Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States/Archive 4

That's outrageous!
I've heard religious toleration guaranteed to Quebec after  La Conquête called one of the "outrageous acts" leading to the Revolution. If anybody can source it, would you include it at La Conquête? Thanks. TREKphiler  hit me ♠  14:31, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

2 articles from this Wikiproject are up for deletion
They are Timeline of the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike and Reaction by actors to the 2007-08 Writers Guild of America strike, just to let you know. Dalejenkins | 13:46, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Census phrasing
While the people distributing the census did a great job, I do have one small comment. The phraseology used "population is spread out" seems clunky to me. I would suggest "population is distributed by age" a better, if imperfect, substitution. Also, went I went to change this, an admin altered my wording back to the clunky phrase. Where is it written in stone that this phrase must be used? Student7 (talk) 12:09, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

New US environment articles
I have created Environmental issues in the United States and Climate change in the United Statesas overview articles. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 21:54, 30 August 2008 (UTC)


 * And now Pesticide use in the United States. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 02:33, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Listed on Wikipedia:Categories for discussion

 * Category:Fictional Americans
 * Category:Micronations in the United States

Bush Doctrine background
We need to reach a consensus in a discussion and some input is needed on Talk:Bush Doctrine. Please include your Wikipedian views. Thanks. Scierguy (talk) 17:28, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for United States
Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:18, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Please contribute your opinions on proposals at Talk:Weatherman (organization)/Terrorism RfC
An RfC has started on whether the word "terrorism" can be mentioned and discussed at Weatherman (organization) (already tagged as part of the scope of this project) and in WP articles on Bill Ayers, his wife Bernardine Dohrn (then the group's leader) and Obama-Ayers controversy. Editors are discussing whether we can come to a consensus. Please take a look and participate. -- Noroton (talk) 18:05, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

US Constitition FAR heads up
As a related Wikiproject, I'm informing you that 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. Cheers! Zidel333 (talk) 15:29, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Automatically created stubs on unincorporated communities in the United States
A few years ago, articles were automatically created for many communities in the United States based on census data. These articles proved to be good starting points for expansion in many cases. What I would like to see now are automatically generated articles for the populated places listed in GNIS that are not already in Wikipedia. I mention this because I spend a lot of time rescuing articles that have been tagged for speedy deletion, some of which are articles on unincorporated communities such as Little Acres, Arizona or Desert Hills, Maricopa County, Arizona. The first thing I do when I find a very short article on a location in the United States is to try to add GNIS data to it.

In this case, if there had already been an automatically-generated article about Little Acres, Arizona or Desert Hills, Maricopa County, Arizona, there would have been an existing framework to which the information about roads and neighboring communities could have been added.

An automaticaly-generated page based on GNIS data would include:
 * name of the community and its coordinates, including elevation
 * name of the county and state
 * under "References", a link back to the appropriate page at GNIS
 * the template for the county
 * the state-geo-stub for the state
 * categories for the name of the county and Unincorporated communities in (name of state) -- Eastmain (talk) 03:18, 9 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Might want to check out WikiProject Geography/Bot, looks like they'll cover US as well. Might want to tell them about the GNIS info.  §hep   •   ¡Talk to me!  22:33, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Pollution in the United States
I have created Pollution in the United States. It is a skeleton page with links that will need prose to turn it into an article. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 00:38, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

FAR notice
Government of Maryland 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. Cirt (talk) 18:06, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Democratic Party (United States) is not A-class quality
The above article is labeled as an A-class article, however it is terribly under sourced. It really needs reassessment and sent down a class or two. — Realist  2  14:01, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Monroe Doctrine
Can somebody check out the string of recent edits to Monroe Doctrine? Thanks,  Grsz  11   →Review!  04:12, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

American films
Just thought that the community would like to know that WikiProject Films has a established a American cinema task force. Interested editors are encouraged to join onboard! Thanks, Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 19:52, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

List of German Americans
I would appreciate a quick show of hands at Talk:List of German Americans, I don't want to revert the user a second time without a clearer consensus. Thanks, Amalthea  01:39, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

United States presidential line of succession
Another editor and I are having a rather spirited discussion of whether the article United States presidential line of succession should retain the section Anticipated order under the incoming Obama administration. We're beginning to go 'round and 'round, and it might be helpful to have other voices in the discussion. I have a position on the matter, but am willing to go with the consensus if one emerges. That's kind of hard with only two people in the discussion. TJRC (talk) 01:55, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

United States Orienteering Federation
Hi I was wondering if anybody at this project could help expand United States Orienteering Federation. 安東尼  TALK 圣诞快乐  19:28, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Norfolk -> Norfolk, England & Norfolk (disambiguation) -> Norfolk
A requested move has popped up at WP:RM about moving Norfolk around. 76.66.198.171 (talk) 13:12, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Corvette
at Talk:Corvette, there is a discussion going on if the warship (Corvette (ship) or sports car Chevrolet Corvette is the primary meaning of Corvette. This is listed at WP:RM 76.66.198.171 (talk) 12:00, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

White House staff
I can see why we have articles on the many functions within the White House, like the Chief Floral Designer, the Chief Calligrapher and the Executive Pastry Chef. But do we really need articles on the people holding these posts, such as Cristeta Comerford or William Yosses? Do we really need to know who bakes the cakes for the US president? Aecis·(away) talk 10:36, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Survey
I'm conducting a new survey since the last was done 3 years ago (an editors lifetime on Wikipedia) at 2009 Vancouver Vs. Vancouver, Washington Survey. Your input would be most appreciated. Mkdw talk 21:37, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

NAVAGATION BAR HELP!
I have updated the Navagation Bar of all cabinet officials, senators, and governors, and some are saying that I have no right to put a nationalistic touch on the navbars, which I was trying to make them like the Israel and Canada one like for Stephen Harper and Tzipi Livni. I was putting the flag and the seal on the navbar to make it look separte of the other monotonus ones on various pages. I am wanting to get your opinion because you all have been working on stuff about the USA and political figures in the US to get your stance on the matter. Bluedogtn (talk) 21:44, 12 February 2009 (UTC)


 * For anyone who's interested, the main debate is here. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 10:28, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Template:Welcomeunclesam
See discussion at Templates for deletion/Log/2009 February 9. Concerns have been raised over the appropriateness of this welcome template for general usage, but rather than see it deleted I thought that you guys might be interested in adopting it as a project-specific welcome template. Regards. PC78 (talk) 20:05, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

United States Army
Hey, I'm really into military and I found out that USMC article is featured and perfect, while maybe even more important article about US Army needs to be improved. I'm asking anybody who can for the help. The goal is to have US Army featured article. Thanks --Novis-M (talk) 22:15, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

GA Reassessment of Education in the United States
Education in the United States has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Articles are typically reviewed for one week. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here. --Malleus Fatuorum 12:11, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Attributing and contextualizing minority 9/11 theories
Review of Talk:September_11_attacks would be appreciated. The debate here is not about whether the existence of non-mainstream "conspiracy" theories should be mentioned at all, but rather about whether they should be put in context. By "context," I mean the fact that "conspiracy" approaches have been both rejected and accepted by notable entities. In other words, I mean that which is being removed here and restored here. My position is that the National Institute of Standards and Technology and "the community of civil engineers" (both of which have opposed non-mainstream theories) and a third of the American public (which supports these theories), as reported by Time magazine (which even goes so far as to call them "mainstream," but not so far as to voice its own support of them) are all notable enough to mention. My position is that this balance is fully in accord with the spirit of WP:NPOV, and especially in accord with its WP:DUE section, which states that "If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents" and therefore, as far as I can tell, encourages the attribution of the minority perspective, regardless of how true or false that perspective may ultimately turn out to be. Indeed, in this debate I have cited WP:V, which states that "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth." Those who oppose the contextualization of these theories have also pointed to WP:DUE, but in a way that I view to be mistaken--namely, by suggesting that reliable sources should back a theory, while WP:DUE emphasizes the extent to which theories are held, regardless of their veracity, rather than "backed" by any particular types of evidence. Thanks, Cosmic Latte (talk) 01:42, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Note: For those who do not share my position (although the spirit of it also applies to those who do), I've made what I feel to be a basic--yet an important--suggestion in this diff on the 9/11 talk page. Cosmic Latte (talk) 03:00, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group
Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. §hep Talk  00:25, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts
Everyone loves this so far, so I don't see why you guys wouldn't love it as well. If you could message the individual states' Wikiprojects and taskforces, I'm sure they would appreciate this as well.Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 09:12, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject United States Biota
Hi everyone I was thinking about this idea for quite sometime and even thought about putting a request up for this project. Originally I thought about doing this at a state level but then too many species would have 10+ "state" biota projects on the talk page so I thought it would be best to do it at the national level. WikiProject Australian biota has done very well with this concept and has accomplished quite a bit. I think we could do equally well with an U.S. version. We have many species that would warrant such help including the American crocodile, Cougar, Bald Eagle and the list goes on and on. So does anyone else think this is a good idea? Also check the previously mentioned project for a good idea on how I think the layout should be put together (the talk box that is). --IvanTortuga (talk) 17:41, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts
This is a notice to let you know about Article alerts, a fully-automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles are entering Articles for deletion, Requests for comment, Peer review and other workflows (full list). The reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what happened, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. A certain degree of customization is available; WikiProjects and Taskforces can choose which workflows to include, have individual reports generated for each workflow, have deletion discussion transcluded on the reports, and so on. An example of a customized report can be found here.

If you are already subscribed to Article Alerts, it is now easier to report bugs and request new features. We are also in the process of implementing a "news system", which would let projects know about ongoing discussions on a wikipedia-wide level, and other things of interest. The developers also note that some subscribing WikiProjects and Taskforces use the  parameter, but forget to give a link to their alert page. Your alert page should be located at "Wikipedia:PROJECT-OR-TASKFORCE-HOMEPAGE/Article alerts". Questions and feedback should be left at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts.

Message sent by User:Addbot to all active wiki projects per request, Comments on the message and bot are welcome here.

Thanks. — Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 09:48, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
Hey there! If I'm in the wrong place, please tell me (this may be too general a WikiProject for this.) I've already asked for some attention on the talk page of EERE and at the Wikiproject United States Government, but I'm hoping to get a few more eyes on this. But if there's a better place for this, just point me in the right direction.

I've been asked to update the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy article. (The details are at my user page if you're curious.) The current EERE article doesn't have any sources and is out of date, so I've been working on a brand new draft of the article in my userspace. You can see it here: Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

In order to avoid COI issues, I'd like to invite anyone who's interested to help out on the draft and help bring it up to Wikipedia's standards. When it looks good enough, I'd like to ask someone to help copy it to EERE, but I'm not going to trouble anyone until I know it's an acceptable article. And if I've made any mistakes, I'd be glad to hear what I could do better. Thanks! Elispen (talk) 23:13, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

US-PROC rename
People's Republic of China – United States relations → Sino-American relations has been nominated at WP:RM. 76.66.193.69 (talk) 01:38, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Featured List Removal Candidate
nominated United States Academic Decathlon National Championship for featured list removal here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured list criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks, where editors may declare to "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. NuclearWarfare  ( Talk ) 03:04, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

O 'Come on!
Gimme a break! The easiest save ever here! Res Mar 21:39, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Featured picture candidates/Grant from West Point to Appomattox‎
Just a note to inform you of a relevant FPC. Shoemaker&#39;s Holiday (talk) 09:51, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

A-7D production data
A-7D production data has been prodded for deletion. 76.66.202.139 (talk) 03:42, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Does your WikiProject care about talk pages of redirects?
Does your project care about what happens to the talk pages of articles that have been replaced with redirects? If so, please provide your input at User:Mikaey/Request for Input/ListasBot 3. Thanks, Matt (talk) 02:28, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

County by county maps
I've added some images to Wikimedia Commons which hopefully will encourage people to map statistics by county using styles in .svg files. To color a county you can edit the upgraded blank svg file (Image:USA counties FIPS text addressable.svg) in a spreadsheet and add its FIPS code above the proper color. If you can obtain statistics (as from the BLS above) which come with county FIPS codes (or with the separate first two and last three digits of those codes) then it is a simple matter to sort the statistics in a spreadsheet. Otherwise you can sort data that labeled by county and state to align with such a list of FIPS codes. Then you can copy out groups of the codes and use "paste special" to bring them into text format. Do a find and replace (if you're using OpenOffice, you may need to download the "Alternate Searching" add-on) to convert the numbers into a group with ", .s" between each number, and then these groups can be placed before a "{fill#ff00ff;}" in the .svg to color them all, in this case, purple. This is a little complicated but it really isn't that hard to do, and I've marked the spot with a comment in the .svg file. It would be nice for Wikipedia to start producing some county by county maps. Mike Serfas (talk) 03:54, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps invitation
This message is being sent to WikiProjects with GAs under their scope. Since August 2007, WikiProject Good Articles has been participating in GA sweeps. The process helps to ensure that articles that have passed a nomination before that date meet the GA criteria. After nearly two years, the running total has just passed the 50% mark. In order to expediate the reviewing, several changes have been made to the process. A new worklist has been created, detailing which articles are left to review. Instead of reviewing by topic, editors can consider picking and choosing whichever articles they are interested in.

We are always looking for new members to assist with reviewing the remaining articles, and since this project has GAs under its scope, it would be beneficial if any of its members could review a few articles (perhaps your project's articles). Your project's members are likely to be more knowledgeable about your topic GAs then an outside reviewer. As a result, reviewing your project's articles would improve the quality of the review in ensuring that the article meets your project's concerns on sourcing, content, and guidelines. However, members can also review any other article in the worklist to ensure it meets the GA criteria.

If any members are interested, please visit the GA sweeps page for further details and instructions in initiating a review. If you'd like to join the process, please add your name to the running total page. In addition, for every member that reviews 100 articles from the worklist or has a significant impact on the process, s/he will get an award when they reach that threshold. With ~1,300 articles left to review, we would appreciate any editors that could contribute in helping to uphold the quality of GAs. If you have any questions about the process, reviewing, or need help with a particular article, please contact me or OhanaUnited and we'll be happy to help. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 06:31, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Prediction of the United States collapse in 2010
This brand new, and rather strange, article appears to me to be a clear WP:UNDUE violation as it's all about the (fringe) views of a single person. Could other editors please have a look at it and see what they think? Nick-D (talk) 00:51, 23 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I think there may be a place for the article but it should probably be renamed... perhaps: "Igor Panarin's Prediction of the collapse of the United States in 2010" or something similar? Anotherclown (talk) 04:50, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

New Navboxs for U.S. Government Offices?
I have been working trying to come up with a new idea on how to distinguish the U.S. Government Offices from other navboxes and alerting the user to the offices, which I have developed here User:USAAuthority/Sandbox1! Tell Me What You Think! And Feel Free To Edit This and make it better before it might get implemented. This is an example of what I want to do to cabinet, senate, house navboxes. Thanks ! USA Authority  DC  17:24, 26 May 2009 (UTC)


 * To be honest I'm strongly opposed to this change. Navbox templates are meant to be simple navigational tools - they are not decorations, and the new styling does more to hinder their use than it does to improve their aesthetic value. I appreciate the work that's gone into the new style, but I'd very much rather that the templates followed the advice of template:navbox/doc and did not override the default styling. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 18:17, 26 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I have to agree. The old templates are fine, and these are no different in terms of content, but on the other hand add gaudiness.  On another note, in the future, please avoid writing  Barack Obama  when you can write Barack Obama .  You're not the only person to do that, but it's clunky, uses unnecessary keystrokes, and it's just a pet peeve of mine. --Muboshgu (talk) 18:41, 26 May 2009 (UTC)