Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States/Archive 2

Attack on Pearl Harbor FAR
Attack on Pearl Harbor 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) 20:41, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Plymouth Colony nominated for featured article candidate
The article Plymouth Colony has been nominated at WP:FAC for featured status. I have been the primary editor at the article, and some concerns were raised that the article needed more eyes on it to improve it further. Some general oversight and editing for clarity, spelling and grammar, and organization is probably needed. Please comment on the state of the article at WP:FAC, or better yet, if you find anything that needs fixing, be bold and help out where you can. Thanks! --Jayron32| talk | contribs 16:06, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Bilateral relations discussion
I would like to invite you all to participate in a discussion at this thread regarding bilateral relations between two countries. All articles related to foreign relations between countries are now under the scope of WikiProject Foreign relations, a newly created project. We hope that the discussion will result in a more clean and organized way of explaining such relationships. Thank you.  Ed  ¿Cómo estás? 18:55, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

WP:SPOTLIGHT work on Poor Richard's Almanack
Howdy folks, we put the spotlight on the stub Poor Richard's Almanack. Its now a fully fledged article.We started off with this. You guys can check out our changes at this link. If you want to join our efforts, just hop into #wikipedia-spotlight on the irc.freenode.net network. If you need any help with this just ask me. —— Eagle 101  Need help? 23:11, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Request for Comments: Mexican-American War vs. Mexican War
The current title for the page on the conflict between the United States and Mexico, 1846-1848, is the Mexican-American War. However, it is argued ("Talk Page: Misnomer" and "Talk Page:  Name of War = Name of Article") that the "Mexican War" is actually the most common name used to refer to that event. Kraken7 20:10, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Harlem Renaissance
An anonymous user brought the article Harlem Renaissance to the attention of Cleanup. It is a rambling, incoherent, unwikified, borderline pov borderline original research article. This was once a Good Article, and a Featured Article Candidate. Not anymore. I would like to ask anyone who knows more about the Harlem Renaissance, and about African-American culture in the US in general, to help restore this article to its former glory. A ecis Brievenbus 23:43, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposed new WikiProject
Hi there, I've decided to propose a new project dedicated to Richmond, Virginia. Leave you comments here if you wish. Neldav 21:20, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

12th Amendment FAR
Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution 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. Marskell 07:27, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

First Ladies
Just a quicky - Who should I direct an expert request over a First Lady to? You folk? The presidential subproject? A new subproject proposal? Sarah Childress Polk needs some work, but I'm not really sure where to start looking for the necessary sources. MrZaius talk  15:57, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
 * This is a good start. WikiProject Biography is another good place. -- Kimon talk 16:13, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, WP:BIO and the WikiProject U.S. Presidents projects. The first may attract general good biography researcher types, while the latter may attract some with specific expertise. Both are likely to be valuable. This project is probably too general/"administrative" to be much help in this regard; a bit like turning to WP:SPORT instead of WP:CUE for help on the nine-ball article. :-) –  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)›

New template for all US projects
All of these "Related projects" sections in all US wikiprojects need to be replaced with a Template:US-related WikiProjects, or it's going to just be a maintainability nightmare. The eventual template should not be subst'd of course, or that would defeat the purpose. –  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 00:18, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I've set up a skeletal template; has all the stock data in it. Needs:
 * Conditional code to prevent the current page from showing up in the list (we won't die if we don't have this, but it might look funny without it). I may do this myself but would prefer it if someone else did it.
 * Deployment on all relevant pages after the above issues are solved. I am definitely not volunteering to do that part.  I'll put it on WP:WPNM and maybe a few others, but that's it. Not enough time!
 * Its documentation explains how to add custom sections (e.g. a section for WikiProjects relating to stuff in that state.)
 * —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 03:00, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * As far as I'm concerned, it is now good enough to be used, even without the conditional code fix; hardly a crucial matter, and implementing it would probably cause massive code bloat, since it would need to be done for every link in the template. –  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 12:23, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Request for assistance: Thomas Pickering (Revolutionary War soldier)
I invite any editors interested in American history, particularly those with access to print sources, to take a look at the article Thomas Pickering (Revolutionary War soldier). One would think that the individual is notable, but the single source in the article seems to be the only information about the subject that is available online. For more details, please see the article's talk page. Thank you, Black Falcon (Talk) 20:14, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * You'll almost certainly have more luck at the appropriate task forces of WP:BIO and WP:MILHIST. Despite the breadth of this project (well, really because of it), we actually have very few members. –  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 20:52, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your suggestion ... I have added a note to the talk page of the American military history task force of WP:MILHIST. I don't know that there is a general project for biographies, but anyway, I have already posted this message on 4 WikiProject talk pages (here, History, Ohio, and MILHIST American). If that fails to produce any results, I doubt anything else will. Thanks again, Black Falcon (Talk) 05:39, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

First ladies - Presidential project, members of metaproject, or new subproject?
There are articles for each and every First Lady of the United States, but many are simply copied from government sources with little to no real editing. At least one, Sarah Childress Polk, has had an outstanding expert request filed with the Presidential subproject for some time. I'm not terribly knowledgeable about the topic, but would anyone else be willing to or interested in spearheading a First Lady daughter project, or should the expert request simply be pointed here instead? MrZaius talk  07:49, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

US radio templates
I was looking at the templates that show radio stations across the US, and was considering trying to make them uniform. I already did most of the NY radio templates, and was looking for some feedback before I continue. Any thoughts? --Smokizzy (talk) 00:42, 7 June 2007 (UTC) 'Addendum':If this is not the place for this question, please let me know.

Unsourced demographics and vandalism
I believe there is a significant accuracy problem with many U.S. geographic articles because of hard-to-spot vandalism that cannot be easily corrected. Over the past year or two, I've occasionally seen prank edits to the "Demographics" sections of these articles, in which the editors (always anonymous) merely change a few digits or insert some into the larger numbers (rearranging the commas to make the numbers look reasonably formatted). I watch very few of these articles, so the frequency that I see them makes me believe they are a regular occurrence.

I've also noticed that regular editors of these articles frequently fail to notice these changes. This means that such errors can remain in the articles for weeks or months, making it hard to spot when the change was made. Unless the change was an increase or decrease so obviously wrong (e.g., changing the population of a city to a billion or so), which is not usually the case, it becomes impractical to know whether any such change is the prank or an attempt to correct the prank.

The obvious way to resolve the problem, like for any other factual edit, is to check the sources of the edited information. But the sources for the demographics information in these articles seem to be missing. Instead of a proper, specific citation of the source, there is a peculiar link to a section of Geographic references that merely explains where the information came from. This is not a source by Wikipedia standards, because it gives no clue as to how to obtain the actual information. For example, follow the link from Fairfax County, Virginia's demographics "citation" and you get the following:
 * ''GR2 - The United States Census Bureau's[20] 2000 Census data. …

The "citation" to this paragraph is a bare link to the Census Bureau's home page, which is about as useful as quoting the U.S. President and citing http://www.whitehouse.gov as the source. (Actually, it's much worse. Searching whitehouse.gov for text often works; searching the Bureau for a geographic name yields a slew of hits that can be very difficult to decipher for useful content.) Without a specific source, we cannot expect editors to verify the infomation, so it will either be edited in ignorance (as I just did for Fairfax County) or left with uncertain data, defeating the whole purpose of the demographics sections.

Is there some effort, within or outside of this project, to replace these improper sourcing attempts with specific links to Census Bureau data for the specified Census Designated Places? ~ Jeff Q (talk) 15:03, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry I hadn't noticed this earlier. The U.S. Census data "highlights" are available at http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html. Factfinder frustrates me to no end (and it beats the . . . out of searching census.gov), but it's a handy way to find some data by city/ town, county, or zip code.
 * Make sure you click on the 2000 tab after the "Fact Sheet" loads, because the 2005 American Community Survey is the default.


 * .s


 * X ile 04:22, 1 July 2007 (UTC) - Talk

Trans-Border U.S. Regions
The U.S. Regions project is on life support, so I'll raise this here and at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Canada

Did anyone bother to consider how readers and editors in countries bordering the U.S. would respond to the inclusion of part(s) of their country as a U.S. region? (For instance, the inclusion of the template in the Pacific Northwest article.)

I am going to revert edits by Anon IP 71.146.50.237 because they appear to have been made to demonstrate a point. Otherwise, the article will need to be merged with Northwestern United States. After which, the whole process is likely to repeat.

Modifying or removing the template from "Other designations" will prevent disruptive editing and accusations of U.S.-centrism. It would be no more acceptable to have a Regions of Canada or Regions of Mexico (only) template on these pages.

I'm not in a big hurry to move on this, so feedback is welcome before I do.

.s

X ile 18:25, 5 July 2007 (UTC) - Talk

Social class in the United States up for GA!
Social class in the United States is now up for GA. Please have a look if you can. Regards,  Signature brendel  19:54, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

List of former members of the United States House of Representatives
This list is the largest article on Wikipedia (600k in size). To ensure centralised discussion on what to do with it, could any interested editors please discuss the issue over at the list's talk page. → AA (talk) – 16:30, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Bill Clinton
Hi, I am trying to get the biography article of Bill Clinton to FA. I however have been editing the article in great chunks over the last few months and am in desperate need of fresh perspectives from other editors, in particular on style, grammar and prose.

The article is currently at Peer review and I would most welcome any comments! Peer review/Bill Clinton. The article has over 100 references and is very close to FA, it just needs some finishing touches by other experienced editors. Thank you for your help! (Barnstars will be given!) LordHarris 23:12, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Questions? Ask them through Wikinews
Hello,

I'm Nick Moreau, an accredited reporter for Wikinews. I'm co-ordinating our 2008 US Presidential election interviews. We will be interviewing as many candidates as possible, from the Democrats, Republicans, and other parties/independents.

I'll be sending out requests for interviews to the major candidates very soon, but I want your input, as people interested in American politics: what should I ask them?

Please go to any of these three pages, and add a question.


 * n:Wikinews:Story preparation/US 2008/Democratic Party
 * n:Wikinews:Story preparation/US 2008/Republican Party
 * n:Wikinews:Story preparation/US 2008/Third Party or Independent

Thanks, Nick –  Zanimum 14:56, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Rock Springs massacre
Hello everyone. The article Rock Springs massacre, while not tagged by this project probably falls within its scope. It is a current Featured article candidate, if anyone here has the time comments would be appreciated after reviewing the featured article criteria and comparing those to the article. You can see its entry and participate in the discussion at Featured article candidates/Rock Springs massacre. This message is an attempt to jumpstart lagging discussion, talk page posts on WikiProject pages which have tagged the article went unnoticed as the three projects are less than active at this juncture. Thanks ahead of time. IvoShandor 09:54, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

United States Congress featured article review
United States Congress 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. Sdornan 18:06, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Energy policy of the United States
This article is in need of help - the main problem being that, despite world interest in the topic due to the proportion of world energy consumed by the U.S., most section of the article contain very little information on past or present energy policy. Compare to Energy policy of the United Kingdom or Energy policy of the European Union / Energy policy of China, for example. Any volunteers? Gralo 01:22, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act featured article nomination
Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act recently achieved Good Article status. I've nominated it for featured article status - please see Featured article candidates/Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act. Comments would be welcomed. – ChrisO 22:49, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

American popular music
This article currently has issues that need to be addressed for it to keep its GA status. See the talk page for details.  T Rex  | talk  23:52, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Third opinion needed
Alexander Hamilton was verifiably involved in the Newburgh conspiracy and was irreligious during the Revolution. I can find no secondary source which contradicts either, and have sourced both; one to the standard history of the Contental army, the other to Adair and Harvey's widely cited paper. Both are vehemently contested by a newbie, who cites no source, and whose arguments are "that can't be true of a Founding Father" and WP:IDONTKNOWIT respectively.

Please come have a look. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:04, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/Gerald Rudolff Ford
The biography for Gerald Rudolff Ford who raised Gerald Ford and for whom Ford legally changed his name has been nominated for deletion as being non-notable. You can make your comments at Articles for deletion/Gerald Rudolff Ford. Americasroof 05:22, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

FAR notice
Separation of powers under the United States Constitution 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. --RelHistBuff 15:36, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Population standards
Just wondering what you guys used (guys meaning general population term, not males...)? Illinois seems to be updated to the 2006 estimate but retains the 2000 official census citation. Either the citation or the number needs to be changed. Spryde 16:49, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
 * To help out, here is where the new number came from. Spryde 16:54, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

First ladies - Your purview or should they go to the United States project?
''Do and should the First Ladies' articles be within the purview of this WikiProject? They're currently orphaned in the vast see of regular biographies, and, if the fawning government-written Sarah Childress Polk is any indication, in dire need of attention. Also, pending an answer, I went ahead and set up an expert request for you folk on that Polk. MrZaius talk  05:01, 19 March 2007 (UTC)'' **bump'' Noone interested in a First Ladies working group? Admittedly, I'm not, but I haven't ever met a female government or poli sci teacher that didn't focus overmuch on the topic. Hard to believe there are no takers, or even parties able to clarify the points on Talk:Sarah Childress Polk. MrZaius talk  17:00, 14 September 2007 (UTC)''
 * Initially asked of the Presidents subproject, but with no takers/no responses. The associated outstanding expert request has been in place since March:

Generalizing to handle more than just agencies
Hi everyone. I just made a proposal at to generalize it to handle more than just agencies. In a nutshell, it would move the code to and then the agency template would call that. For non-agency pages, they could just use the more general instead of the agency template. This will allow all of the articles on government departments, offices, bureaus, commands, administrations, and programs to have a standard infobox, instead of just agencies. Right now this template is used in departments and offices (for example United States Department of Defense), but with incorrect subtitles (i.e. it labels it as an agency instead of a department), which my proposal will fix. I'd appreciate people reading the proposal and commenting on it at Template talk:Infobox Government agency. Thanks, --CapitalR 00:05, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
 * It should be noted this user has been unwilling to even discuss this matter at the infobox's talk page, being more inclined to enter a revert war over it yesterday which led to the article's protection. There now appears to be a bit of forum shopping going on to find a venue amenable to his ideas. I would suggest the talk page of the template is a better venue. Orderinchaos 04:12, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikiproject American History Proposed
Comments would be welcome here. Cheers, Corvus coronoides talk 15:49, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

American Civil War 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 requirements of the GA criteria. I'm specifically going over all of the "Conflicts, battles and military exercises" articles. I have recently reviewed American Civil War and have determined that it is in very good shape but need some assistance to remain a GA. I have put the article on hold for seven days until the issues on the talk page of the article are addressed. I wanted to mention it here so that members of the project, if interested, could assist in improving the article and help it to remain a GA. It currently has a few problems concerning the lead and citation templates & needs about 20 more inline citations for quotes, numbers, etc. Additionally, I will be leaving messages on other WikiProjects and editors affiliated with the page to increase the number of participants assisting in the workload.

If you have any questions about what I've said here, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. I hope members here assist in addressing the issues within the article, and keep up the good work in improving articles on Wikipedia! --Nehrams2020 03:29, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Please help


What is Tag & Assess 2007? It's a Wiki-wide call for volunteers. To explain ... a month or so back, we ran a script to list all the articles in categories related to military history. This gave us about 165,000 articles. Some of these are already tagged and assessed as military history; some are military history but not yet tagged and assessed; some are not military history articles at all. This huge project – working thorough 165,000 articles – is called Tag & Assess 2007. To make it manageable, the list has been broken down into 330 ranges each of 500 articles. This is where youcan help.

Just... adopt-a-range from the available worklists then keep track of your tally on participants' list. The tagging is easy, just follow the simple instructions. Afterwards, as our way of thanking you, you'll be presented with service awards and barnstars based on the number of articles you process. Remember... the ranges are broken down into sub-sections of ten articles, so you work through them at twenty or thirty articles a day if you wish. To make Tag & Assess 2007 a success, we need your help. Please sign up now. Thanks. -- R OGER D AVIES  TALK 09:25, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to move Georgia
Hey everyone, I thought some of you might be interested in a poll that's currently underway over a proposal to move Georgia. The discussion is taking place here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Georgia#Updated_Poll You can see the archived discussion of a previous poll on that issue here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Georgia/Archive1#Poll Helvetica 20:49, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Redirection of census-designated places
User:Polaron is proposing the redirection of CDP articles throughout Vermont to the towns in which they are located. If this is accepted, this would lay precedent for similar action to all other CDP articles to the governmental bodies in which they are located, whether towns, townships, or counties. Please offer your comments on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Vermont. Nyttend 20:15, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Please don't over-generalize my proposal. This would only cover those towns in Vermont that have a single CDP with the exact same name as the town. I don't see how this would be a precedent except for the exact same situations in other New England towns. --Polaron | Talk 20:20, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the clarification. However, what's the difference?  If any CDP deserves to be redirected, all others do as well.  Nyttend 20:47, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * CDPs nominally exist in unincorporated areas. However, the Census Bureau classifies towns in New England as minor civil divisions (MCD) alone when, in reality, they do serve as both MCDs and incorporated places. CDPs in New England are less important than those elsewhere because of strong civic identity of residents with the town. --Polaron | Talk 20:50, 14 November 2007 (UTC)