Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Texas/Dallas–Fort Worth task force/Archive 1

To increase participation
You need to put the banner up everywhere it might be relevant so that people know your project exists. I just now found out about it. Placing your banner on all the pages relating to your city, including buildings and residents, will definitely help you get the project known about. Also, I would strongly suggest that you place your project on the WikiPedia:List of WikiProjects. Badbilltucker 17:43, 23 August 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 19:21, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

75080 Represent
Thanks for including us. If you'd like to expand your suburb history sections, I recommend going to your city library and asking for the local historian. I went to the Richardson Public Library and was able to attain access to a broom closet full of old photos and other historical artifacts -- they were very friendly and helped me determine which images were considered public domain (gov photos), etc. I'm now (for better or worse) scanning the entire archive and donating the digital images to the library and to the UNT Texas History Portal (another good source for North Texas history photos, many with Creative Commons licenses). --nathanbeach  16:26, 3 November 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 22:23, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Project Membership
Is there a specific way/place to 'join' this project? Or is that not how it works? -- RedPoptarts 03:54, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
 * All you have to do is add your name to the member list! Just follow this link and add your name to the list using this syntax:  .  You can also add User WikiProject Dallas-Fort Worth to your user page to identify yourself as a member.  drumguy8800   C   T  05:00, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Assessments?
I've noticed that the bot that updates the Assessments page hasn't run for 3 weeks. I added the template to Roger Staubach, but it has yet to appear on the page. Caknuck 20:40, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
 * According to Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Dallas-Fort Worth articles by quality log and Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Dallas-Fort Worth articles by quality, its been added. Something like WP 1.0 Bot runs it now instead of Mathbot.. also be sure you're watching the Dallas-Fort Worth, not the Dallas assessment. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Drumguy8800 (talk • contribs) 07:13, 21 February 2007 (UTC).
 * Oh. I get it. I fixed the Assessment page to show the DFW project instead of the Dallas project.. just hadn't been fixed to reflect the project move. drumguy8800   C   T  07:16, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks! The log shows the article, but the worklist doesn't. Does that need to be updated as well? Caknuck 07:36, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
 * That's what it was. I fixed it so the worklist is up-to-date now. Caknuck 07:41, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Articles on local charities
I would like to write an article on H.O.P.E Tutoring Center, an award-winning and locally notable Arlington literacy charity. However, I'm concerned that it might not qualify as notable by Wikipedia standards. What do you think? LoneStarDavid 01:42, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Graduates of Dallas ISD
I created a category last week for notable Category:Graduates of Dallas ISD. I also have been going through and adding notable alumni sections to the articles on the DISD high schools, where I can find notable alumni. Some of you may know of additional notable people whose articles don't yet mention the school from which they graduated, but for whom you are able to find published sources that document they graduated from that school; please make the addition in each relevant article &mdash; person, school, and adding to the category! One caution: While there is room within a high school's article to make a subsection for "Former students" to cover notables who attended that school but didn't graduate, it would not be appropriate to add them to the "Graduates" category. (A prominent example is Stevie Ray Vaughan, who went to J. F. Kimball High School but dropped out; another is Owen Wilson, who attended Thomas Jefferson High School after being kicked out of St. Mark's, eventually graduating from a military school out of state.) Thanks! Lawikitejana 07:24, 21 June 2007 (UTC), non-notable DISD graduate

A handy tip for researching if you live in Dallas!
Not everyone will be able to do this, but it will work for many: If you live in Dallas and have a Dallas Public Library card, you can sign on to http://www.dallaslibrary.org and use databases there that let you search The Dallas Morning News back to the 19th century, along with many other kinds of print resources. This can be handy when you're trying to source a detail about some Dallas person or neighborhood, etc. For those who don't live in Dallas, but do live in the U.S., your local library may have a similar program! Lawikitejana 18:07, 26 June 2007 (UTC) P.S. Be forewarned; it's addictive!


 * I have been doing this quite a bit. It's a great way to source something when citation is needed.  Plus you can search magazines, etc. Spectre9 (talk) 01:44, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Tom Vandergriff rewrite, input requested
I drafted a rewrite of the Tom Vandergriff stub. Discussion here. I need some input before I copy it over the stub. davidwr (talk) 23:33, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I copied the draft over with minor changes. I still want input and an assessment. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  01:07, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

South Dallas
This is pitiful. South Dallas has a rich history and various notable places, as well as its own politics; the controversy over how that section of Dallas has historically been treated could make an article all by itself. There has been article after article in the DMN over the decades describing how all the industrial construction &mdash; and the attendant industrial waste &mdash; got dumped there over the years, the demographic differences, the politics, the tendency to vote as a bloc ... the schools are a story, too, and consist of far more than Madison and Lincoln. To say only "it's mostly black and is considered the poorest and most dangerous part of town" is inadequate and insulting; the statements to that effect need to be backed up with data, and the summary of the area needs to say far more than that 100% negative assessment. South Dallas Cultural Center, for example, needs an article of its own, and there could be articles or sections about notable South Dallas people, such as the artist Arthello Beck, and the many local politicians and businesspeople and professional athletes who originated or grew up in that part of town.

Be bold, you'll say &mdash; I'll do what I can, but the fact is that I'm a "North Dallas white girl" by background (speaking of which, just compare the North Dallas article to realize how we editors have shafted the South Dallas), and the history of South Dallas has been written largely by outsiders for outsiders. It'd be good if we could get a mixture of insights and info; the very subject unfortunately invites divisiveness and partisan editing, but that's life &mdash; it's better than the rude treatment it's getting in WP at the moment. Lawikitejana 14:31, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Southside Dallas
Hello,

I'd need some input from the locals on this merger proposal. Does a neighbourhood named "Southside" exist in Dallas? Or is it just a synonym for South Dallas? --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:53, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Ads and Newsletters
Do we have an ad? Do we have a newsletter? If not, we need to make them. Basketball 110  02:31, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Template
Could someone from the project take a look at Template talk:WikiProject Dallas-Fort Worth. It appears to be broken and is producing very bad code. See this use to see what its doing. AnmaFinotera (talk) 23:00, 9 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I second this request.(Mind meal (talk) 17:30, 23 March 2008 (UTC))

Newsletter again
Is there anyone who will volunteer to write April's newsletter? It needs to get done soon. Contact me, or list yourself below if you are interested. Basketball110 pick away... 01:47, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikimedia Chapter proposal: Wikimedia Texas
I wonder if anyone is interested in creating a Wikimedia chapter serving the state of Texas. See: meta:Talk:Wikimedia_chapters WhisperToMe (talk) 23:14, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Dalworthington Gardens Article
I was reading about Arlington and happened to pop into the DWG article. I'll quote from the article:

"The town's northern border adjoins Pantego; both towns are completely surrounded by the city of Arlington. The town's borders are ambigious as to conceal the limits that the Dalworthington Gardens Police department can operate in, which has become notorious as one of the United States most prolific speed traps, including a questionable school zone operated during questionable hours, all in an effort to increase revenues for what some consider a corrupt police department and civil court system."

I made no changes to this, but thought I would bring it to the attention of the group. As a former resident of Arlington, I can attest that a drive through DWG is fraught with peril, but unless there are some citations, this entry should be removed. That being said, I'm sure there is a Star-Telegram article that talks about this (the notoriety, but I doubt seriously that someone can find an article that can verify this verbatim), but wouldn't you all agree that this detracts overall from what you are trying to do in creating a DFW community? --Txredcoat (talk) 21:58, 26 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Some of it should go, I agree. It should look something like this:

The town's northern border adjoins Pantego; both towns are completely surrounded by the city of Arlington. Some consider that major actions must be taken to secure traffic in this area.

Basketball 110  22:04, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Meetup
Would anybody be interested in Meetup/Dallas-Fort Worth? Basketball110 My story/Tell me yours 23:36, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Picture requests
Here are some DFW area picture requests== WhisperToMe (talk) 04:44, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Preston Hollow Elementary School
 * Lakewood Elementary School
 * Benjamin Franklin Middle School
 * J.L. Long Middle School
 * W.T. White High School
 * Woodrow Wilson High School

Flower Mound
I have a ticket in OTRS from the town of Flower Mound, Texas, wherein the person is writing in to inquire about an email they received:

The Town of Flower Mound:

WikiProject Dallas-Fort Worth is seeking to improve the Flower Mound, Texas, article. One main advancement would be the inclusion of images of The Town of Flower Mound; however, permission is required for non-free images. A member of Wikipedia requests permission to use one or more images from:

http://www.flower-mound.com/my/downloads.php 

in the afore mentioned Wikipedia article. Please indicate denial of such permission by non-response, or approval by a reply email to such an effect. No future communications will result from a denial.

Thank You,

Wikipedia

No consequential damages can be sought against Wikipedia, as it is a voluntary association of individuals developed freely to create various open source online educational, cultural and informational resources. Publication of information found in Wikipedia may be in violation of the laws of the country or jurisdiction from where viewers access the information. The Wikipedia database is stored on a server in the State of Florida in the United States of America, and is maintained in reference to the protections afforded under local and federal law. Laws in your country or jurisdiction may not protect or allow the same kinds of speech or distribution. Wikipedia does not encourage the violation of any laws; and cannot be responsible for any violations of such laws, should someone link to this domain or use, reproduce, or republish the information contained herein. This email is a bot-generated presentation of information supplied by the user; any errors are the user's responsibility to correct.

They want to know if this is legit. What I want to know is, what bot is generating these emails and what is the deal with this disclaimer? Here are the issues with this:


 * 1) It's not cool to make it seem like Wikipedia as an institution is contacting them; whoever is requesting the photos is a volunteer, not an agent of Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation. All of our OTRS communications are even signed with disclaimers that make it clear that us OTRS agents are volunteers.
 * 2) You can't just ask for permission to use the images. If they are legitimately fair use, then you don't need to ask. If not, you need to ask for a release under a free license, not "can we use it on Wikipedia".
 * 3) Emails with a human touch are usually are more effective than bot-generated mails. See WP:COPYREQ for help there.

Any information on this is greatly appreciated. If I don't hear anything, I'm going to reply to the person and says it's not an official request and that they should ignore it. Thanks.  howcheng  {chat} 21:44, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Copying and pasting of Weatherford, Texas
Much of Weatherford, Texas is copied and pasted from. I'm working on it, I'd appreciate it if some other people could have a look and rewrite it. --AW (talk) 21:28, 24 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.
 * 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.

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 )  22:01, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Mosaic Dallas
Can someone familiar with the area have a look at Mosaic Dallas? Myself and Gwen Gale have rescued this from deletion (for the moment), but I'm not familiar with the city enough to judge if it's a generic apartment block or a genuine landmark that warrants its own article. Thanks! – iride  scent  21:08, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Allen Saxe
I stumbled across Allan Saxe and his article needs references. Can someone with access to Arlington-area media add them? Thanks. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  21:58, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup
Currently, 880 articles are assigned to this project, of which 191, or 21.7%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 2008-07-14.) 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. More than 150 projects and work groups have already subscribed, and adding a subscription for yours is easy - just place a template on your project page.

If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page; I'm not watching this page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:42, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Dallas-Fort Worth
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 22:26, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Problem with the template
Hi! I found a problem with the template when it displays here Talk:Dallas Independent School District WhisperToMe (talk) 04:51, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone have a Dallas-Morning News subscription?
I am trying to get information from this article http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=DM&p_theme=dm&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0ED3DADE87DB994C&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM into an article about Vickery Meadows - Does anyone have a DMN subscription to access the article? WhisperToMe (talk) 08:25, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Have you tried your public library? The Dallas Morning News is the paper of record for Dallas, and most large-city libraries will have it in microfilm or online form for free to their cardholders.  davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  16:49, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I am not located in Dallas. Anyway, I tried one library system but the research services I used such as Lexis-Nexis and EBSCOHOST don't have the article I had in mind. Does some other research service have the DMN? WhisperToMe (talk) 03:14, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The reason you cannot get the article is that Newsbank links only work for a period of time without re-authenticating. If you got them from a library, then you don't have the username and password (that is being passed behind the scenes).  If you know the title of the article, and roughly the year, then I could retrieve it.  I have an active DPL card.  But if this is old, this thread should be archived.  Spectre9 (talk) 01:46, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Vickery Meadows-> Vickery Meadow?
Regarding Vickery Meadows, Dallas, Texas I noticed the management district uses "Vickery Meadow" - Shouldn't we use that name? WhisperToMe (talk) 03:14, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Dallas Stars
Hello to everybody in this project. The WikiProject Ice Hockey is currently looking for editors to help update team articles about the 2008-09 NHL season. If you are interested in the NHL, please consider helping us keep these article current. To sign up, go to this page and add your name beside the team or teams you wish to particpate in. For a guide to expanding the article, see 2007-08 Pittsburgh Penguins season which is currently listed as a Good Article. If you have any questions, feel free to ask at WT:HOCKEY or at my talk page. Hope to here back from you,  Grsz Review!  16:49, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Dallas Portal template icon
Several articles link to the Dallas Portal but they use the Portal template incorrectly: They use it as  rather than just. This causes visual problems. Please help fix this up. As you have time please check these and fix them up. Thanks. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  14:44, 23 November 2008 (UTC)