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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

Politics, Western WA, Seattle Metro, King County

I just edited some recently added text, trying to make the wording clearer. I also have some questions about the underlying picture being painted. The text read:

Due to Western Washington's larger population, Democrats usually fare better statewide. The Seattle metro area (especially King County), home to almost half of the state's population, generally delivers stronger Democratic margins, than outlying areas of Western Washington, which were nearly tied in both 2000 and 2004.

I changed it to:

Due to Western Washington's large population, Democrats usually fare better statewide. The Seattle metropolitan area, home to almost half of the state's population, and especially King County, home to about a third, generally deliver stronger Democratic margins than most other parts of Western Washington.

At first I just wanted to avoid the possible confusion of whether Metro Seattle or King County had about half the state's population. Also linked to Seattle metropolitan area because there are multiple definitions. Given the statement "about half the state's population" it is clear that we're talking about the Seattle–Tacoma–Bellevue MSA--King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties. I also changed "outlying areas" to "most other parts", because "outlying" suggests the rest of western WA is some kind of rural Seattle hinterland. And said "most" because there are other Democrat stronghold areas. Almost no county compares with King in terms of voting so strongly Dem, although in the 2000 presidential election San Juan County voted 65.3% Dem to King's 65%; and Jefferson came close at 62.4%. But if one compares Metro Seattle (King, Pierce, and Snohomish), the percentages change. Pierce and Snohomish's Dem percentage is usually similar to many other western WA counties. In the 2008 election, for example, Pierce (55.18% Dem) was less Dem than Thurston, Whatcom, San Juan, Jefferson, Grays Harbor, and Pacific. In short, while the dense population around Seattle plays a major role in state politics, the situation for the rest of western Washington seems more complicated than the implications of "Due to Western Washington's large population, Democrats usually fare better statewide." Pierce is the 2nd most populous county but is not exactly a Dem stronghold. Clark is the 5th most populous but is a swing county. Then there's Lewis County, which while not that populous is strongly Republican. Anyway, I just wonder whether this point about Western Washington should be reworded somehow. Perhaps the focus should be on King County alone, which has about a third of the state's total population and over twice that of the 2nd most populous (1.9 million to Pierce's 795,000). Finally, I removed the original text's last phrase, "...which were nearly tied in both 2000 and 2004." It wasn't clear what was nearly tied. Western Washington? Western Washington outside Metro Seattle? Either way the wording suggests that this near tie applies to the whole area being described, when it must be an averaged figure over many counties, right? Pfly (talk) 06:56, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

BEST state and American State Litter Scorecard

These need to be explained. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.189.103.145 (talk) 15:59, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm an infrequent contributing editor here. This section does not 'ring a bell' with me. What does it mean? What is this all about ? Can someone explain ?? . . . Charles Edwin Shipp (talk) 02:38, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

GA Review

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Reviewing
This review is transcluded from Talk:Washington (state)/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Martinvl (talk · contribs) 06:31, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I have reviewed this article against the B-Class criteria. I have not reviewed the article in detail as I feel that that there are number of major issues that need to be addressed first.

1. The article is suitably referenced, with inline citations where necessary.

A check on the citations present using the tool here revealed that about 10% of the citations map onto dead links.
The section on history is rather short of citations as are the sections on Transport and Governance.
In addition, there do not appear to be any citations for national parks etc.

2. The article reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies.

The coverage seems fair, though a few items mentioned in the lede are not covered in the body of the article. One such item is the lumber industry (there may be more).

3. The article has a defined structure.

Yes

4. The article is reasonably well-written

The article has too many lists, particularly the lists of national parks. It might be appropriate to create a new article National parks of the State of Washington and move the lists there. How much of the state is devoted to national parks? To military areas? Are the most significant worth mentioning, but merge the rest into a general discussion.
Similarly, a new article Demographics of the State of Washington could be written and some of the lists pruned down.
Again, the list of cities is probably too large – maybe more about the metropolitan area of Seattle and less about every community within that area.
Likewise, the section on religion is too detailed – don’t be scared to lump small groups into “other”, but give the expanded list in the new article on demographics.

5. The article contains supporting materials where appropriate.

By and large Yes

6. The article presents its content in an appropriately understandable way

Yes

Summary – I think that the article is bordering a "B-class" level, but needs considerable work to bring it up to GA level. In particular, certain areas do not have sufficient citations while the lists could well be spun off into new articles and this article should concentrate on the highlights. Given the amount of work needed to overhaul the lists and to replace the dead links, I think it best to fail this article and to invite a resubmission once those areas have been addressed. Once resubmitted, the prose and other details can be examined in more depth.

Demographics

just something that was sbothering me the demographics section seems a little lacking. The statistics were only for white people. I don't know were to get these facts but could some one alter it to be more specific unless that is all the census or whatever provide (which I doubt). Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.64.104.4 (talk) 01:16, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I think the census's ancestry data is not just for white people, just that the census defines "ancestry groups" as not including racial groups, including "hispanic". Pfly (talk) 03:52, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
I made the paragraph from reading concerns brought upon the article's previous lack of details in the state's racial diversity. Washington state is known for social liberalism when it came to past civil rights movements, but like any other state there was a notorious history of racial incidents towards Asians and African-Americans, included laws to block residential rights of these mentioned groups. The paragraph was necessary and based on all the other states' Wiki articles have racial population data.

I do not know why nobody until now decided to write a subsection on the different races and cultures in Washington state, unless someone did and it was purged out of the article. Political correctness out of hyper-sensitive reactions to a controversial subjects such as race to be removed or censored, blocks academic freedom provided by Wikipedia, which does not censor out of "one person takes offense" to a particular topic/subject. A free-thinking/open-minded academic researcher doesn't need to observe any taboo of another individual, esp. when it blocks proper analysis or examination of legit study.

Someone (most likely an anonymous poster) deleted pages/articles on the Hispanic Culture of the Pacific Northwest, Cherokee Identity, Lists of Mexican American and American Jewish communities, and Racism in Chile simply because "they didn't like it", this is very unacceptable in Wikipedia and I would reported these unwarranted actions to the administrators. + 71.102.26.168 (talk) 04:25, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Clarified article on English 'undercount', most Americans who have English ancestry describe themselves as 'American'. Statisticians suggest it is due to English Americans being completely integrated having resided in the Americas the longest of any ethnic group. [1] (see 1980 Census). Twobells (talk) 12:32, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

One notable ethnic group in the Seattle area and coastal washington are Russian immigrants, and there's a long history of Russian Americans in the state. In fact, Russianseattle.com [2] (in Russian) and citydata discussed the issue of Russian Americans in Seattle and its suburbs. [3] Not surprisingly, Russian traders and fishermen have visited Washington and the Pacific coast (of course, Alaska was Russian north America) in the late 18th and early 19th century all the way down to Fort Ross, 100 miles north of San Francisco, California. 71.102.21.238 (talk) 23:27, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_American#Number_of_English_Americans
  2. ^ http://www.russianseattle.com/
  3. ^ http://www.city-data.com/forum/washington/1019914-why-so-many-russian-immigrants-lynnwood.html

Sound spellings

WASHINGTON! Do you REALLY think people have a hard time pronouncing Washington? After George Washington was our first president? We see his last name on singles. I really am sick of the insulting sound spellings you people force on us, thinking you know what is good for us.--67.84.73.254 (talk) 21:49, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Washington was not Wikipedia's first president; he was the first president of only one of the countries where English Wikipedia readers come from. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 21:58, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
  • Hi,
    Sorry if the phonetic pronunciation guide in the article annoyed you. However, Wikipedia is an international community that is not just edited and used by Americans, and the purpose of this encyclopedia is to inform. The pronunciation guides, while not useful for you, may be useful for somebody else, which is especially likely if that person is not a native of the United States. Thanks, and welcome to Wikipedia!

    Cogito-Ergo-Sum (14) (talk) 22:01, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Mount St. Helens Eruption within Industrial Era seems odd

The paragraph about the Mount St Helens eruptions feels like its in the wrong place, but I do not know a better place to put it, without creating a "Natural Events" section, with its only item being this paragraph. I propose creating that section right underneath the Industrial Era section. Enorl76 (talk) 13:48, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Temperature Table

I propose to add a table of temperatures in Fahrenheit and Centigrade so it's easier for readers to see how the temperature varies. Any comments anybody? Neilpatrickwhelan (talk) 19:48, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Neil, the temperature table is a nice addition. Good that it has degrees F and C as some tables for other states/cities don't provide both. Do you have a source for the data? It could be added to the table as a citation. Other editors might then add data for other state cities. Declangi (talk) 00:17, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Proposed move

Please see the "Washington and Georgia" section of WP:VPR. I've proposed synchronizing this article's title with Georgia (U.S. state), either by moving this article to Washington (U.S. state) or by moving the other one to Georgia (state). I don't care which we do, but I think that it would be good for the two to use the same method of disambiguation. Nyttend (talk) 16:10, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Moving the latter to Georgia (state) would be the most reasonable option. However, in the case of Georgia, it may also refer to the sovereign state. TBrandley (T • C • B) 02:58, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
If you want to standardize the disambiguation of U.S. states then the discussion should be had at WT:USA. As it is I am inclined to oppose the move to keep the article titles and categories stable. – Allen4names (IPv6 contributions) 03:53, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

A link to Washington DC might be useful. I'm sure all Americans know there are two completely different Washingtons but perhaps not the rest of the world. 81.106.95.46 (talk) 18:27, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

hi peps — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.201.45.10 (talk) 21:34, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

  • Oppose "Washington (US State)". Georgia needs the "US" part because of prominant non-US Georgias. Georgia is not a very uniquely American name. Washington is. I have, however, been long thinking, in wider contexts, Washington the state is very frequently referred to as "Washington State", naturally disambiguated. Capitalised as a 2-part proper name. I propose moving to Washington State. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 14:38, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Climate article

I'd like to create a separate article for "Climate of Washington (state)", similar to how Oregon and California have their own separate dedicated climate articles, linked to on the main state article. I made the new Koeppen map that's on the article, and would be happy to contribute additional climate maps as well as some writing. Would anybody here be willing to collaborate with me on that? Redtitan (talk) 05:22, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

I've made a Trewartha climate map for Washington to contribute. Think it'd be good to include in an article for comparison. One of the criticisms is that Koeppen throws most of the Pacific Northwest under a Mediterranean climate, rather than an oceanic one, which Trewartha doesn't. Trewartha also includes a lot more of E. WA in semi-arid (steppe) and desert zones than Koeppen, which could be said to underestimate that zone (it also throws lots of eastern WA under the same climate type as western WA). I personally prefer Koeppen to Trewartha on the whole, but think it'd be good to include Trewartha here for WA, to provide another take on the state's climate zones. Redtitan (talk) 22:19, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

WA Trewartha WA Koeppen

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"Washington State"

Washington is sometimes referred to as Washington State...

This is only the beginning of the confusion, because the term "Washington State" is often used among sports fans to refer to Washington State University as opposed to University of Washington.

Yet they have

Whereas in Oregon, the term "Oregon State" is exclusively reserved for the Beavers as opposed to the Ducks or other sports franchises...

— 169.156.16.220 (talk) 18:15, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
Because the capital is not called Oregon D.C.? What are you asking for here? -Dennis Bratland (talk) 19:08, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
Any number of state government agencies and entities include the word state in their titles. Add to your list Washington State Ferries and Washington State Patrol if you like. Some do not, like Washington Military Department. Some private enterprises likewise: American Lung Association in Washington (ALAW) [1] does not, but Washington State Quarter Horse Association [2] does. Like Dennis I'm not sure where you are going with this. - Brianhe (talk) 06:05, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 6 external links on Washington (state). Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

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Choropleth map? No.

I am highly opposed to any choropleth maps that create a two-dimensional value that consists of [factor] x land area. So if you assign a color to a county and the intensity is percentage of votes/proportion of population/age/whatever and the color fills the land area, you're creating a misleading illusion. Garfield County has 1/3 the land area of King County, but only 1/1000 the population. Okanogan County is two and one half times the size of King County, but King County has 50 times as many people. Any attempt to display data about people that correlates it with land area is utter nonsense. The only reason we see so many of the choropleth maps is that they're easy to make. Otherwise, they're crap. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 02:45, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

@Dennis Bratland: My source is https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/WA – I entered every county individually and collected information from there as I could not find an all-encompassing source. MB298 (talk) 03:20, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
Race and ethnic origin of Washington State, US, by race and ethnic origin. Source: Estimates of April 1 population by age, sex, race and Hispanic origin, County: 2010-2016 (Microsoft Excel), Washington State Office of Financial Management, 2016
If your source is https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/WA, then you need to cite that on the file description at Commons, and it belongs in the image caption. You can't just stick a graph in the article and not give anyone clues how to verify it.

But there is no reason to slouch into misleading filled-area maps. I have only spent a few minutes on this, but I have made a pies-on-map graph that shows the geographic size and relationship between the county, while accurately assigning weight to the relative populations of each county. I have cited my source. I'd like to spend a little more time double checking the totals, but I think it's accurate enough.

We don't need to use a misleading filled map just because it requires a little effort to make something accurate. We have time to get it right. And no graph or map at all is better than a misleading one. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 03:27, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

@Dennis Bratland: I'll still add the source but I see you've created a more accurate map. Thanks! MB298 (talk) 03:37, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
Cool. This is brand new and errors are possible. I think I got the largest data values right, but it's possible some of the very small groups, like "other" might not be right. Visually, it's probably only a sliver that you can't see anyway, but I'll check it when I can and make corrections. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 03:50, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Phonetics about Washington

With International Phonetic Alphabet, Washington must be written /ˈwɑʃɪŋtən/ or /ˈwɔʃɪŋtən/ (depending on the speakers). In any case, the vowel "A" of Washington is a short or medium vowel. It is not a long vowel /aː/ as in british english. In this article, Washington /ˈwɑːʃɪŋtən/ is written in the British way with a /aː/. That is quite strage for an american state. The least thing is to pronounce the proper names as pronounced in the place. On the other hand Washington in the Sunderland in the United Kindom must be writen and prononced /ˈwɑːʃɪŋtən/. Thanks for editing. --MYR (talk) 06:52, 11 September 2017 (UTC)MYR, sept 11, 2017.

Not worth edit warring over

@BilCat and Janweh64: it's true that the MOS says that either Washington or Washington (disambiguation) is the preferred way to link the hatnote. Neither is wrong, but one is generally favored. The difference between the two, while real, is infinitesimal. Wikipedia:Disambiguation is a mere guideline. The two links go to exactly the same place. There is literally no difference whatsoever in the user experience.

Why are either of you edit warring? Edit warring is for things that matter. This is petty. Come here and discuss. Hash it out, figure out which of the two is what the dab guideline says is preferred, and then change the article to suit. If it takes a week or two weeks or three weeks to find a consensus, so the fuck what? This is not urgent enough to be creating hard feelings over.

I'm asking you both politely to not touch the revert button again. Please? Have a sense of proportion. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 04:12, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

The mistake was mine. BilCat was right. —አቤል ዳዊት (Janweh64) (talk) 04:14, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Sometimes "revert discussing" is both simpler and preferred. IAR, and it's done. - BilCat (talk) 04:23, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
You're both wrong. Next time, do better. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 04:47, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
Next time, mind your own business. The issue was settled before you even opened the discussion here. - BilCat (talk) 06:31, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Religion stats

I thought the recent update of the religion demographics was wrong, but I checked and from what I can tell, it’s consistent with the latest data at the source, with the exception that Christian should be 61%, not 62%. The rest looks correct.

Tangentially, I’d expand "Unaffiliated" to say something like "Unaffilliated (atheist, agnostic, nonspecific)". —Dennis Bratland (talk) 05:56, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Could you find a date for the data? I looked and couldn't find it on the linked page, but it may be somewhere else on the site. - BilCat (talk) 05:59, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
According to About the Religious Landscape Study, the Pew surveys were conducted in 2014, with two reports released in 2015, first on May 12, and then on November 3. The edit summary by Bunnyboi (talk · contribs) "the citation is literally already there, I just updated the numbers that haven't been looked at in 4 years" doesn't make sense. The numbers online haven't changed since publication; it's the same data published in 2015. The Wayback Machine miffor on June 1, 2015 is the same as the February 17, 2018 version. It might make more sense for us to be working more directly with the published data, the full report and the detailed tables, rather than the web version http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/state/washington/, mostly because the web page doesn't have a specific publication date on the page; we have to infer it from the report it comes from May 12, 2015 report it comes from.

Both this edit and the old version get some things wrong, mostly rounding errors because groups like "Historically black Protestant" are listed as 2% but that is probably some value closer to 1.5. Instead of trying to do the math ourselves and adding up the Christian values and getting 60% in one case and 62% in the other, we should trust Pew when they tell us it is 61%, since we only see whole numbers here. The old value of 4% for Mormon was incorrect; it is 3%. The editorial choices to lift sub-categories like "New Age" or "Pagan/Wiccan" out of broader categories like "Other faiths" only adds to the confusion. We should present a more condensed version, since we don't have access to the many <1% values and don't know when we're giving undue weight to a category based on how it looks rounded in whole numbers. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 17:59, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Note on Good Article nomination

It appears that a student editor for a classroom program has nominated this article for GA. I am unsure if the student is aware of the time commitment or has a good working understanding of the GA process, and I'm seeking to clarify with them whether it's best to proceed with the GA review or if they should withdraw the nomination. I wanted to be transparent with this before a member of the community invests their time in reviewing the article. Thanks, Elysia (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:56, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

@Elysia (Wiki Ed): I recommend withdrawing the GA nomination, seeing as the article is far from ready to meet the criteria. It will need a lot of work on referencing and gaining a more comprehensive view of the state, to start, and has a lot of copyediting ahead. SounderBruce 05:40, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
SounderBruce I went ahead and withdrew the GA nomination, as I have not heard back from the editor who nominated it. I'll let them know that I withdrew the nomination, but they can re-nominate if they are committed to pursuing this (which seems unlikely). Elysia (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:15, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Graph of state and local taxes

I don't understand any part of this edit summary by Patrickneil reverting an addition by Ryan1783:"this too tall graph is about the United States, not specific states. Would be better added to Taxation in the United States#State administrations)".

  1. Too tall? The formatting can be adjusted, although you have to always remember that nothing will look right on every display size/resolution. On a 15" 2880x1800 display I think it looks fine, but I'm sure on some 3" displays or 68" displays it doesn't work. There's no perfect answer to that.
  2. We should never exclude something on the grounds that it's about the larger world around the article subject. Context is vital -- context isn't everything, but it's very nearly everything. Almost no fact has meaning without putting it alongside other comparable facts. The level of taxation in Washington is nearly meaningless unless you put it in the context alongside the levels of taxation in the other states.
  3. A fact or citation or statement, or in this case an image, might very well be helpful on some other article, such as Taxation in the United States and probably several other articles, but that is in no way a reason not to include it on this article. Many facts or data sets or graphs appear on multiple articles.

I don't see any valid reasons not to include this graph, or one very much like it. Anyone? --Dennis Bratland (talk) 03:16, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi Dennis, this file was added to all each of the individual articles on the 50 states last week by Wikideas1 (not Ryan1783) which first off is probably an excessive number of articles to feature it on. Mainly, I think the issue with having it on an article about Washington state, or any specific state's article, is that the topic of the chart is all of the states. If the chart was comparing Washington state counties, that would be relevant here, for example, just as a map of population density in Washington or a chart of Washington's presidential voting is relevant to the article's topic. We don't have an image of a bar chart of the total population of each of the 50 states in the Demographics section, instead we just say Washington "ranked 13th overall in population." If you want to have the info from this chart here, you could just add a sentence to the second paragraph of the Taxes subsection saying "Washington has the 18th highest effective tax rate per capita in the United States, as of 2017." I'd suggested adding the image to Taxation in the United States article just as a more specific option, and see that it is now on the page "State tax levels in the United States," but even then, a sortable table would be better than an image of a chart. Lastly, the sourcing for this chart is not the best, its from Wallethub, which seems to be a free credit score website, not an independent news source or some national bureau that might be a better WP:RS.-- Patrick, oѺ∞ 03:49, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
So you part ways with me on the matter of context.

It sounds like you're saying you don't want to see any articles with any context in them. Each topic is a self-contained universe, but comparing this subject with other subjects is verboten. I can talk on and on and on about how many dollars were spent making Star Wars, and where all the money went in the budget, so much for actors, this much for location shooting, this much for special effects. But if I were to make a list of movie production budgets and show you where Star Wars stands on that list, then it's no longer "about Star Wars"? I can tell you how many bowl games Nebraska has won, but not show you a list of bowl game wins, and where they rank in relation to comparable teams?

I strongly disagree with this approach. Washington (state) can't be filled overflowing with lists of stats comparing this state with all 49 others, but we should strive to include as much context as is practical.

The fact that you believe this graph would do nicely on some other article is in no way a meaningful or relevant argument for why it can't be included here. If this article is better with it than without it, then it should be here.

Sourcing is a solvable problem. Assuming we can take care of that, you're taking a stand on the issue of context. We can talk about taxation levels in Washington, but if we compare that with anywhere else, well, no, that's too much context for you. For me that's not a reason to exclude it. The very thing that you say makes it inappropriate is exactly why I want to include it. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 05:27, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

My suggestion was, that if you want to compare Washington state tax levels, you can just do it with a single sentence and a wikilink to an article with more specific information. Imagine translating the information in this chart to text, would you really want to include a paragraph here that stated "Illinois has the highest effective tax per capita at over 13%, followed by Nebraska, followed by Wisconsin..."? I feel that would be excessive and indiscriminate. There is a Wikipedia principle here that Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, particularly statistics. It is discriminate, as in, we have an article that covers a defined topic. My example above was with the population density map shows just Washington state. If you are looking for a population density map of the whole United States, that's on an article like Demography of the United States. With your Star Wars example, again I think the article on The Force Awakens would say "The Force Awakens is the third highest grossing film of all time" with that wikilink, not "Shrek 2 is the 50th highest grossing film of all time, The Two Towers is the 49th highest..." and so on. Does that make some sense, there's a separate article for the list?-- Patrick, oѺ∞ 16:13, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
If WP:INDISCRIMINATE applies to this, then it is unencyclopedic and doesn't belong anywhere on Wikipedia. You can't argue it belongs on some other article and cite WP:INDISCRIMINATE at the same time. If you mean the problem is the image lacks context, then the solution is to add the missing context, not delete it. Removing content because it's imperfect violates WP:Editing policy, because that pracice would prevent any articles from existing at all. Everything would have to be WP:FA quality on the first edit. WP:FIXTHEPROBLEM requires that you fix it rather than delete it. Or tag it for someone else to fix. If it's not blatantly false, or libelous to a living person, or a copyright violation, expunging it is harmful to building an encyclopedia.

I didn't make any reference to the gross receipts of Star Wars; I said the budget. Episode one is not one of the most expensive films, but that doesn't mean that seeing its budget alongside comparable films -- either other major features of 1976, or other comparable sci-fi films, or other examples of George Lucas's work, or whatever is appropriate -- is not a source of insight. This is why it's necessary to include context on the topic article and not assume some other article will do it for you. What we're doing here is editing Washington (state) and we should make it the best article we can, rather than punt over the wall and hope for the best. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 16:47, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Editing often means removing text or images, and when possible moving it to appropriate places. I definitely feel that general information belongs on general articles and specific information belongs on more specific articles. The article on Washington state is a more specific article than the one on the United States, which is more specific than planet earth, and so on. The goal being to build the web. If you want to have a Star Wars example, a chart showing the comparative budgets of the franchise's films would be appropriate on an article titled "List of Star Wars films", but not appropriate on an article titled "Cinema of the United States". In the same way, a chart comparing U.S. state and local effective tax by rate is appropriate on an article titled "State tax levels in the United States", which is indeed where you'll now find the chart, but not on an article titled "Washington (state)". Again, if you want to include the relevant information, please go ahead and add a sentence to the Taxes subsection saying where Washington ranks nationally or as compared to its neighbors. It would work well in the last paragraph, where we already mention how Oregon's lower taxes lead to border economic anomalies. Any other editors want to chime in here?-- Patrick, oѺ∞ 19:35, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Culture?

Seems like it's a sports section, not culture. Everett3 (talk) 20:18, 23 March 2018 (UTC) Everett3 (talk) 20:18, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

You assume we have anything beyond sports ;) Heliozoan (talk) 20:55, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Request title change

Given that Georgia (U.S. state) has the format including "U.S.", Washington (state) should become Washington (U.S. state) to...

1. Have consistent formatting among all states with (state) in the title

2. Look neater

3. Be more clear (state vs. U.S. state)

Redditaddict69 (talk) 05:45, 7 July 2018 (UTC)Redditaddict69

Please read through the previous discussion, which shows that the use of (state) is by far the most common; Georgia has to have the extra bit because there is also a sovereign state called Georgia. SounderBruce 06:11, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
There's only two examples. The other 48 states don't need parenthetical disambiguation. One needs to be disambiguated from Georgia (country), and the other from Washington, D.C. If there were two US states that shared names with a country, then you could say (U.S. state) is the norm, and the third should conform. But instead we have two unique examples, neither can be called typical of its class. Each is a class all its own. Back when this was discussed in 2011, at Talk:Washington_(state)/Archive_2#Requested_move_-_Washington_(state), there was overwhelming consensus favoring the principle of WP:PRECISION. The disambiguation is as precise as necessary, but no more.

This whole question is meaningless housekeeping; it won't affect anything. Except in a few cases, some readers will see Washington (U.S. state) and interpret it as meaning the same thing as Georgia (U.S. state), that there is a country out there somewhere called Washington. Resulting in either leaving behind a misconception in someone's mind, or the reader wastes their time figuring out there is no such country. Pointless. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 06:22, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

Reverting removal of politics section

I am still all sandwiched

I'm reverting this deletion. This RfC Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States never even had a notice on this talk page. You can't mass-delete so much content from 50+ articles after an RfC with a mere 9 participants that wasn't even advertised on the talk pages of those articles. You need a proper do-over.

Also: if sandwiching the text bothers you so much, how about UN-sandwiching it? Seriously. Is that so hard? Minor formatting issues are hardly a reason to nuke so much content. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 20:15, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

It's not text or the "politics section," it just the tables. I wouldn't call it "mass deleting" or "nuking", its just moving the tables to a subarticle when those exist, or linking to the more complete tables we already have osn articles such as United States presidential elections in Washington (state). The question that led me to the RfC was whether the reader needs to know the vote totals in the 1952 gubernatorial election on this overview article. To me, the answer is no, that info belongs on a more specific article, or if that election is really important, integrate it into the section text.-- Patrick, oѺ∞ 21:37, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
What are the objectsions to the RfC's outcome? --Moxy (talk) 22:53, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
It’s not even a real RFC. Can we stop calling it that? And do it over with a real RfC, correctly, after discussing alternatives. And notifying all concerned editors. —Dennis Bratland (talk) 23:28, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
I can assure you those involved feel that it was real despite you not being aware of it. So what can we do ? Let's talk more at the project page because thus far your reasoning for reversal are incorrect in my view..... as no content was deleted from Wikipesia and the fact that sentence fragmentation is still happening with your "fix".--Moxy (talk) 00:04, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
"Those involved" in this case, only 9 editors, are a small fraction of the number of active editors on the affected articles. Nobody informed them. Read Wikipedia:Requests for comment. WP:RFCBRIEF explains why the statement should be neutral. It's a prejudiced statement that gives arguments for why the content should be removed. It should only say "Should we remove X?". Arguments for or against belong in the !votes or the discussion. If it had been a real RfC, it wold have appeared automatically in places like Wikipedia:WikiProject Washington/Article alerts. Or you could have posted a short notice to the talk pages, though doing a proper RfC lets a bot do all the work.

How many articles were affected? 53? 56? At least? There's more than 9 active editors on the Washington state article alone.

Wikipedia:Requests for comment explains better than I can how and why to do it right. I have no idea why anyone would have a problem with that.

If there's a sentence fragemnt that you're aware of, FIX IT, don't sit around and bitch about it. Are you here to build an encyclopedia or make a point? --Dennis Bratland (talk) 01:13, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

I am sorry not more were involved in the Rfc that was posted on 4 noticeboards.......but at this point we are not moving forward. So perhaps you should follow the protocols on the page you have linked and start a new RfC or ask for a review of the last RfC ( that you think was lacking participation) because as of now your the only one in all the talks advocating for their inclusion on top level articles.--Moxy (talk) 01:53, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
Because of the number of articles these tables had been added to (44 had presidential election tables, 33 had gubernatorial) WP:STATES seemed like the logical place for a larger discussion. I do realize that not every editor watches the WikiProjects and gets into the weeds of their discussion. And an RfC is only that, just comments, its not a policy written in stone, and I will certainly defend the idea that editors on individual articles can ignore them if the local consensus there goes the other way. So that said, can we move past the procedure discussion to ask what is the argument for having these two tables and the treemap chart image on this article here? Why these seventeen election cycles with the political parties and vote totals listed? I think we have the presidential election information presented better on another article. There isn't a great destination for the gubernatorial table, since Washington doesn't have a subarticle on its politics and the elections article is just an empty outline, so Dennis, would it be a compromise to just keep the gubernatorial table? That would halve the sandwiching Moxy is concerned with as well.-- Patrick, oѺ∞ 14:11, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
The short answer is that the data supports the generalizations about the political character of the state found in the text beside the table. Should it begin in 1948 instead of 1952? Or perhaps 1946? Or 1962? Maybe. The midpoint of the 20th center is an obvious starting point. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 03:28, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Portal:Washington (state) for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Washington (state) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Washington (state) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America1000 21:20, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Questions and comments

1. Can anybody improve the layout of the "Geography" section by placing the "Major cities in Washington" map right below the state quarter released in 2007?

2. The "Western Washington" and "Climate" sections are reduntant in terms of climate. The information about climate should be just in the "Climate" section. It's pointless to have it in two places.

3. The "Settlement" section says "They settled in Washington to avoid Oregon's discriminatory settlement laws". I think it would be appropriate to add a brief explanation to clarify what that is.

4a. In the "Birth data" section, the entire set of statistics and argument about the Hispanics does not make sense, even more when numbers do not add up. A sample is missing for all 5 columns.

4b. In the "Birth data" section, the title of the table is "Live births by single race or ethnicity of the mother".

What it the point of just listing the mother? What about the father?

5. The "Economy" section says "Among Washington's resident billionaires are, as of December 2017" and "As of April 2014".

It would be appropriate to update.

6a. The "Environment" section says "previous 2004 Ecology".

Whey does "Ecology" have to be capitalized?

6b. The last paragraph in the "Environment" section needs to be updated. I see 2006, 1008 and 2010.

6c. The last paragraph in the "Environment" section also says "An invasive amount of algae in bodies of water would lead to a variety of excess ecological and technological issues."

Why should the sentence use "would"?

7. The 4th paragraph of the "Notable legislation" needs to be updated.

ICE77 (talk) 22:09, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Item 3 fixed. Schazjmd (talk) 22:49, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
8. The sidebar gives the population (2019) as 6,724,540 with a link to the U.S. census bureau. However, the U.S. census link gives the 2019 population as 7,614,893; the 6,724,540 number is for 2010. Is this deliberate? If we update this, where do we find the updated information for the other fields in the sidebar? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.34.82.65 (talk) 23:25, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 20:44, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Article improvements

As of writing, I have begun efforts to drastically overhaul the article for this state. However, in doing so, and through providing an edit summary, those contributions were staunchly reverted with the contributor seemingly ignoring the complete context of the summaries (see my personal talk page for more). Now, the primary issue appears to be with the lead as they have cited the appropriate guideline; the issue begins, however, with the definition of the policy. To verify current population and economic standings, citations were added so they could not be challenged. Someone could, perhaps, slip through a faulty contribution using old statistics, or worse, malicious statistics, rewriting its popular industries, etc. Those citations were placed to combat any future challenges to current information which the appropriate guidelines have permitted. - TheLionHasSeen (talk) 20:11, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

MOS:LEADCITE is not only policy, but generally applied across most high-quality articles on enwiki. If the content in the lead is covered in the body (as it should be), then the redundant citations in the lead do little more than cause more headaches for article maintenance. The population and area citations are usually exceptions, but only need to be cited in the infobox rather than the lead, so as not to be affected by major prose changes. SounderBruce 20:23, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
May you provide examples for such articles, and where it states they should be in the infobox as cited? Thank you. - TheLionHasSeen (talk) 20:30, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Actually, MOS:LEAD is a guideline, not a policy. BilCat (talk) 20:35, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
TheLionHasSeen, if you look at Template:infobox city, you'll see that separate parameters are provided for refs for information such as area, population, etc, because those are generally expected to be sourced in the infobox. You'll also see references for that type of information in the infoboxes of articles on most major cities. (I just spot-checked New York City, London, Paris, and Chicago to be sure.) Whether area, population, etc., should also be sourced in the lead is a separate question, but they should be sourced in the infobox; it's particularly helpful for mobile readers to be able to access the ref for key information from the infobox rather than have to search for the information in the narrative text. Schazjmd (talk) 20:40, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
Ah, guideline, correct. I thought it was perhaps both. And let me take a gander at those articles; oh, look, lead citations for information that is current and complex (humorous intent, non-aggression). But returning to a serious moment, let me look at the template. I will get back with you all in a few minutes. Thank you. - TheLionHasSeen (talk) 20:46, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
Until there is consensus to actually move around elements like the symbols infobox, you really shouldn't do it yourself. The new location is creating a serious sandwiching issue with the sports tables, on top of being far too low in the article. The lead changes should also be reverted until there is consensus on whether to include citations (which I still maintain are unnecessary and do more harm than good). SounderBruce 03:05, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
First, there appeared to be aggression with a complete disregard for understanding; then, there appeared to be a warning from you (Bruce) suggesting that you have the authority to block me along with going along with my lack of understanding of what was proposed was a guideline and not a policy (and you have seniority by personal contribution history); then, I am politely guided by others such as those participating in this conversation to resolve the dispute; and then, here we are yet again at square one; much of the information in the lead is current and deals with complexities, while also the controversies (same-sex marriage, physician-assisted suicide, etc). The recreational cannabis and other such nationwide controversies have never been cited further in the article; abortion was not even expanded upon until I opted to work and improve the article piece by piece by adding the additional mention (with more work, going in chronological order of the sections). From the article's history of contributions, it seems no one has truly bothered (Bruce in particular), until September and I perceive he has been highly-unwelcoming to the task. - TheLionHasSeen (talk) 13:20, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
First of all, WP:AGF. I am not attempting to block you, but the message is a standard warning about edit warring that is part of standard procedure. There is no seniority or deadline that demands constant attention be given. The section expansions are welcome, but they need to conform with project guidelines and norms, particularly for a high-traffic entry like this one. Some of your edits (e.g. un-capitalizing Western/Eastern, overreliance on primary sources, improperly using Census QuickFacts for comparisons) have introduced errors that need to be fixed. SounderBruce 18:53, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
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