User talk:Ruhrfisch/Archive1

Welcome!

Hello, Ruhrfisch/Archive1, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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Verses

Hiya,

you recently voted to merge per Uncle G at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Matthew 1:verses

however, that VfD concerned only the verses from Matthew 1, wheras Uncle G's proposal covered a much larger group of verses.

would you be prepared to make a similar vote at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Individual Bible verses, which covers the full list of verses in Uncle G's suggestion?

~~~~ 9 July 2005 15:23 (UTC)

Welcome

Just wanted to drop you a note giving you a welcome, as I see you were rather rudely accused on a VFD. Even if there is some reason to believe you a sockpuppet (which I'm not convinced of), I'm definitely in favor of Wikipedia:Assume good faith and Wikipedia:Please don't bite the newcomers, and thought I'd let you know that there are plenty of us who feel that way. If you have the credentials you claim on your userpage (and I'm trusting you do), I think you'll be able to contribute in a number of important ways here. Drop me a note on my talk page if you ever want my advice, help, or just a sounding board...stepping into editing around here isn't always very easy. :-) Best regards, Jwrosenzweig 05:06, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

---

Regarding the images, I think you've done a fantastic job! I think the clarity of your note is important -- making the distinction between the pd source of the maps themselves and the GFDL release of your modifications. They're an excellent enhancement of the articles, and I wish you luck in completing the task. Thanks so much for keeping at it (especially when, as noted above, your welcome here was a bit iffy) -- I appreciate your work very much, Jwrosenzweig 23:23, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

---

Hi again. :-) It's a shame nobody else comes by to chat with you, but I guess it makes it easy for me to just keep adding to this conversation. :-) Go back to Steamtown National Historic Site and check again -- I think you'll find I fixed the problem. Look at the diff of my edit to see what I did. Basically, anything you put after the pipe in a piped category link is the title the category uses for sorting. For example, if I wanted the Geoffrey Chaucer article to be sorted under "C" instead of "G" (which the category sorting would normally choose), I'd put [[Category:Cool English poets|Chaucer, Geoffrey]]. Hope that helps -- if I'm being confusing, let me know and I'll try a different expplanation.

Re: the Commons, I'm afraid I've done absolutely nothing with the Commons, so I can't be of any help there. Sorry! I'd suggest either asking someone you've met who you've seen uploading to Commons, or else trying a note at Wikipedia:Help desk, which I've seen used by plenty of established users when they're trying something they're not used to. Best of luck! Jwrosenzweig 20:34, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

We meet again

I'm sorry to see that no one else has taken the time to chat with you or work with you--I'm consistently impressed by your work, and very much appreciate your happy demeanor. I am sure it must seem faint praise since I so rarely post here, but in my opinion you're one of the people here who keeps me coming back, and I'm happy to help with the Larrys Creek article.

Here are some thoughts. First of all, you're very thorough, but the article isn't in complete compliance with the guidelines at Wikipedia:Citing_sources. I think that, if it was, certainly it would be eligible for the list of Wikipedia:Good articles, and at least some of the watersheds you work on would be good candidates for featured article status. I'd encourage you to give a references section a shot.

I like the general flow (no pun intended) of the article: if this is the structure you'll adopt in the future, I think it works well. It does leave the lead section a little thin, but I can't think of what to do for that. Perhaps more notable historical events that will be dealt with at length later in the article can be "previewed" or alluded to in that first paragraph? I think that would be good.

I hate to criticize the map, which must have been hours of work, but I think it may be too large. So many colors are on the map that the suggestion of "lilac" didn't work for me...I initially assumed that Lycoming Creek was Larrys Creek. Is it possible to narrow the scope of the map down to a smaller number of watersheds, so that you're only making use of a small group of colors: say, the ROYGBIV of the rainbow? I'd find those colors much easier to distinguish, especially at thumbnail level. If you would really rather stick with the map essentially as is, I'd consider a more careful and lengthy caption for the map to help the color-challenged identify where Larrys Creek is.

A note more generally about location is that, if I am unfamiliar with Pennsylvania geography (and I am), the article at present doesn't orient me very well. It may be galling for a Pennsylvanian to have to place a location in terms of its distance and direction from Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, but I think it would benefit the article. Failing that, perhaps the margin of the map could indicate with an arrow and a note the direction and distance to a city recognizable to the average non-Pennsylvanian.

I am sure that I am being too nit-picky with much of this, but I thought I'd give you a detailed critique and let you decide what to do. Honestly, it's remarkably good as it is, and if you changed none of it I would still call it an example of good, solid Wikipedia writing. Best of luck with it, and please tell me if I can ever help on another article in the series--I don't collaborate with many folks anymore, and I miss it. All my best, Jwrosenzweig 05:03, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Tiadaghton State Forest Map

According to the data produced by the DCNR in 2004, the holdings in the NE portion of Lycoming county are part of Loyalsock/Wyoming SF. Based on my experience with the naming on PA-DOT maps, I am assuming their map is wrong or out of date. Even the DCNR map up on the web may be out of date. The date in the lower left corner looks to be 5/98, but is too fuzzy to be sure. I suspect the PA DOF may have transferred some holdings from one district to another since the date of that map. I am not sure about that though. --Ray 12:46, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Of course the GIS data the DCNR produced in 2004 could also be wrong. I will email them about the differences between that data and the PA DOT and older DCNR maps. I also want to ask about the name change between Loyalsock/Wyoming. --Ray 12:19, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

re:Steamtown National Historic Site Protected Area Info Box

I placed the message box on the dicussion page to tie all these related artilces together. Eventually I would have gotten around to adding the infox, but with over 1,000 articles in need of it, the messagebox is one way to notify folks that the article lacks an infobox...so thank you for adding it. To do the infoboxes, I have to bring up several browers pages at once. If you go to the project page for protected areas, a link to the IUCN website is available...simply link this [1] and click search for sites, then the country and then the designation of the site...once you click on the particular site, a green tab will appear on the right, clicking that opens a new window and most of the sites listed will at least have the coordinates and the land area in hectares, and usually has the IUCN designation as well. More recent parks and protected areas are not listed on the IUCN website. I use Google converter to convert hectareas into acres and square kilometers. If you open a U.S. Government website, sometimes (but not always) you can query "stats" or visitation or acreage in their search window...but this works about 50% of the time. Aside from full National Parks and more popular historical sites, visitation is simply not recored...this is especially true with Wildernesses and National Forests. In answer to your query about the locator dot, just do the best you can. I don't think the template is designed to use coordinates for the methodology to pinpoint the dot, as Alaska and Hawaii are not in the actual location as they would be on a globe, instead simply being on insets. Also, if you have trouble locating the coordinates of some areas in the U.S. figure the absolutely closest hamlet or town and bring up the topozone website....do a search of that location and apply the tabs on the left side of the topographic map to help you determine deg/min/sec...let me know if there is anything I can do to help.--MONGO 09:25, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I queried the info about facts for Steamtown and here they are...[2]. Happy editing!--MONGO 09:29, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, good job...some of those IUCN categories overlap. I have found that most of the areas that are not wilderness, actual parks or national forests are III or V...with those with III status being more likely to be nature oriented and those with V status being more history oriented...but since they do not list every area, we can just do our best to identify them. Most national wildlife refuges are IV, wilderness Ib, national forests are VI and so on. Also, be careful to cross reference when in doubt about areas that listed in the IUCN database, as I have found their acreage to be off, as well as the creation date (they usually have the year correct, but not the month and day). Anyway, keep up the good work.--MONGO 13:18, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Speedy deletion

I noticed that you tagged the page Image:Park locmap warriorspath.jpg for speedy deletion with the reason "Image is from the State of Pennsylvania, not the US Government. See source cited below". However, "Image is from the State of Pennsylvania, not the US Government. See source cited below" is not currently one of our criteria for speedy deletion, so I have removed the speedy deletion tag. You can use one of our other deletion processes, Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion if you still want the article to be deleted. If you think the image may be unfree, tag it with {{PUI}} and list it at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images. Thanks! Stifle 01:07, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

F. Nelson Blount

Ruhrfisch: Thank you for your interest in F. Nelson Blount. I'm writing a trivia book on Southern New England and stumbled upon Mr. Blount's bio when researching Edaville Railroad in South Carver, Massachusetts. Two question marks for Mr. Blount's his age were found in the Wikipedia article on him, so I amended the gap. I forgot which source I used. Not many articles on Blount exist on the internet. I would suggest you contact the town of South Carver, Massachusetts for the information you want. Thank you for contacting me.

Glenn

Hi. I don't know where you live in the Northeast, but the SAILS network [3] has 5 copies of the Adair book available at Fairhaven-Millicent, Middleborough Public Library, Hurley Library - Mass Maritime Academy, Raynham Library, and Wareham Free Library. These are in Massachusetts. Good luck with the research.

Glenn

You're welcome :-)

And I'm glad it made it to GA status -- keep up the fine work, and please let me know if ever I can again be of assistance! Incidentally, I'm pleased to see a few others have found your talk page too...you must be starting to make a name for yourself. :-) Best wishes, Jwrosenzweig 04:55, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

By the way, if administrator status is ever something you want (and while it has many headaches, it does make a few tasks easier), please let me know, as I will happily nominate you -- you're pleasant, hard-working, and intelligent, and we need to encourage editors to be more like that. :-) I'd caution that the community's standards have of late run to demanding ridiculously high numbers of edits before some will approve (2000-3000 for some people), but many of us are wise enough (I think) to evaluate on a case-by-case basis. :-) Let me know if you're ever interested. Jwrosenzweig 05:01, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Kilometers/miles

I've responded on Talk:Larrys_Creek. Happy editing! Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 06:03, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Answers to questions

Vandals can be reported at a particular page whose name has changed since I last used it. :-) Go to the admin's noticeboard WP:AN and look at links etc. there, since I know it's not more than two clicks away from that page. Sorry I can't recall. WP:AN is a good page to glance at now and then, especially if you'd consider being an admin someday, just to get a sense of the kinds of issues going on around the pedia.

Edit vanity stuff (which I find fun as well) can be done with various tools designed for such things. There are always links to such tools at WP:RFA as they're often needed for admin candidates...click on one of those links, and then replace the admin candidate's username in the URL with yours and reload the page to get your stats. There may be a list at a page like Wikipedia:Tools but I haven't snooped around for one in a while.

Sorry I'm not of more help, but I hope this is a way to get started. :-) Jwrosenzweig 05:54, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

12.177.48.100 report on WP:RFI / re:questions

Because school IPs can be used by many different people, they are generally not blocked unless the vandalism is very bad and/or recent. If you spot vandalism in progress, you can warn them and then report to WP:AIV for a block. There is a guide to cleaning up vandalism at WP:CUV. I'd be interested to hear any feedback on how good (or not!) that is. Please do let me know how that can be improved (I've been doing some work on it, to make it a quick guide for people who have spotted vandalism and want to know what to do). Cheers, Petros471 14:52, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply and sorry for the ungainly headline. I understand the lack of block better and looked over WP:CUV. It seems fine - very thorough. I had already reverted all the vandalism I found from this IP address that had not already been caught, but I have not checked every edit they did. I will mention that I almost never do RC patrol, but I have a lot of pages on my watchlist that are not very often edited (so even though I am not on all the time, I catch some vandalism that way, including this IP address). One idea I have had is to make every page watched by someone - no orphans (in another sense of the word - I watch almost every PA county, for example). Not sure how practical it is - I think it would only work for articles that are not frequently edited. Anyway, thanks again, Ruhrfisch 00:47, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry about the headline- I usually use a "x report on RFI" format when replying from there, and the questions bit I added on was a reply from seeing replies to your talk page above. Thanks for taking a look at WP:CUV, glad it looks ok. No problem about not doing RC patrol- quite a lot of people do that, but it is also essential to have people watchlisting articles they know something about to check for false information and any vandalism that slipped through RC. There is a page called Special:Unwatched pages, which automatically lists all pages that have no-one watching them. It is only available to admins to prevent vandals abusing it. Petros471 15:24, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi Ruhrfisch. Please note that I've archived or removed your recent request for investigation. That page is only for very specific cases, as described by the page's guidelines. Your alert would be better placed on Administrator intervention against vandalism (WP:AIV), where it will usually be processed within minutes. Many alerts that are incorrectly placed on Requests for investigation are never dealt with, simply because they become old before an administrator gets to them. Thanks for your efforts. :) // [admin] Pathoschild (^talk/_map) 09:15, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Re:Congrats and followup

Aye, Pathos does tend to archive reports rather quicker than I do :)

We're continually working towards making the guidelines clearer- the thing is that they tend to mean different things to different people! Personally I don't think there was anything particularly wrong about reporting what you did there, generally RFI is for investigation of past (but recent) vandalism or watching for future vandalism. Very few blocks get used as a result of RFI reports. WP:AIV is for reporting users that need a block now, and as long as they have carried out recent vandalism after warnings they will usually get a block.

1) Flowchart idea is interesting, but it would need someone to be willing to do it... I'm working on the basic guidelines and WP:CUV for the moment. Also there is the danger of having too many instructions in too many places.

2) Yes, I think repeated warnings can encourage vandalism. I haven't issued any blocks yet as a new admin, but I'll do my best in future to catch them! The problem with school IPs is that the vandalism committed is probably from lots of different people, each only doing it for a short time. Unless they are blocked by User:Hall Monitor (one of our stricter admins!) Petros471 18:52, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Sullivan County railroads

Bitte schõn. Ich bin Biochemiker im Hauptstudium, obwohl ich nicht mehr in Pennsylvanien wohne. Your article on Larry's Creek is wonderful, by the way. I was going to add rail information for Loyalsock Creek as well, but I hit a snag when I reached Lopez. I have Taber's "Railroads of Pennsylvania Encyclopedia and Atlas," and the maps are, unfortunately, atrocious. His description of the route of the Jennings Bros. lumber railroad and the Stony Brook Lumber Co. (which used part of the Jennings Bros. roadbed) are rather vague and I'm having trouble establishing correspondence with the rail grades shown on topo maps, with a line running up the Loyalsock to Shumans Lake and then up Cold Run and curving round to Bellasylva, as well as a spur up Santee Run. Do you have access to the Taber-Kline-Casler series on "Logging Railroads of Pennsylvania"? That might have somewhat better maps and clear up the question. Choess 23:17, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

You *are* a blessing. After going over the scraps in "Railroads of Pennsylvania," and "Kester's History of Bellasylva" [4], I'm inclined to declare that the line out to Schmitthemmer Lake is probably the original Jennings Bros. lumber RR, and the spur running north to Crane Swamp and Briskey Mtn. was Stony Brook Lumber. I'll add the info to Loyalsock Creek in a day or so. By the way, if you ever need lookups from "Railroads of Pennsylvania" or "Muncy Valley Lifeline," let me know — I have copies on hand in my apartment. Of interest to you, perhaps, are two "paper railroads" proposed for Larry's Creek: the Larry's Creek Railroad and Coal Company, incorporated June 24, 1839 to hold 2000 acres and operate up to seven miles of railroad from the mouth of the creek to the coal mines, and the Jersey Shore, Pine Creek & State Line RR, incorporated on April 11, 1853 to run from Jersey Shore up Pine Creek to Tioga or Long Run, and thence to the state line, and charter amended April 4, 1854 to run up 3rd Fork Pine Creek and Crooked Creek to the Tioga RR, and March 26, 1856 to run up 1st Fork Pine Creek to the Larrys Creek Plank Road and up Block House Fork to Blossburg. It was still corporately alive in 1865, but the charter of the Jersey Shore, Pine Creek & Buffalo Ry. in 1870 (NYC-Reading interests) superceded it. Hope you find this interesting, Choess 00:20, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, actually I suppose I would like to see a scan, if that's not too much trouble. I may actually have a hand-drawn copy of the map in question, but I'll have to sort through The Place Where Papers Go To Die next time I'm home in Pennsylvania to find it. My email address is my user name @stwing.org. The information above is from Taber, citation as follows: Taber, Thomas T., III (1987). Railroads of Pennsylvania Encyclopedia and Atlas. Thomas T. Taber III. ISBN 0-9603398-5-x.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) Auf wiedersprechen, Choess 19:08, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Danke sehr! The kindness is much appreciated, and this clears things up: it looks like at least part of the line towards Crane Swamp was Jennings Bros. first. The history of Bellasylva linked above speaks of "Carter" mortgaging his farm to build a logging line to Crane Swamp, and that it cost him $7,000/mile where Jennings Bros. had paid $1,000/mile. He eventually lost big and shot himself. Presumably he was the prime mover behind Stony Brook Lumber. I've written an article on the Elmira and Lake Ontario Railroad, which encompasses some paper schemes on Pine Creek, and I'm planning to write up the NYC line down Pine Creek, but I'm waiting to clear up some points on the connecting Beech Creek Railroad first. I'm afraid I don't know much about copyright, and can't make a definitive statement on the legality of copying Taber's pictures. Tchüβ, Choess 02:30, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Kupfergraben

I refer to your recent edit of the Neues Museum article. What is Kupfergraben? I hope you can translate that into English. The previous translation was copper ditch which doesn't make much sense as well. Who would make a drain from copper? Anyway, thanks for improving the article. Wai Hong 03:35, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for translating the Neues Museum Article. Keep up the good work! Wai Hong 06:14, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Why will SmackBot's edits not hide

• First off, I must apologize for not being a robot. I don't know if humans are supposed to leave messages for bots or not. When I click "hide bot edits" while going through my watchlist, all bot edits except yours are hidden. Why is that? It wouldn't be a big deal, but I have so many geographical pages on my watchlist that it makes it really hard to read if these edits can't be excluded. Thanks, Smacky. You're the best.--Hraefen 15:47, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

• • I am also greatly appreciative of all SmackBot does, but I also have a large number of geographical pages changed by it and had the same question (i.e. why are SmackBot's edits not recognized / flagged as bot edits for my watchlist)? Thanks, Ruhrfisch 18:41, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

It looks like this bot hasn't gotten the bot flag yet. That's why. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 21:47, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

This is correct. It got the flag, then we had a crisis about the process, so I relinquished the flag, the process of re-setting it is happening. Rich Farmbrough 18:32 3 June 2006 (UTC).

re: Northumberland County, Pennsylvania edit

I assure you that any changes were purely accidental and I apologize. I didn't realize that changes had been saved, so thanks for catching it. I was mucking around using "Show preview" and I/my computer/something freaked out and chose to save the entry. With minor edit checked, no less. I have started and entry in Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. counties to find out the reasoning for what seems to me to be a redundant presentation of information. Dddstone 03:16, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Janx Jrotum

Thanks for the mnessage. I've indef the sock also. Blnguyen | rant-line 03:17, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Logan County map

Great job on the map for Logan County, Ohio! I've removed the map I created for the article in favor of yours, as yours frankly is much nicer than mine. -- SwissCelt 03:42, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Ohio County Maps

I'd be glad to work with you on any of the county maps. I do intend to produce these maps for all 88 counties and keep them up-tp-date based on official county and municipal maps and census information. However, I anticipate this project taking through at least Septemeber since I am taking summer courses. Let me know what you think and perhaps we can collaborate.

The Northumberland Navbox is more organized

I think I'll try a Few of Those and see what it looks like. Once these are created doesn't it make the City and Township sections Redundant?

Re: Juniata Valley Railroad

I'm working through Category:Unassessed rail transport articles this week, assigning ratings based on the scale described on Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/Assessment. Some areas for improvement that I spotted include:

• Cite your sources in a References section
• Add photos of JVRR trains and equipment
• Expand the history to include significant dates (date of charter or incorporation, etc.)
• Add a map showing the railroad's route in relation to major population centers
• List the company's top executives (if there's only been one president or CEO, a short [1 paragraph] bio may be appropriate as can be seen, for example, in Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad)
• List the railroad's interchanges with other railroads
• Describe typical operations over the line

I've copied these suggestions to the talk page. Slambo (Speak) 11:04, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Ohio Maps

Greetings!
Thanks very much for creating those Ohio county maps. I'll have to add them to some of my articles. PedanticallySpeaking 16:30, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Redundancy exercises

Hi there—Thanks for the message, and that's a good suggestion about including a whole-paragraph exercise. Could do that for redundancies alone; or could focus on redundancy and another problem (perhaps the use of commas) in a paragraph exercise, on a subsequent page. I'll think it through.

Cheers

Tony 02:30, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

peer review

Thanks for your comments on the peer review page. I'll take them into account :) - CheNuevara 15:07, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

State Forests & Parks

I don't have a template, or even a good example to work with. The article on Forbes was really an experiment on my part. I found it using Special:Random article when it was a tiny stub and I wanted to see if I could write on a topic that I knew absolutely nothing about. I'm sure you noticed that all my material was paraphrased from the DCNR website, and I really understand your frustration with those sites. I dislike redlinks in an article, but I think the best way to handle them is to write an appropriate article and make the redlink turn blue; I definitely plan to devote more time to this. BTW - you're doing great work...keep it up :) --Doc Tropics ^{Message in a bottle} 16:56, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi again, sorry it took a while to get back to you. I think that a PA locator map is a really good idea; bound to be more useful than a general U.S. map! It does sound like we have similar attitudes about redlinks which means we could probably stay busy for a while :) --Doc Tropics ^{Message in a bottle} 15:29, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

OK...Wow! The PA State locator map is great! I think it could be used in all PA articles that might benefit from a map, but especially the Parks and Forests. I won't be available much this weekend, but I'll definitely be looking forward to some productive editing when I have time :) --Doc Tropics ^{Message in a bottle} 20:17, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I just checked out Little Pine and it looks excellent. I tweaked one of the hyperlinks, but you should revert it if it's not the link you intended. I'll look over the other two as well but I'm sure they are also up to your usual high standards :) I really like the format that you've used for this article and I think it would make sense to use it whenever possible. I currently "owe" about 6 articles on other topics, but I look forward to getting back to the State Parks & Forests. They were very pleasant to work on. --Doc Tropics ^{Message in a bottle} 13:12, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Cookie break

An award to acknowledge your extensive and detailed grasp of the utterly irrelevant  :) --Doc Tropics ^{Message in a bottle} 05:13, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for adding to my userpage. Feel free to add a quote of your own. --Doc Tropics ^{Message in a bottle} 05:13, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Larrys Creek

I'm unfamiliar with the area, but your research is impressive. Pepso 16:01, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Ottawa-Glandorf Local School District Information

You said that Titan Tikes Preschool is not part of the school district, but it is part of the school district. To confirm this, check the official webpage: http://og.noacsc.org/. Otherwise, thank you for cleaning up the article. Do you know how to add the mascot of the school on the page? (or should the mascot stay off the page?) View user discussion (August 2, 2006) left by User:Jordanrschroeder 07:28, August 2, 2006

• I have another question (by the way, thank you for the school district by county website), but would I have to put all of the townships from more than just the one county or is it fine to just include townships from one county. For example, if the school district serves from other nearby counties such as Ottawa-Glandorf to Hancock County, would I have to add the townships from Hancock County as well to the Ottawa-Glandorf school district entry. I know it sounds kind of confusing, if you want me to re-word this just ask. Again, thanks for the website. View user discussion (August 14, 2006) left by User:Jordanrschroeder 04:04, August 14, 2006

• Thank you and yes you answered the question. It may take me some time to get through all the school district articles I have created. Great job on Fort Wayne Metropolitan Area map! I do not know how to liscense my maps I created or recieved off another webpage. How do you do you make these maps? I think someone may have told me before, but I did not understand. View user discussion (August 14, 2006) left by User:Jordanrschroeder 04:44, August 14, 2006

Fair Play Men on DYK

On 5 August, 2006, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Fair Play Men, which you created. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

-- Scott e^iπ 17:22, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review/Larrys Creek/archive1 - Re

Unfortunately, Larrys Creek isn't the only article that has suffered from this lack of comments- see Wikipedia talk:Peer review#Scotland - Any explanations?. The problem is that there isn't quite enough editors to extensively review articles on WP:PR. My suggestion would be to ask other interested editors to take a look at the article and point out some ideas. (there is nothing screwed up with the review :) AZ _t 20:26, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Pennsylvania GA

Don't know what to say about that article. I just tagged it to see how it would affect the ratings, as the PA Wikiproject has no GA articles. I haven't signed up for the project because I'm working with the Philly one, but if we can collaborate, please let me know. --evrik 14:18, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Wawa

I don't actually know much about Lenape philology — Wawa happens to be relatively local, and I think I might be able to gain more information from some PRRT&HS "High Line" issues on PRR operations there — but while investigating, I found this chart, which appears to be a detailed list of Indian place names and their derivation within the Susquehanna River watershed. (The Delaware tribe is the same as the Lenape.) I suspect you'll get some fascinating reading out of it. (e.g., the Iroquois/Seneca name for Pine Creek was "Tyadachton", while the Lenape was "Cuwenhanne," "pine stream".) Choess 16:10, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Re: Railroad maps

Yeah, that should be fine. It's got a state outline to show where the line is within the state and it's got the detail needed for the article. When you add maps to those articles with the Mapneeded parameter, just remove the parameter. Since the Maps task force is just starting out, we have yet to build a standard for railroad maps, but I suspect we'll do something like is being done on WikiProject Maps. I don't have any software specifically for map making either (I tried one, but couldn't get it to do what I wanted to do), so the maps that I've made are crops of a generic blank US map (the link is on the image description pages) and the lines and labels are added in either Microsoft Paint (ugh!) or the GIMP (much better). Slambo (Speak) 00:51, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Re: McComb Links

Ok I understand that, but McComb is such a small town. I think if someone is looking for information, the more the page tells about the town, the better. People should know there is a library and a church available. I understand for places like New York City it doesn't help to list things like that because everybody and their brother would have a link. For small towns it is helpful to list places of interest, not as a directory really, just to list the few organizations that actually have sites in town. I think it contributes the completeness of information about the community. After all, it is a wiki about a community.

NC (city names) -> settlements

you may be interested in Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (city names)#WP:RM -- Tobias Conradi (Talk) 20:42, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Re: McComb Links

Thank you for the help. I am only trying to contribute to the site, not violate any Wikipedia terms or create spam. If there are any other changes that need to be made, let me know. Thanks again.

Lancaster County

I did a lot of work on the LC article tonight. One of the things I did was to eliminate the sections on all the communities in the county because all that information is in the template at the bottom of the page. I moved some material around. I rewrote some stuff. I added tons and tons of citations. I rewrote the economy section almost entirely. I sorta wanted to get rid of the list of local businesses, but I stuck them down at the bottom, by the external links instead.

I didn't get into the demographics because I think that's where the census table needs to go. The graphics *definitely* need to be rearranged, but until the census table gets added, we don't know how things will fit, anyway. The sections on politics, I didn't touch, and I don't *want* to touch, since I'm sure that will draw hellfire from those who wrote them, but they, uh, as a chemist, you know what t-butyl mercaptan is, right? I'm sure that in 24 hours, I'm going to take a look at some of the stuff I did and say, "What was I *thinking*?" And there are going to be things you see that I wouldn't notice in a million years. Anyhow, if you would please take a look at your earliest convenience, I'd appreciate it. ClairSamoht 07:04, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

I was looking for 1790-1900 decennial numbers online, and looking and looking. I don't think they are online. The museum next to Wheatland has all the census numbers on CD-ROM. It's $5 a day to use the library, and I hate to spend $5 just to copy down 12 numbers, especially when the numbers are still inaccessible to others and thus semi-unverifiable. If I could pay them $5 to put the numbers online, it'd be different, you know?

The thing about the LC politics sections I hate is that so much of it is touchy-feely opinion instead objective fact. And the thing is, I suspect that most of it is true, just impossible to come up with a consensus of credible sources. If I could find quotes from Terry Madonna, sure, but anyone else is going to be considered partisan.

The econ section, I went back and took *all* the top employers, instead of just the top 12, and deleted the government/school/hospital/nursinghome/laborcontractors. That mostly gave manufacturing/distribution, so I came up with the idea of listing the major manufacturing/distribution employers, and then the few other businesses that aren't manu/dist, but have an impact outside the LC area. I mean, I have nothing against microbreweries, but *every* place of any size has them, and unless they are something special, they're nothing special.

Anyhow, my objective there was sorta like the objective on the Pennsy page - get the page stable, instead of everybody adding their brother-in-law's favorite barber to the list. With the Pennsy page, I could justify pulling the lists completely off the page, to a list page where nobody really gives a hoot, and with the Economy section, I set up criteria that the barber can't meet. That still leaves the list of tourist traps, but if we limit that to places that have their own articles, that should be more manageable.

Putting the community names next to the graphic, we end up with a *really* narrow table, and then it's long enough that there's a lot of whitespace under the graphic. I think we need to either futz around with the graphic, so that it's next to the wrong table, or change the size of the graphic, or *something*. Suppose we could list the townships first, then the city, then the boroughs? Or maybe we can move the graphic down so the city and boroughs are full-width before it. Trying to have the page look good in 800x600, 1280x1024 *and* 1600x1200 is a real pain.

Put together a Dart Container article today, as a way to turn red links into blue ones. The more I researched, the uglier it got. I ended up deciding that it was an appealing company owned by really unappealing owners. Trying to keep everything NPOV was difficult. I thought they were involved with Justin Dart and Kraft and Tupperware, and turns out they weren't, and I found a cousin or something that there are some pages out there that say he's related, but he isn't, so it turned out to be a strange article, but I did my best to be thorough and NPOV and very verifiable. Not my favorite article, by a long shot, but in a way, doing articles about people/companies you like is harder, because they try to turn themselves into puff pieces. ClairSamoht 05:34, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I was just taking a look at Buckinghamshire which is a FA-candidate, and Cleveland, Ohio which is a FA. I think we're rapidly progressing to FA status. We need to get rid of all those red links. I think we also need to get the "Feel of Lancaster County" into the article.

• 1. I want to address rural life, with the loafing shed for horses and buggies at Wal-Mart, the cow-cam at Kreiders, the auctions at Roots, and that new traffic safety manual for the plain.
• 2. I want a "flavors of Lancaster County" section, talking about the unique cuisine. Not just pretzels and shoo-fly pie, but filling, pot pie noodles, chicken and waffles, "seven sweets and seven sours", etc.
• 3. I want to address the puppy controversy. Hard to do in an NPOV way. It's as touchy as abortion, in a way. I need to find some farmer's blog somewhere, where he says that nobody in their right mind would raise livestock unless he loves it, because you never get a day off, never get sick days, never get holidays, can't even count on sleeping through the night.
• 4. I want to address the anti-plain sentiment. This one is going to be the most difficult. But there are a lot of people who are openly resentful and hostile to the plain, and a lot of people who oppose them, not because the plain are something special to be protected, but because the plain *aren't* something special, and deserve to be treated decently.

The first two are going to be hard to write, because of the "no original research" rule, and difficult to manage, because people are going to want to add stuff all the time that's original research. The other two are going to be even harder to write, trying to find citations, and they're going to be real monsters to manage because it's going to be hard to get them NPOV enough not to cause edit wars. I think we can handle the management problems by reverting on the basis of "no original research", though. Thoughts? ClairSamoht 05:14, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Your Larrys Creek is quite the article. I have been striving to keep things short, and you just "have at it", not apologizing in any way for covering everything anyone might want to know. I pretty much took the opposite tack on the school districts. I found a couple of sources for statistics, so I made up a table of PSSA scores, a second one for enrollment and student/teacher ratio, etc., a listing of the schools in the district and your map. Of course, there's a difference. I've come up with a stub that I can mass-produce in fairly quick order, providing the basics for someone else to build an article around, and my real motivation is to change the color of the links on the county page.

I kinda like business articles. It's frustrating to do one like Lancaster Laboratories because most of the content comes from their own website, and it's bland and flavorless. I rewrote one on Chuck Taylor, (salesman), the greatest tennis shoe promoter of the 20th century, and it was fun, because as it turns out, the guy was a big fraud. I got to quote all these great things from the bio that Converse was putting out on him, and he was dishing to reporters over the years, and then show that he didn't really do the things he claimed to do. The guy wasn't actually stealing from anyone. They were decent enough shoes at a decent enough price. It's just he was selling a dream, saying "I did it, and you can, too." when in fact, he didn't and you probably can't either. And I recently redid Johnny Appleseed and Waffle House, which were articles with lots of flavor.

If someone else doesn't beat me to the punch, I think I will try to do a decent job on Joe Pitts' congressional district, rather than just a stub. I don't know if there is "enough there there" to even try to come up with something for the statehouse districts. The guys are part-timers, and often short-timers as well....

Yes, I was talking about "puppy mills" when I mentioned that controversy. The shelters are all run by people who breed show dogs, and by vets, and they require that dogs be de-sexed in order to be adopted, which means fewer people are willing to adopt from there, which means a lot of dogs are killed who are turned in, which means people don't want to turn in dogs. They have had some severe health problems at the Humane League, cats dying left and right about a year ago, but they point the finger at farmers raising puppies, as if the shelter was innocent and the farmers were so evil. In Dayton, some people set up an alternative to the regular shelter, where people foster strays in their homes, and bring them in to a central location one or two days a week, when people can adopt them. The pets are socialized that way, and are a lot more adoptable. And fewer of them are killed. I've seen *so* much on both sides of this issue, and never seen anyone do an NPOV report, and since there are the billboards, etc., funded by folks on the Main Line, and by PeTA, it really needs to be covered. All sorts of people read in Reader's Digest that Lancaster County has all these evil puppy mills....

I'm going to have to stop by the library and see what they have in the way of books.... I don't have the oomph to finish the school district stubs tonight. I think I've had 12 hours of sleep in the last 3 nights, due to aches and pains. I'm getting tired enough, I might be able to sleep tonight, despite the hurting. ClairSamoht 05:22, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

More LC

It's not like you have to ask permission. I think rivers and railroads is a fine idea - especially since the Railroad museum is here, and there's consequently going to be railroading interest on the part of the people who visit the page.

Yeah, I was pleased with how the addition to the tourism section turned out, too. It's part of the "flavor" I was talking about the article needing. And that cquote macro adds some typographic interest to what can be a boring gray mass of type.

I can shoot a picture of the loafing shed at WalMart. No big deal. I was a studio and newspaper photographer in my youth. Can you think of anything else in particular that needs shot? (George Bush was here earlier this month, but that would have only given us Cheney, so that's no bargain. ::grin::) ClairSamoht 21:29, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Pennsylvania

The QuickFacts page is, in general, 2005, but it says the racial makeup numbers are 2004. ClairSamoht 20:54, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

The guy who keeps vandalizing the "Race and ancestry" section was using pool-72-92-99-233.phlapa.east.verizon.net before and is using pool-72-92-107-94.phlapa.east.verizon.net now. I wonder if he's hoping I'll violate the Wikipedia:Three-revert rule. ClairSamoht 00:55, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Posting the "white non-hispanic" numbers strikes me as offensive. Would you list the white non-German numbers? When the census bureau reports hispanic, they report hispanic of all races. They report the white non-hispanic numbers because they were ordered to collect those numbers by Congress, not because the demographers think it particularly valuable. My inclination is to consider "white" as important, "white non-hispanic" as non-notable. Removing the white number is vandalism, in my view. ClairSamoht 17:15, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Larrys Creek

Voted my enthusiastic support for it as a FA. BTW, I have institutional access to the [5] database, which has a fair amount of local histories and the like stashed in it. Let me know if you'd ever like a lookup done. Choess 05:41, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Most of my stream stuff has been the result of browsing newly-created articles by User:Gjs238 and adding description from topo maps, but if I try tackling some of them systematically, I'll let you know. Having looked in Taber, there was, in fact, a railroad along White Deer Hole Creek. The Vincent Lumber Company built a 42" road about five miles west from Elimsport into timber, and then built from Elimsport to Allenwood on the Reading, paralleling the creek, or so I assume. It was incorporated around the time of construction (June 24 1901) as the Allenwood and Western Railroad. The lumbering operation ceased in 1904, the railroad was torn up, and its one second-hand Shay moved to the Vincent operation at Denholm. Incidentally, while browsing old Bellefonte news for railroad information, I found an interesting item at the bottom of this page. Why, it's the Spanish Prisoner, forerunner of the 419 scam! Choess 21:31, 26 August 2006 (UTC)