Talk:Bronx Community Board 8

Representative Government

Community boards are appointed, not elected; do they qualify as representative government? Vectro (talk) 13:49, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Depends on your point of view. The VPOTUS is traditionally appointed by the POTUS (although theoretically the top members of the party are supposed to vote on their party's VPOTUS candidate at the national convention... in practice the VPOTUS candidate that the POTUS candidate announces to the media a few weeks prior to the convention is always accepted by acclamation). Then, at the general election, the rest of the country gets a shot at picking the ticket (POTUS + VPOTUS + party) of their choice. Once elected, the POTUS appoints the cabinet.

So as a specific example, in 2008 Obama appointed Biden as his VPOTUS (Biden was the third-place runner-up in the dem presidential primaries race), and then after winning against McCain, he appointed Hillary as SecState (she was the second-place runner-up). So in *some* sense, Hillary was 'elected' to be SecState... because Obama was elected in reasonably-representative fashion during the general election... and because the representatively-elected-for-the-most-part insiders in the Democratic party blessed Obama/Hillary/Biden during the primaries of late 2007 and early 2008.

Presumably the community boards are appointed by somebody elected (mayor of NYC? I'm not familiar with NY local politics), and thus qualify in the same roundabout way. In theory even the local postmaster is an 'elected representative' because *they* were appointed by somebody who was elected at some point. Back in the 1800s, this was a big source of political patronage, and often led to corruption.

Personally, I consider the head of the EPA and the DOE, and to a greater extent the head of the DoD and the SecState, to be pseudo-representative. In theory you can impact who they are, based on your vote, but in practice you generally cannot. There is a very long chain of appointees between the local meat inspector, the county USDA bureaucrat, the state USDA bureaucrat, the regional USDA bureaucrat, the federal head of the sub-department of meat inspections, the top brass in the FDA, and the congressional and presidential elected representatives that are supposed to be in charge of making the laws that the FDA enforces. In fact, you have to go a little bit deeper down the rabbit hole: in order to become a president, or a senator, or even just a member of the federal House, the candidates have to get millions or billions of dollars in party funding... and the inner workings of the way candidates are selected by the major parties for the major federal races is *extremely* baroque and closed to participation.

Probably the membership of community boards is not quite such a longwinded chain. If somebody knows what elected group appoints the community board, it would improve the article to explain the structure of the pseudo-representative chain which leads to membership selection for Bronx#8. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 10:17, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Update, this was on the page, I missed it the first time through. "Each Board consists of up to 50 voting unsalaried members who serve for staggered terms of two years; one half of the membership is appointed each year. The members are appointed by the Bronx Borough President, with half nominated by the City Council Members who represent the community district. All City Council Members whose districts form part of the Community District are non-voting Board members. Board members are selected by the Borough Presidents." No citations and no wikilinks, at the moment, so definitely needs improvement. Here is the current article on the overall topic: Borough_President#Bronx_Borough_Presidents. *That* article sounds like it needs some WP:NPOV assistance; it seems very harsh on the whole beep/board infrastructure, and also cites no sources. Anyways, it vaguely claims that the Bronx Beep is elected, but does not say exactly when nor how. Presumably at the same time as NYC mayorial elections... but maybe not. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 10:48, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

what is the status of the facebook page of Bronx Community Board No. 8

Hello friends, somebody with username Bronxcb8 was trying[1] to add this facebook link to the article.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Bronx-Community-Board-No-8/142135602566655

Wikipedia generally tries to avoid linking to social media websites like facebook, because they tend not to be Reliable Sources except in rare cases when the author is a noted authority in some particular subject area, and the contents of many social media sites like facebook are not part of the permanent record of the internet.

That does not mean wikipedia should *never* link to facebook... it just means that we prefer to link to the 'official' website of an organization, which in this case is www.nyc.gov/bronxcb8 already being done. Can somebody with local knowledge of the situation on the ground please explain to us outside-of-NY folks what the deal is here?

Who modifies nyc.gov/bronxcb8 -- the city, the board-members, it never gets changed, what exactly?

Who modifies Bronx-Community-Board-No-8 over on facebook -- is it run by a current board-member, is it a semi-official page of the Bronx Borough President, is it run by a resident as an unofficial blog about the activities of Board #8, or what exactly? In particular, it is incredibly important for wikipedia to maintain a neutral point of view. If the facebook page is written from a partisan perspective, advocating for certain policies that one member (or a subset of members) of the overall Board are hoping to get enacted as policy, then linking to the facebook page would be a kind of advertising slash petition-site slash promotional. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, so it is not the place for such things.

Given these general sorts of concerns, one of the wikipedia sysadmins wrote a bot that reverts facebook links (plus a ton of other blog sites and so on) temporarily. That bot is still getting the kinks worked out; at the moment it is way too unfriendly! If the facebook link will improve wikipedia -- *as* an encyclopedia -- then it should be in the article. If the facebook link will improve one resident's ability to advertise their political message, that is *not* the same as improving wikipedia, of course... that would be degrading wikipedia, from a trusted neutral source, into a covert promotional platform.

So -- if anybody has some knowledge -- Bronxcb8 are you out there? -- about what the relationship of the facebook page is, to the 'official' page, and who is behind the curtain (has the ability to login and edit both the facebook and the official page), that would help decide whether adding the facebook link is a Good Thing, or best left out as temporary and/or unduly biased. Appreciate you helping to improve wikipedia. See you around. Leave a note on my talkpage, if you respond and I fail to notice your response promptly. Thanks. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 10:41, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Meta-question

Does anybody know why wikipedia only generates the TOC when talkpages have at least three subsections? Help:Section#Table_of_contents_.28TOC.29

It's true on articles as well. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:37, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

You would think three was enough

But maybe four is required? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.192.84.101 (talk) 11:03, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Bronx Community Board 8

The article Bronx Community Board 8 has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

This page may not meet Notability guidelines, along with need a lot of citations.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Tewksbg (talk) 23:27, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

• I've removed the PROD. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:37, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

This article is being considered for deletion (January 2018)

This article is being considered for deletion at: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bronx Community Board 8#Bronx Community Board 8

Please share your thoughts on the matter there.