the latter).

Comments and suggestions invited. Kestenbaum 07:24, 17 February 2006 (UTC)


 * There is a lot of red links there for the names. I was surprised to see L. Brooks Patterson does not have an entry.  Some of these folks are likely never going to have an entry, for the small counties in particular.  In general, it seems that there is no great press to wikify names if there is little likelihood of an article being sustainable.  I'm wondering if there might be a practice for other counties to just insert names without wikifying?    Jtmichcock 13:33, 17 February 2006 (UTC)


 * As I said, probably better not to wikify the names in smaller counties. But L. Brooks Patterson (former U.S. Senate candidate, successful advocate of ballot proposals, famed defender of urban sprawl, etc.), and several others, really ought to have articles. Kestenbaum 14:58, 17 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Since this is a type of information that gets dated quickly, it would be a good idea to add a date when these individuals held office to the section. I would suggest a single "county officials as of [date]", rather than listing each of their terms. Rmhermen 16:36, 17 February 2006 (UTC)


 * On the four counties done so far (the three already mentioned and now Kent, i.e., the four counties over 500,000 population), I added a parenthetical note at the bottom of the officials list: "(information as of February 2006)". I think that looks better than including a date in the subheadline. Kestenbaum 16:52, 17 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I misspoke somewhat. I was wondering actually if there was any sort of convenion adopted in counties in other states for what sort of information would/should be wikified.  Jtmichcock 19:50, 17 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I just did the 5th largest county, Genesee, and this time I didn't wikify the names. Kestenbaum 21:50, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Further work: I created a page for Robert A. Ficano, Wayne County Executive. Kestenbaum 16:21, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I will soon receive the United County Officers 2006 directory, and I will use it to greatly expand listings of county officials (generally about 5 or 6 officials per Michigan county), unless there is some objection. In general, I don't plan to wikify the names of ordinary county prosecutors and sheriffs and so on. Other than that, they will be generally in the format I did for other counties mentioned above. Kestenbaum 06:18, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I just now did an article on L. Brooks Patterson, the controversial Oakland County Executive. I don't anticipate doing more of these on county officials, but the Wayne and Oakland executives (Ficano and Patterson) are both major figures who are clearly deserving. Kestenbaum 08:05, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Update. I am in the process of adding the county elected officials (prosecutor, sheriff, etc.) from the 2005-06 UCOA directory. So far, I'm up to Gratiot Lapeer County. In each case, I'm also adding my general intro paragraph about the functions of county government in Michigan. Take a look at any of the counties from Alcona through Gratiot Lapeer and let me know if you have any concerns or suggestions. Kestenbaum 02:24, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Further update. I have completed adding a government section with elected officials to all 83 counties. I didn't wikify names beyond the ones mentioned above, and I have already dewikified some of those in major counties who didn't have articles.

When I got to Washtenaw County, where someone had already listed all the members of the county board, I did go ahead and add the countywide officials including (somewhat incautiously) myself as clerk-register, but in exactly the same way as in all the other counties. Kestenbaum 06:24, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Featured Article prospects
There are a number of articles that can and should be brought up to featured article status that the project should adopt. Here are some candidates I would like to suggest:


 * 12th Street riot - a defining moment in Detroit history and the 1960s civil rights era,
 * The Battle of the Overpass led to widespread unionization in the area.
 * Renaissance Center the largest office complex in the State.

Anyone else have any topics that warrant such treatment? Jtmichcock 12:01, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

UP Category
I just created a category for UP-related articles: Category:Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Any help categorizing the many UP articles would be greatly appreciated! -- dcclark (talk) 21:26, 3 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Incidentally, I added all counties in the UP to the category -- so all UP towns and cities can be left out of the new category since they're already in a subcategory. -- dcclark (talk) 23:23, 3 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I also fixed a couple names by adding their "lastname, firstname" to the category invocation, so that they will alphabetize properly on the category page. E.g., John D. Voelker is now under V instead of under J. Kestenbaum 06:14, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Michigan Olympic Medalist
If you guys can help me out with this page, List of Olympic Medalists from Michigan, it would be greatly appriated Chaldean 04:34, 9 March 2006 (UTC) copied from Talk:Michigan. Rmhermen 05:33, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Placement of WikiProject and Michigan Templates
I have begun going through the list of cities, villages, and townships in Michigan, and adding the Michigan template to the bottom of every article, and the wiki project template in each article's discussion box. Should I continue doing this? Or should the templates only be used on large articles? King-of-no-pants 23:26, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Because a lot of project members use the "recent changes" database to see if there have been any modifications to articles they are working on, I would not label everything simply because it's going to increase the likelihood that something gets missed. If you could focus on articles that can and should be improved to either feature or good article status, the members can focus on those.  If you'll notice above, I have identified three articles that I believe warrant improvement to feature status.  If you want to specify cetain articles for similar improvement, feel free to tag those.  Thanks and welcome to the project.  Jtmichcock 23:34, 12 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Should I still add the michigan infobox to all articles pertaining to the state of michigan? King-of-no-pants 02:42, 13 March 2006 (UTC)


 * For aesthetic reasons, I'd insert it on any article involving a city, county or other governmental entity that was large enough that it appears to have been substantially completed. In other words, I would not insert it where the article is marked as a stub.  Editors might get the impression that the article is "done" when it is not.  Jtmichcock 03:04, 13 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I'll keep this in mind. Thanks for the advice. What about articles that are very small, due to the city size, but complete? King-of-no-pants 03:09, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, if they are "done," I would insert the template. Might look a little odd if the template is larger than the article, but certainly not inappropriate.  Jtmichcock 19:40, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Gerald Ford
I have been working on this article. If anyone has the time and inclination, a second look is always appreciated. This is hopefully one that will get feature article status. Jtmichcock 19:40, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Status report: The article is about ready for peer review. I should be sending it there later this evening.  Jtmichcock 17:31, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
 * In general a very nice article! (I live in GR) + +Lar: t/c 19:17, 23 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) 18:47, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

To the other group members: I think the following articles are appropriate:

Featured:

* Ann Arbor, Michigan - Featured September 11, 2005. * University of Michigan - Featured November 19, 2005, on main page January 11, 2006 * Michigan State University - Featured January 19, 2006. * Michigan State Capitol - Featured January 30, 2006. * Bath School Disaster - Featured March 9, 2006, on main page March 22, 2006

Soon-to-be featured:

* History of Michigan State University - submitted for FAC on March 14, 2006. * Gerald Ford - submitted for Peer Review on March 19, 2006.

Good/Class A articles:

* Michigan Life Sciences corridor * Detroit, Michigan

Any other articles? Jtmichcock 19:25, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
 * 12th Street riot and Toledo War are fairly good. Might be worth looking at getting up to featured status. Rmhermen 21:05, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree especially about 12th Street riot (I did the table). I was in the process of turning that into Feature Article when, as recounted here: Requests for comment/Ta bu shi da yu 2. Right now, the Time Magazine cover is still in doubt simply because I'm afraid it could be deleted at any point since (8 weeks later) its claimed that it was "too large." From that vantage point, I'm avoiding doing any major edits until I can get a commitment not to delete the cover. Which is likely never. Jtmichcock 22:11, 23 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, that certainly helps! Thanks! Tito xd (?!? - help us) 22:37, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Michigan
Many articles covered by this WikiProject lack photographs. As part of a subcategorization of the requested photos category, there is now a category for Michigan articles needing photos - to use it, just add to the article's talk page. I have only added a few articles to the category so far, but it would be an easy way to make an extensive list Michigan-related articles lacking photos. I hope you find it useful! TheGrappler 07:06, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Categories
I added a line to the "to do" box for categories. I added one: Category:Michigan writers, which currently has only one entry. What about Baum, Kienzle, etc.? Rmhermen 17:15, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I created a new category for Ypsilantians and started populating it. Shouldn't the category People from Detroit, Michigan be renamed Detroiters to parallel other categories for Bostonians and New Yorkers and Cincinnatians and so forth? Kestenbaum 20:00, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Hitsville USA
If any member of this project lives in the Detroit area, is it possible for someone to take a photo of the Motown Museum? I can't find a decent fair use image for use in the Hitsville USA article. --FuriousFreddy 23:57, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Portal:Michigan
Hi Michigan. Greetings from Kentucky! We are in the process of building Portal:Kentucky and I noticed that WikiProject Michigan along with WikiProject New Jersey have the most advanced assessments at Version 1.0 Editorial Team/WPPlaces as well as nice Portals.

I'm working with V1.0/WPP to help with the coordination of US state portals, hoping to streamline getting some tools in place for the remaining states and territories using the Portal namespace as a framework. Kentucky is about to join the collection right behind Portal:Florida in the table.

It is hoped that some specialized standards and guidlines for U.S. state portals can be developed for the growing list of Portal:United States/Related portals. Any help, guidance, advice and participation at WikiProject U.S. states would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. -- CQ 08:28, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

request for assistance
The article History of Wyandotte, Michigan is in dire need of help. As it is, much of the article is unsourced. However, User:ZMAN is trying to add even more unsourced information that is written in a rather odd style, with pervasive use of "we" and somewhat archaic phrasings. I'd appreciate it if others would care to take a look at it--I may have already alienated ZMAN by reverting the additions, so he might not be inclined to listen to me, but it may help if some others could stop by and try to explain that my insistence on citing sources and using the MOS are not just my own personal idiosyncracies. older ≠ wiser 17:45, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

History buff needed
Please check out List of current and former capital cities in the United States and make sure that Michigan'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. Having this portal well-maintained is helpful in making the case for subportals, such as Portal:Michigan. 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 Michigan (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 ) 23:26, 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 Michigan" 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 13:28, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Elmwood Cemetery (and other Michigan cemeteries)
I noticed that the page List of cemeteries has quite a few cemeteries listed in Michigan, almost all redlinks. Some of those that aren't redlinks actually point to similarly named non-Michigan cemeteries.

Supposedly that list is only for famous or notable cemeteries. However, the most historically important cemeteries in Michigan were not listed, e.g., Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit, Forest Hill Cemetery in Ann Arbor, Mt. Hope Cemetery in Lansing, etc.

As a limited first step toward remedying this, I created a brief article about Elmwood Cemetery.

There is also a category of Category:Cemeteries in Michigan which should be used with all Michigan cemetery articles. Kestenbaum 06:20, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I've started a Forest Hill Cemetery (Ann Arbor, Michigan) article. BobDively 04:59, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Detroit Free Press looking for Michigander Wikipedians
Hey folks -

I've contacted a few of you individually, but I also wanted to put out the general call. We're doing a story on Wikipedia in conjunction with next week's Wikimania event, and I'm on the hunt for folks in the state who are users/editors/abusers (jk) of the service. Give me a shout as soon as you can - phone numbers appreciated, full names (alas) required. I promise we won't sell you out to the classified ads department's sales force.

Drop me a line at hnewman@freepress.com, and thanks for letting me sneak this in - it's not inappropriate ad spam, I swear!

Heather 7/26/2006

This may offend you, so be warned: Detroit, Flint & Saginaw
Why is it, that i look at how violent these towns are *and other towns in the country* and that i look at the census for population, and see that that there's alot of african americans in these cities that are high crime rates?

I don't mean to sound racist. im just stating a fact. I mean i know that no race is better then any other. But I'd like to be shown the highest crime rate city in the country that has ALOT more white people in it then blacks.

Thats all. Thank you, and if you think im racist. That's fine. --Dr. Pizza 03:55, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Deletion-sorting page
Hi all,

Just wanted to let you know about the page of sorted AfDs related to Michigan. Hope it's useful to you. Cheers, -- Visviva 11:31, 22 August 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 19:44, 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 19:04, 25 October 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 22:12, 29 December 2006 (UTC)