Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Governors of Wisconsin

The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted 23:50, 23 December 2007.

List of Governors of Wisconsin

I've been working on this list for awhile now, and believe that it is now comprehensive and well-references, and meets all the criteria, in addition to being comparable to Featured Lists about similar topics. Thanks to those members of WikiProject Wisconsin who looked this list over and caught a few problems I had missed, and to all those who comment here. —Salmar ^(talk) 00:13, 13 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comments - "Other high offices held" looks like it was added on as an afterthought. There must be a better way of doing this, although I'm not sure what. Also, under "Living former governors," the statements about the oldest, the most recent death, and the most recently-serving governor to die seem like trivia. (Could dates of birth and death be added to the table?) -- Thinking out loud here, Orlady (talk) 00:43, 13 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Reply Both were actually added in imitation of other featured lists about ~~Wisconsin~~ governors, not as afterthoughts. As for your comments, the dates of birth are already in the "Living former governors" table, the dates of death can't be added because it is, after all, a list of living governors =P ... or did you mean the table of all the governors? I suppose I could, but it'd make the table kind of overly big, in my opinion. As for the "Other high offices held" table, is there anything, in specific, that you think could be better about it? —Salmar ^(talk) 00:55, 13 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- edit Strike out extra (not to mention wrong!) word in that reply. —Salmar ^(talk) 02:18, 13 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Conditional support. The red links and "Madison, Wisconsin" links in "references" should go. Circeus (talk) 05:08, 15 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Y Removed —Salmar ^(talk) 02:49, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comments - as someone who brought four other governor lists to featured status (AL, AR, CA, and helped with KY), good job. A few comments:
- Are the key boxes really necessary? The table says which party they were, it just seems to double up on things.
  - I added them to a number of article. Here they admittedly do not double with the table itself as much as with the summary in the upper-right corner. 00:13, 16 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Circeus (talk • contribs)
  - Y After taking a closer look, I agree, and have removed them.
- "Terms" is a new idea, and like all new things, I hate it immediately, then slowly grow to like it. Because of that, I have no opinion. :P However, now that I take a closer look at it, it's a very novel way of getting rid of the mostly-empty "Notes" column we've had in the other featured lists. Hm.
  - I was wary at putting it in, because it wasn't in any of the other lists, but the empty notes column was driving me crazy!
- I dislike having Doyle's expiration day in the table, I much prefer it in the ref. Like the others. :>
  - Y moved to ref
- I like you showing the offices that the governor resigned so that he could be governor; I dunno if we've had to deal with that before, since usually it's the other way around.
- I like the other high offices held and former living governors, but I can also see why others would see that as trivia. I think I was inspired mainly by New York's governor list (which listed the many, MANY governors that have become presidents and what not), and the List of Presidents, which obsessively mentions the living ones, how many times we've had 5 living presidents, etc. etc. Personally, I find the list of living governors as useful as the list of living presidents - which is to say, useful.
  - I found it useful too, and also felt it was best to put it in since it was in all the similar featured lists
- One thing keeping me from a full support: the acting question. In the intro, it states that the Lt. Gov becomes governor if the governor dies or resigns; however, the references all say that the Lt. Gov acted as governor. This is an important distinction that needs clarifying.
  - Y Sorry about that; the constitution distinguishes between "becoming governor" and "acting as governor", but several of the sources use the latter in all cases, and I'm afraid I used the same terminology without thinking about it. I've fixed it now.
- So, fix that, and you get full support. :) I think I'll take some of these ideas and put them in the Cali, Ala, and Ark lists. --Golbez (talk) 21:37, 15 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Thanks for the comments! —Salmar ^(talk) 02:49, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
and thus, Support. --Golbez (talk) 04:41, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- for reasons explained on his talk page, I have asked Golbez if he could come back to here and make sure that he still supports —Salmar ^(talk) 14:01, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - yup! --Golbez (talk) 17:56, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
1. ~~I'd like to know why there isn't a "left office" column in the Governors of Wisconsin Territory section.~~
  - Simply because, although I assume that they left office the same day their successor took office, there is absolutely no source I can find that actually says this.
    - On the other governor pages, it was very difficult sometimes to find out when a territorial governor left office; often, it was not when the next one took office, and there were significant gaps. However, in the absence of such information, we have to simply assume it was the date. I'll add a note on this.
2. ~~Since there are free images of Governors of Wisconsin Territory available, why is the table not formatted like in the California's page with the images?~~
  - Actually, that'd be a good way to make the table the same size as the governor's table. I think I'll try that; thanks!
    - I tried it, and then reverted myself; my opinion is that the overly tall cells (in contrast to the governor's table) and the large white space to the right make it look ... odd. You can see the with-images version here, if people disagree with me, I'll have no problem changing it back. —Salmar ^(talk) 14:15, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      - I have readded the pictures because a)The "left offices" column was added and the table got an appropriate width and b)All images make tables taller, but at the same time make it more illustratable.--Crzy cheetah 21:30, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
3. These lists about State Governors are the only pages in Wikipedia that use letters for citations and numbers for notes. It needs to be reversed! I blame this on Golbez, of course.
  - Yeah, well, you can .. do .. something bad. :P And no, not quite the only pages, but if you want it repaired, go bug the devs to fill my two-year-old feature request for a second class of reference tags! --Golbez (talk) 17:56, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Because it's easiest to use <ref> tags for the notes (which always produce numbers) and {{ref}} templates for the references, which must, therefore, use letters. I could change it, but it'd be difficult, I think. —Salmar ^(talk) 14:06, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - I can as easily say the opposite that <ref> can easily be used for references and {{ref}} for notes.--Crzy cheetah 21:30, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      - You could. However, it is my opinion that: 1) changing them now would be very difficult. That, of course, is not a good reason not to do it, and, if you truly believe that this is necessary, I will change them. However: 2) the other Featured Lists about governors do it the same way this list does, and a) there doesn't seem to be a problem there and b) it seems good to me that the lists have a similar format and 3) there's no guideline that says it has to be done one way or the other, so, quite simply, I don't see why it matters. —Salmar ^(talk) 00:56, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        I understand that it will be difficult to change, especially so many FLs use it. I just think that notes have to be differentiated from citations. When I am reading an article, I want to know what I am going to read (a note or a citation) before clicking on the footnote. That's why I started advocating these "numbers for citations and letters for notes" guideline, since I believe that most of the articles use this already.--Crzy cheetah 02:31, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
--Crzy cheetah 09:05, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support I supported this list since it was nominated. I just want to make this clear that it doesn't matter to me whether my last concern is met or not.--Crzy cheetah 02:31, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks, and sorry if I came off as a bit rude. I certainly understand your concern, and also wish that there was some easy way to differentiate between notes and citations that is consistent across articles. But unless something like the two-classes-of-references that Golbez mentioned is ever implemented, I'm afraid that I just don't know what can be done =\ Thank you to you and everyone else who has supported thus far! —Salmar ^(talk) 01:08, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
~~Comment~~ Support: A few questions/comments before I support fully:
- Could you widen the almost-full-width tables to 100%? Specifically "Governors of Wisconsin Territory" and "Other high offices held".
  - YDone for the two tables mentioned; the third one is so narrow that making it that wide makes it look silly
- I disagree with the above statement about the key/legend. If you skip down to the table, or (like I did) forget that you saw the colors up there once you've read the lede, you don't know what the colors mean. And since there's a column that indicates party affiliation, you (I) assume(d) that the color couldn't mean party. Then, of course, I scrolled back up for some reason and felt stupid. So my suggestion is to either a) have a key at the bottom of both colored lists or b) move the "Number of ..." table/key/legend down closer to the other colored tables and remove the party affiliation column. Actually, since that column is duplicated information anyway...
  - YI've added the color keys to the main governors table (and that table only) because: 1) the territorial governor table is so small that it really is unnecessary, 2) it isn't completely useless since the lieutenant governors weren't always of the same party as the governor, and their party isn't explicitly mentioned and 3) it isn't completely without precedent; the List of Presidents of the United States does it too
- I'd love for the table to be sortable, but there are too many split-rows for that to be practical, so I'm just registering my frustration at the universe here. :)
- Maybe one more picture along the right side to fill in the white space?
  - YThere's no whitespace when I look at it, but, sure, why not? =) I've added a picture of the current governor, since he was rather obviously missing. The only problem is that the only available picture of him is considerably smaller than the others. If you don't like it (or it isn't big enough to fill the blank space) I can take it out and use a different one.
- -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 02:08, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Thanks for the comments! —Salmar ^(talk) 02:42, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Looks well done. Rmhermen (talk) 16:28, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.