Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Oregon/Government

Government of Oregon, etc.

So one of the goals of this subproject should be to get the articles Government of Oregon and Politics of Oregon up to a decent standard. If we ever want to try to get the Oregon article up to GA or FA status, these will need to be filled out, as they will then become "see main article" redirects under those headings in the Oregon article. You can see Government of California and Politics of California for examples of what this should look like. Can't let our neighbors to the south get the better of us, can we? ;) BTW, only Minnesota and West Virginia have reached GA status and no U.S. states are FA yet. Katr67 20:37, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I still think de-redlinking Government of Oregon is step one toward that end. I've searched in vain for a comprehensive org chart of the various agencies, bureaus, divisions and departments. The Oregon Blue Book list is redacted, and the list on [Oregon.gov] doesn't clearly indicate hierarchy. I'll see what materials I can find at the local library Monday. I'll start creating missing articles on statewide offices and governmental agencies in the meantime. --J-M Jgilhousen 06:03, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I may have an alphabetical list laying around here somewhere. I tried to find it on the website of the agency I used to work for, but I think it was an in-house thing. I'm rather familiar with ORS too, so if you need help sorting this stuff out let me know. Katr67 07:00, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

New articles

Today, I posted articles on Charles Crookham and Oregon Attorney General. With them, we now have articles on four of our five statewide elective offices, and at least the last few individuals to have served in those posts.

The recent mass deletions of fair use images has wreaked havoc on "mug shots" in our politician infoboxes. Several which have been spared remain only because they have been inaccurately tagged as free use images. Although I'm having a conscience struggle over the issue, I've decided not to correct those tags until we can obtain replacements. -- J-M Jgilhousen 07:27, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Naming conventions -- State political offices and government agencies

Click "show" to view the original discussion on this topic, from winter '06-07.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Confession: The MoS and other policies and guidelines are so voluminous, I have to admit that I had not read the entire section on naming conventions, and have been relying solely on the "most popular name" provision when creating articles. Recently, I had occasion to delve into it more thoroughly, and it seems that I may be running afoul of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (government departments and ministers) as I go through Oregon government and politics to fill in gaps, de-redlink, etc. In mitigation, I appear to be in good company, as I browsed through the correlary articles for California, Wisconsin, and a few other states before starting to name government-related articles, and they seem to be equally noncompliant with the guideline. Since I expect to be creating a good number of articles in the next few months, I want to prevent the occasion arising where our noncompliant naming conventions becomes an issue requiring the renaming of a daunting inventory of articles. On the other hand, neither do I want to use a naming system that is so inconsistent with the ones which already exist within the scope of the Government and Politics subgroup. The logical course would seem to be to rename the existing articles according to the guideline, and then follow it in the naming of future articles. Frankly, I am not keen on interrupting the research and writing I'm doing in order to undetake such a massive "clean up" project. Any thoughts? And should I move this discussion to the project, sub-group, or other talk page? -- "J-M" Jgilhousen 01:20, 17 December 2006 (UTC) I think it would be good to copy this discussion to the sub-group talk page, with a note on the main project talk page. My professional bias would be to name things according to what the state calls them, with redirects from what people might actually search for. I believe this automatically "pre-disambiguates" them as most of the state agencies have the word "Oregon" in them. Can you give some examples of articles you feel don't fit with the guideline? BTW, a quick rummage through my training materials from the legislature does not reveal an official list of state agencies and divisions but if there are any questions in this regard, I'm pretty qualified to figure them out. (See answer to ORS question, below.) Katr67 22:53, 17 December 2006 (UTC) I share your bias in principle, and even more in theory. This comes from work in more traditional media. But, I am complying with the "most common name" policy, and even have come to agree with its use on Wikipedia because of the peculiarities of search technology, etc. Consider the case of the American Episcopal Church, whose "official" name could be argued to be that of the corporation holding its assets, "The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America." We don't have anything quite that absurd amongst the various corporate entities of the state government, but some are separated therefrom only by degree. The "common name" matter is a settled one, anyway. By the way, predisambiguating is not entirely foolproof. Some well-meaning person could very well that the existence of the redirect page indicated that the DFMSPECUSA in the example above warranted a page of its own, and turn the redirect page into a stub. Meanwhile, as the matter grinds through the nomination for deletion or revert process, all of the links to the church go to an oddly named stub. If that sounds outlandish, think about all the pages that link to List of Governors of Oregon in the context of the office. Of course, when it's moved, I will use AWB to find and change all those links, but that doesn't always happen, and in the hypothetical referenced above, it would mean changing links again when the DMBSPECUSA page got turned back into a redirect. What I was really raising was the specific form prescribed by the guideline: "Name (jurisdiction)." As I read it, that would mean Oregon Department of State Lands, for example, should be changed to "Department of State Lands (Oregon)". I find that awkward, counterintuitive, and at odds with other provisions of the MoS. It may make sense for "Minister of Agriculture (Guatemala)" but not for our articles. So my question remains, is this a rule we should ignore (which makes me nervous about the Wikipedians whose primary contribution to the project is MoS enforcement, and the possibility that when they are finished with deleting images they may well turn their robots on article titles), or if it is one with which we should comply, should we just do so for new articles, or go back and rename our existing inventory in the Name (jurisdiction) style? By the way, I suppose I should say my inclination is to ignore. I could be swayed fairly easily, though. The images purge has made me a bit gun-shy, to the point of giving serious consideration to spending my time elsewhere. -- "J-M" (Jgilhousen) 23:34, 17 December 2006 (UTC) I definitely think we should set our phasers on *ignore*. As it says: 3) Pre-disambiguation shall not be carried out: in the event of the jurisdiction name being a natural part of the subject's name (c.f. Statistics New Zealand, Canada Border Services Agency, Royal Australian Navy, Minister of Canadian Heritage) in the event that the suffix "of Jurisdictionname" is a natural part of the subject's name and/or is the overwhelmingly-utilized means of disambiguating in common speech.[emphasis mine] (c.f. Cabinet of Germany, Prime Minister of Japan, Treasurer of Australia.) Care shall be taken to avoid Something of Something of Jurisdictionname constructions. in the event that a proper noun within the natural name of the subject unmistakably identifies it with a particular jurisdiction (c.f. Mount Fuji Conservation Authority, Ministry for Paris and Lyon Affairs, State Secretary responsible for Hindi standardization; NB: artificial examples) True, here in Oregon, it is officially the "Department of State Lands" and not the "Oregon Department of State Lands" but despite my professional bias, I think moving to the parenthetical would just be silly. Though it isn't an "of Oregon" like it says above, it should still count as the "overwhelmingly-utilized" (which I note is improperly hyphenated </snark>) natural part of the subject's name. I think I mentioned this elsewhere, but it's "Department of Transportation" not "Oregon Department of Transportation", but even ODOT calls itself ODOT. If some MoS stickler takes this up, I think we can make a pretty good argument for leaving these how they are. BTW, did you ever see my argument for moving "Treasurer" to "Treasury"? I think I'll relent on that one. :) Katr67 00:24, 18 December 2006 (UTC) Okay, I brought this up only because I am poised to create a ton of articles over the coming weeks, and have already seen many of my articles robotically edited on the basis of MoS provisions which were buried so deep that I had difficulty even finding them. Then came the whole questionable image jihad, the aims of which I supported, the execution proving devastating. Forgive me if I'm over-reacting in hopes to avoid yet another round of "incoming." Thanks for confirming my initial inclination to continue naming articles based on logic rather than legalism. At least we are in better stead than most states in that the legislature seems to have seen fit to include "Oregon" in most official titles, and have been acceding to efforts by the executive branch to rename agencies to a more intuitive hierarchical scheme (e.g., Department/Division/Section). It gets a little stickier, as you know, when it comes to Bureaus and Boards, some of which are only advisory, and others regulatory or even governing, but much different than some states in which I've lived where the terminology was all but random (Departments sometimes being under Divisions, and sometimes the other way around, for instance). As to the Treasury/Treasurer thing, I have very strong feelings about maintaining the distinction between officeholders, their offices, and the agencies they may head. In most cases, I think they would be merged at peril of hopeless confusion. I feel far less strongly about how far back one should go in counting the order in which an officeholder falls. The Secretary of State asserts that the Clerk of the provisional government was numero uno, a notion I find dubious at best. And is Kulongoski really the 36th Governor of the State of Oregon, given that we didn't achieve statehood until 1859. If so, is Wikipedia consistent by counting from the days of the Republic of Texas for that state? Frankly, I think referencing democratically elected officeholder by number order is a silly throwback to the age of kings, but with it hard-coded into the infoboxes, I think we're stuck with it. So, I'll get back to gathering source documents now for my next surge of composition. -- "J-M" (Jgilhousen) 00:45, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

New question

It seems to me that having articles for both state agencies and their leaders is unnecessary. For instance, Oregon Commissioner of Labor and Industries and Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. There are several cases like this. I think one should direct to the other, and a single article should cover both the agency and the position of its director. Seems best if the article lives under the agency's name, not the title of its director. Thoughts?

Also, a special case of this. Do we need separate articles for the Oregon Dept. of Justice, Supreme Court, and Attorney General? This department seems sufficiently complex to justify more than one article, but do we need three? Or is there a good way to combine into two?

I should note, in both of these cases, one of the articles has yet to be created, so now seems like a good time to decide the future direction the articles will take…

-Pete 22:46, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I think for the most part one article is good under the title of the department, like BOLI. As to the Dept. of Justice, maybe combine with AG, but not the supreme court since it is part of the Judicial Department. As far as I know they are seperate departments (Chief Justice is the head of the OJD, AG of the DOJ) in seperate buildings, though they share a parking lot. But I don't think the judicial department should be combined with the OSC since the OJD also has the court of appeals, tax court, and the state circuit courts too. Each of those courts could be greatly expanded as the supreme court article was. I think overtime these little stubs will be adopted and expanded into real life articles. But minor agencies like BOLI don't need seperate articles for their directors, even if they are elected otherwise it would be like having Governor of Oregon and Office of the Oregon Governor, and that would just be weird. Aboutmovies 23:49, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm embarassed to say I didn't know that DOJ and OJD were separate departments. I had always thought that the separation of prosecution and adjudication was an essential part of our form of government, but the similarity of the names must have thrown me off. So, thanks the bit of education, and for reaffirming my faith in the viability of democracy. -Pete 00:48, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Work group banner

Unless there is objection, or some other reason of which I am unaware that I shouldn't, I would like to put the following banner in our collection, and use it on the talk pages of the subproject articles (until such time as we have a more comprehensive project banner that does it more "automagically"). It would really help with tracking, sorting, and prioritizing the work. Here it is:

This article is supported by the Oregon Government & Politics Workgroup.

And it would go directly under the project banner (it is the same width and conforms to the style and wording of the correlary workgroup banner of the Biography project). It would add the talk page to Category:WikiProject Oregon Government & Politics.-- "J-M" (Jgilhousen) 13:35, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Hearing no objection -- Done. Inventory tracking can now be done at . --"J-M" (Jgilhousen) 12:40, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Belated approval For your handy template. Katr67 21:56, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

List of Oregon State Government Agencies

Article with this title "beta" version done. More information on its talk page. It gives us an overview of the bureaucracy, and I am getting an idea of which stubs to develop and which to merge (Department level and major Divisions obviously belong in the former category, as do those which frequently end up as political footballs. Professional licensing and regulatory boards in the latter. Advisory and governing boards I think should probably be dealt with case by case, as some are more active and/or politically "hot" than others.) Input invited, either here, or on the respective talkpages. Assistance in de-redlinking would also be appreciated, although I don't want to pull anyone from other projects... it's nice to see cities and towns doing so nicely, for instance. --"J-M" (Jgilhousen) 12:45, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I'm quite happy with my cities and towns but I can probably lend a hand with the agencies. You are right about merging the various licensing boards, etc. Body piercing can go with health licensing, for example. They are never particularly interesting unless there is some incident or legislation affecting them, at which time they can be expanded. Quickly browsing through the list, I'd say the most interesting and/or useful ones to deredlink first would be the Oregon Cultural Trust, the Land Use Board of Appeals, and the Public Utility Commission... Katr67 18:54, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I was actually surprised to find that the professional licensing boards do not formally fall under the Department of Consumer and Business Services, but are organizationally autonomous. Since the DCBS is the primary business regulation agency in the state, licensing everything from insurance companies to electricians, would it be inappropriate to add a section with an intro to that effect, followed by brief summaries of the different boards, and then point the items on the list in that direction? (It would turn almost a third of the red entries blue overnight.) --"J-M" (Jgilhousen)

That sounds like an excellent solution. Katr67 21:56, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Stub request

Proposal for

has been filed at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Proposals in case anyone wishes to support or object. (This is not a political solicitation, just an informational notice.) --"J-M" (Jgilhousen) 12:49, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I put in a "support" vote over there, complete with a link to "Byzantine". Katr67 21:56, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanky, thanky. (No, that's not in the OED, and I don't throw it, 'cuz I can barely lift it.) --"J-M" (Jgilhousen) 22:12, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Oregon Supreme Court

The last few months I have been adding pages for the OSC justices past and present. I have plenty more to go and was wondering if your group would like me to tag them as supported by this workgroup as I go? Aboutmovies 19:13, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

That would be great. And I'm sure if J-M ever comes back he will appreciate it as well. Katr67 19:49, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Hear hear! I noticed your article on Justice Wally Carson last week, one that seemed a notable absence for some time. Glad to hear you're going to keep up the good work! By the way, do you have a legal background? There are many OR-gov related articles that could benefit from someone with a little legal knowledge. If you don't mind, I might make a request of you now and again...feel free to do the same. -Pete 22:44, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I working on getting my legal background here, so I have some, but nothing expansive as of yet. So I'll answer any requests as best I can. What's your forte?

Also, on a related note, I just added the OSC justices templates I made/stole/altered to the People sub page, so if anyone here does a bio of a justice you can start with it. Aboutmovies 22:52, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

That's great. I'm excited to see so much energy starting to come toward WP OR, and specifically gov't stuff. What's my forte...tough to pin down. I managed a campaign for a Mult. Co. Circuit Court judge last fall, but other than that have no particular affiliation or knowledge of law/courts. I'm interested in all things political, currently focused on the ballot initiative process, including Measure 37, the national coordination of measure pushing, and campaign finance. My edits are all over the place, but I try to stay somewhat focused on those :) -Pete 23:31, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Infobox

I came accross this infobox for legislation, for those working in that realm:

{{Infobox Legislation
| Name= 
| Parliament/Congress/Senate it was passed in= 
| Logo of that parliament or congress= 
| longtitle=
| introducedby=
| datepassed=
| datesigned= 
| amendments= 
| relatedlegislation=
| tablewidth=
}}

Aboutmovies 17:22, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Oregon Shield Law

Does anyone know what the Oregon Shield Law was/is? There's a redlink to it on University of Oregon, saying that the Oregon Daily Emerald was instrumental in its creation. Anyhow, if someone's interested and wants to write an article on it, that would be cool. akendall 21:13, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

See also: Oregon Daily Emerald#The Emerald and Oregon Shield Law: State v. Buchanan. akendall 21:14, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Notability of state legislators

What do people think about the prospect of having articles for all state legislators? User:Duff recently wikilinked all legislators on the Oregon House of Representatives and Oregon State Senate articles. This seems inadvisable to me for a few reasons: (1) I'm not sure every legislator is sufficiently notable to have an article, (2) Even if they are notable enough, there are very few articles, and all the red links are unsightly; and (3) simply creating the wikilinks has, in 5 or 10 cases, resulted in links to completely different people of the same name, which is bad news. Opinions? -Pete 07:13, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Per WP:BIO they are all notable, every last one of them. I know it's a lot of work, but by 2020 we should have it done. Though they all will eventually get articles, I am not for linking everyone of them yet. And Duff should go back in and fix any disambiguation issues. I recently wrote William D. Hare who was a legislator and used the state legislator infobox that we can use spruce up the current articles. No matter what we are way ahead of our neighbors to the north, as I just taged their supreme court with a WP:WA tag and I know they have very few (17 to our 70) house members with articles. So Oregon Rocks! Aboutmovies 23:18, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes I did that yesterday. I am self-generating power in the central Oregon desert and can't always stay on as long as I'd like to. Anyhoo. I'll get back to the pages tonight with the generator and fix the disambiguation issues, of which I was aware when last I had to wait for sun. Today we have mostly rain. Yay! I should be in the garden, while I still have a little light. Mostly I did that linking to test which legislators had wikipages. Those pages were where I went to find out the skinny about my own elected officials. I'm pretty new here in Oregon, one of those people from the south of you. I found nothing on my three cats, so decided to dig and expand. A really great page emerged that I had not noticed before...maybe it was already linked, but I just dug the page on Vicki Walker. Anyhow, I'll defer to your judgment on the redlinks aesthetics. I think they are helpful because they stimulate others to dig and post information, where otherwise they might not think to discover. When I get back on, if the consensus is still no redlinks, and start a list here, aok. I'll so fix it. I like the infobox politician, and plan to use that. As for where I'm going with this, I want to see all those seats and districts clearly defined and their current elected officials illuminated for all to see. Surely there's someone in each district who gives a rat. I do, and will get to them as I can. Thanks for what you've already assembled here. Great work, one and all. Duff 03:02, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I propose to use the Template:Infobox_State_Representative and Template:Infobox_State_Senator for articles I add. I note that the page I liked, Vicki Walker, used Template:Infobox_Politician, and propose her template be changed to Template:Infobox_State_Senator since she is actually an elected official at this time, in that role, not like a politician, for example Ralph Nader, an actual template infobox politician. Duff 06:55, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Also, how's anyone feel about linking the internal redlinks (until their pages are built) to their official state website home page, such as Jeff Kruse?Duff 07:15, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

With the templates, they really are all the same Infobox Elected official now, even for the politician one. So if you leave the template intact and just copy the line "| state_senate =" and paste it into the existing article it would work the same without all the conversion work. I personally would be against the external links as too SPAM like. Aboutmovies 07:41, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks for that clarification on the templates. I have done the disambiguation on the Senate page, and just cracked into the House page. I'll get to it more fully tomorrow, along with the rest in sequence, to disambiguate. One thing that occurs to me before I start, getting back to the redlink issue: I'm for keeping the redlinks until the articles are written, and written they shall be. Here's why: For example, Peter Buckley is misdirected to the boxer Peter Buckley on three different Oregon related pages (by checking what links here on the boxer's page): Oregon's statewide elections, 2006/from Oregon House Elections, 2006, Oregon's 2nd congressional district, and Oregon House of Representatives. My question: If the redlinks don't exist already, how else could those three pages come up on what links here and thereby be updated and internally linked properly by the writer of the new page on Peter Buckley (Oregon politician)? Upon disambiguation of Peter Buckley (Oregon politician) and Peter Buckley (boxer), all three of those Oregon pages would contain redlinks, appropriately (instead of the currrent blue misdirects to Peter Buckley (boxer)), until soon after, when the Peter Buckley (Oregon politician) page was at least stubbed, whereupon all three pages' refences to him would automatically turn blue and link to the right feller.

I hope that's clear. I'll wait for a little more conference on that, and focus on the disambiguation of the House folks next. Duff 11:29, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Duff, your analysis about red links sounds spot-on to me. A red link to an appropriately-named article is ideal, because it doesn't give the false impression that there's an article about that person…readers will be less likely to waste their time or get confused clicking into articles they don't expect.

Regarding the House elections page, AM and I recently discussed that a bit on my talk page. Basically, this is what I think: I had created Oregon's statewide elections, 2006 long ago; your Oregon House Elections, 2006 page is largely redundant of that, and also incomplete. The one kind of information you included that I did not is the number and percentage of votes for the candidates. So, here are the different concerns: (1) do you, or anybody, have the time and inclination to put a lot of work into this? Personally, it doesn't seem worth a lot of effort to me, but if you feel differently, that's great. (2) If so, is there any reason to have two separate pages? (3) If we get them all on the same page, how to include the statistical info without overly complicating the massive table that's already there?

Oh, and lastly, I'm glad you spotted the Vicki Walker page - I've put a fair amount of work into that one, and (not so humbly) agree that it's one of the better state legislator articles.

I'm really psyched we have all this energy for working in this area. Keep up the good work guys! -Pete 19:30, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm working now on the merge of the data from the temporary sub-page at Oregon's statewide elections, 2006/from Oregon House Elections, 2006 into your page at Oregon's statewide elections, 2006. I noted that on the discussion page at the subpage and detailed it on the discussion page at your page.

missed doing my sig above acoopula days ago...woops. Anyhoo. Work continues on the merge: up to and including Senate 10th & House 20th are merged, more very soon, done as soon as possible. peace Duff 01:15, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

That page (or anyway, the work I was doing on it) is done, awaiting deletion of the subpage. We now have the election results for every district, both senatorial and housatorial, and lots of redlinks for the legislators without pages at this time. I'm going to start with my own reps, all redlinked, and blow out from there. -Duff 16:28, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

A note from WikiProject Iowa

With regards to state legislators, feel free to stop by WP:IOWA/Government - we've laid out a bunch of relevant templates there. Also, I've recently (around December) created articles for all of our state legislators - please check out Steve Warnstadt, which is the "model" article.

Keep up the good work - it's always nice to find someone else interested in keeping Wikipedia up-to-date on state government.  :) --Tim4christ17 ^talk 05:47, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh you betcha! Thanks for the kudos and the tip on some fine templates and the great work over there too! -Duff 16:28, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Free the People's Documents

I imagine this will fall under the heading of Pete's worthy crusade to break this old(?) state habit of claiming that the State holds the copyright to the people's governmental and state foundational documents. I note that on the front page of our project is a wikisource link to the Oregon Constitution, which is great....but Wikisource has no such document, at that link or via searching. Please advise, and let's go on ahead and heat up the discussion of how to procure access to and free-use to all of OUR OWN state documents, at the very least of all the State Constitution, I mean...for Pete's Sake! -Duff 22:38, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

You can access the constitution here: http://www.leg.state.or.us/orcons/home.html I'm not aware that it is copyrighted--perhaps the link to wikisource was just wishful thinking? I don't see why it can't be copied and pasted there, but with the handy link at the legislative webpage, I don't know if we should bother. Katr67 22:50, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Not to brag or anything, but I'm intimately familiar, via a previous state position, with various state documents and their retrieval--let me know if you need help finding anything. For more info also check out the slightly off-topic conversation at User talk:Peteforsyth/leg. Katr67 22:58, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Total newbie who might be able to contribute something :-)

I'm working for the Oregon Council on Court Procedures, a division of the OJD. We noticed that there is a reference to the Council on the OJD page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Judicial_Department) but no separate page for the Council. I'm happy to provide the information for this page (including membership) but never having worked with Wikipedia before I have no clue how to go about this. Can anyone give me a hand? Thanks! Sharicn 17:42, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Hello and welcome to Wikipedia. Though we encourage people to edit and contribute, we do have a few rules/guidlines/polices. One of which is our conflict of interest policy, which strongly discourages editing (though does not prohibit) such as you writing an article about the entity you work for. Its not that you would be biased or would edit from a non-nuetral point of view, but we try to avoid the whole appearance of biased editing for the sake of the encyclopedia. However, you can certainly help out in other ways, either edit other articles where you can use your knowlegde or using this talk page provide links to WikiPedia determined reliable sources that are independent of the Council (i.e. OSB, The Oregonian, law journals, etc.) or citations so others can find those materials to then use for making an article about the Council. Then once an article is in place you can leave comments and suggestions on the talk page for others to integrate. I hope that helps, and just ask here if you have any other questions. Also, I left some links on your talk page, it is a good idea as a newbie to skim through those so you have a better idea of how things work, it definatly is not the real world. Aboutmovies 18:47, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks so much for all your information, and sorry it's taken me so long to get back here to thank you. I've also found some sources that might provide information for someone to write an article. Here are the links: http://www.osblitigation.com/ http://www.osbar.org/publications/bulletin/07dec/barnews.html https://sos.oregon.gov/blue-book/Pages/state/judicial/court-procedures.aspx http://www.ojd.state.or.us/aboutus/ccp/index.htm http://oregonlegalresearch.blogspot.com/2007/11/oregon-council-on-court-procedures.html The Council's own website is http://www.counciloncourtprocedures.org. Let me know if I can suggest anything else. Sharicn (talk) 20:59, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Maps of election results, seats in legislative assembly, and such

Hey guys. I hope this isn't a dead subproject. I wonder if anyone is working on maps showing things such as election results for various state offices by county, House and Senate districts color-coded by the party of their incumbent, and so on. I had this idea just now and was excited to find WikiProject Oregon.

These district maps would help in this endeavor. There are statewide .jpg maps available, as well as .zip folders with files that apparently can be used to make vector maps, which I would do if I knew how and had the tools. I see we have good maps showing the 2006 gubernatorial election results, our Senate districts, and the results of the vote on Measure 36. And I have already made (very rough-draft) maps of which party currently holds each seat in the legislative assembly, just to get an idea of what they would look like.

So, is there anyone actively working on this stuff already? Äþelwulf Talk to me. 13:27, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Welcome to the project. I don't think this project is dead, though the most active member left almost a year ago. I know Pete is interested in maps and such, and I think he watches this page, so I bet you hear from him shortly. Katr67 (talk) 17:28, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Did somebody say Pete? :) Yes, I'm interested in this stuff…User:Duff was too, but I think he's drifted off. User:EncMstr works on government stuff a fair amount, and has made some excellent maps. My first major project on WP was Oregon's statewide elections, 2006, basically aiming to keep track of who was running for what; I think it would be great to do it again for the '08 election, but honestly, I don't have the time to do it again on my own. I could definitely offer some thoughts on how I'd do it differently though, to make the project easier and make the article more in line with Wikipedia style guidelines. I made the Senate district maps in the process of making that page.

One important concern with map making and the like, though, is copyright. The State claims copyright over much of the stuff it puts on the web. This may or may not be supported by state law, and might be something that can be changed. I've put some ideas along those lines up at User:Peteforsyth/leg, and welcome any input; if a legislative change is needed, I'd like to push for it in the '08 session. -Pete (talk) 23:21, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

The potential copyright issue is unfortunate. But the possibility of having the relevant laws changed, if they exist, is kinda exciting. I'd be willing to take a special trip to Salem for it. But back to the subject: Supposing this weren't an issue, do we have the tools and skills to make vector maps? I know I don't, but I might try to learn. I'm also interested in working a bit on the 2008 election page. I'm (sorta) keeping an eye on the US Senate elections. I tried to find information on the election for my US congressional district, but I couldn't find it. It may be too early. Äþelwulf Talk to me. 03:08, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

New article: Oregon Arts Commission

Hi folks, I created this article to resolve a redlink at the Wordos article, but felt it deserved some care from devoted Oregon government editors, so I thought I'd give you a heads up. --GoodDamon 17:22, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

The big question.

Okay, well, to me it's "the big question." Tonight. And some other nights.

As I understand it, people register with a state party, never a national party. And the state parties are the ones that nominate candidates. The only national nominating convention I'm aware of are for presidential candidates.

So, since we have perfectly good (okay, I'll admit, they are actually far from "perfectly good") articles for the Oregon Republican Party and the Democratic Party of Oregon, shouldn't biographies of Oregon politicians link to these, rather than the national articles they presently do?

The only reason I can think of why not is that the nationally-oriented articles are presently much more thorough and informative than the state-oriented articles. But that can be fixed, and the state ones do link to the national ones.

Thoughts? -Pete (talk) 08:25, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I can see that was an exciting topic. I've started using the state parties in some articles, we'll see how it goes. -Pete (talk) 14:14, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

The Good, The Bad, The Awful

This is a recap of a discussion that started on Talk:Charles Starr, but applies to all recent state legislators. "The Good, the Bad, and the Awful" is a series in the Willamette Week that comes out at the end of every legislative session. In my opinion, it fails miserably as a reliable source, and I think we should agree not to use it as a source. I hope others will weigh in on this so we can develop some consensus, as this will affect biographies on all recent state legislators.

In the intro sections, the WW basically brags about their departure, in this series, from accepted journalistic ethics: they interview lobbyists, and then publish the results anonymously. As a rule, journalistic ethics require reporters to name sources. Sources go unnamed when there are compelling reasons to do so, and where the story does not suffer as a result; the journalist is typically understood to put his/her reputation on the line by doing so. But in this case, the WW makes a regular practice of leaving sources unnamed in order to produce a more salacious story -- decidedly not a compelling reason.

I have concerns about libel, and also don't think there is much encyclopedic info to be gained from these articles that can't be found elsewhere. (In the Charles Starr article, all these articles add are the observations that he's "unintelligent", "honest", and "nice".)

Aboutmovies rightly pointed out that WP:RS generally applies to publishers, not individual article series; but in this case, where WW makes a specific claim about their approach for this one series, I think an exception is warrented.

One year, the article's intro begins: "Reader Beware: What follows is largely gossip and opinion…" and another year, it says: "(1) This survey does not claim to be anything more than a number-crunch based on unscientific scores given by people who closely follow legislative antics."

A group of journalism professors addressed anonymity here: "Medill professors emphasize that unnamed sources should be used sparingly. Students routinely are required to submit names and contact information for every person quoted in their articles as a guard against fabrication."

That famous unsourced online encyclopedia has this to say: "The downside is that the condition of anonymity may make it difficult or impossible for the reporter to verify the source's statements. Sometimes sources hide their identities from the public because their statements would otherwise quickly be discredited."

A team of online journalists for the Poynter journalism school asserted this as part of their guidelines: "For the most part, though, it's difficult to make the case that the credibility of anonymous content can ever match that of material whose author is known. As journalists, our default position is to publish material only with full names attached. We make exceptions only in rare cases, only for compelling reasons, and only with explanations attached explaining the reason for the anonymity."

In short, WW makes a flippant case for rewriting journalistic standards in the case of this one annual(ish) feature. They state they're granting anonymity to ensure they're "…not getting mealy-mouthed answers." It's not me, but WW that first said this feature should be considered differently from the rest of their content.

I think it's a mistake to include anything acknowledged to be gathered from anonymous sources, with such tepid justification, in a serious encyclopedia article. -Pete (talk) 14:14, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Interestingly, WW founder seems to agree with me, and describes the premise of the article series as being "nuts." -Pete (talk) 18:53, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

State Depts vs. Commissions

We have lots of similar articles (and redlinks) for state commissions and state departments. I'd like to suggest that we generally make the state department the article, and have the commission redirect to the department. The article can then explain the distinction between the two. Any objection? For an example: Oregon Department of Transportation and Oregon Transportation Commission. (Note, we discussed something similar above, regarding departments and the Commissioner thereof.) -Pete (talk) 18:38, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I think that is a good solution for most of the commission/department pairings. Some them also have boards in addition. If any of the boards or commissions have household-name status on their own we can split them out as needed. I'm thinking of, say, the closely-related Land Use Board of Appeals (which gets mentioned in the news) vs. the Land Conservation and Development Commission and/or the Department of Land Conservation and Development... Katr67 (talk) 19:09, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that makes sense. Then again, mightn't it make more sense to start off in one place -- even Land use in Oregon -- and split off articles as we have enough content to build a decent start-class article? -Pete (talk) 19:37, 7 July 2008 (UTC)