Talk:List of law enforcement agencies in Pennsylvania

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Massive section blanking

This is the most complete listing of police departments in Pennsylvania anywhere. It is a unique internet resource. I went through and checked to ensure each department actually existed. These are the endless "official site" cites. There is nothing wrong with those. As for the red links, there is no easier way to determine if an article exists than making a link. Paul, in Saudi (talk) 03:55, 17 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@PaulinSaudi: Hi Paul. It's nice to run into another longtime Doper. I see you've put in a lot of work on this, but I'm not sure I follow your logic abut the red links. Once you create a link and hit Preview then it's apparent whether it's blue or red. The comment at the top of the list (added by TheGoofyGolfer on June 16, 2014 after another similar set of revisions) states:

As WP:WTAF notes, this sentiment is pretty common. It's not clear that all of the agencies meet notability guidelines for organizations. Listing ones which don't, without red links, may still be valuable. Perhaps it would be best to seek consensus for this at either WikiProject Pennsylvania or WikiProject Law Enforcement.

Regarding the citations, it would greatly aid in verifiability to include the URLs of the particular websites checked.

I hope we can find a mutually-satisfactory solution here. Nick Number (talk) 17:09, 17 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Good evening Nick. First off let me 'fess up and say I removed the hidden text about not redlinking on this page. I frankly do not see the harm in it. I suppose this is because of my belief all police departments are notable. Amazing there are no good lists for all the police departments. Since nobody but me seems to look at this page, I nearly got away with it.

This most correctly falls in the bailiwick of WikiProject Law Enforcement. Please raise the issue there now if you like, or I will get to it in the morning. I would be pleased if someone would just look at "my" darn page.

Since I have your attention, could you show me how to fix my cites so it is not an endless parade of "Official web site accessed ..." over and over again at the bottom? Smarter people than are able to link many footnote superscripts to one citation. Paul, in Saudi (talk) 17:20, 17 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I will put together a summary at WikiProject Law Enforcement's Talk page. In the meantime, the named references feature is useful for consolidating identical citations. Nick Number (talk) 17:35, 17 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No response yet regarding the links. If you are going to keep using agencies' websites as citations, could you please start including the URLs? In terms of verifiability, just saying "official website" is roughly equivalent to "JFGI" or "because I say so". Nick Number (talk) 19:49, 23 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Gosh, isn't this sad? Nobody gives a darn about this this little list save you and me. I really think it is important to know how many police departments are out there. You are right of course. I was not happy with the "official website" thing, although it is a move up from nothing at all. Let me begin by fixing it as you outlined so we do not have so many links at the bottom of the page. That also will be a step in the right direction. If you show me how you want to do the links, I will attack that change in the fullness of time. I still like this list even if nobody else does. Darn it. Paul, in Saudi (talk) 01:33, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It is not clear to me what you mean by "URLs please. Pretend this is GQ." I am an Old Person and suspect I am doing something wrong. Obviously I need assistance with cites. How ought I to proceed? Paul, in Saudi (talk) 02:29, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The simplest way to include a URL is with link titles, e.g. <ref>[http://www.example.com descriptive title here]</ref>. That shows up as descriptive title here.

To add more detail with standard formatting, it's better to use the cite web tag. Here's the one I just added to the article:

<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.wtae.com/news/local/washington/police-department-shuts-down-after-settling-lawsuits-against-2-officers/23074066 |title=Police department shuts down after settling lawsuits against 2 officers; Point Marion Police Department dropped by insurance carrier |last=Cipriani |first=Marcie |date=November 20, 2014 |website=WTAE.com |accessdate=January 19, 2015}}</ref>

You don't have to include all the parameters; just url, title, and accessdate would be a good minimum.

My GQ comment was referring to this place. If that doesn't make sense then I must have the wrong Paul. Nick Number (talk) 15:00, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No, no, he is me. I just stopped posting there years ago. I will try to turn my attention to the cites tomorrow. Almost bedtime here. Paul, in Saudi (talk) 15:49, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I can see no problem whatsoever with adding red links to a list if these redlinks are likely to eventually point to something (even a redirect), and all these agencies fall into that category. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:49, 18 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Precision in titles

In reference to this reversion: per WP:PRECISION, "Usually, titles should be precise enough to unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but no more precise than that." There is not currently an article for Scottdale Borough Police Department and it's highly unlikely that there's another organization in the world which would ever be called that. Thus, if there's going to be a red link (an issue which has yet to be resolved), it should point to Scottdale Borough Police Department and not Scottdale Borough Police Department (Pennsylvania). Scottdale Borough Police Department (Pennslyvania) is right out. Nick Number (talk) 16:48, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thank you. Carry on. Paul, in Saudi (talk) 17:25, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]