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An "…in Oregon" topic in need of help

Hey all, in case you missed it: a few months ago, EncMstr moved Land use in Oregon (a draft we were working on) into the main article space.

It's got lots of details and citations, but so far it's just a timeline. Needs to have a narrative added. Anyone want to help work it into a decent article? -Pete (talk) 06:23, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

How should we go about expanding it? Should we section it off into decades and give a general run down of the different events? Or should we give a short, but somewhat detailed description of each, collapsing the overly minor into the bigger sections? Ryoga-2003 (talk) 06:54, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Just FYI: I started Gambling in Oregon as yet another "x in Oregon" article. Hope to add more in the near future! Feel free to contribute or add thoughts/comments on the Talk Page. --Another Believer (Talk) 01:44, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Betty Roberts needs your help!

See Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Betty Roberts/1

Right now there's a Good article reassessment on Betty Roberts. For those who don't know, a "reassessment" is where somebody (in this case Aboutmovies (talk · contribs)) objects to the way a Good article assessment was handled.

This has been sitting there for over two weeks, without with only minimal comment from anybody outside the process. Let's see if we can get this resolved, eh? -Pete (talk) 18:06, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Metro web site

I've been trying to work, here and there, on Metro (Oregon regional government) and related articles like David Bragdon. The recent FAC for Forest Park (Portland) had me exploring their web site in some depth, and I found a problem. FYI, here's an email I sent to naturalareas@oregonmetro.gov:

Hi, I am a Wikipedia editor, and a former member of Portland's Mount Tabor Yard and Nursery Planning Group.
Recently, a colleague on Wikipedia has done a fine job writing an article on Forest Park (linked below). I have been trying to help him put the finishing touches on the article, to attain "Featured article" status (the highest peer-reviewed status on the site.)
In the course of our work, we gradually came to recognize the significance of the Natural Areas Program in expanding the natural areas surrounding the park.
However, it has been a painstaking process. You may not be aware, but there appears to be no page on your web site that directly explains what that program is. There are specific pages on the specific bond measures, on the oversight committee and its report, and on its impacts on various parks, but it seems impossible for the general reader to get an overview of what the program IS, what its overall goals and history are, etc.
I hope you can address this, as it appears to be an excellent program, and one that Portland area residents should be made aware of.
<contact info>
Pete (talk) 20:18, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Mugshot / Ma Anand Sheela.

On this page Ma Anand Sheela the picture (mugshot)mugshot is 25 years old and there seems to be a dispute over the copyright status as in it appears to be a fair use picture and as this person is alive it would be better if it was removed . I have a free use recent photo of the profile type which I would like to replace it with to bring the page and image up to date and more inline with wikipedia policy. Are there any objections to this? Please leave any comments on the talk page here. The copyright status of the current picture is here according to what I understand about pictures of living people they should be free use and as recent as possible . regards (Off2riorob (talk) 17:18, 18 April 2009 (UTC))

I think what you're asking boils down to two more or less separate questions. (1) Would it be good to have a free/fair use portrait to illustrate the article? and (2) Does the mugshot belong in the article?
In my view, the answer to both is "yes." (Which appears to be more or less what you've said on that talk page, Off2riorob.) I think it's ideal for the infobox to have a high-quality portrait that does not attempt to portray any specific aspect of the person's life. However, I also think the mugshot illustrates an important aspect of why she's notable, and should be included elsewhere in the article.
The copyright status of the mug shot is a non-issue. The non-free use rationale is sufficient; if you think it's not, the place to take that up is with copyright experts, not Oregon experts. -Pete (talk) 19:07, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
Oh, and it might help the discussion if you were to upload your image so that we can take a look. Let me know if you need technical assistance in doing that. -Pete (talk) 19:08, 18 April 2009 (UTC)


I used Wikipedia:Media copyright questions to solve a recent copyright issue I was having. If I were in your shoes I would upload the image, change to a biography infobox, maybe move the mugshot down below somewhere, and generally be bold. ;) ---- Zab (talk) 19:38, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

here is the picture. (Off2riorob (talk) 20:42, 18 April 2009 (UTC))

You may want to get a WikiPedia:Image copyright tags on there soon before the bot sends you a reminder. Put one on there and I will adjust the image dimensions. -- Zab (talk) 20:57, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
The image of Sheela has been removed by cirt . I was unsure of the copyright tag. I would like to know what anybody who saw the photo thought about it ? was it correct for wiki? would its inclusion improve the page? (Off2riorob (talk) 12:33, 19 April 2009 (UTC))
Yes, I believe that photo would be an improvement to the article. I don't think that it should replace the mugshot, but I think it would make a better lead photo for the infobox; and that the mugshot should be moved down to the section about criminal activity. (Also, I've posted instructions for dealing with licensing on your talk page.) -Pete (talk) 19:26, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Silver Creek (Oregon) article

I was looking at the article, and was wondering why it's listed as a disam page on it's discussion and why it isn't an article on Silver Creek that flows through Silver Falls State Park. I wish to expand on it, but I want to know if there is a reason for it's being what it is, or if I should rewrite the article to be for the specific body of water in Marion County. Ryoga-2003 (talk) 22:19, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

It is difficult to produce a lot of notability from a stream. I have been sporadically working on Bear Creek (Rogue River) but the article has more to do with the park and bike path rather than the stream itself. It's only a matter of time before one of the other "Bear Creeks" in Oregon want their share of the article name. Also Silver Creek already looks like a nightmare. You ask a tough question! Zab (talk) 05:31, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
Looking at the page, and looking at the source there, I would say leave the page as is and start an article Silver Creek (Pudding River) and add it as a link to the page under discussion here. Then add the Silver Falls info. Many creeks are notable, and even reach featured status due to the work of Finetooth, but see Category:Rivers of Oregon for many of the creeks already with articles. Aboutmovies (talk) 06:50, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
An example of a itty bitty creek as FA article is Paulins Kill. (I helped review it long ago.) —EncMstr (talk) 07:35, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
How do we go about having the page deleted? There is already a disam page for Silver Creek, all of them in the world apparantly, and has redlinks to both of Oregon's Silver Creeks. Ryoga-2003 (talk) 19:04, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
To get something deleted, you could ask one of the admins, like Pete or EncMstr, or add a deletion template, but why delete it? The reason that Silver Creek (Oregon) isn't about the stream in Silver Falls State Park is that there are several streams named Silver Creek in Oregon. So that article is a placeholder for what should be a disambiguation page. And yes, because Silver Creek is already quite full, then a single link to Silver Creek (Oregon) (with the wording, "is the name of several streams in the U.S. state of Oregon" or some such) should be placed there and then the Oregon dab page can further disambiguate the Oregon ones. EncMstr has created several similar dab pages for articles with the same name. I moved Bear Creek (Oregon) to Bear Creek (Rogue River) for the same reason. So if another Bear Creek needs an article, then Bear Creek (Oregon), which Zab recently transformed into the dab page it should have been (instead of redirect--I was too lazy to fix it), and the new article listed along with the Rogue River one.
Oh and to back up a moment, when diambiguating stream names, one uses either its location or the stream of which it is a tributary for the qualifier. There is no consensus which is better. When I check GNIS for stream names I sometimes choose the stream into which it flows, and sometimes I choose the location. For example: Mill Creek (Marion County, Oregon), is that way because there are likely several Mill Creeks that flow into the Willamette. So Silver Creek (Pudding River) seems like a good choice for the article in question.
As for the notability of streams, I agree with AM--please look at the contribs of Finetooth (talk · contribs) to just how much info one can find on a stream article. See also List of rivers in Oregon. I hope that helps. Katr67 (talk) 20:08, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Fairbanks, Oregon school?

I happened upon Fairbanks, Oregon while poking around today. I took two halfway decent snapshots of the old schoolhouse. If anyone is interested, I will certainly license and upload them: pic1 pic2. tedder (talk) 05:58, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Good find! I find "Fairbanks, Oregon". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior. for Fairbanks, Oregon. Zab (talk) 05:41, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
Nice! This is kind of my department (deserted locations, cool old buildings), so I might get around to it eventually, but right now real life and The Big Blue Room are more compelling. There's no harm in starting a two-sentence stub though, so if someone does that, I might be motivated to look up the history in OGN. Katr67 (talk) 20:14, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Music Venues

I noticed that there are not articles written for the Portland area music venues, i.e. Roseland Theater, Hawthorne Theater, La Luna, etc. And, I am going to assume that is the same for Oregon wide venues as well. I would begin some of these if WP:OR deems that these places would be considered notable. Roseland would be my first target.Neonblak talk - 13:02, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Hey now, we've got a few -- I'd especially note X-Ray Cafe (hint...hint...) But you're right, there are some major ones missing. I'd say no question that La Luna and Roseland Theatre are notable, not so sure about the Hawthorne. For the Roseland, I'd be happy to work on some info about the Starry Night murder (see PDXS for a sketch). And, you've probably seen the category Category:Nightclubs in Portland, Oregon?
I'll be watching for new additions! Thanks. -Pete (talk) 16:11, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
Note also the page Starry Night (disambiguation). We should check for redirects that need to go to...well, I had it as Roseland Theater (not Theatre)--which is it? People often link the venues in articles about band tours. What was it called before it was the Starry Night, anyway?... Wasn't Pine Street Theater a big deal, or is that the same as La Luna [1]? Also Aladdin Theatre might be notable. Katr67 (talk) 17:03, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
Need to be careful about Starry Night. They have concerts in Sisters at the high school every few months called "Starry Night", which I feel is significant enough as they have big name musicians at times. Once they had Kenny Loggins. Ryoga-2003 (talk) 19:11, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
All I'm saying need to update the disambiguation page to reflect the appropriate name of the current venue, and make sure any links: [[Roseland Theater|Starry Night]] direct to the correct spelling. If a redirect from "Starry Night" the concert venue to "Roseland Theater" is needed, it would be at Starry Night (venue) and the concert series would be at Starry Night (concert series). If further disambiguation is needed, then we add "Oregon" to the qualifiers. But I've found that municipal concert series are not usually notable on their own, and are better mentioned in the articles about their respective venues. By notability, I'm talking about something on the level of the Britt Festival. Katr67 (talk) 19:34, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
Katr, you'er probably right about the Roseland spelling. I went ahead and created a stub for LaLuna (yes, my current credibility on such matters aside, that actually is how it was spelled), as I remembered I have a bit of dead tree lying around that mentioned it. Plenty left to do there though. -Pete (talk) 05:02, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
Katr brought me here with a link. I guess I'm supposed to say something about La Luna not being called LaLuna. I too, have several hunks of dead tree in the form of posters, old advertisements, concert listings, etc., and all of them show La Luna (with a space). I was active in going to concerts when La Luna was still kickin' and La Luna is the way it was described. LaLuna without a space just doesn't make sense. It is interesting to note, that the article Lunatics Ball that is referenced on the La Luna article, has both spellings. Do a Ctrl-F, type in La Luna and it will show you where it's hiding. So not even this allegedly legit article can get it right. I think Katr pointed this out as well. Leitmotiv (talk) 18:37, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Francis J. Murnane

Can we get some more help with this article? As far as I can tell, the guy is quite notable, despite the page being used somewhat to promote a cause (save a wharf named after him). The authors claim most of the references are on newspaper clippings, so maybe we can get a volunteer or two to check microfilm. I've encouraged the authors to provide citation info, but I'm not sure if they've read those messages. I'll follow up later and link all the pertinent talk page messages to the article's talk page and notify the authors. Meanwhile, I'm uncomfortable with the number of quotations and what I perceive as a bit of pro-Murnane slant (not that I have anything against the man, but Wikipedia is not a memorial). I'm not asking for a draconian/deletionist approach, but since I'm not as familiar with WP:BIO as some of you are, I don't know how much of the content is appropriate. The authors aren't experienced, but they are acting in good faith, so please don't bite. Thanks. Katr67 (talk) 19:25, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

anyone feel like wordsmithing?

Rex Putnam High School has a paragraph that could use some editing. I tried paring it down, but the contributor has some points with what was (re)added. So I'm hoping a third party can look at it. tedder (talk) 05:26, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Request for comment at 1985 Rajneeshee assassination plot

Please see Talk:1985_Rajneeshee_assassination_plot#RfC:_High-ranking_followers. Thank you for your time, Cirt (talk) 01:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Big Town Hero up for deletion

This has been speedy tagged. Likely some notability can be dredged up if someone has a minute. Katr67 (talk) 18:55, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Listing all requested photos for Oregon?

So Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Oregon exists, but it is broken up into subcategories. Is there a way to get all articles that need photos in Oregon listed on one page? Especially a category that I can use the toolserver kmlexport on? (listing your top 'wants' here is good too.. I'm willing to make some daytrips out of it). tedder (talk) 18:43, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Many of the requested photos in the category are for NRHP-listed historic sites. I was just recently wondering out loud, elsewhere, whether it would be better to just put a reqphoto template on the big List of RHPs in OR article (which covers the smaller counties) and on the 25 or so separate NRHP articles for bigger counties. Each of these NRHP list articles has a linked Google/LiveSearch map that shows locations of all sites having coordinates. Each has a big set of implicit photo requests, for all sites where there is no photo in the table. This includes sites with an article and sites with no article yet. Would it help, here, if the separate reqphotos on the individual NRHP sites were dropped, in favor of more-important reqphotos for the list-articles? Anyhow, wherever you go, you can check the corresponding NRHP list-table and Google map to see if there are NRHP photos needed. doncram (talk) 20:56, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the analysis, Doncram. I think it's probably best to keep them on the individual articles -- especially with the location background. That makes it easy, say, if I know i'm going to be running around southern Oregon for a few days with a camera, I can see all locations that need a photo, and figure out which ones I want to try to shoot. That way I would see all Oregon-related photo needs in one place, instead of having to do a separate list for NHRP locations. -Pete (talk) 21:21, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
I won't go deleting the reqphotos from individual articles. To be clear, all the NRHP places which don't have articles yet (probably more than half) don't have reqphotos, so checking the NRHP list-articles would still help you find more pics to take wherever you are going. Sorry it is not as convenient as having all in one place. By the way, I started a big map of historic sites in California, just so that California historic sites Task Force members could find all the historic sites for which coords are available in just one Google/LiveSearch map. I could set up the same for Oregon, covering all the NRHP ones with coordinates, to start, in one list/map. Non-nrhp places having coordinates could be added in too. Would that help? doncram (talk) 22:23, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
Oh, I see what you're saying -- sorry, I didn't get that about redlink articles. Glad to know about the overall maps, that's helpful. -Pete (talk) 22:51, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
A complete list would be handy. I like to ad-lib when I travel, and I usually end up at Point B or C instead of the planned-for Point A. If I could go on-line from Point B or C and look at the general list, I might snag an extra photo or two per trip. Finetooth (talk) 22:03, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
For Oregon historic sites and other locations needing photos, I'll start something at Wikipedia:WikiProject Oregon/Coordinates. Since I've run into errors for having too many coordinates on one page, when trying to do all the California sites, I'll start by just trying to cover one area. Would "Southwestern Oregon" be useful to cover, defined by, say, Curry, Josephine, Jackson, Klamath, Coos, Douglas and Lane counties? doncram (talk) 00:26, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I'd say so. Looking at your northern California list was interesting. I sometimes ramble around down there. Finetooth (talk) 04:23, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
I happened to notice this discussion and just wanted to note that the kmlexport tool also has a (largely unused) recursive mode. It for example allows you to see a Google Maps or Live Search Maps view of all articles in Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Oregon and its subcategories, or if you want something usable elsewhere, there's a list in kml format. Hopefully that'll help with some of the tedious manual work! --Para (talk) 01:17, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
Para, that recursive mode is EXACTLY what I needed. Fantastic! Now I just need to solve the travelling salesman problem so I can get to all 921 locations :-) tedder (talk) 04:34, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
Para, thanks for joining here. I was going to see what I could do semi-tediously and then ask for help automating. I have not been aware of that, I didn't hear of it when i was involved in some discussions a year ago. I need time to look at that. But, in the LiveSearch link, it doesn't capture some, such as Agness, Oregon, which are in the requested photos in Oregon (southern coast sub-category). There must be some limitations, or some tricks we need to learn to use it more fully. doncram (talk) 06:18, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
The size of the collection is just too big to handle in Javascript based services. The tool always includes all the articles with coordinates in the requested category, but map services seem to work a bit differently when given big lists. Here's a test with 1024 points in a grid: Google shows 100-ish randomly here and there throughout the area, possibly to space them out and to avoid clutter. It reorganises them when the viewpoint is moved or zoom control massaged. Live however shows only the first 200 from the list and doesn't touch the selection no matter what you do. The kmlexport tool goes through categories in a depth-first manner, so Live may not be showing the unlucky last branches (in database order, whatever that may be) of the root category at all. I haven't put any thought into ordering the results, as the order of xml elements shouldn't matter, and with an application like Requested photographs, some wanted ones will always be missing when the list is chopped like that.
You can work with the whole tree in Google Earth for example, but for preparing routes etc it would be nice if there was a way to select placemarks with a selection tool like on a Windows desktop or the lasso tool in drawing programs. Otherwise the only solution is probably just to start the category lookup from the subcategories. --Para (talk) 16:50, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, I exported the kmz to gpx/gdb and imported it into MapSource; it showed all 900+ items. tedder (talk) 17:10, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
FYI, with the NRHP listings, many of the coordinates are off, so if you are looking for a particular house among many, it will show the wrong one (I found it to be about three houses off for those in Forest Grove, and I think in all cases the correct house was west of the coords). Entering the address in Google Maps or whatever map program you use is more accurate. Aboutmovies (talk) 08:11, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Merge discussion

Please see Talk:Rajneesh_movement#Merge_discussion. Cirt (talk) 08:25, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

reqphoto: where is Corvallis?

Pardon my ignorant geography, but with the reqphoto tag, is Corvallis part of (greater) Eugene, (greater) Salem, "Willamette Valley", or some category I'm missing? To put it in context, it's for this article: Talk:Crescent_Valley_High_School. tedder (talk) 18:21, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Corvallis is about 10 miles (somewhat) west of Albany, Oregon --Tesscass (talk) 19:36, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
I would consider it in the mid-Willamette Valley region, and not near Eugene or Salem. --Tesscass (talk) 19:39, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification- I know where it is, but not what region/category to consider it. I put 'willamette' in for the reqphoto tag, so I guessed correctly. New camera will arrive Friday, I'm looking forward to some photo-gathering road trips. tedder (talk) 19:42, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
The reqphoto parameter should indicate Willamette Valley for Corvallis. When I set up the categories, there were few Corvallis articles. At present, there are 23 articles in Category:Corvallis, Oregon. The number of requested photos in the Willamette Valley has grown a bit, and is now at 56, probably about to the point it should be subdivided. —EncMstr (talk) 19:46, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
Just a suggestion, but you might want to go through Commons and here as well and see if there are photos there before duplicating work (or maybe saving some gas). Occasionally we get pics first and no article, and then someone makes an article but doesn't look for an existing pic. Aboutmovies (talk) 23:24, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
Hooray for photo drives! (Or photo cycles, as the case may be.) Be sure to blog about your adventures], too! -Pete (talk) 23:31, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Ladd Carriage House: too many photos!

There are three photos on the Ladd Carriage House page, and I have two more:

Can someone tell me (here) which of the five photos should remain? Ideally the page should only have two, maybe three photos. I can't make the decision, especially since 60% of the pictures are mine and I feel like they are my babies. tedder (talk) 05:45, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I think the priority should be #1 File:Ladd Carriage House - Portland Oregon.jpg, #2 File:Ladd Carriage House on moving day 2008-10-25.jpg, #3 http://perljam.net/photog/t1i-test/small/dpp_0037.jpg. They can all be on commons and linked there by the other versions field, or maybe a category. —EncMstr (talk) 06:58, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Enc. 0018 is a bit close, unless there is an architecture section. The one with Ladd Tower is focused on the tower, sadly. Ryoga-2003 (talk) 07:37, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
Okay, so I added #37 and left out #18, though I uploaded both. That means there are two images not linked: File:Ladd Carriage House brown paint closeup 2009-04-29.jpg and File:Moving_the_Ladd_Carriage_House.jpg. What needs to happen to those? They need to be categorized, but I don't know how or anything else- the image world isn't something I'm really familiar with. tedder (talk) 11:35, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
I added the pictures in the see also section. I'll add categories soon. Next time, you can add them to Commons which makes them available across all versions of Wikipedia, plus it is more designed for images with categories and the templates that can be added to an article saying there are pics available at commons. Aboutmovies (talk) 19:38, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
I need to start adding them to commons instead, yeah. I guess my question was, how does a commonscat work for a specific article? (and I have a new batch of photos from today's field trip) tedder (talk) 01:07, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
You just make a category there, just as you would here. Which is add the category to the photo, which produces a red link, click on the redlink, add some parent cats, save. Aboutmovies (talk) 06:07, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Portland WikiWednesday, May 6th

FYI for all WikiProject Oregon folk, the Portland WikiWednesday gather next week will be specifically aimed at Wikipedia for Journalists and Bloggers. You're all invited (as usual), and we'd love to have plenty of Wikipedians there. See you next week! Steven Walling (talk) 02:27, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Old Greyhound terminal/CCC?

Was in the neighborhood, so I took some shots of the old Greyhound bus terminal building (in the armpit of 405 and 5, south end). Is anything known about it? Is it truly CCC related? Sorry for the PDX-centered discussion and the "hey everyone, look at tedder's generic photos" thing that is going on. tedder (talk) 06:55, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I always notice this building when I'm flying by on the freeway, wonder what its story is, and promptly forget to try to find info on it. But I don't think it's CCC if you're referring to the motif in the corners--I believe those are wheels. If you look at the details on Union Station, you will see winged wheels as part of the designs of its facade as well, so it seems pretty common on transportation-related buildings. In fact, wouldn't you know, I did a google search on "winged wheel", and look what turned up: Wheel#In symbology. There are wheels (without wings, I think) on the facade of the former state Commerce building (across 12th from ODJ/Supreme Court), and winged wheels on a UO building that probably used to house the appropriate department, like Business...the Wheels of Progress and all that. Anyway, the old Greyhound building looks Art Deco to me and like a bus barn facility. All I can find on Google is speculation, this person seems to agree with me: http://www.agilitynut.com/bus/or.html Sounds like this interesting old relic is not long for this world though. Here are some other photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/41385865@N00/313082557 http://www.flickr.com/photos/vintageroadside/2454656681/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/11339606@N07/2455509744/ I believe the speculation that this was a station is incorrect. Strange the historic preservation folks aren't all over this. Maybe y'all just have too darned many historic buildings up there in P-Town. Katr67 (talk) 01:23, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
Great topic. Interesting about the CCC vs. winged wheels. My first thought of course was of the Community Cycling Center, which maybe should think about incorporating that theme into its logo ;) (if it hasn't already).
I don't know the building -- and I spent a while poking around in Google Street View looking for it in the area you described, no dice. I thought it might be interesting, if we could determine the address, to look up the ownership info on Portlandmaps. -Pete (talk) 16:18, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Oh, also -- in case you guys weren't aware, there was a bus station here before the new Hilton building went in 8 years ago or so. (Though it was inactive long before that.) -Pete (talk) 16:59, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Here's the google street view and the portland maps link. Sorry, I really need to rewrite my perl script to autotag my photo coords. tedder (talk) 17:06, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

(Outdent) Not 100% sure, but I think the pictured building was a bus barn, not a terminal. The old Greyhound terminal Pete mentioned was between 5th and 6th on Taylor, on the south half of the block that once held the Corbett mansion.

By the late 1860s and 1870s, many of Portland’s merchants had become prosperous. They began to commission gracious residences with manicured gardens near what was then the edge of town. Within a few years, the town grew up around them, and before long many of the comes were at the center of downtown activity.

The Corbett mansion, at Southwest Fifth and Yamhill, was one of these. It survived until Henry L. Corbett’s widow, Gretchen Hoyt Corbett died in the mid-1930s. She was his second, and younger, wife, and her home was a tourist attraction because she kept her cow pastured in the north end of the block until 1925. Finally, rising taxes compelled her to allow the construction of a large office building over the cow pasture.

Source: Oregon Historical Society. YBG (talk) 07:35, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Date formatting in citations

Here's a general style question that I keep bumping into. WP:MOSNUM#Dates says that dates in the article body text should all have the same format and that dates in article references should all have the same format. However, the date formatting of the article body text can differ from the date formatting of the citations. These requirements apply to dates in general prose and in reference citations but not to dates in quotations or titles. Following this guideline is not a problem for me when I'm editing or doing a peer review because the main contributor(s) have usually made a choice about the preferred style or styles. I assume that their choice is just a matter of taste or national custom. When the choice is mine, however, I've been using the m-d-y (August 10, 1999) format for both main text and citations because I have a taste for utter consistency. However, I see that few other editors who are aware of the MOSNUM guidelines make the same choice. Instead, a common pattern for U.S.-centric articles is to use m-d-y in the main text and yyyy-mm-dd (1999-08-10) in the citations. Occasionally, as happened today with Tryon Creek, an editor will revert one or more of my m-d-y dates to yyyy-mm-dd. Unless someone reverts them all, that makes them inconsistent. Rather than reverting the revert, which is something I take pains to avoid, my inclination is to change the rest of the citation dates to yyyy-mm-dd to achieve stability and (knock on wood) consensus. Can someone give me a logical reason why yyyy-mm-dd is better in the citations than m-d-y? Finetooth (talk) 20:45, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that using the citation templates via the buttons above the text editing area, it automatically fills in the date, and does as 2009-05-02. I rarely take the effort to change it while I'm typing. I don't know about anyone else, but that's why it happens in articles I edit. Maybe there is a preferences part for that.... Aboutmovies (talk) 22:31, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
This may sound odd, but I have never used the buttons, and I didn't know the "cite" button favored yyyy-mm-dd. This tilts me toward yyyy-mm-dd simply to go with the flow. Finetooth (talk) 00:17, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
It's also nice for citations to use yyyy-mm-dd when looking for the cited books, as that's how the ISBN coding sorts books. Like you Finetooth, I'm consistent, but when it comes to the citations, it's actually easier for me to use yyyy-mm-dd if I want to find publications. m-d-y is more colloquial. Ryoga-2003 (talk) 23:20, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
I didn't know that either, and I thank you. This also tilts me toward yyyy-mm-dd. Finetooth (talk) 00:17, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

At some point the citation templates were changed so that they no longer worked with one's date preference settings. (Maybe there's a new option I don't know about?) I used to enter them as yyyy-mm-dd because I knew they would default to the user's preference. I now enter them as Month Day, Year since I dislike yyyy-mm-dd but I generally only change other refs to that format as needed to be consistent within the refs section, and that format happens to be consistent with the preferred Month Day, Year format for the body of the American English topics I edit. But I also didn't know about the ISBN thing, for which it makes sense to default to yyyy-mm-dd. Not all the citation templates are for books though...but I'm for whatever format renders the refs section consistent even if it's not consistent with the format in the article. Katr67 (talk) 00:59, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I've changed the other Tryon Creek citation dates to yyyy-mm-dd. They are once again consistent. Finetooth (talk) 01:19, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
Actually, we are talking about the retrieval date field, which has nothing to do with ISBN numbers, does it? Since we're talking about the date a url is retrieved? Or am I missing something? Books generally are only cited by year, not month or day, right? Katr67 (talk) 01:37, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
I like yyyy-mm-dd because it puts them in major to minor order and makes sorting dates easier. Good proof for why we (as wikipedia) need to use a templated date system! tedder (talk) 02:30, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
I think that the ISBN, depending if it is the older ISBN-10 or newer ISBN-13 also codes in the month. Ryoga-2003 (talk) 22:56, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Above (the initial post) we're only talking about the formatting of the accessdate field, correct? I don't see what that has to do with the ISBN. Again, am I missing something? Katr67 (talk) 23:14, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
I don't see it either. I just assumed Ryoga was using a method unfamiliar to me. Like Katr67, I prefer m-d-y, but, as I said above, I'll go with the flow (if there is one). Finetooth (talk) 23:47, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
I just discovered there was a discussion here about date formats. I noticed it because I left a note for Finetooth about some confusion I caused by changing the name of a field in Template:cite gnis. I agree with what has been said so far. I use MDY in the body of an article and ISO 8601 (yyyy-mm-dd) for citations. I prefer ISO 8601 in citations because it is easier to check for errors when using AWD and regular expressions. That's no reason for a standard. It's just pure laziness on my part. I don't like ISO 8601 in the body of an article because I find it rather distracting. I also don't like abbreviations or acronyms in the article body for the same reason. --droll [chat] 05:16, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

SPA / COI at Portland Spaces and Portland Monthly

Portland Spaces (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

and

Portland Monthly (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Lots of material added by a WP:SPA / WP:COI account - the account already has a conflict of interest warning on its user talk page and it has also tried to add wholly unsourced info to the article Portland Monthly. I removed that, but this article Portland Spaces needs a lot of cleanup. Would be helpful if others could also take a look at it. Cirt (talk) 16:46, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

This account Mgillim (talk · contribs) is now removing swathes of sourced material from the WP:GA article Portland Monthly. Cirt (talk) 16:55, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Dude, I was already on it =) Blocked for 3 hours, which is probably too little. I'll keep an eye on that account after 1pm. -Pete (talk) 17:09, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Update: The user's first action after the block expired was to repeat the exact same behavior of unsourced changes and removal of sources [2]. Cirt (talk) 20:28, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Proposing changes to Template:WP:WPOR-Nav

Hello, I made some adjustments to Template:WP:WPOR-Nav which now look like this:


Main • Talk 		Oregon Portal • Collaboration
Recent Talk • Recent Changes (Non-Article) 		About Us • Participants (Our Blog) • DYKs • Awards
Subprojects • Assessment • Infoboxes • Templates • Reference Desk

What do you all think? The adjustments are made here. Zab (talk) 11:38, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I like it. --Tesscass (talk) 17:45, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Ooooh. Graphics! I think the only change I'd make (to stuff that is also in the current version) is to make the links plainlinks (i.e. no arrow-thingy), except maybe on the truly off-site blog. Oh, and the copyeditor in me urges capitalization of all the words. Katr67 (talk) 20:31, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm adding the current one here for comparison because I'm too lazy to scroll up to the top of the page... Katr67 (talk) 20:33, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Um, "capitalization of all the words", including "us", "blog", "non" and "article". :) Katr67 (talk) 20:15, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
I like this too, and greatly appreciate the efforts! Suffering a bit of self-serving tunnel vision right now, my favorite thing is that this went live immediately before our radio appearance =) Thanks for taking a crack at this, Zab. And if you have thoughts about the overall layout of our front page, I still think we could use some kind of overhaul there.... -Pete (talk) 20:20, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
Oh wait, I see it ain't live yet after all. Ah well, I dig it just the same ;) -Pete (talk)
Nah I figured consensus was best on this one. I updated it again per Katr67's suggestions. Zab (talk) 22:33, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
The new one looks better than the old, but can we try to work in more white space? For instance move the image and related items to the left a bit. Also, infoboxes should really be one word as that is how we use it on Wikipedia. Lastly, I'll second Pete's motion that we need a revamp of the main page, with a suggestion much of it be split off into individual pages and for the rest WP:LAW has a good design. Aboutmovies (talk) 06:33, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
  • I went ahead and updated it again per suggestions. As for the main page is it ok to separate all those show/hide blocks into subpages? Zab (talk) 16:15, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Redesign thoughts

Moved to a new subsection to separate these items out. These are my thoughts on some redesigns of the main project page:

  • Make a subpage for the subprojects section, but then leave a link to that page as well as a small column like list that has just the names of the subprojects (minus the current see also part). This way people can see what subprojects there are without have to go elsewhere first, but take up less room.
    • Do we find the sub-projects useful? In my opinion, a couple are, but not necessarily all of them. Also, I'm not sure that having them linked from article talk pages (as in, "this article is part of WP:ORE/politics workgroup") accomplishes anything beyond talk page clutter. -Pete (talk)
  • Move the "Categories and recent changes" to its own page, but similar to the subprojects leave some info in a smaller format. Speciafically the links in the upper section that are not duplicated in the nav template at the top of the page. To help keep these smaller, pipe the links with only a few word description: e.g. New Oregon Articles Bot. Also, move the "Article alerts" link here too with the same short description.

So those are my thoughts, what are everyone else's? Aboutmovies (talk) 07:03, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

After your clarifications I'd say we're in 100% agreement. Hooray for a consensus of two! I'd say, go forth and be bold. Nobody else seems to give a damn, as far as I can tell ;) -Pete (talk) 08:10, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
I care! Really I do, but I'm up to my eyeballs in helping a fellow Wikipedian put on a benefit right now. Check out the ad on our wiki and come on down! Hopefully I'll have time to take a look at our beloved project's page this weekend. Katr67 (talk) 23:06, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
My god man! I do not render opinions very often because I am good at making an ass of myself; rather I would prefer everyone else decide and I will just play along. WP:WikiSloth ftw! Here are my thoughts though:
  • Subprojects are kind of redundant. Already a select few dedicated editors are hard at work maintaining the primary WikiProject Oregon pages. I believe the subprojects unecessarily increase this workload. Why not collapse the subprojects into categeories (if not already) and perhaps dedicate a month out of each year on them? Think: July is Wikipedia:WikiProject Oregon/Cities month (for example).
  • The main page should be broken into subpages to the point where only an introduction to the WikiProject appears on the main page, then some kind of description of the project with bold links (playbill style?) should be under the intro leading to the other pages. The entire entry page for WikiProject Oregon should be no more than 2 screenfuls of info.
  • You are right that this comes down to boldness. No matter how much it is discussed here, nothing will matter until someone starts butchering the page with impunity. ZabMilenko 09:01, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Oregon hits the airwaves!

Wanted to let y'all know, I'll be on the OPB radio talk show Think Out Loud tomorrow (Friday) morning, 9-10 AM.

I'll be on with Oregon Encyclopedia editor Bill Lang, talking about online encyclopedia projects (specifically, the WikiProject Oregon community of Wikipedia editors).

Check out the great announcement they put up for the show.

Hope you all can listen! And if you have suggestions about what to talk about, or highlight about our work, let me know! -Pete (talk) 19:20, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Post-archiving note: the broadcast is archived here. -Pete (talk) 23:29, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
This is most excellent! For those of you unfamiliar with the show, you can call in or comment in the show's on-line discussion area during airtime, and they rerun the show in the evening at 9 p.m. (obviously you can no longer call in, but you can still comment) If you're not in their broadcast area, I think they have nearly statewide coverage with translators now. Or you can always listen online. I sound like an ad for OPB. Guess what station my radio is tuned to most of the time... Katr67 (talk) 20:22, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
That's great! I would think most OPB listeners have heard a lot about Wikipedia, but don't have any clue how collaboration works, particularly in article development, fact checking, and the different passes by copyeditors, photo contributions, overall article structure, etc. Those would be a great things to focus on: kind of a we're doing this and here's how you can help thingy. —EncMstr (talk) 01:21, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the support, guys! You know, their online discussions during the show are often lively. It would be great if you guys can make accounts on the OPB site, and be logged in to answer the slew of questions and concerns that might come in... Esprqii has already volunteered to do that, but I'm sure he could use a hand. Getting excited for this! -Pete (talk) 02:50, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Does your WikiProject care about talk pages of redirects?

Does your project care about what happens to the talk pages of articles that have been replaced with redirects? If so, please provide your input at User:Mikaey/Request for Input/ListasBot 3. Thanks, Matt (talk) 02:14, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I replied at the listed forum. Aboutmovies (talk) 05:54, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Subprojects

Currently we have 10 regular subprojects that deal with sub areas of the project such as biographies, history, or government. They are all pretty much dormant, but do provide a good centralized location for storing useful sources/links and lists of articles to create. I think our long term goals was to add a icon and link via the main {{WikiProject Oregon}} template similar to how WikiProject Biography does with its work groups for politicians, military, etc. Right now only WP:ORE's politician/government subproject has a talk page template, and I know I stopped adding that a long time ago to new articles. So, the question raised by Pete above is if we want the politics and government template removed as excess baggage, leave it, and/or implement the icons within the {{WikiProject Oregon}} template? I support removing the politician/government template and implementing the icon option. My thoughts are that the politician/government is clutter, but the non-intrusive icons may help revive the subprojects by giving some advertising to them and recruiting an active base for each. In general it would be great to recruit more members so we can accelerate the improvement of articles across the project. My personal hope is that we could get more than half of all the articles in the project above the stub level by years end through expansion, re-assessment in some instances, deletions, merges, and even removal of the WP:ORE template in a few cases, all by the end of the year. But I digress. Aboutmovies (talk) 05:53, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

new article heads up: Oregon senate democrats

This was recently created. Besides having the improper article title, is it redundant with something else? tedder (talk) 22:40, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Looks like Seventy-fifth Oregon Legislative Assembly duplicates some of it. (Did we decide to rename the spelled out names?) —EncMstr (talk) 23:01, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
It is also somewhat redundant with Oregon State Senate as well. I personally don't see a need for it or one for the Republicans (or Independents if there are any this session) or for the House. I think making sure the members are all in the Oregon Demos cat and ensuring the info on the Senate and session articles are current should suffice, then a redirect. Aboutmovies (talk) 23:57, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
I also think a merge and redirect is in order. Steven Walling (talk) 22:15, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

I would like to load article on Camp Abbot--a WW II amry training base near Bend; however, someone has linked "Camp Abbot" to "Sunriver" article. How can I get that link disconnected so I can load Camp Abbot article? While Camp Abbot is related to Sunriver, it has its own story.--Orygun (talk) 02:10, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi Orygun! No worries, that's pretty easy. Basically, when you click on Camp Abbot and it takes you to Sunriver, note at the top it says "(Redirected from Camp Abbot)". Click there, which will show you the real Camp Abbot page. (really, all it's doing is adding "redirect=no" to the URL). You can now edit and remove the #redirect and replace it with content.
I'd suggest including some sort of link to Sunriver, since there might be links on or off Wikipedia pointing to Camp Abbot that really mean Sunriver.
For more information, you can check this out: m:Help:Redirect#Changing_a_redirect. tedder (talk) 02:41, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
Camp Abbot article is loaded--thanks!--Orygun (talk) 03:13, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Just noticed there are 2 different categories for Oregon disambiguation articles

??? -Tesscass (talk) 23:08, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps invitation

This message is being sent to WikiProjects with GAs under their scope. Since August 2007, WikiProject Good Articles has been participating in GA sweeps. The process helps to ensure that articles that have passed a nomination before that date meet the GA criteria. After nearly two years, the running total has just passed the 50% mark. In order to expediate the reviewing, several changes have been made to the process. A new worklist has been created, detailing which articles are left to review. Instead of reviewing by topic, editors can consider picking and choosing whichever articles they are interested in.

We are always looking for new members to assist with reviewing the remaining articles, and since this project has GAs under its scope, it would be beneficial if any of its members could review a few articles (perhaps your project's articles). Your project's members are likely to be more knowledgeable about your topic GAs then an outside reviewer. As a result, reviewing your project's articles would improve the quality of the review in ensuring that the article meets your project's concerns on sourcing, content, and guidelines. However, members can also review any other article in the worklist to ensure it meets the GA criteria.

If any members are interested, please visit the GA sweeps page for further details and instructions in initiating a review. If you'd like to join the process, please add your name to the running total page. In addition, for every member that reviews 100 articles from the worklist or has a significant impact on the process, s/he will get an award when they reach that threshold. With ~1,300 articles left to review, we would appreciate any editors that could contribute in helping to uphold the quality of GAs. If you have any questions about the process, reviewing, or need help with a particular article, please contact me or OhanaUnited and we'll be happy to help. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 06:52, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Digital Trends article - Please help

Hi,

I have updated the main article page (Digital Trends) while affirming the reference of content with a popular electronic product review website (www.digitaltrends.com). In addition, I've also did some minor copy editing to make the article stand in terms with wikipedia rules. It has been more than a week that the changes have been incorporated. However, still the main page carries the following headers.

{{COI}} {{Refimprove}}

May we now remove above header from the page? Please advice.


Digital Techno (talk) 13:09, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

DT, thanks for bringing this up here. I think we can get you where you want to be, but it might take just a couple more steps.
First, the tag was placed by Orangemike (talk · contribs), who is not a member of WikiProject Oregon -- so you might want to contact him independently. However, you probably want to make a pretty strong case before you go to him, so that might not be your best first step. (Of course, he's not the final arbiter of this sort of thing, but it's sort of an unwritten courtesy guideline to check in with the person who initially placed the tag before removing it; not necessary, but good practice).
The first tag is a little more complicated than the second. I think that if we work together a little, I'll be comfortable removing that; but addressing the issues surrounding the second tag will be a big part of that.
The second tag -- it's great that you added a couple references, but for an article as detailed as this, we really need more; and also, they need to be placed inline. To demonstrate what I mean by that, I placed the "LetsGoDigital" reference as an inline citation; I suspect this article supports many more of the facts in the article, but I'll leave some of that to you. I "named" that citation, which makes it easy to use it to support other facts. To do so, simply place the following text at the end of any sentence that's supported by that article: <ref name=letsgo/>
Other things you should probably do: seek out a few more references (I'd recommend the Portland Business Journal, which has covered Digital Trends a few times I believe); and there may be some considerations about the article content still. For instance, I'm not sure there's a need for a section on the "Core team".
Let me know if this makes sense, I'm happy to answer more detailed questions if necessary. -Pete (talk) 22:06, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

attention WPOR admins: more PCH

Can one of you admins quickly handle our new friends? tedder (talk) 02:11, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Just FYI, in case you aren't aware, I've created Wikipedia:WikiProject Oregon/Pioneercourthouse sockpuppet saga, which attempts to explain the situation in depth. Sign it if you agree; eventually I will probably move it to WP:LTA. tedder (talk) 21:35, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Division

Hi folks. If anyone has time to look this over (I don't), it appears a COI editor added new info over the old info in this article, and rather than revert it, I cleaned up the new version. The old info definitely contained a great deal of COI copy-and-paste, but I didn't have time check and see if any of the old info should be incorporated into the new version, or if the new version was also some sort of copy and paste. I concluded the new version was an improvement, but if too much damage was done in the updating, I wouldn't mind if it gets rolled back to the original version and the new info added to that if needed. I've found these government COI folks generally aren't very interested in engaging in the Wikipedia process, but I think it's good to try to work with them if possible. Katr67 (talk) 23:38, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with all that...I posted some basic suggestions on the talk page. I think maybe stubbifying the article, and moving all the prior content to the talk page, might be appropriate here. But I'd want some other opinions before doing that... -Pete (talk) 00:22, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
I commented on the article's talk page, but it does need major work. I didn't look back to see if it was better before. —EncMstr (talk) 00:41, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Goat Weather Vanes

Radioman User:Dravecky came across some notable popular culture from the 70s and 80s, goats in Roseburg used to forecast the weather. See User:Dravecky/Sandbox/Weather Goats and KRSB-FM. Neither he nor I have time to research and write up an article, but it would be an easy DYK for someone with the time. Aboutmovies (talk) 07:44, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Oregonian tips

I came across this blog post the other day and it might be helpful to others struggling with getting info from The Oregonian: http://www.altportland.com/consume/media/the_oregonianor_1.shtml

The best tip is for accessing The Oregonian archives using your (assuming you have one) Multnomah County Library membership:

  1. Go to http://www.multcolib.org/ref/articles.html
  2. Select "Newspapers"
  3. Select "The Oregonian (1988-present)"
  4. Search results will direct you to the full article at NewsBank.com.

I love the library. Cacophony (talk) 01:38, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Eugene neighborhood article for rescue

If anyone wants it: West University, Eugene, Oregon. tedder (talk) 05:00, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up! I completely rewrote it. Anything for the old 'hood. If anyone has the patience to flesh out my bare refs, it would be much appreciated. I'm up past my bedtime... Katr67 (talk) 06:27, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
I can totally get pictures up the wazoo for this one. Namely because it's where I currently reside. Sadly, I'm otherwise biased about the area. Namely because of the noise on weekends. Ryoga-2003 (talk) 18:36, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
Awesome. I'd like to see what the new park looks like. I lived in the neighborhood when it was safer and quieter, and it was pretty good then, especially when the students left for the summer. ;) It was sad to come back after living out of state for a few years and see what it had become... Anyway, could you get pics of the Bijou Theatre, Little's Market/Max's and...? I'll think of some more. Those two are on the NRHP though. Need to add that info to the article. Katr67 (talk) 19:55, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
Those three are easy, especially since they have renovated Little's and Max's this last year. The park is nice, but fairly basic. Looks like a simple city park. Nothing special. Been a lot of old housing complexes torn down and new ones built, while some have been remodeled and sold to new companies. And the Bijou is the church turned theatre, right? Ryoga-2003 (talk) 02:20, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

A new bot has graced us with its presence: Wikipedia:WikiProject Oregon/Popular pages. Would you have guessed the most popular WikiProject Oregon pages in the month of May09 were .. River Phoenix, followed by Annie Duke? That our least popular GA was Oregon wine? tedder (talk) 05:59, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

So, how does it work? Does it record pageviews? Number of edits? It's an interesting thing, but I'm curious as to what makes them popular. Ryoga-2003 (talk) 18:34, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
It is number of page views, probably distilled from the server logs. I notice a strong correlation of high scores to youth popular culture notoriety. —EncMstr (talk) 19:15, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
Keep in mind, Annie Duke was just on Celebrity Apprentice, so that might have bumped up article hits. This is a cool list! Thanks for sharing. --Another Believer (Talk) 03:24, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Pageview stats

After a recent request on my talk page, I added WikiProject Oregon to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Oregon/Popular pages.

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. I can also get provide the full data for any project covered by the bot if requested, though I normally don't keep it for much longer than a couple weeks after the list is generated. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man 04:29, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

This is cool. Thanks for doing it. One cool thing going forward would be to see a trend over time--so for next month's entry, if it would show the % change from the previous month for that article, maybe even highlighted in red or green depending on the change. I'm sure that's not trivial to implement, but it would be very interesting and useful. Again, thanks for this! --Esprqii (talk) 05:13, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
I agree, Esprqii. I may fuss with the code, though I'm not a big Python guy. In any case, it's great work by Mr.Z-man. tedder (talk) 05:22, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
Hear hear! It'll great to have this info on an ongoing basis. Looks like there are already major changes since last year, when EncMstr (talk · contribs) did something similar for us based on the stats.grok.se code. Thanks Z-man!! -Pete (talk) 19:42, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Legislator ID collaboration, redux

Well, I did it again..I went to Salem, and hung around the Capitol for a day. This time I didn't have Aboutmovies (talk · contribs) with me with his fancy camera, so I took on the legislator photo project myself.

I've posted the results on my Picasa account. I know who most of these folks are, but not all. And, I'd be happy to have any input on which are the better photos, where there are duplicates.

Most aren't pretty, but I should point out that's a reflection on my skills and equipment..not the dashing good looks of our legislative delegation!

Please feel free to leave comments here, or in the comments on the photo site. And if anybody's wondering, I'm releasing these public domain..so feel free to upload directly. (You could reference this diff as proof of their PD status; my Google username and my Wikipedia username match, so hopefully that would be enough for even the most zealous copyright defender!) -Pete (talk) 19:50, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Anyone feel like wordsmithing? (Lebanon High School's small school controversy)

I put a ton of sources on the talk page, but I can't get the paragraph started to talk about this whole controversy. Can someone read through them and create it? tedder (talk) 06:00, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

GLBT community in Portland (or Oregon)

Quick question. Is there an article relating to the gay community in Portland and/or in Oregon? I haven't come across one. If there isn't, I was wondering if one might be worth creating. We've started several "X in Oregon" articles (cannabis, religion, gambling, etc.), so I thought this might be appropriate as well. However, I wasn't sure if it would be better to focus on the whole state, or Portland specifically. Or, would a better approach be a "Portland Pride" article, describing the history of the annual celebration, parade, etc. Pride Portland seems to be more of a celebration, while "Gay community in Oregon" (or Portland) could focus on attitudes, events, historical context, and possible even legislation/activism. Any thoughts? Sorry I often use these talk pages for feedback, but I thought I'd ask before starting something new. --Another Believer (Talk) 21:27, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and let's not mistake the Portland Pride celebration for Portland Pride, the indoor soccer team from the 1990s. :p --Another Believer (Talk) 21:29, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
I don't know of such an article, but there are definitely a number of articles on issues relating to gay rights in Oregon. I'd love to see you start one up though! Some things to look at...Measure 9, Oregon Citizens Alliance, Just Out, Gay marriage in Oregon
Good luck! -Pete (talk) 00:01, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

"nth Oregon Legislative Assembly"

No action was taken on this discussion, so I was bold and moved the articles for the 35th, 73rd, and 75th Oregon Legislative Assemblies. I cannot move the 74th, because the redirect to it was modified at some point, which means the redirect page has an edit history. I will consult an administrator soon — unless there happens to be a grand uproar over the moves. — Athelwulf [T]/[C] 22:55, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

You should be able to use {{db-move}}. Katr67 (talk) 23:35, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
You're right, thanks. And I was way ahead of you on that. :) — Athelwulf [T]/[C] 00:00, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
Dang. Can't win 'em all. Katr67 (talk) 03:08, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

New template for Oregon legislatures

I created {{OR legislatures}}, which is an imitation of {{USCongresses}}, and I've applied it to the proper articles. There are lots of red links, so there are quite a few articles to create. — Athelwulf [T]/[C] 00:11, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Very cool, thank you! Time to get back to work, I guess.... -Pete (talk) 23:57, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

"Measure n"

Some ballot measures are not simply "Measure n". Some have official titles as declared in the text of the measure. For example, Measure 67 in 1998 was the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act, as declared by Section 1. Wikipedia accordingly cites the measure as such. I'd like to see a discussion about applying this convention to all such measures. I could imagine an argument that it's not worth it for "trivial" legislation, which the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act certainly isn't, but which other ballot measures probably are.

Here's a list, probably not exhaustive, of measures with titles voted on during this decade:

— Athelwulf [T]/[C] 05:11, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Per WP:NAME: Generally, article naming should prefer what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize...
This would be the measure number and year—mostly. The redirect Measure 5 to Oregon Ballot Measure 5 (1990) takes this even further, quite justifiably. Interestingly, the article itself does not contain the ballot title Limit on Property Taxes for Schools, Government Operations. Important omission or minor omitted detail? —EncMstr (talk) 05:33, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
Yes, as EncMstr says, the most common name is what rules, and except for maybe "Son of 9" (I think for one of the anti-gay rights measures) you really only hear of the ballot measures as the number. Now, if passed, you might have a different story such as the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, which is then an amalgamation of the ballot measure and the enacted legislation (and the same with the Medical Marijuana). Aboutmovies (talk) 06:40, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
Interesting points. So is the consensus to just leave them alone, unless and until their individual situations change? Is it common for the ballot measures that pass to become known by their titles, when they have one? I'm not all that privy to the history of this kind of thing. Was the Marijuana Act simply "Measure 67" until it passed? — Athelwulf [T]/[C] 07:55, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
The official and legal title is "Oregon Medical Marijuana Act" per section 1 of the measure. I would suppose it depends on several factors but in this case it is law, which is why the name has entered into common usage. Measure 11 is still called by that name even in colloquial usage. ZabMilenkoHow am I driving? 08:24, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
All good points. I think it's best to take this on a case-by-case basis; I'd have a mild preference for using (or at least redirecting) the "wordy" name in marginal cases.
Regarding Aboutmovies' point about amalgamation -- I'd argue that in most or all cases, the name referring to the amalgamation is the more notable topic (compared with the specific ballot measure). This is why we made decisions a while ago to merge related articles (e.g., Measure 16 and Measure 51 both redirect to Oregon Death with Dignity Act, which covers the entire topic area). -Pete (talk) 23:56, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
Just to make sure I'm clear on my point with the amalgamation: if the ballot measure never passed, then it in all likelihood will only be referred to as the ballot number; if it did pass, then there is a chance it would be called by the ballot title instead of the number. Most likely the wordier titles that passed remained as just the ballot number as too many words to bother with writing out or spelling out in a conversation. For instance, "hey Bob, what do you think of MANDATORY SENTENCES FOR LISTED FELONIES; COVERS PERSONS 15 AND UP? I voted for it, how about you?" Aboutmovies (talk) 06:10, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Date linking format w/o commas

Remember when we always used to link dates in order for folks' user preferences to work? I don't know the status of the debate around that and don't want to get into it. But it also used to be if linking [[Month Day]][[Year]] you didn't need to put a comma, or even a space, between the day and year, as the software added one. But now you get: June 292009. Yuck. Adding a space seems to make the comma show up: June 29 2009. Does anyone follow the history of that sort of programming decision? I'm curious about the reason for the change. And so far clean up seems to be random. If this is a permanent change, shouldn't there be a bot to fix this? I'm sure there are many Oregon articles that currently have garbled dates. Katr67 (talk) 13:05, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

The debate about autoformatting vs. not autoformatting is stuck in an odd place halfway between one and the other. ArbCom recently ruled against mass delinking of triple dates "until the Arbitration Committee is notified of a Community-approved process for the mass delinking," and until the committee is satisfied that "date delinking bots will perform in a manner approved by the Bot Approvals Group". Details of the case are at WP:RFAR/DDL. Meanwhile, the Manual of Style says, "Dates are not normally linked." This instruction lives at WP:MOS#Dates. A footnote to this MOS guideline says, "The use of autoformatting links for dates is now deprecated. This refers to the system by which a date containing day, month and year can be surrounded by double square brackets to permit logged-in users to select a user preference for date formats." As I understand it, the ArbCom injunction applies only to mass delinking and not to delinking one-by-one by an editor heavily involved in a page or editing for internal consistency. I have been reproved for autoformatting (when the MoS supported autoformatting) and asked nicely to stop delinking with a script (after the MoS no longer supported autoformatting). I'm trying to hug the middle, to stay out of the debate, and to defer to the main contributor. In the case of internally inconsistent formatting within a single article or in the case of comma-less dates, the contributor may not know about the MoS or ArbCom and may not mind if another editor makes alterations for consistency. But it's not certain. Finetooth (talk) 16:59, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
This basically says that the decision was to leave it as typed on the page and leave the burden to the software. I also found this which discusses the software implementation, and Wikipedia:Date_debate which seems to serve as an introduction. Personally I was a date-linker but nobody ever told me to stop that I can remember. ZabMilenkoHow am I driving? 18:58, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
It is a strange situation. The chief proponents who lobbied to change WP:MOSDATE from linked and autoformatted to unlinked and nonautoformatted are now on extended blocks or topic bans. The arbitration committee issued injunctions to prevent mass delinking, but were silent about relinking mass-unlinked dates. Normally when harm is prohibited, it is customary to undo any harm. Obviously Mediawiki date formatting has changed so Katr67's example which used to work fine now jumbles dates. It seems like that could be preparatory to whatever resolution awaits. —EncMstr (talk) 22:08, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
How annoying. I don't care what "they" decide, but right now the result of this halfway solution is a whole lot of articleslookinglikecrap. Katr67 (talk) 23:42, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
The issue came about from the last software update and a bug report was filed. I've been fixing it where I've seen it, but I'm not actively looking for the error. As to the general debate, since the MOS says it is depreciated, I remove the linking if I am working on an article, which doesn't break the ArbCom ban, as it is not mass delinking in the way that led to the ArbCom. The mass delinking was the use of scripts and bots across lots of articles in an effort to eliminate the then (and maybe now) depreciated practice. Making an article comply with the MOS, which includes the date issue, does not violate this remedy of ArbCom. Its common sense, if you are there to improve the article, and that improvement includes de-linking in order to make it consistent, then that is not the type of activity contemplated by ArbCom. If someone tries to veil a mass de-linking campaign as a good faith effort of improve lots of articles, it will be obvious. Until then, I hope we would AGF for the edits such as Finetooth's attempts for consistency. Aboutmovies (talk) 06:27, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
Ah, I'm glad to learn that the comma thing appears to be a bug (and bravo AM for being the first one to report it). And I love how CharlotteWeb backed you up after someone implied you might be imagining things. (If you are, I am too!) Mass Oregon hysteria! As for the linking thing (didn't we discuss this recently?) I believe my approach is to stop linking dates in new articles, but strive for consistency in old ones, and not necessarily removing existing links. I figure a bot can do that (or not) when a decision is reached. Katr67 (talk) 18:35, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Changes to {{Oregon-geo-stub}}

Apparently our beloved {{Oregon-geo-stub}} is being split into 36 new templates, one for each county. They take the form of {{DeschutesOR-geo-stub}}. Obviously replace with the appropriate county as needed. There is a bot doing the changeover right now. I assume eventually that the stub sorting project will sort any that end up in the generic Oregon category. Currently they all still sort into Category:Oregon geography stubs--I don't know if there is a plan to create county subcategories. I'll change the the WP:ORE template page with the new information eventually. It might be easier to simply expand all those stubs! Katr67 (talk) 16:14, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Once again the robots lead us forward. I'm not worried. It would be nice if those stubs would end up as a subcategory in the relevant county categories too (eg Category:Deschutes County, Oregon) wouldn't it? --Esprqii (talk) 16:27, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for volunteering! Katr67 (talk) 16:41, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, that wasn't me, that was EsprqiiBot talking. --Esprqii (talk) 16:45, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
Uh huh. Anyway, I was just gonna say that the template actually isn't being done by bot, but by a very productive human... Katr67 (talk) 16:55, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
Sometimes we are indistinguishable from a bot anyhow- a Seattle paper once called me "not 100% human". tedder (talk) 16:58, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
Tedder -- do tell!! (p.s. my unanticipated quasi wikibreak will be over Monday.) -Pete (talk) 16:14, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
A little googling- here it is. (oops, how did I make a geo-stub conversation about me?) tedder (talk) 16:42, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I notice that templates have been created for 22 of the 36 counties. Any idea when the other 14 will be created? Template use is ahead of the template creation! There are six {{MultnomahOR-geo-stub}}'s but no {{MultnomahOR-geo-stub}} template. YBG (talk) 08:14, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

So.. why not create a bot to handle these? Seems like it would get 95% of articles. tedder (talk) 08:18, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
Not sure how to create a bot ... it appears Baker to Linn have been created, but Malheur to Yamhill still remain. Maybe I'll just go and do it myself manually. —Preceding unsigned comment added by YBG (talk • contribs) 08:35, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
OK, I've created those 14 templates. It took me about 14 minutes over a dial-up connection. It appears Waacstats has been creating these as a part of a larger project listed here. Now the hard work of stub sorting begins. YBG (talk) 09:23, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

horn tooting

It goes against my nature, but I have to show off a little. Every bluelinked high school in the state should now have an infobox, meet the article guidelines for schools, and have at least some rudimentary standard information. The majority of them are tagged for reqphoto, have very reliable sources, and have colorboxes. It's taken me almost three months, and I will have to make another pass to bring the earlier ones up to the same standards as the later ones. tedder (talk) 20:43, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Ted. Kicks. Butt. Katr67 (talk) 23:29, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Wow. Great work. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 23:32, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Cool. I'm already thinking about my camera. Every trip, short or long, seems to pass by multiple high schools. Finetooth (talk) 17:40, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
Sweet! Steven Walling (talk) 18:52, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Oregon content in the National Archives?

I recently stumbled on the many photos and other materials available in the National Archives that haven't been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. I'm sure there's some Oregon-related content that's in there. Perhaps next WikiWednesday or another opportunity would be a good one to get a work party together to delve through some of the archives. Things available digitally can just be downloaded, but there's plenty of other stuff we'd have to send in for, and identifying which (if any) of that is worth the effort might be a good thing to do. Steven Walling (talk) 07:20, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Great idea, Steven! I'm up for a scanning party. Might be some stuff that belongs on Wikisource, too. On a quick glance, I found this item kind of interesting, though I'm sure there's plenty more... -Pete (talk) 03:20, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Okay, perhaps I'll think about whether WikiWednesday or another day might work best. Maybe a Saturday or something instead? More than just scanning, I suspect there's some tedious searching of the archives online that would go down better with some beer and good Wikipedians some afternoon. :) Steven Walling (talk) 07:44, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Joshua Marquis

Just a heads up that the controversy there might heat up again, judging by this edit, so it might help to have a couple more folks watching it. See the article's talk page for background. Katr67 (talk) 16:04, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I removed that comment, it was to his user page and has nothing to do with Wikipedia, so I think it's probably best reverted. -Pete (talk) 03:13, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Oregon-based company controversy

Hey guys. I thought I'd give everyone a heads up that there will probably be some COI and suspicious edits to WebTrends, which is a Portland based Internet marketing company. They recently pissed off the cycling community with some ads, and both anon cyclists are adding stuff and User:Metafluence (who is a WebTrends employee) is removing it. The stuff he reverted was extremely biased, but it's still likely to be tendentious. I have met the user myself and feel slightly tied in to the whole matter, so I thought I'd give everyone else a chance to keep an eye on things as well, from a really neutral perspective. Thanks, Steven Walling (talk) 07:42, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeeeargh! Finding arrreliable sources for a pirate school

Katr67 pointed out that Glendale Jr/Sr High School in Glendale, Oregon (on I-5 north of Grants Pass) may be in a building painted and decorated like a pirate ship. My google-fu was weak, I was only able to find hints of one article named "Pirates Reign: This rural Oregon school may be considered small in..." from "School Planning and Management", but the link is dead. Can anyone find anything else on this? It seems that a pirate ship-themed school would have been written about somewhere, even if it's just on a blog. tedder (talk) 23:50, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Google: "Did you mean glendale oregon private school?"
Me: Avast!!
Sorry, I'm striking out as well. Sounds interesting though, I'll keep looking around. --Esprqii (talk) 00:03, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
Here's some info: http://www.nrtoday.com/article/20050623/NEWS/106230068. Apparently the pirate ship was designed by Tom Pappas--the uncle of this Tom Pappas. More about the builder Pappas (but no mention of the ship): http://www.nrtoday.com/article/20080221/NEWS/798923556 --Esprqii (talk) 00:13, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

{{Oregon-geo-stub}}

Quick question about this: Should articles that span multiple counties, (take the Wallowa Mountains for instance), still use the generic {{Oregon-geo-stub}} template, or have multiple county templates (in this case, {{WallowaOR-geo-stub}}, {{UnionOR-geo-stub}}, and {{BakerOR-geo-stub}})? I think that the articles would look much cleaner with just the one Oregon stub tag. Thanks, LittleMountain5 21:21, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

H LM5 -- I just see this question has been hanging out there for some time -- just wanted to say, I doubt it's that nobody cares, only that nobody really has a definitive answer! I guess I'd say, if you're working on this, just use your best judgment...and if you find yourself with what seems like the right answer, feel free to tell the rest of us what to do :) Hope that helps :/ -Pete (talk) 18:55, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, I'm leaning towards using the county stub tags only if the subject article is located in one or two counties. If there's three or more, I'm just going to leave it generic. If anyone else has an idea, I'm all ears. :) LittleMountain5 21:02, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
LM5, I like that idea. I definitely don't support category spamming, but can see the need for more than one. In other words, "two or less" sounds like a good rule of thumb. tedder (talk) 03:15, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
I've always seen it from the perspective of category browsing (the raison d'être of Categories, no?) rather than as a way of organizing or creating a hierarchy of articles. Whatever way you go I suggest seeing it from this perspective. Cacophony (talk) 12:19, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

There are a few important changes to the popular pages system. A quick summary:

  • The "importance" ranking (for projects that use it) will be included in the lists along with assessment.
  • The default list size has been lowered to 500 entries (from 1000)
  • I've set up a project on the Toolserver for the popular pages - tools:~alexz/pop/.
    • This includes a page to view the results for projects, including the in-progress results from the current month. Currently this can only show the results from a single project in one month. Features to see multiple projects or multiple months may be added later.
    • This includes a new interface for making requests to add a new project to the list.
    • There is also a form to request a change to the configuration for a project. Currently the configurable options are the size of the on-wiki list and the project subpage used for the list.
  • The on-wiki list should be generated and posted in a more timely and consistent manner than before.
  • The data is now retained indefinitely.
  • The script used to generate the pages has changed. The output should be the same. Please report any apparent inconsistencies (see below).
  • Bugs and feature requests should be reported using the Toolserver's bug tracker for "alexz's tools" - [3]

-- Mr.Z-man 00:24, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject State Legislatures

Just want to give you all a heads up to the emergence of Wikipedia:WikiProject State Legislatures -- drop by and give 'em an encouraging word, or join up if you're inclined! I not-so-humbly think we've done some of the better work on the topic here in Oregon, so it would be good to reach out as these guys are getting started -- and also to learn from other states that may have done good work we're unaware of. -Pete (talk) 19:21, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

By the way, it isn't just Pete that said something about our leg articles- over there, someone said "That's amazing—easily the state legislature best covered here on Wikipedia!" Pretty impressive. tedder (talk) 04:25, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Peer review request

Hi, I just requested a peer review for 74th Oregon Legislative Assembly. I'd like to create more articles like this, and would love some input about how to make the best articles possible. Please weigh in at Wikipedia:Peer review/74th Oregon Legislative Assembly/archive1! Thanks for any input :) -Pete (talk) 19:21, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Small topic, but I think it's important

The story of Madison Meadow in Eugene would seem to warrant inclusion on the Eugene, Oregon page, perhaps under Parks and recreation. I started to write the story up here, but would prefer to see someone closer to this geographical area and th Eugene article tidy up what I've started and decide where/how to insert it. (I put a similar request on Talk:Eugene, Oregon#Include something about Madison Meadow.3F a few weeks ago, but haven't heard or seen any reply.)

In my draft I've included the references I found as of December 2008, with one update made in June 2009 (but there may be some more public coverage now that the project has been completed). Please feel free to just take my copy and use it! or contact me if you would like — I could help some, but don't have the time to devote to "doing it right" at the moment. Thanks! — Martha (talk) 00:51, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Oregon high school naming

This is just FYI, I've been trying to hack out the rationale behind how some of Oregon's high schools are named. It isn't unusual that various sources will call the same school by different names, so I decided it was about time to explain what I've been doing by instinct and trial/error.

Eventually I'll probably move discussions like that over to a subproject of WikiProject Oregon, but since the "education subproject" is currently me (with help by several others), it's probably worth keeping informal. tedder (talk) 22:38, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria

As someone just added Woodburn to {{Oregon}} I thought we might discuss inclusion criteria for that template (specifically the Cities portion), as it would be impracticable for every city in the state to be listed. I have no problem with Woodburn being added, as it is larger than many already there, its just that the edit caught my attention and there seems to be no logical criteria set out. For instance for Polk county, Independence and Monmouth are listed but not Dallas, and Dallas is not only bigger but the county seat. In Lane county both Springfield and Eugene are listed via the Metros section, but then Florence is there and not Cottage Grove when the later is more populous. So, do we want to do county seats, top 30 by population, or county seats + those in the top 20 in pop that are not county seats, or ...? Or we could just go with entropy. Aboutmovies (talk) 07:30, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Top 20 by population? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 15:48, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
Top 20, but that will bias to the west/valley area. How about top N plus the CSAs? It isn't perfect, but that'll at least include some of the other "important yet minor" cities. tedder (talk) 19:09, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
Here are the possibilities, which can be mixed and matched to taste:
  1. The top n cities by population
  2. Cities with a population greater than n
  3. The most populous city in each county
  4. Each county's seat
  5. Cities which WP:ORE has given an importance status greater than n
Combining any or all these criteria would mitigate the bias towards the population super-centers in the Willamette Valley. — Athelwulf [T]/[C] 04:44, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
Anarchy. Katr67 (talk) 04:57, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
Why, I'm deeply offended by the insinuation of bias! (Also, I would love to work towards solving that.)
The list above seems good (apart from #5, which seems kinda circular), but as long as we're discussing it -- do we need a section called "Cities" at all? Are there better sections we could use instead? For instance, maybe we could have one section called "County seats," and another section called "10 most populous cities". Those are off the top of my head...but the general idea is, if we can find a way to communicate whatever we decide here in the structure of the navbox itself, that would be ideal. Transparency in editorial decisions, and all that.
Aboutmovies, thanks for bringing this up -- an important topic. -Pete (talk) 05:39, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
It appears that the "cities" section, or something like it, is the norm for templates of this type. See {{California}} and {{Massachusetts}}. But that doesn't mean we can't lead a glorious revolution against the status quo. — Athelwulf [T]/[C] 05:44, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
I think we should blaze a new trail, and do something like what Pete says. We might also consider changing all the other US State templates to match ours. ;-) - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 05:29, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
With bias, I don't think its really bias. Much like NPOV doesn't require we represent all views equally, we represent them in accordance to their general acceptance (i.e., we only give a buried link to Holocaust denial in the see also section of the Holocaust article). That is to say, when we are talking about cities or any of the built environment in Oregon, the valley and Portland area will dominate since that is where the majority of people live. If you have an encyclopedia about the world, you give a lot more space to China than you do to Lichtenstein (I wonder if there is a WikiProject for Lichtenstein). Not that we want to be hostile to the eastern 2/3rds, but that area is well represented in other parts of the template.
With following other state templates (only concerning the layout, as in the left column), I tend to think we should conform to the norm. These state nav templates exist to help the reader find things within a state, but they also are meant to be uniform across the states so readers looking through the states can easily navigate between the states without learning a new template. We try to do this with all the nav templates and infoboxes, keep them fairly uniform among the similar topics. It is a little like the road signs across the country; blue means services (I think), brown means recreation (I think), green has something to do with the roads (again, I think), but they are uniform in this respect to help drivers. It would be a hassle, but not impossible, to drive through a state that decided to use other colors (say color blindness inducing colors discussed below) for its highway signage.
As to an actual resolution: How about all the county seats (36 I believe), plus any others in the top 20 in population (or top 25 if we want a few more). Of the top 20, only Gresham, Beaverton, Springfield, Tigard, Lake O, Keizer, Tualatin, Redmond, and West Linn are not county seats. Now, Springfield, Keizer, and Redmond would be excluded as already in the Metro section. We would also then exclude Portland/Salem/Eugene/Bend/Medford as also already in the Metro section. I think that would leave us with 37 in the Cities section. We could even add to the Metro section: Woodburn to the Salem one, and then Beaverton and Gresham to the Portland one to help stretch that section out a little. Currently there are 37 cities in the Cities section, and I don't think its too big, but I'd say more than 50 might make it less useful. In all, this would allow representation for every county, but also take into account population. Aboutmovies (talk) 06:27, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Thoughts on colors used in Oregon ballot measure maps

Example of current convention

A convention for Oregon ballot measure maps by county has pretty much been established (largely by me, incidentally). So far, green (#22b14c) has been used for counties that approve a measure, and red (#ed1c24) for counties that reject it. This is shown by the example to the right. But I have some lingering concerns about the colors being used, and I seek a discussion on this.

One specific concern is a potential NPOV violation. Green has connotations of "go" and "good", while red connotes "stop" and "bad". I don't really believe there's a violation here, myself, but I'd like to know if others feel differently.

Another specific concern is color blindness, or indeed, visibility in general. A sizable minority of people are red-green color-blind. And since the maps lack other visual cues to show "yes" and "no" votes, the maps might be totally illegible to people with this kind of color blindness.

I tried starting a discussion at WikiProject Maps several days ago, partially addressing referendum maps and the project's lack of conventions regarding them. No one responded. I figure it's worth it to have this discussion in the context of our project, so there's something to work with.

Here are a few options:

Thoughts? — Athelwulf [T]/[C] 05:39, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

IMHO I think something should be done about this, as red-green is one of the most common types of color blindness (people that have it cannot distinguish the difference between the two colors). It also affects yellow hues, so green-yellow would probably not be in our best interest. Blue-red or green-purple look fine. Thanks, LittleMountain5 14:55, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
I would avoid blue/red due to its now ubiquitous association with Democrat/Republican on these kinds of maps. So I guess that leaves green/purple, of the options above. I suppose there are infinite options, but why complicate things more. --Esprqii (talk) 15:42, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
In looking at those LATimes maps, one cool thing they do is to show shades of purple/green for how strong the support was. It is nice to show that things are not always black/white::green/purple. We do have the numbers handy, so this may be something to aspire to at some point. --Esprqii (talk) 16:08, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Yeah, you could use just about anything. The only real problem about how it is now is the color blindness issue. LittleMountain5 16:14, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
It looks like we reached a decision pretty quickly. That's great. Green/purple seems logical to me. It seems intuitive to people who are used to green/red maps. Now that there seems to be a consensus on the basic colors, does anyone else think we should pick particular shades that are a little more contrasty? Finally, I second the desire to ultimately make a gradient showing margins of approval and rejection. But we don't have to decide on this detail right now. — Athelwulf [T]/[C] 20:53, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
I found this page, which might be helpful: Category:Articles with images not understandable by color blind users
I'm not sure if the shades of red and green we use are a problem for color blind users, and wouldn't want anybody to have to do all that work of converting them if it isn't necessary! (Interesting, there is a color-blind simulator linked from that page...maybe that will be helpful?)
As for the possible bias of "go/stop," I don't think that's a problem. In Oregon, any "no" vote must indicate "no change" (though I heard there was an attempt to change that this session!) So it seems fine to me to think of green as "go ahead and make a change" and red as "stop changing things." This seems quite different than any association with "good/bad," as changing can of course be good or bad in different situations.
At any rate, I don't have a problem with any of the color schemes mentioned...so if y'all want to change it, that's fine by me =) -Pete (talk) 21:13, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
Also, Wikipedia:WikiProject Accessibility -Pete (talk)
Looking at the Color Blindness Simulator Pete found, the original red/green actually looks fine in all three types of color blindness! It's doesn't look red/green of course, but the difference between the two is distinguishable. LittleMountain5 21:52, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
Interesting. I thought maybe picking the right shades would help color-blind users distinguish them at least by their brightness or darkness, or something like that. I'm not color-blind though. I wonder if we can find some color-blind users and ask them to help us figure this out.
Meanwhile, according to Vischeck, red-green color-blind people see two shades of brown when they look at our maps. And to me, they look pretty close to each other. A darker shade of red, however, as in File:CA2008Prop8.png (Vischeck), would seem to help.
That said, maybe it's still a good idea to move to green/purple, just in case. Or is the consensus now to stick with green/red? 05:22, 23 July 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Athelwulf (talk • contribs)
I like red-green, if everyone can easily see it. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 05:33, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
How about holographic 3D? And maybe scratch and sniff too. Aboutmovies (talk) 05:57, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
I vote for a watermelon scent. — Athelwulf [T]/[C] 06:40, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

I left a message on a couple red-green color-blind Wikipedians' talk pages, asking for some input. Hopefully they are active users. While simulators are good in a pinch, I figure it's better to have a human being review things. — Athelwulf [T]/[C] 06:40, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi, User:Athelwulf asked me to stop by and give my perspective. Like around 10% of white males, I am red-green colour vision deficient. My deficiency is quite heavy, and I am about as red-green colour blind as it is possible to get without brain/eye damage. The map as it stands is just about readable on a good monitor with no screen reflections, but is very, very difficult to read in less than perfect situations. The best option would be "Use blue/red, such as in File:Venezuela 2007 Referendum Results by State.PNG, or File:Ref05dept.png" which is highly distinctive for me and very easy to distinguish even on a poor netbook screen in bright sunlight. I would discourage green/yellow or green/purple as, depending how you mix the colour, yellow can look like light green, and purple can look like red which can look like green. Also colour blind people generally don't understand what purple is, it is a very difficult colour for us to imagine. As you may have noticed by my spelling of "colour", I'm not exactly local, so unfortunately I have no idea how big the colour-blind population is in Oregon. Worldwide it is about 10% of white males. As a general rule of thumb, if you have a lot of white males, you'll have a lot of red-green colour blind people. Other types of colour blindness (blue variants) are incredibly rare, well less than 1%. However, I do want to visit Oregon as a tourist one day, so I am the kind of person who would browse the Oregon wiki pages.
There are other ways you could distinguish the maps, such as polka dots, hashing (diagonal lines) or chequer-board patterns (blimey, "chequer"/"checker", how many British spellings can I get in one post?) which would be distinguishable to all variants of colour vision deficiency, but these can make maps look messy, particularly they can make border lines more difficult to see. Thanks for your consideration, it is very much appreciated. Andrew Oakley (talk) 10:42, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
Just realised my preference for red/blue has political overtones in the US which are less prevalent here in the UK. You could also consider:
  • Dark grey and yellow
  • Purple and yellow (but avoid mentioning the word "purple" in the key, just use a swatch)
  • Light and dark (any colours)
Andrew Oakley (talk) 10:48, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
Hey Andy, thanks so much for your valuable input. It looks like using a light/dark contrast combined with a colo(u)r contrast would be the way to go, just to be safe. Could you please look at File:CA2008Prop8.png and tell us if that's reasonably comprehensible? — Athelwulf [T]/[C] 20:25, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
File:CA2008Prop8.png is fine. Simple and effective; light and dark. Job done. Andrew Oakley (talk) 13:45, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
Awesome! Thanks. If there are no objections from anyone, then soon I'll start changing maps to make the colors match File:CA2008Prop8.png. — Athelwulf [T]/[C] 22:43, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

COTW - Great Infobox Drive of '09

Any idea which infobox template may be most useful for Wildwood Recreation Site? Tesscass (talk) 23:58, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

{{Infobox Protected area}}? LittleMountain5 01:00, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure if it is a protected area. --Tesscass (talk) 16:47, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
Tess, I'm no great expert on these things, but Category:Geobox seems to be the basic one for places, with lots of configurable options. Looks like there's pretty good documentation at that link. -Pete (talk) 17:04, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
Well, Wildwood is a BLM recreation area, so that would seem to protect it from development, and really most any change of purpose. That probably isn't how Infobox Protected area is evaluated, but surely it's in the ball park. —EncMstr (talk) 17:09, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
Thanks everyone. I just added the Protect Area infobox to the page. --Tesscass (talk) 20:46, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Announcement: a new mop bucketeer!

In case anybody missed it, our own Tedder was recently approved as an administrator. Congratulations Tedder! -Pete (talk) 17:37, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Pete, and the rest of you too. tedder (talk) 18:24, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
I already congratulated him. Now get to work! :D Katr67 (talk) 08:21, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
You should see how many old AFDs I've cleaned up, not to mention WP:RFPP. If it ever cools off I'll get back to my main computer and work on my "no redlinks" task again. tedder (talk) 08:25, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Found a fantastic resource

The American Library Association has a wiki-based directory of online databases relating to Oregon. Check it out! -Pete (talk) 01:42, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/Oregon

updating our contributors list

Not that it bothers me much, but there are rules about making contribs to Wikipedia and to Oregon-related articles. Is there any interest in running a little bot to figure out who is active or inactive? Do we actually care to do something like that? tedder (talk) 03:13, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

very long discussion collapsed
I have no arguments over a bot moving me to the inactive list and it would be cool if it could move me back as well. I go inactive alot. ZabMilenkoHow am I driving? 06:53, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
I've been meaning to bring this up. For those of you who don't know (or don't want to check the page history), for a long time it's been Aboutmovies and I that have tried to keep the list tidy, until the recent formatting improvements and such (yay scrolling list!), and who devised the "rules". I've noticed and it's been pointed out to me that there are a couple of reasons to care about the active/inactive status in general (simplification of dealing with COTW notices, ability for non-members to quickly find someone to answer their question, honesty about how many members we actually have), and several reasons not to care (creates an artificial hierarchy, alienates some folks, creates a sort of artificial "reward" system and cliquishness, "delisting" is seen as unwelcoming...). Apparently "inactive" can be seen as a kind of slight, and also in the interests of simplifying the list maintenance, I think I kind of made up the "Oregon requirement" for active status without consulting anybody (likely because I figured no one was interested in boring WikiGnomish site maintenance). So we should revisit the whole concept, and the criteria for "active" vs. "inactive". I was thinking we should start over--that is, drop a note on everyone's page who has ever signed up, clarify the active/inactive thing (once we know what it is and if we choose to keep it), and start over. Maybe a first step would be to find all the folks who haven't contributed to Wikipedia at all for a year or more--that way we could skip them during our spam revitalization campaign. Would that be easy to do? What are folks thoughts about the lists? Katr67 (talk) 08:20, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
How about get rid of the inactive list and rely on Category:WikiProject Oregon participants (from {{User WikiProject Oregon}}), then set an inactive time to six months? Yes it conflicts with my previous post but it seems cleaner and easier to maintain. ZabMilenkoHow am I driving? 11:27, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
So are you suggesting we remove the badge from inactives?
Katr, I'm not a fan of spamming all former WP:WPOR users.. it seems too cliquish to me, I guess. tedder (talk) 11:30, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
We shouldn't remove the badge from inactives (you mean the userbox on their userpage, correct?), though I have removed the badge from folks who showed up in Category:WikiProject Oregon participants without ever actually signing up and who had not contributed to the wiki since signing up. But not before dropping a note on their page.
In the spam I was just thinking we could say that they've previously been moved to inactive status but that we're reinstating everyone--isn't that the opposite of cliqueish? We've been a bit of a benevolent dictatorship so far and we should try to fix that. (Though I think there will always be a few super active members and many more periodic contributors--the active members naturally form a clique because we've gotten to know each other.)
Lots of WikiProjects do a periodic "roll call" kind of announcement--i.e. "If you're still in, sign here." (I guess being "in" or "out" could be seen as cliqueish (shades of high school), but my question has always been: what's the point of a members' list if half the people don't really contribute? Should some level of participation in project matters be a criterion? Should there be "members" and "supporters" or "fans"? Maybe I'm spending too much time on facebook...) I used to be a member of the WikiProject Roads or whatever it is, the Oregon subgroup, and they did a roll call. I actually chose to opt out at that time. So I think a spam or roll call gives folks a more active role in choosing their status. I bet Pete, our worldwide ambassador, could write a really good spam telling everyone all the great things the project has been up to that would help people choose. Hint hint. :)
Note also that someone on your RFA said they found WP:ORE insular and bitey. I won't deny that, but how do we fix it? Katr67 (talk) 18:17, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
I'm glad this issue is being raised. I was moved to "inactive" about half a year ago, and shortly after I found out, I removed myself from WP:ORE for various small, petty reasons, one of which was this, I'm a bit ashamed to say. I found the moving of me to "inactive" unexpected and a bit presumptuous. At the time, I was a moderately active editor, I had just not made more than one or two edits to Oregon-related articles that month. I wasn't aware of the minimum number of edits (which I think were something like 5 edits to Oregon-related articles every month), and I had thought it a bit insular and non-standard to put those who failed to meet the edit quota that month into an "inactive" category. We are all volunteers, and I don't think we should require a certain number of edits to participate in a supposedly open group; that is how it seemed to me at the time, even though I realized even then that being placed in "inactive" (with, admittedly, the ability to re-add yourself to "active") wasn't quite the same as being expelled from WP:ORE. Being in the WikiProject and receiving the monthly notifications had directly resulted in me helping out in some Oregon-related articles, and being moved to "inactive" seemed like someone had looked at my most recent edits and decided they weren't enough. I know that wasn't the intention, and expecting anyone to scrutinize the edits of every WP:ORE member every month and accurately understand a person's full history and intentions is unrealistic. But I wonder if it's even worthwhile to try? If the purpose of this WikiProject is to improve our coverage of Oregon articles, then in my case the "inactive" placement was detrimental: I equated "inactive" with "not participating", and so I stopped participating. Since then, the only Oregon-related articles I've edited are either ones I've stumbled onto by myself, or ones I've kept on my watchlist since the days I was considered "active" at WP:ORE.
I wouldn't mind as much a "roll call" scenario as described above, as long as it was infrequent and allowed people at least a month to speak up (people take wikibreaks, go on vacation, etc). But I still wonder, what's the harm in having a huge list of participants, even if a great deal of them don't edit Oregon-related articles frequently, if at all? I can see that having the userbox on your user page implies some level of WP:ORE-related activity, and if you're legitimately inactive, it may be misleading. But the "inactive" list doesn't affect the userbox at all, or one's membership in Category:WikiProject Oregon participants; it just puts them in the "inactive" list on the project page (and apparently stops them receiving the COTW notices). I don't see this as much help, even for the legitimately inactive users. At worst, though, it drives people away from WP:ORE, and discourages editors from participating at all. This is what it did for me, even if, admittedly, it was a petty reason to do so. -kotra (talk) 22:42, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Regardless of what is decided here, I would strongly encourage the notification of users who are moved to "inactive". When I was moved, I didn't know why I was no longer receiving the COTW notifications until several months later. The "inactive" list was added long after I joined, and I wasn't aware of it, much less what it entailed, so I could only assume someone had unsubscribed me due to my comments about the COTW notifications! A politely-worded notice would at least prevent misunderstandings. -kotra (talk) 23:33, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) To clarify (not just directed at kotra, but so everybody is on the same page--I still suspect most people don't pay attention to this part of the project), folks were not moved to the inactive list (mostly by me) monthly, but whenever I got around to it. Which is much less frequently anymore. And nobody was expected to do the maintenance--that kind of thing is my idea of a good time. I think I and Aboutmovies can take full responsibility for the evolution of the participants list from "put your 4 tildes here" to the form it has today (barring the formatting improvements mentioned above), so if there are any questions and especially criticisms about the process, they shouldn't be directed to the project members collectively. I for one was acting independently (if not always transparently) and in good faith, like all of my work on the wiki.

Now this is my particular bias, and it can be seen as an unwelcoming one--the one thing I really don't get is belonging to a group but not participating (again, this is not directed at kotra, I've already opened a separate discussion with him)--I have removed myself from the participants' list of several WikiProjects because I knew I wouldn't be able to give them the time and energy they deserved. I suppose if there was some way to count myself as a "supporter" of those groups, I might have chosen that option, but it seems somehow dishonest to me to say I belong to a group and then never help the group out, participate in its discussions, etc.

So what are the potential advantages and disadvantages of being totally open versus having some sort of membership standards? I'm curious what other people think about this. I think I tried to strike a happy medium when maintaining the list, but obviously kotra got caught in the crossfire. On one end there are those of us obsessive souls who are on here for hours every day. I think you can say that we are "in". :) On the other end are folks who get an account, make one or two edits. See the project, think that sounds cool, add themselves to the list and promptly disappear. Is it hurting anything to keep them on our participants list? Is there an off chance that they might return someday? Will the anal retentive among us be able to stand letting these fly-by-night members remain on the list indefinitely? Should they be "in" or are they "out" before they even get "in"? What are your opinions? Katr67 (talk) 23:27, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I am having a hard time figuring out any clear advantage of the "inactive" list. I can see the aesthetic interest in keeping the main list tidy and concise, and even how organizing into categories can be someone's idea of having a good time, but I'm trying to come up with a practical reason to do it, and I am coming up empty. I am, however, seeing some disadvantages: unintentionally causing offense, preventing future participation due to misunderstanding or otherwise, decreased visibility for the WikiProject as people react by removing the userbox from their user pages (as I did), the impossibility of finding a universally accurate model for determining what is "inactive", the minor annoyance for users who wish to be considered active members but must manually "re-add" themselves, and the inaccuracy that would occur when project members eventually stopped updating the list. Some of these disadvantages are more valid than others, but... I am seeing no clear advantages. -kotra (talk) 23:54, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
I think a good reason to have the inactive list is so that editors new to the project who need help can easily see who is active, and ask them what they need to know. Anyone who is put in the inactive list can easily re-add themselves if they disagree with the move. Sure, it's a minor annoyance, but I think it would help in the long run. LittleMountain5 00:08, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
But would it not be better for editors to post a note here on the talk page in those situations? They would be much more likely to get a prompt response than a randomly chosen participant, even from the "active" lists.
Besides, if the editor wanted to ask a question individually instead of to the entire WikiProject, they would still have to make sure they chose a user who is actually currently active, instead of relying on a categorization that might have been accurate when the list was last updated however months ago, but may no longer be. Separating the participants list into active/inactive lists as a convenience for editors seeking help would only be a minor assistance at best, since the editors would still need to check that their chosen target was, in fact, active; at worst, it could be misleading. -kotra (talk) 00:53, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

(moving left again) It seems like there are a couple issues. One is how/why to put someone on the inactive list. The second is if we should have standards of some sort to indicate who is a member.

At first thought, something like DYK is an insular group, and have "service level awards". On the other hand, what's the harm of having a huge list of people who are or were interested in WP:WPOR?

Here's my proposal. Instead of marking people as active or inactive, we just have a big list of people who signed up and allow people to remove themselves- but we won't. At the same time, we come up with a list of "active Oregon members", perhaps using a simple editcount in our articlespace, updating it every week or every month.

Sure, it makes it seem like a competition, which I'm not a fan of, but it makes life really easy for Aunt Betty to find someone in the Project that can help. tedder (talk) 00:39, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I think having a list of active members helps accurately represent the WikiProject. The number of active members affects how much work AboutMovies does to broadcast the COTW, and affects the number of items on the COTW. Also, I've signed up for other projects only to exasperatingly learn that there had been no activity for months. Kotra, how do you feel about another level of membership? Supporter is good. Or maybe something like follower, apprentice, fan, etc.? —EncMstr (talk) 01:15, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
I cannot speak for AboutMovies, and don't know for myself what process he uses to compose and send out the COTW messages, but if I were doing it, I think I probably would not use the "active" lists. The act of distributing the COTW messages would be more efficient in a semi-automated or fully-automated way; there are well-designed bots created specifically for this purpose. Using a bot would render the number of recipients irrelevant. In fact, the more people receiving the messages, the more visibility for the WikiProject, and if people no longer find them useful, it's trivial to unsubscribe as I recall. As for the number of items on the COTW, it seems like a more accurate metric to use would be how many participated in last week's COTW. The number of people in the "active" lists might be a useful metric to use when starting for the first time, but I think probably you just get a feel for it over time based on prior participation.
About discovering a WikiProject is dead, in my experience, a quick check of the project's main talk page, and/or the edit history of the project page typically show how active the project is. True, people don't usually check these two places before joining WikiProjects, but if they're really curious about the activity level, that's where they should look. If I were to see WP:ORE for the first time, I would think, "oh, these people listed are more recently active than these other people listed", and that's about as far as it would go. I'd head on over to the talk page if I wanted to see if it was still active today.
Anyway, "supporter", "follower", "apprentice", "fan", etc, all sound fine to me, as long as placement in those levels is voluntary. If it's not voluntary, you get into the messy problem of criteria, irritating people, etc... all the disadvantages I mentioned above.
Tedder's above proposal, while not exactly voluntary, also sounds like it could work, as long as it is "Most active Oregon members" (people like myself considered themselves "active", just active on a very low level), the criteria for inclusion is transparent and consistent, and it's introduced as an aid for getting prompt assistance from individual editors, not as a "Hall of fame"-type list (which I don't actually have a problem with in principle, but edit count is a poor metric for determining worth, and the only better methods would be highly subjective from user to user). Anyway, these are just opinions from an outsider; ultimately, I think the decision is up to WP:ORE members, since it is your project after all. -kotra (talk) 02:11, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Arbitrary break: roll call

I was chatting with someone from Oregon's Mexico and they recently did a roll call using this template. If we choose to go in that direction I like that idea. Katr67 (talk) 23:17, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I think their idea is good. However, in the interest of fairness, I think everyone would have to be in the "inactive" list to start. -kotra (talk) 00:16, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Yes. That's how it was done. Katr67 (talk) 00:59, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Hola from Alta California. I did that last one run in September 2008, so not sure if I would call that recent (contribs link). There were a couple issues that might cause some headaches if you want to do it the same way. When I put the list into Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser to do the run I think I pulling the list of names from the participants list first and then from the participants category since I had just formatted the participant list. I did get one wtf? message from someone who had just added their name to the list when I did the San Francisco Bay Area roll call, but otherwise I didn't get any major issues or confusion from people. -Optigan13 (talk) 06:59, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Now that the bar exam is over, here are some of my thoughts on this. Disclaimer, this is not directed at any particular editor at WPORE or anywhere on Wikipedia, and is a bit brunt in many respects. First, while a shorter list makes the COTW slightly faster (and it only takes about 5 seconds or so per editor, so an extra 25 is not that big of a deal from that perspective), lets leave the COTW out of this as any sort of consideration. This long-running discussion about active/inactive pre-exists the COTW and has little connection. As in the motivations for having an inactive session could not have anything to do with less work on the COTW. It has everything to do with why we are supposed to be here.
We do not have fans. Wikipedia is not WP:NOTMYSPACE, WP:NOTFACEBOOK, and WP:NOTLINKEDIN. We are an encyclopedia. If you are here because you want a friend, Facebook is free and easy to use, so please go sign up there and toss beads at each other, poke each other, and waste your time on everyone's wall. Then when the next big socail networking things comes along, dump Facebook like many did to MySpace and the old bulletin boards before that. That's where that belongs. Things like the talk page guidleines should clue people in that we don't want general discussions about whatever. Now, if you have made friends on Wikipedia, that's great, but the goal is not to social network, it is to write an encyclopedia. Some collaboration is necessary, but again no need for fans, cheerleaders, or the like. Along those lines, we have WikiProjects, which according to the template at the top of our main WPORE page is: ...a collaboration area and open group of editors dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of a particular topic, or to organizing some internal Wikipedia process. So, again, we do not have fans, or supporters. We are a group of editors coming together to improve the coverage of Oregon [in writing an encyclopedia]. We are not here to see how many fans we can get, unless I missed that in the description somewhere.
Thus if you signed up and never edited again, or left Wikipedia long ago, or just never improved any Oregon content, then how can you in good faith, call yourself a member of WP:ORE, or really any WikiProject. Many of the people in the inactive list have not edited in years, were sock puppets (I think they were later removed all together), vandalism only accounts, or people who were confused on what WikiProjects are for. For a tangential real world example, the Portland Children's Museum has special rules for unattended adults (as in they show up with out children), as since if you don't have kids, why in the hell are you at a children's museum? I am a member of WPORE, WPLAW, WPBIO, WPUNI, and WPLIBERIA. On each and everyone I make edits every month to content in those areas. Sometimes it is writing an article about a dean of a law school in Oregon so that kills four birds with one stone, but others it is just some minor clean up, rvv here and there or weighing in on the project's talk page. But, if at any point I stopped editing in one of those topic areas I would remove my name as a member. It's like if you don't pay your dues at the MAC, I'm pretty sure they kick you out (they also do that for some instances of criminal behavior I hear), but you are likely able to re-join when you have the money. And honestly, I don't understand why someone would want to even be listed as an active editor somewhere if they are not actually active. Sounds too much like Wes Cooley's military service.
Benefits/Detriments: The benefits I think have been explained above, a list of people who might be able to help, an accurate representation of the level of involvement, less clutter, and I would even say a reward for those who demonstrate they are members. The detriments: someone is offended because they are removed, hierarchy/clique. Well, if they weren't really here, then we can't really offend them, nor can they leave if they have already left. Now, mistakes can be made, but that is a separate issue. Even without a division, a perfectly active editor could improperly be ousted through error, but that is an error. In that case, we say, my bad, the editor gets re-added, and we all move on to writing an encyclopedia. Not every mistake made in the world comes from bad intentions or some secret motive, though paranoid folks like Nixon might disagree, which is why we have WP:AGF. As to hierarchy/clique, sure, but its an open one so anyone can join. Or to use some law since I can't stop, restrictions on free speech are often just fine if they apply to everyone equally. For instance, everyone who walks down the middle of Broadway during rush hour traffic without a permit will be subject to arrest regardless if they are protesting for Global Warming, for using more green energy, against the mayor, for the mayor, pro choice, pro life, or save the cute and cuddly pandas. That is to say, a hierarchy that conveys no benefits (though I'm an active editor I do not have: special buttons on Wikipedia, a 10% off at Denny's card, one hour of free parking at any SmartPark, free health insurance, tuition reimbursement, a cool hat, key to the executive washroom, or company car.) and everyone is not only free to joy but really, really encouraged to join. We don't care if you scored 1600 or 400 on the SAT, or if you have a driver's license, or if you are here legally, or if you are even in the United States, or if you like to dress up as Harry Potter and smoke your medical marijuana while texting as you drive (as long as you stop after 1/1/2010) down I-5 jamming to the Dandy Warhols/Pink Martini/Cherry Poppin' Daddies/The Kingsmen. The project does not care, we only care about if you are editing.
So what does this all mean? This means I personally think people who do not actively edit Oregon content should really not consider themselves members. But I also have, since the first time inactive was proposed (see dif above), always been OK with the criteria only being Wikipedia edits, and five over two months is not that hard to do. Seriously, add HotCat and go through a category of People from X and you could easily find five articles that need to be removed from a cat or one needs to be added. It's a really low threshold, but it demonstrates the person is active and not dead. We could even make it three months. Or go with a roll call every six months to weed out those who just are not editing. There is no stigma attached unless you attach it (unless I've been missing the posts mocking editors who were moved to inactive status), and the editor can always sign back up when they want. Aboutmovies (talk) 08:55, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Your point of view I think is valid, but I think it has resulted in a WikiProject that is less welcoming than many. Most of the benefits given above I feel like I've called into question, and only a couple of the detriments I raised were addressed. The main detriment I see is that currently, the criteria set up and the frequency of updating make it impossible to make an "inactive" list accurate. What you call errors I see as inherent symptoms of the current process. "Inactive" is subjective from person to person, and as long as you have a person making subjective judgments on who is active or inactive, there are bound to be people who rankle a little at being judged "inactive". Only if you put the bar low enough, like a single Oregon-related edit in the past 5 months, or a single Wikipedia edit in the past 3 months, will nobody be irritated at being moved to "inactive". Also, the hierarchy/clique thing may be more than just a theoretical problem; Katr mentioned above that at least one person perceives this project as "insular and bitey". I can see how someone might get that impression from the "inactive" list and how it's been updated (no offense to Katr, who I'm sure never intended that perception).
Consider administrators. A common view is that, as long as an admin has made a single positive administrative action, giving them the tools has been a net gain (I don't entirely agree with that, since the RFA process is probably a huge time suck and drama incubator, but there is some low level of participation that makes it "worth it" to keep someone as an administrator). Is this not a similar situation? If someone has helped with the project in the past, improved Oregon articles, and been a net positive on the project, aren't they entitled to be considered "Participants" or "Members"? Keep in mind that the "Participants" section is titled just that, not "Active participants"; it's only because of the "Inactive members" list that there is this concept of "active" vs. "inactive".
All this said, I can see some minor, at least theoretical benefit of an "inactive" list, and I think it can be done in such a way that is mostly harmless: set the criteria low (for only those editors who are certainly inactive, and not just perhaps on an unannounced temporary wikibreak or vacation); and leave a polite note on their talk page explaining why they've been moved and how to move themselves back.
I don't think these are major changes; the "inactive" list would still be meaningful, and there's no real harm in the "Participants" list including a number of possibly active, possible inactive users, as long as it isn't renamed "Active participants". There is also the roll call option, which I think is even better, and a third option that I don't think anyone but me is advocating: one all-inclusive "Participants" list, allowing people to move and remove themselves as they themselves deem accurate. -kotra (talk) 03:28, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
My two cents: the only criteria for membership should be a desire for membership. Fine, let's do a roll call--annually seems like plenty--just to shake out people who really have dropped out or maybe never existed at all. But I don't see why there should be a number of edits requirement. Whether you edited once or a thousand times, or just plan to really get around to editing one of these days, or maybe they just want to be on the team--I don't see how it hurts the project to have people who are actual people who want to be on the project. I'd hate to lose editors who were busy in real life for some time and somehow found themselves dropped. --Esprqii (talk) 03:40, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
kotra, if we set a minimum standard, which certainly is arbitrary, and we then apply that standard uniformly, that is an objective standard. As in it does not vary person to person. And I think everyone here is advocating for a set number if we are to have a division. Secondly, a participant is one who participates, not one who participated. Now, determining the line between the two is the difficult task and is again arbitrary, but the list has always said participants. It really is about participating, not "one time 3 years ago I added a comma to an article about a professor at Yale who had a connecting flight through PDX so I signed up for WPORE." Take for instance RepublicanLeague's edits, its one, signing up at WPORE. That's it and it was almost 2 years ago. Or take this user who made two more edits the same day they signed up and have never edited since. Most of the people moved to inactive fall into those types of editors. I think you are too caught up in what happened to you, which I would say was a mistake/oversight, and not the norm. I'm not saying we should not attempt to make sure it doesn't happen again, but there will always be the possibility for errors. And as to insular, I seriously doubt User:ChildofMidnight looked to see how we broke down our list of editors. Aboutmovies (talk) 07:47, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
I prefer the infrequent roll call over the arbitrary edit number because I view it more of a question of "are you still there?" than "do you still want to be in the group?" I can see a reason to remove people who created an account and then lost interest and never returned, or were banned, or whatever. Other than that, I really don't see why it matters if someone associates with the group just because they want to, even if they make very few--or no--edits. There's no glory and riches awaiting the survivors at the end of Wikipedia. All the list of "participants" tells us is who cares about the project; to me, that's all that matters. But, no need to try to convince me further that I'm wrong; I'm fine with whatever we decide to do, including my favorite: nothing. --Esprqii (talk) 17:16, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
(response to Aboutmovies) "fewer than five total edits (especially on Oregon-related articles) in over two months" is not entirely objective. It would be fairly clear if it weren't for "especially on Oregon-related articles"; that side-note implies there is some wiggle room for subjective judgments. But I'm being nitpicky here; in general, you're right that there is a standard that is probably applied pretty uniformly. My concern is that what constitutes "inactive" varies from person to person, and the standard that is used currently may conflict with how some editors see themselves. I don't think it hurts anyone to have a few people in the "participants" list that haven't edited in the last month. Yes, "participant" implies current participation. But as you say, the line between "participant" and "former partipant" is vague. Perhaps it would alleviate that concern if "Members" was the title instead; many WikiProjects use it. But either way, I don't see a few users who haven't edited much recently causing too much harm to the main list. An "inactive" list, on the other hand, could contain the obvious examples you mention.
I feel like I've put behind me my personal experience, which I knew really wasn't a big deal at a time, but it, in combination with other minor things, caused some small sense of annoyance. I'm not annoyed by it anymore. I'm weighing in because I was asked to, and because I honestly want to see WP:ORE be more welcoming. If you think I'm wrong, that's fine, but I'm not bitter or anything.
I don't know what ChildofMidnight was referring to either, but I don't think it's unreasonable that other people have been a little annoyed with being moved to "inactive", especially without notification. And the whole concept of "I don't want people who haven't edited recently in our participants list" is a bit insular by Wikipedia standards, though perhaps not by real-life standards. Maybe it's that difference that is the source of this issue. -kotra (talk) 17:28, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
Kotra, yes, the old standard would be subjective. What I've been talking about (and this actually goes back to the implementation of the inactive list) is a new standard that would not have an Oregon component to it. I have never favored having that due to subjective/logistical problems with it. First, what is an Oregon-related edit, is it an edit to an article within the project or does it include work on disambiguation pages that include Oregon places/people? Second, the logistics of trying to go through everyone's edits and sort through each of the edits, which could include 1,000s of edits. Its not really worth it. So the only standard I've ever proposed is for a set number of edits on Wikipedia over a set number of months. Now, I personally would remove myself from any project and would hope others would as well if they ever stopped editing articles within the scope of that project, but that's not what I'm advocating for with any standard. Now, I have a question, what would inactive be for you, as in how many months would an editor have to go without a single edit to Wikipedia before you would consider them inactive? And as to real world/Wikipedia and insular, actually since many projects do the whole roll-call process to clean out inactive editors, I hardly find this unique to WPORE, as there too an editor(s) has to remove the inactive people from the project list (you can see how our neighbours to the north did it). Now lack of notification can be a problem, but that can be fixed so that pre-removal notice is part of any process. Aboutmovies (talk) 07:46, 1 August 2009 (UTC) PS here you can see how many projects do roll calls, as in how many projects do distinguish in some way between active and inactive editors. Aboutmovies (talk) 07:48, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for clearing it up about the subjective/objective criteria; I had misunderstood you. I agree on both reasons you give.
My opinion is that if a user hasn't edited at all in a month, they're probably inactive. However, I don't think my opinion is important here, nor is the opinion of anyone other than the person who's being moved to "inactive". There are reasons why a person might not consider themselves "inactive", even after a month of zero edits; perhaps they are on a vacation, in the hospital, or on a temporary wikibreak. Maybe they do check Wikipedia often, keeping informed with their watchlist and reading every COTW for articles that strike their interest, maybe even (this isn't in allusion to anyone, I'm just being hypothetical) posting on the WPORE blog... but, for whatever reason, hadn't made an edit to Wikipedia during that month. Some people in these or other situations may still view themselves as "active", just taking a brief hiatus from editing. I wouldn't agree with them, but having the "inactive" list be a bit more accurate (at least, accurate to those of us that see them as inactive) might not be worth annoying people over. That's why I suggested a more conservative number like 5 months of no edits, just to be safe.
As I read the last parts of your comment though, I wonder if I've misunderstood you again. I thought we were discussing whether/how to update the "inactive" sub-list of the "participants"/"members" list; but you seem to be suggesting kicking inactive editors out of the project altogether. That would strike me as a very bad idea; I hope that's not what you're suggesting.
As for a "roll call" method, as I mentioned above, I do support it; in fact, I think it's better than the current method, because it's not unexpected, puts everyone on equal ground, and precludes any possible perception of persecution or picking people personally. So, to summarize, I support the following: no "inactive" list, "inactive" list with current method with something like 5 months total inactivity and a polite notification, and "inactive" list with the roll call method. Anyway, I feel like I've overspent my 2 cents since I'm not even technically a participant, active or inactive, in this project, so I'll bow out now.... -kotra (talk) 04:37, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
I'm assuming the misunderstanding comes from "I personally would remove myself from any project and would hope others would as well if they ever stopped editing articles within the scope of that project, but that's not what I'm advocating for with any standard." Which the last part of that should resolve any misunderstanding. As I started with in that sentence, I personally would remove myself (assuming I'm not dead or incapacitated or otherwise unable to do so myself) from any project that I was not contributing to. I also would hope others would do the same, but that is not what I'm advocating for with any standard we set. As in I personally would stop to help in an emergency situation and would hope others would too, but I don't advocate for Good Samaritan laws. Also, about the only real difference between a roll call and making a set number over a set time frame w/notification is that the roll call would be less often. It would be arbitrary as to when it was held, and someone who considers themselves active could still be removed even though they edited within the last two months (as in the same examples apply with someone being on vacation/sick). If you remove the arbitrariness of the current system, people should not take it personally, but if they do then the same people would also likely take being removed via a roll call personally as well. We can't please all the people all of the time. Even leaving a complete list of everyone who as ever signed up and calling it members and never removing anyone would piss people off, people like me who expect people to edit if they are members. Because again, there are no penalties for not editing nor any tangible benefits, so why associate with a group you have nothing to do with? But, I'll leave the decision to others. Aboutmovies (talk) 08:34, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

(moving left) I'm a fan of the "mandatory number", partly because I really dislike the roll call idea. It seems worse to say "hey, come by or we're dropping you" than to have a low bar that can quietly mark people active/inactive. I do like the concept of calling them "active members" and "members". tedder (talk) 04:51, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Pete's modest proposal

Hi all, Katr asked for me to weigh in on this. I've done my best to skim through the various discussion, but have despaired of following every thread...when you get so many smart people hammering away at a complex issue like this, the results can be a bit daunting!
In general, though I understand Aboutmovies' concerns about social networking, I don't think this is a problem we've had in practice, so I'm not inclined to weight those concerns very heavily in determining a policy.
I have some recent experience that I think is relevant. I signed up about a year ago to be an editor for the Open Directory Project. ODP has a policy that if you are inactive for 3 months, your account goes inactive, and you have to apply to have it reinstated (with, I believe, a pretty low threshold). Mine lapsed once, and was good motivation to jump back in within 3 months. There's lots about ODP that I think is sub-optimal, but I think the 3 month window was about right. Now, I am doing work there once a week or so.
I believe there will always be a variety of people, and a variety of approaches to a new project. People who may be highly productive contributors in the future may be exceptionally difficult to identify early on, but we should have a policy that is unlikely to give them a bad taste.
And I really like Tedder's offer to develop some sort of bot or automated process, because I think it's a lot less likely to make people feel like they've been singled out if they are removed by a clearly-defined formula and process. (If my suggestion below is difficult to code, of course, please say so!)
But, I think maybe we have had enough of theoretical discussion, and should look at some specific proposals. So as a test balloon, how about this. If you disagree with this, how about creating an alternate proposal along with any critiques, so we can start to move this discussion toward specifics?
Wikiproject Oregon membership requires one of the following
  • Manually adding oneself to the project (this is always acceptable for WP users in good standing; regardless of past inactive status, you will not be removed for 3 months)
  • Any member who is inactive on Wikipedia for 3 months will be moved to "inactive" by an automated process, and notified with a message that invites them to add themselves back
  • Any member who makes no edit to an article tagged by WP:ORE for 6 months will be moved to "inactive" by automated process, and notified as above
  • When instituting this policy, all members will be moved to "inactive" and a roll call will be taken, to give us a nice fresh start.
Okay, attack! -Pete (talk) 23:00, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Voting results below, consensus was support except for Aunt Betty
  1. Support: (With minor revision.) That all sounds very Solomonic to me. Way to slice that baby! I would only quibble on the 3 months/6 months; I would opt for 6 mo/12 mo as time passes quickly in this wikilife. But that's only to make it seem like Pete doesn't have all the answers. --Esprqii (talk) 00:08, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
  2. Support. And to answer your somewhat-asked question, it's easy from a technical standpoint. And it's sort of what I was trying to suggest earlier :-) tedder (talk) 01:34, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
  3. Support. I have not been following this, but this page is making my watchlist hop like it never does. Anyways, I like what Pete's been saying. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 02:38, 6 August 2009 (UTC) (Interpreted as "Support" by YBG (talk) 04:29, 6 August 2009 (UTC) )
  4. Support. And maybe have a bot periodically invite folks who've made some number of edits in WPORE but haven't signed up? Depending on the bot's trigger, that might include me -- I've never added myself, but have been watching for a while and have contributed occasionally. YBG (talk) 04:42, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
  5. Support - Works for me. Aboutmovies (talk) 08:46, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
  6. Support with a preference for 6 months. Cacophony (talk) 12:32, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  7. Support - fair compromise. -kotra (talk) 16:26, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
  8. Support. - ZabMilenkoHow am I driving? 02:08, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
  9. Support and the 6/12 thing works for me. And just to complicate matters, I think someone like kotra, who does quite a bit to spread the Oregon wikilove in the real world, ought to get special dispensation, on the off chance he or she doesn't make a couple of Oregon edits in a year. I realize that's a whole 'nother can o' worms. Thanks Pete for the wrap up. Katr67 (talk) 02:15, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Certainly "member at large" or another term for exceptions are required. tedder (talk) 02:44, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
      • That makes me think of someone like llywrch, who I think isn't much of a joiner as I recall, because I asked him about joining one time. But he's definitely a friend of the project, and in the past has offered us his admin services/third opinion in difficult situations. Katr67 (talk) 03:41, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
  10. Support (huffing and puffing in a belated rush to the ballot box). Finetooth (talk) 02:53, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
  11. Oppose Who do you whippersnappers think you are? By cracky, I've forgotten more Oregon history in my 198 or 222 years than any of you will ever write about! That settles it, all my pictures and documents are going to the Oregon Historical Society and designated as unreferenceable in perpetuity! Hah! --Aunt Betty 07:08, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
  12. Support the 6/12 option. LittleMountain5 14:30, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
  13. Support --Tesscass (talk) 18:17, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Bot requirements list

Based on the consensus above, I'm trying to distill a requirements list for the bot: User:TedderBot/OreBot. Please feel free to edit it to match the requirements, or to add anything necessary. tedder (talk) 22:55, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, I expected a little more resistance than the halfhearted troutslapping. Actually, rather flattered that you all seemed so congenial to my suggestion (which was, of course, just a more formal representation of stuff that had been suggested before).
In addition to programming the bot (thanks tedder!!), I think there are some important tasks to attend to: we should compose the text we're sending out in the roll call, and the text that will appear on our front page. In addition, I wonder if maybe writing a brief mission statement would be a good idea, to inform both things. Let's work on all that at WP:WikiProject Oregon/Membership. -Pete (talk) 23:22, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Another resource worth looking into

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Peteforsyth (talk • contribs) 01:11, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Mr.Z-man's brilliant popular pages report for July are up: Wikipedia:WikiProject Oregon/Popular pages. Makes me wonder if we should re-assess the importance of some pages- people like Holly Madison are consistent high-rankers. (insert joke here) tedder (talk) 04:05, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I went through and upgraded some, downgraded others, mainly "low" near the top of the list and "top" near the bottom of the list. tedder (talk) 04:37, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
The list shows another example of the power of the main page, even via DYKs. Copper, Jackson County, Oregon ranked higher than PDX and had 10,000+ hits, all because of the DYK for Applegate River. Which the river got about 8,300 hits, Applegate Lake got about 4000 hits, and Copper with about 10,000, so overall about 22,000 extra hits from a single DYK. Great job Little Mountain 5. Aboutmovies (talk) 07:26, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, and many more DYKs last month: Heritage Christian School (Oregon), RadiSys, Zigzag Ranger Station, Sandy Parker, Prewitt-Allen Archaeological Museum, Felix Hathaway, O'Kane Building, probably more. Way to go, DYK gods. tedder (talk) 12:55, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
Thanks! I guess that hook didn't really focus on the actual river, seeing as Copper received quite a few more hits... LittleMountain5 15:42, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Wow. I guess I should try to expand "my" crappy stubs before they appear on the front page. People really like to hear about submerged towns, I guess. At least it didn't get vandalized! Nice work everyone! Katr67 (talk) 19:38, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Congrats also to Little Mountain 5 on the Little Applegate River article and its DYK. Finetooth (talk) 19:37, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Fleshing out the article on the current legislative session

The Oregon Legislative Assembly had quite a session this year. Lots of notable bills got passed, and it all deserves to be covered while it's still fresh in our minds. I've expanded the article on the 75th legislature in the past few days. I'd like a little help to further expand and improve it. A little more work, and it will be on par with the 74th in terms of completeness. So let's get to it!

Here are some useful links:

— Athelwulf [T]/[C] 02:04, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Athelwulf, I think it's great you're taking this on, and I want to help...I've just been too slammed to dig into it recently. But I'll be back when I get a moment! You're bringing up excellent ideas and sources for expansion. -Pete (talk) 07:09, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Portland WikiWednesday tomorrow night!

Hi all, just a reminder about WikiWednesday tomorrow night. (For details check http://pdx.wiki.org )

As a possible topic: a friend from Mayor Adams' office contacted me, curious about setting up a wiki for the City of Portland. Unfortunately nobody from their office is able to attend this month, but it's an interesting thought. Maybe we can discuss what a good general interest local wiki would look like, and what it might take to make it fly?

For some background, you might want to poke around these ones:

http://arborwiki.org/ http://richmondwiki.org

and this article about an Indianapolis wiki, courtesy of Mark Dilley:

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/tag/wiki-weekend/

Hope to see you all tomorrow evening! -Pete (talk) 16:22, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

A possible bot project

Anyone looking to do some technical stuff that's a bit beyond my ken might want to take a look at this discussion. Bots, categories, templates, and stubs, Oh My! -Pete (talk) 18:42, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I suspect it's this discussion: User talk:Xeno#Included non-stub categories confusing bot. I'm not sure what is necessary, but it's not my specialty anyhow.. tedder (talk) 22:57, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Molalla River

I am trying to improve the Molalla River page by adding a better image, but cannot figure out how. If anyone could tell me how or post it on there, it is in the commons under Molallariver.jpg thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mdroses (talk • contribs) 05:10, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

That file does not exist on commons (or Wikipedia). Was it deleted? Did it conform to copyright rules? Aboutmovies (talk · contribs) 06:56, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
Found it here. I went ahead and added it to the article in place of the old one. I used a cross-wiki contributions checker to find Mdroses (talk · contribs)'s upload. ZabMilenkoHow am I driving? 07:06, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Jesuit High School (Beaverton, Oregon) or is it Portland?

As you may have seen, User:Decltype went ahead and took this comment from Aboutmovies and moved the page over to Beaverton 18 months after the comment was made. I checked my Thomas Brothers map and it does appear that the city limits of Beaverton do include the school; assuming the map is accurate, technically, the move is correct, but the school clearly wants be identified as being within Portland: http://www.jesuitportland.org/s/173/jesuit.aspx?sid=173&gid=1&pgid=989 Heck, even their URL uses Portland. I realize we have a redirect from the Portland page, but just wondering what people think of the move. Are we splitting hairs here to move the school to the 'burbs? Would a reasonable person looking for the school necessarily know where "Beaverton" is as opposed to Portland? I do not bleed Crusader green in any way, so I'm only thinking of what people are most likely to look for. --Esprqii (talk) 19:02, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I think Aboutmovies and Katr67 should be The Decider in this case. One option would be to move it to Jesuit High School (Oregon). :-) Having said that, their zip code (97225) is Portland according to the USPS. tedder (talk) 19:04, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
That is definitely one thing to consider, but according to the P.O. the entire city of Tigard doesn't even exist as it is served by Portland post office branches. I like the (Oregon) option, if there are no other Jesuits in the state; however, I remember vaguely, and I'm sure Katr remembers in detail, a long painful discussion about whether to use city and state in disambiguating schools. --Esprqii (talk) 19:10, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
Ooooh. The Decider. I like that. And sorry no can do on moving it to Jesuit High School (Oregon) unless it is physically located in Jesuit, Oregon. Hmmm, maybe we should encourage them to incorporate. Kinda like Vatican City...but I digress. (And no, there are no other Jesuit HSs in the state.) It's possible that this is a good time to ignore the rules. That said, I saw the page got moved and I didn't really have a problem with that, but I do think it's weird to see the article title and lede say Beaverton, while the address in the infobox says Portland. That's just inviting some hapless WikiGnome to try and "fix" the problem. As it stands now, the article's title is accurate geographically and my default reaction is to say that's the best way to do it. Note however I didn't really care when Portland was still in the title. Do we give a fig if the school IDs itself as being in Portland? Lots of businesses in the metro area have Portland in their names or their propaganda press kits but are actually in the 'burbs. So do we strive for geographic accuracy above all, or bow a little bit to popular usage? If the Hoi polloi think the school is in Portland, who are we to argue? However, whichever way we go, I think it would be necessary (if tedious) to have a footnoted explanation that it is geographically in Beaverton but postally in Portland. How's that for a non-answer? In a nutshell, let's leave well enough alone and footnote it unless we deem "looking at a map" as original research. Katr67 (talk) 19:31, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
The infobox is a little weird since the school is actually in Washington county (Portland, of course, spans the county line). We probably don't need the county listed at all and a little note about the school being served by a Portland PO would probably be plenty. That's not that uncommon. Should we leave the dab page here and probably elsewhere at Portland? Seems like there should at least be some qualifier like "Beaverton (ya know, kinda near Portland)." Wait till the Portland Beavers move out there and that naming issue gets going. Beaverton High School isn't going to be happy to have more Beavers in Beaverton--and really, is anyone, other than 14 year olds??? --Esprqii (talk) 20:02, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
Espr, I'd prefer not to bring the county thing into the discussion, that's an entirely different can o' worms regarding school infoboxes.. tedder (talk) 20:19, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
As discussed with Katr in a related school thing, the USPS has issues. For instance Adair Village is apparently in Corvallis, and as Esprqii points out Tigard doesn't really have a zip code (though in actuality these both have what I term dual zip codes, ones that you can use several cities for and the USPS recognizes them all). My personal preference is to use actual geography when possible as the USPS is not the final arbiter in geographic info (much like the Census bureau does not control all population statistics despite some editor's contentions). My rule of thumb as been this: if the thing is physically within the city limits then no matter what the USPS says I list it in that city. For instance Planar Systems is in Hillsboro, but has a Beaverton/Aloha zip code, so list in Hillsboro since that is to whom they pay municipal taxes. If it is not physically in a city, then go by the USPS if it makes sense. As in the Canby Ferry is technically not in Canby, but has a Canby address and Canby is the closest city (and shares a name), so list it as Canby with no qualifier needed. Ditto with Enchanted Forest, but the city involved is Turner. But, Providence St. Vincent Medical Center is not in any city the last time I checked, but both Portland and Beaverton are very close. I believe Beaverton is a little closer, but it has a PDX address. In that case, I put it in the county cat and said it is in the PDX metro area, near Beaverton (since B-ton is closer). So in this case, it is physically within Beaverton, so list it in all ways as Beaverton for cat and text, but have the city in the address as PDX since that is the correct address and leave a footnote and hidden comment for it that the address is correct and that it is in Beaverton. Aboutmovies (talk) 22:15, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

<outdent>Sounds like a good solution. I took a stab at clarifying. I also fixed the county name, hopefully this was not the contentious part of the county issue that Tedder was referring to. --Esprqii (talk) 00:42, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

County change is fine- I just don't want the county to be totally dropped. tedder (talk) 00:48, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

bot replacement of the /admin list

This got split out as a subtask of the memberbot request. Basically, the idea is to relieve EncMstr from the duty of maintaining Wikipedia:WikiProject Oregon/Admin by hand.

I've already started a prototype for it, and it'll hopefully be ready to go before the memberbot. I could really use some feedback- for several reasons- it's the first bot of mine that should go all the way through the WP:BRFA process, it's an important page for our project, and I want to make sure to do it right. So, please go improve my project spec at User:TedderBot/AOP.. either add it to that page, or use the talk page.

Thanks! tedder (talk) 06:41, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Oregon Geographic Names vs. geographic mysteries

I was thinking it might be nice to write to the authors of OGN and ask them about place names we haven't been able to find much info on. Apparently an 8th edition is in the works. I've started a list here if y'all can think of things that you've run across that aren't in (or I've told you aren't in) OGN. Thanks! P.S. You might take this opportunity to remind me of things I've said I would look up but didn't. And I think Finetooth has a copy of OGN as well--I have a feeling he's more reliable than I am. :) Katr67 (talk) 18:31, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Any chance we can put a less obtrusive protection tag on this? Katr67 (talk) 14:34, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
I have a copy of the seventh edition (2003), and I'd be happy to share information. I deny being more reliable than Katr67, however. Finetooth (talk) 22:09, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
I love the idea of a letter from WP:ORE as a group. Katr, would you be able to draft one? On a related note, I've submitted a few requests via the online form at the Oregon Encyclopedia, which is pretty straightforward (though I have no idea how much influence it has). And I've been sitting on a half-completed review of that site for several weeks...probably about time I wrapped that up, huh! Anyway, I digress. OGN letter, yes! -Pete (talk) 23:53, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Oregon Bach Festival

I just did a big overhaul of the page on the Oregon Bach Festival, heretofore just a stub. It could probably use some more work but now I think it is in the category of "acceptable wikipedia entries," so perhaps this is an opportunity for another editor or two to take a look at it and give it some nips and tucks? OBF is one of the state's cultural touchstones so it seems like it deserves a good article. Thanks! Imaginesuccess (talk) 23:27, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

I did a bit of copyediting, but didn't have time to look closely at the refs. Very nice job for a new editor, though! Cheers, Katr67 (talk) 00:35, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Interesting find

Oregon's page views hit an unprecedented high today. Is there something going on that I don't know about? :) LittleMountain5 02:04, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

8/14/1848 = creation of Oregon Territory. It didn't make the "On this date" feature (on the main page) that I saw, but maybe people clicking on the "more" part for on this date saw the Oregon Territory listing and clicked through [7]. Aboutmovies (talk) 02:59, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks, LittleMountain5 15:36, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Socks

An old friend is back could an admin kindly administer their medicine? Aboutmovies (talk) 07:31, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Tedder got the block. But a little worrisome, our "murdering bums" fan seems to have branched out to anything with Portland in the title, including Portland cement. Aboutmovies (talk) 07:39, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
Jinkies! Better add this and this to my watchlist, just to be safe. "And incidentally, speaking of squares..." --Esprqii (talk) 17:25, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

[8] What AM said. And BTW, he's watching this page now. Katr67 (talk) 14:02, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Missing Article

This Oregon Ballot Measures 41 and 48 (2006) got deleted, should it have been? Looks like it was speedied but I don't see any links to user pages indicating anybody was warned. Katr67 (talk) 03:38, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

It wasn't a fluke. It contained this wikitext:
{{Orphan|date=February 2009}}
{{Split|Oregon Ballot Measure 41 (2006)|Oregon Ballot Measure 48 (2006)|date=January 2009|discuss=Talk:Oregon_Ballot_Measures_41_and_48_(2006)#Splitting article}}
This article was split into the above two suggested articles.
{{Uncategorized|date=May 2009}}
It was deleted August 11 with the comment A3: Article that has no meaningful, substantive content. —EncMstr (talk) 04:48, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
Lestatdelc split that article into Oregon Ballot Measure 41 (2006) and Oregon Ballot Measure 48 (2006) a while back. I had initially created them as one, since they were presented as a package simply to overcome the prohibition on modifying two parts of the Constitution in the same measure; but he disagreed. Since one passed and the other failed, I think he's got a point. At any rate, thanks for catching that. -Pete (talk) 16:41, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
I shoulda checked first. I saw it was a redlink in EncMstr's sandbox--I didn't think of the fact that you can't really redirect a split article properly. Thanks for letting me know! Katr67 (talk) 17:57, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Kari Ann Peniche

There's a sex tape thing going on, and an Oregon personality is involved. It will probably get many thousands of hits over the next few days, if we want to put our best face forward. I've cleaned it up a little bit. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 02:19, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

A good thought -- but I'm not sure what would be needed for an article like this. Better sourcing? -Pete (talk) 02:54, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
Keep out BLP problems, while trying to answer some of the readers questions. I'm in the middle of an FA push, but I'd like to improve the sourcing, basically. Apparently, she's a pimp, but the most reliable source I've seen is this. It just repeats gawker.com, which is a borderline thing to do. There are more source from today that I haven't read.[9] It looks like it's true, but I'd like to hear ideas on how to best include the info. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 03:21, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
Pete and I have made some serious improvements. It's a serious subject (BLPwise), so please way in. A little bit more help, and we can have a GA nom by the end of the night. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:24, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
Whoa, I just finally checked the stats. The darn thing had 85,000 hits the day the story broke!!! -Pete (talk) 05:54, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
And, the more I think about this, the more I like the Peregrine's idea. Articles like this often have problems with reliable sources, NPOV, BLP, weight, etc. etc. etc. Even though none of us might have much interest, it really is a good opportunity to show the world how good a Wikipedia article can be. The article was in pretty bad shape before Peregrine started working on it, but he's right -- I think we've gotten it into much better shape in a pretty short time. -Pete (talk) 05:56, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
I just created Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Oregon/Oregon in the news. Not sure if people will be interested in such a thing, but I think current events are one of WP's strong points, so maybe we can make it one of Wikiproject Oregon's strong points. Feel free to change the page, or delete it if it's not appropriate. I would like to tell a little story, though. When Google News began linking to WP articles, I noticed the Sonia Sotomayor article on their main page. It was in poor shape, and I expanded the lead quite a bit.[10][11] I think that lead (since worked on by others, of course) has been viewed by millions of people. Basically, I get a kick out of making sure articles with large audiences are ship-shape, and I think others will too. Also, refs are easy to find while an event is current. I don't think it will take away from our COTW, but that might be a consideration. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 06:38, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
An excellent idea! Would be good to think back and fill in some others. D.B. Cooper story is the only thing that comes to mind, though there's certainly been plenty more. I just moved it from talk space to regular WP:ORE space, hope that's OK. Think I'm gonna sign off for the night. Thanks for this idea, it was fun -- and good luck on your FA push! -Pete (talk) 06:58, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
Sounds good, and thanks. I wish we would have had it for that health care proposal that Wyden put forward. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 07:00, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

New Articles List

There used to be running list of new Oregon-related article at bottom of Wiki-Oregon page. New articles lasted about a week before dropping off. Does that list still exit; if so, where can I find it?--Orygun (talk) 01:50, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

This might be the bot you are looking for, while this was what was at the bottom of the page, but I don't recall new articles listed there. Aboutmovies (talk) 06:23, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
New Oregon Articles Bot was what I was looking for--thanks.--Orygun (talk) 00:10, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Portland Demography

You are invited to add to my comments. YBG (talk) 07:03, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

This is a great topic to discuss. Unfortunately not feeling smart enough to see my way through it...but you make some excellent points in your breakdown. I'll try to take another look later. -Pete (talk) 20:56, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
I have worked up four alternative tabular presentations that include the additional information that was reverted. Your are invited to have a look and comment here. YBG (talk) 05:41, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

History of Oregon needs rework

According to a source, History of Oregon has significant omissions. See http://xkcd.com/623/ —EncMstr (talk) 19:05, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Which reminds me. Should The Oregon Trail (video game) be part of the project? Since when many people think of Oregon, they think of dysentery... http://www.bustedtees.com/dysentery Katr67 (talk) 20:22, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Pete's at it again

Though not mentioned by name, WikiProject Oregon got a shoutout on OPB this morning. Pete provided the soundbites. What's the story Pete? Katr67 (talk) 14:46, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, meant to post here last night, was waiting for the link to the story, which you can read or listen to online. (It's really short, I think "shoutout" captures it better than "story" :)
A reporter who attended our WikiWednesday session "Wikipedia for Journalists" last spring contacted me yesterday. He was looking for a local angle on the flagged revisions that was so widely covered in the national news yesterday. I called him, thinking that he just wanted a little background...and was a little surprised when he wanted to make sure the phone line was set up for the best recording quality!
We talked for about 15 minutes. He said it would be edited down into maybe a 2 minute piece..but it ended up at 48 seconds. I think the bits he chose are a bit odd, but it's likely that I was just too long-winded in general for a short story. Anyway, maybe not ideal, but I think they say any exposure is good exposure! Sorry for not naming "WikiProject Oregon" -- he was going to, but he was going to describe it as "a state guide," and in a hasty email exchange it seemed more important that he say something accurate, than that the name itself gets in. So I suggested the phrase "the local community of Wikipedia volunteers." But this is another reminder that a bit of stock text describing who we are would come in handy... -Pete (talk) 16:14, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

State of Oregon-->Government of Oregon

This redirect is up for discussion. I'm tired of fighting for what I think is the logical redirect to Government of Oregon. Sorry to be cranky and uncivil, but I think the uniformity police1 are going to win this one. Though I think this is a good case for WP:IAR and is more logical for our readers, of whom we should always be thinking, it's possible that I'm wrong. (*gasp*) For the sake of discussion, feel free to weigh in at the Rfd, I dunno if I will or not. You can see "what links here" and my current talk page for my previous arguments. Feel free to disagree with me--I've "owned" that redirect long enough. I'll just go through and fix the appropriate redirects to [[Government of Oregon|State of Oregon]] if necessary.

1. I don't know about y'all, but I've noticed that folks like that don't usually give kudos for your hard work, and instead just forge ahead insisting on doing it their way. I would be a lot less cranky and apt to budge if I got a pat on the head first. Let's not forget to try to keep the wiki a happy place! :) Katr67 (talk) 22:52, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

block please

 Done ... and I'll go look for more. —EncMstr (talk) 06:23, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Another sock to be blocked please per their MO. Aboutmovies (talk) 06:17, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Who are the Oregon admins? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 06:21, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
There are a few of us Oregon janitor types indicated with a mop icon on the main page. I believe I must be the only one who hasn't had the honor of a PCH block. I'll get one someday…sigh -Pete (talk) 06:27, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
Thank you for the speedy service. To bad we don't earn tickets at this wack-a-mole game so we can turn them in at the counter and get some cool prizes. Aboutmovies (talk) 06:43, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
And another. Aboutmovies (talk) 10:05, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Fresh one. Aboutmovies (talk) 08:15, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Finally got one! I'm all growed up now. Thanks Am. -Pete (talk) 08:42, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
Right now it's like fishing in a trout hatchery :-) tedder (talk) 12:10, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Mountain Ranges list completed from USGS GNIS data

FYI - I created 30 stub articles to fill out List of mountain ranges of Oregon based on USGS GNIS data. I had already done the same for California and Nevada (which took about 215 new articles each to complete) last year. Ikluft (talk) 10:32, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

This is fantastic -- thanks for doing it, and thanks for informing us! -Pete (talk) 22:56, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Lewis A. McArthur

Just loaded article on Lewis A. “Tam” McArthur who wrote Oregon Geographic Names, a resource many Wiki-Oregon editors use. Was thinking about adding sentance or two on book's uses in Wikipedia. While I know it is used as a reference in many Oregon related articles, I can't find source that says that. It's not really important to the article itself, but thought it might make good hook for DYK bullet. Anyone know where/how I can confirm/reference that fact?--Orygun (talk) 23:22, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid that would be a self-reference, thus not admissible. I can vouch for its use, as can Finetooth, who also owns a copy, but unless one of us gets interviewed by the press, that's original research. I'm also not sure how relevant it is. OGN gets used as a reference in lots of things, not just Wikipedia, so I don't think it's particularly remarkable, except to us at WP:ORE. I bet there's another great DYK hook or two in there though! Thanks for creating another long-needed article! Katr67 (talk) 00:23, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
Just wanted to be sure there wasn't something I missed.--Orygun (talk) 00:32, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict) By the way, I just ran across this interesting tidbit that cleared up some family connections for me: List of United States political families (A)#The Ankenys, McArthurs, Nesmiths, and Wilsons. I wonder how Nesmith Ankeny and Captain Alexander P. Ankeny fit in. Katr67 (talk) 00:45, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
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