Category talk:High-importance Youngstown articles

Rating importance

It might be a good idea to develop criteria that would help users rate the importance of Youngstown-related articles with some degree of consistency. Perhaps biographies of notable people with strong connections to the Mahoning Valley should be automatically considered for ratings of mid- to high-importance. Such notable figures would include prominent political leaders, businesspeople with regional/national reputations, major league baseball players, professional football players, and reasonably well-known actors. I think local businesses (past or present) with regional or national reputations should also receive mid-to-high ratings.

I re-assessed a couple of people who had been rated low in importance, including Billy Evans and Jimmy McAleer. The former is a Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher and sportswriter who was raised in Youngstown, worked for The Youngstown Daily Vindicator, and took his first umpiring position at Youngstown's old South Side Park. This didn't seem to add up to "low importance", in my view. McAleer, meanwhile, is credited with helping to organize the American League, and he was born (and died) in Youngstown. Other figures, of course, are well-known Valley icons, e.g., Ray Mancini, Kelly Pavlik, and Frank Sinkwich. Well-known writer and critic Mel Watkins vividly described his upbringing on Youngstown's south side, in his memoir, Dancing With Strangers, which became required reading for some courses at YSU.

These selections are hardly written in stone, and, again, it might be a good idea to develop criteria to make consistent evaluations on importance. Any thoughts on this? -- twelsht (talk) 17:41, 26 July 2008 (UTC)