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Historic Open Houses

If anyone has time on his/her hands and wants to check out some historic buildings (and maybe snap some pictures and pick up a flier or two), I noticed a few NRHP open houses this month that might be of interest to the project:

There are a few in Ladd's Addition coming up too, it might be nice to replace the photo that's there now with something, uh, a little brighter.

Here's the full list for November:http://www.oregon.gov/OPRD/HCD/docs/openhouse_oddNOV_month.pdf

There should be a ton more in December as entire historic districts often do some sort of joint holiday open house.

Happy trails, Katr67 16:01, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Rose Garden arena peer review

As you may have noticed, Rose Garden arena became a good article on Halloween... so off to Wikipedia:peer review here. The goal is for the article to become WP Oregon's first TOP/FA article.

That said... I'm not entirely sure that Rose Garden arena deserves to be Top-importance, when other fine articles like Oregon State Capitol or Columbia River are only high-importance. Which is more important--a major navigable waterway which is key to the state's economy, the seat of government for the state, or a basketball arena?

--EngineerScotty 17:35, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

FYI, you don't have to go through peer review for FA. It's good to have people look it over, but not required.
With the importance classification, the reason I placed the Rose Garden at top was that in its category (sports venues in Oregon) of around what will likely be 100 articles, it is the top priority, and top are the top 1%. With the Columbia, I didn't go with Top since, though important, with the geography articles it's more of the geographical spread, and the Columbia only touches a handful of counties, and is shared with Washington. So though there is a lot of river traffic, how much is Oregon's share? Even the damns are shared, so only half of the electricity generated on the three dams (I think) is really Oregon's. And between Oregon rivers, its a tough choice between the Willamette and Columbia (though maybe move both to Top). I'm not saying its not important, just the system outlined was trying to go with objective criteria, instead of more subective criteria. Symbols of Oregon as defined by the state=Top. There is then no debate on what the article should be. With people, a governor is automatically mid, unless there is more important offices to bump them up. With geography, how many counties does the feature exist in, one or two=Low, 3-6=Mid and so on. It's by no means a perfect system, but I was hoping to avoid discussion such as, well it's important to me. Eastern Oregon isn't important to me, but it arguably takes up half the state, so it is important even though sparsely populated. With the capitol, how many people are effeced by the building? The government itself is Top, but the building that usually gets used every two year just seems less important. Also at the time we were working on improving it and it seemed wrong to label it Top while editing it too. I'm not against them being Top, or lowering the Rose Garden, I just caution on trying to go with subjective reasoning. There is no perfect system, but the one in place could be tweeked. Also note that just as articles can be re-assessed for quality as they are expanded, they can also be re-assessed for importance since a info is added an article can then be more important to the project. For instance say there was a stub about "Bob's Pizza" with a single sentence and it was then classified as Low, but after expansion the article showed the company was the oldest and largest pizza chain in Oregon, thus more important and should be bumped up. Aboutmovies 18:50, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

early oregon history timeline

I summarized a few historical "significant events" related to transportation at talk:Barlow Road#timeline. Originally I was thinking some form of this would be a good addition to Barlow Road as a sidebar thingy. But such a collection may have broader usage in other Oregon history articles. Additions? Comments? —EncMstr 17:49, 1 November 2007 (UTC)


My thoughts on top-importance articles

Continuining the above thread... my personal assessment of the articles flagged as "top" by the project (I'm not changing any assessments at this time, just discussing), along with a few subjects which might be better suited to "top" quality.

Oregon, Portland, Oregon, Salem, Oregon.
Yes on all three; no on any other community.
Alis volat propriis, American Beaver, Flag of Oregon, Fusitriton oregonensis, Oregon-grape, Oregon, My Oregon, Sunstone, Thunderegg, Western meadowlark
The state motto, critter, flag, mollusk, flower, song, gem, rock, and bird. All interesting bits of trivia, but none of 'em is truly necessary to understanding the state of Oregon. The Beaver should possibly be high-importance due to historical importance to the economy of the Oregon Country; the rest of 'em are all trivia.
Chinook Salmon, Coast Douglas-fir Common Hazel
Biological things (critters and plants) with both symbolic and commercial importance. The salmon and the douglas fir I could see as being kept at top-priority, though maybe high is better. Hazelnuts, less so.
Cascade Range, Cascadia subduction zone, Columbia River Gorge, Crater Lake, Mount Hood, Oregon Coast.
Geological things. The Cascades, Mount Hood, and the coast, sure. Crater Lake, as our only national park, yes. I'd promote Columbia River to top and demote the gorge to high. I'd add in Willamette Valley and/or Willamette River; perhaps Central Oregon and Eastern Oregon. The Cascadia subduction zone won't be important until the Big One, at which point none of us will care anymore.  :)
Charles L. McNary, George Henry Williams, John McLoughlin, Ken Kesey, Steve Prefontaine, William Paine Lord
People. McNary, yes. Williams, maybe. McLoughlin, him more than anyone else. Kesey... I'm not sure. (If we had to pick one artist-type from the state, would you pick Kesey over Matt Groening, Beverly Cleary, Gus Van Zandt, Everclear (band), etc?) Pre... sure; probably the most accomplished native-born jock (playing for the Blazers doesn't count, so sorry Clyde.) Lord, maybe. What about Herbert Hoover, Tom McCall, Neil Goldschmidt, or Mark Hatfield?


Government of Oregon, Oregon Constitution, Oregon Constitutional Convention
certainly.
Oregon Department of Transportation
no. Likewise for articles on any other governmental department or bureau.
Intel Corporation, Nike, Inc, The Oregonian, Portland Trail Blazers
Sure to the first three. Maybe to the Blazers. Any other local companies qualify (OHSU? Les Schwab? Jeld-Wen? Tek?) What about business-and-economy summary articles?
Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Lewis and Clark Expedition
Yes, important historical topics. What of the Oregon Trail, the Oregon Country, the Oregon Territory, or of summary articles like History of Oregon?
Oregon State University, University of Oregon, Oregon Ducks, Oregon Ducks football, Oregon State Beavers, Oregon State Beavers football.
Yes to the articles on OSU and the U of O. No to the articles on their sports programs.
Interstate 5 in Oregon
No, primarily a road-geek page. (And I mean that nicely, being a roadgeek myself...)
Miss Oregon
You have *got* to be kidding. Katie Harman might be a high-priority article, being a former Miss America, but the Miss Oregon pageant itself is not a top priority for this WP.
Rose Garden arena
Currently, the only piece of architecture (building, bridge, dam, or other structure or similar facility) represented. Why should a basketball arena be ranked ahead of such things as the Bonneville Dam, the Oregon State Capitol, the Interstate Bridge or Glenn Jackson Bridge, the Portland Building, Portland International Airport, etc.? Or for that matter, ahead of the Oregon State Fairgrounds, Memorial Coliseum (Portland) or Hayward Field? Or the Oregon Convention Center?

Flame away!  :) --EngineerScotty 18:21, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure AM will have some thoughts on the matter. :) In the meantime, for those who aren't familiar with our subprojects, check out Wikipedia:WikiProject Oregon/Assessment for more info. Katr67 18:32, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
First, yes do read the reasoning on the assessment page. But I'll point out a couple things using some examples from above:
George Henry Williams why maybe, what's you reasoning? Only Oregon person to be US AG, Portland mayor, member of the consitutional convention, and Chief Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court versus McCall-two term gov, and sec. of state, that's it (not counting policies which he could not implement alone). Hatfield, gov/sec of state and longest serving Senator, but unlike McNary never was minority or majority leader (thus no national leadership position and I don't count committee chairs). Hoover, sure he was president, but who actually considers him an Oregonian, he lived here for what ten years and pretty much never came back and never was an Oregon politician. Goldschmidt was mayor, one term gov and short term sec of transportation (cabinet level but lower than sec. of state/AG/defense). In 60 years how important do you think they will be? With Miss Oregon and the other state symbols, see above.
Basically for people, this is how I outlined it and then did it since I taged the majority of the articles:
  • Base level is Low, all articles are notable since they are on Wikipedia (theoretically)
  • If they do something above that single thing that made them notable, bump to Mid.
  • Something more, bump to High
  • National level too, then Top.
In practice: Williams: Oregon Supreme Court justice gets him an article, chief of the court bumps to Mid since its in charge of a state-wide governmental agency. Portland mayor does nothing by itself, and neither does Senator, but combined with Oregon Constitutional Convention delgate that's enough for High. Then being U.S. Attorney General, that's Top. If you do this for all the people you should have a similar outcome to their current classification for all the people above. That way its not a I think this person is more important than that person debate, since that will involve a lot of bias and judgement calls. I may hate a certain politician, but judging by objective criteria allows for a more neutral judgment. This similar to the reason why notability is established useing reliable sources and not, well I've heard of them. Aboutmovies 19:25, 1 November 2007 (UTC)


I know it's all subjective, and I don't mean to step on toes.  :( (And of course, you cannot assign ratings to subjects on which we don't have articles.) It's hard to consider the needs of the "typical reader" (which one? The casual reader? The serious student?) and not put your personal judgements in instead. OTOH, some of 'em looked a bit out of place. And in some cases, perhaps the best bet is to improve the article. For example, Interstate 5 in Oregon consists primarily of a route description and an exit list. Not surprising--the page came out of Wikipedia:WikiProject Oregon State Highways, and technical descriptions of highways are the sort of thing that WP (I'm a member there too) focuses on. Were we to improve it as part of this WikiProject, we might expand on a) its history, and b) its importance to the state.
Things like geographical scope and such should obviously be considered, but remember to think beyond mere physical location. No river flows through all 36 counties, after all; and no personage, no matter how importand, has lived throughout the state's entire history. The Columbia River may only touch a handful of counties, but it affects practically the entire state; goods from all over the state are moved on the river, fish caught in it are eaten throughout the state, power generated on its dams keeps the lights on statewide. The fact that we share it with Washington doesn't diminish its importance to Oregon--we share I-5 with both Washington and California after all.  :) And there are nine (out of 46) top-importance articles in the "symbols of Oregon" category; that's 20% of them. I think a better approach there would be to create a "Symbols of Oregon" article, have that be top or high, and then have the individual articles on beaver, sunstone, etc. focus on the biological/mineral/other aspects of the subject. To a biologist, the fact that the beaver is our state critter (and OSU's mascot, and Caltech's, and that of the local AAA ballclub, and the nickname of Wally Cleaver, etc.), is trivia. For the state song and motto, that approach might not apply.
One more concern--I do disagree somewhat with the idea that someone has to have national or worldwide import to have top importance here. Tom McCall is an excellent example; what other political (or other) figure in Oregon in the last half-century was anywhere near as influential on the state? IMHO his profound influence makes him a top, even if he never held national office. A similar observation applies to Neil Goldschmidt--this project should be concerned with his legacy as the mayor of Portland, governor of Oregon, as a behind-the-scenes power broker, and his recent downfall. His stint as Secretary of Transportation in the Carter Administration does little in my mind to enhance his notability in the Oregon context.
I hope I haven't upset you, or anyone else, involved in categorization and evaluation (something I've so far not done much of myself). You've done a lot of excellent work. The criteria for categorization are FTMP quite good. Please take my suggestions as just that--suggestions--and perhaps the seed for a discussion as to how we might improve--we may decide that we're pretty close as it is.
Perhaps this belongs at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Oregon/Assessment, not here...
Anyway, thanks for hearing me out.
--EngineerScotty 19:54, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent discussion, and I sure hope nobody is taking it personally…doesn't look like it from what I see, but whatever. I'm going to write assuming that we're all grownups (or pretty mature kids, not making assumptions about anyone's age!) and that we all get that these "importance" tags are a tool for organizing our efforts, not a final and authoritative product.

I agree almost entirely with Scotty -- both that AM has done excellent work getting this going, and also that it's a good time to take a "big picture" as a group look after a lot of detail work, and also on most of the specifics.

Hope I'm not oversimplifying, but what I hear is basically AM advocating a "bottom up" approach, where articles are evaluated individually based on certain criteria, while Scotty is wanting to look at it sort of "top down," as in, "what are the most important topics to cover in terms of Oregon." I'd like to suggest that both are valid, and that it's necessary to do some of both for the system to be useful. Definitely there will be subjective calls, but that's not a reason not to do it; I think we're all interested enough in the content itself, that we won't let ourselves go too far down the path of re-evaluating or squabbling over ratings. We've all got better things to do, ultimately.

A few specifics: I agree that state symbols and Miss Oregon should not be "top," but am interested in seeing your reasoning, AM. I looked for it on the Assessment talk page, but couldn't find it. Can you summarize, or point to the section where it was discussed?

The Columbia River, I absolutely think should be top priority. Obviously I have done a lot of work on that article recently, here's my reasoning: it is the main "artery" of our entire region. Geologic, economic, cultural, industrial, and environmental issues have collided there for…well, for all time, more or less. It is a major shipping channel as far as Idaho, its bounty of fish supported trading across the western half of the continent for maybe 10,000 years, it provides a tremendous amount of electric power to the region, it is the sole reason that massive chunks of Oregon and Washington are agricultural rather than desert, it's central to multiple international treaties (with Canada and Native Americans), it supported the birth of nuclear warfare. It was also one of the primary reasons that westerners rushed to settle the PNW: they were seeking the NW Passage, and everybody thought the Columbia had to be it. And many of the otters, beavers etc that supported fur trade lived along the river. (Actually, I need to get that into the article.)

To me, that one is a no brainer, and utterly separates the river from the Willamette and any other. It may be equally important to Washington and BC, but I don't see how that diminishes its importance to Oregon.

Re: Williams, AM has me totally convinced. Sounds like I don't know his story well enough. Re: Hoover, I'm convinced there too, nobody thinks of him as an Oregonian. McCall, Hatfield, Goldschmidt, I think all of them should be "top" as well. The details of their resumes only get you so far. To take Goldschmidt as an example, when multiple newspapers discuss you as being the most influential politician in a 30 year span, and when your scandalous downfall ripples through multiple layers of gov't for several years, and when you generate significant national coverage, to me that transcends any specific office you may have held. Similar arguments for Hatfield and McCall, though I'm not as well-versed on the specifics there.

Anyway -- I think it's good to have this discussion, as long as we don't let it stretch to eternity. Among other things, I collaborate with you guys enough, to me it is valuable simply to get to know how you think about these kind of issues -- I think it will help us work together in the future. I also think it's a good discussion to have here, where more people will see it -- we should just move it over to the Assessment page if we find ourselves repeating each other.

That's my 2c...or $200, maybe, that was more than I meant to write :) -Pete 00:15, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not offended at all, and I don't think anyone else is. Trust me if this was WikiProject Aboutmovies Oregon there would defenitely be changes as I would not select Miss Oregon and some of the others that are currently Top. My point with the process was as I've said to try to reduce the subjectivity and make it as best as possible to cover the entire state. That meaning geographically, demographically, and hstorically. Miss Oregon is not in anyway important to me, but 50% or so of the state are women, and remembering back to high school I can recall many female students did care about pagents (us men did too but that was just the swimsuit contest part). Not all, but not all the guys cared about the Friday night football game. Perspective is all that I ask with any re-doing of the criteria. We're mainly talking about more recent polititicans here, and since I've seen a lot of the politician pages you'd be surprised about some of the accomplishments of the older ones. Hatfield's hot now, but in 40 years is he going to just be another John H. Mitchell (minus the land fraud scandal) or George Earle Chamberlain? With McCall, honestly I thought going in to assess that article I figured he'd be Top. But when you read the article and seperate the man from the myth, you get a different view. He's given a lot of credit for the bottle bill and the whole public beaches thing, but read the articles about those and you get a different perspective on McCall. Important, but I don't think quite the god like figure I remember him being portrayed as. Again, I'm all for improving the process, and I like the idea for an article on the symbols of Oregon, I just really caution on the historical perspective. Aboutmovies 00:56, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

My two cents about state symbols

First, I'd like to reiterate the thanks to Aboutmovies for getting the ball rolling on the assessment project, which some of us talked about quite a bit before it actually happened. I know I was personally too lazy to do anything about it, but was perfectly willing to go along once it started. And kudos to User:Theophilus75, who was the one who actually set up the ratings category pages, before he was even a member of the project.

As far as the ratings of state symbols, I think the traditional ones--bird, flower, tree, (animal?), (rock?)--should be top importance. This is the kind of stuff we used to learn about other states when we were kids. I remember finding it interesting back in the day, so a casual reader might be likely to check out those articles and it would be nice if they found a good one. (However, the top three are under the purview of other WikiProjects and don't even need our help!) A lot of the more recent ones are only there because some schoolkid or a powerful agricultural lobby caught a legislator's imagination in a slow legislative year. Pear is the state fruit because the berry lobby didn't think to give away tons of free stuff in the Capitol Galleria like the pear lobby did. I have nothing against pears (I still have my free pear swag), but these "feel good" sort of state symbols should probably have lesser importance than the old school ones. Heck, Arizona has state neckwear, but I digress. I like the idea of a state symbols article. Several states have them, and we could give some background on the history of legislative efforts to nominate things as state symbols. I know that's the least of our worries, but I had some first-hand experience with this, so I thought I'd mention it. Katr67 01:48, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

List of Oregon covered bridges

Just a head's up that I created List of Oregon covered bridges. There's a great reference here that I plan I using to fill in the rest of blanks in the table. — Zaui (talk) 22:05, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Nice work. I left you a note on the talk page and added one. I know EncMstr has Office Bridge on his to-do list... Katr67 22:29, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Oregon (toponym) is up for deletion

For other Oregon-related Afd and prod news, be sure to check Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Oregon (conveniently linked from this project's front page). I'll be trying to keep the page updated, since the deletion sorting project seems to be AWOL... Katr67 18:02, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

List of Oregon covered bridges DYK?

Are lists ok to submit to DYK? The deadline would be tomorrow. Possibilities:

or do we need to write a Covered bridges in Oregon article? — Zaui (talk) 18:17, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

On that topic, I'd really like to extract a DYK about George W. Joseph, a stub I just made, and a fascinating bit of Oregon lore. But I don't know anything about the process, including whether it's OK for me to self-nominate. Any suggestions anybody? -Pete 01:31, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, both articles are too old for inclusion in DYK. Since the covered bridges article is mostly a list, I don't think it would fly even if it were under the five day cutoff. Likewise, the George Joseph article is at the cusp of being too short (less than 1500 characters). Self nominations are common. Just compose your item (like Zaui did), add it with the others at T:TDYK, and monitor for comments. Note that there was a bit of a meltdown in recent discussions, so the DYK project has slowed down significantly. —EncMstr 02:02, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
List of Oregon covered bridges was created 2 November + 5 days = 7 November. — Zaui (talk) 06:31, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

WikiWednesday

Hey all, this is your (fairly last-minute) reminder about Portland WikiWednesday. Tomorrow night, 5:30pm, AboutUs offices in inner SE Portland. Come one, come all! It's evolving into a very good group. My personal goal tomorrow night is to get some discussion going about how we might invite the Oregon Historical Society or similar group to come talk with us about how to work together. -Pete 01:31, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

A mission to fix up the missions

In editing the Cayuse War (last week's CoTW), I noticed that we have lots of overlapping articles on the Methodist Missions that were such a big part of the settlement of Oregon Country. I'm going to try to make sense of them, with some selective merging and editing. But I'm pretty new to this period of our history, so hopefully some of you with more familiarity will take a look as well.

Articles I've noted:

-Pete 22:46, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Great idea. I have a docent packet from Mission Mill Museum in my possession that gets at some of this info. I need to figure out how to cite it. I haven't had much input in this area since to my eternal shame I had planned to volunteer as a tour guide at the mill, but, well, I'm a flake, so I've been avoiding going over the material. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.... Katr67 (talk) 20:29, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

A shoutout to the article creators

According to User:Bryan/List of users by pages created, a list of everyone who has created 50 or more articles, Owen has created a whopping 420 articles, EngineerScotty has 298, Aboutmovies had made 263, I've got an even 200, Esprqii 109, Ajbenj 101, Jgilhousen 99, EncMstr 97, Trashbag 97, VegaDark 87, Cacophony 55. Way to go WP:OREsters! I bet most of those even had to do with Oregon topics! (And Llywrch, who isn't a member, but dabbles in Oregon-related things has a scary 1137!) Sorry if I forgot anyone, those are the folks I thought to check. Please mention your own article creating prowess here if I overlooked you. Cheers! Katr67 15:37, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Oregon Book Award

Got a start on this, but it's little more than a list at this point. Would appreciate anything anyone could add. Owen 04:24, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack

Here's a brand new article that is already a GA candidate that I ran across this a.m. if anybody wants to check it out. Katr67 (talk) 16:29, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I thought his name was Charles? Katr67 (talk) 09:04, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Charles, yes, my mistake, corrected it. Charles Turner (attorney). Got some other stuff on my plate, but might create that article at some point. Curt Wilhelm VonSavage (talk) 12:24, 21 November 2007 (UTC).

Do we have a place to list new articles? I just started Table Rock Reservation, and would put it there if such a place exists. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 18:55, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

If a new article mentions Oregon, it should show up at User:AlexNewArtBot/OregonSearchResult within a day or so. At least that's how I find new articles. —EncMstr 19:02, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Yep, that's how I find them (besides the huge amount of redlinks on my watchlist), but always feel free to list them here if you'd like more input. Thanks for starting it! Katr67 (talk) 20:24, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

State of Oregon

This currently redirects to Government of Oregon, which is something I did for, I think, logical reasons, though most "State of" articles redirect to the state in question. There is a proposal on the redirect's talk page to redirect to the state. Though I'm a big fan of consistency, I think the way it currently redirects makes sense, and is possibly a good use of WP:IAR. If I'm wrong, that's cool, but either way, please weigh in on the discussion, thanks! Katr67 (talk) 20:57, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Historic Images

Salem Public library has online digitized copies of many of its archival photos. The uses and restrictions notice states that they can be used for educational, non-profit purposes as long as they are correctly attributed to SPL. My personal opinion is that this would be an invaluable resource for this project, but I'd like to throw it open for discussion seeing how sensitive copyright issues are in regards to images. My understanding is that fair use images with the appropriate rationales are still acceptable for Wikipedia even if their use is discouraged if images that can be used from the WikiCommons project are available. Thoughts? Awotter (talk) 00:13, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

In a nutshell, very sensitive. A former WP:ORE editor, Jgilhousen attempted to post some of the photographs with proper attribution, and I believe they have all been deleted. If you want to dig through his archives you may find some clues as to why these images were deleted. Since I can't be bothered to figure out the proper license for these images, I just add them to the external links section, but if you can find a way to get some of these uploaded without deletion, that would be excellent. As a side note, I've noticed a lot of errors in their image descriptions, and e-mailed them about one of them (Something about the Lane Hotel in Eugene being misnamed the Lake Hotel) and they responded quickly and were very amenable to hearing about things like that, so you might try contacting them. I'm not sure if J-M did or not. Katr67 (talk) 00:25, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Awotter, if I might suggest another kind of approach…not nearly as satisfying, but I think the right thing for the long term. I think it's vital that those of us who see this kind of issue, find ways to educate and lobby those who license images and other media, about this issue. I've outlined a sketch of how to get the state of Oregon to freely license its publications, like the Oregon Blue Book; I've brought it up to a few elected officials, who seem to think it's a good idea (though potentially tough to implement.) That's just meant as an example, it wouldn't address the library issue of course. But it would probably be worthwhile to get in touch with the right person at the library, and point out this consequence of their licensing decision. Might not cause a change right away, but it would be a step in the right direction. If you want to pursue that, I'd be happy to help edit a letter or something -- just let me know. -Pete (talk) 03:44, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Pete, I'm not quite clear on what you mean, maybe I wasn't clear originally, the library explicitly grants fair use of the images for things like personal web pages and educational uses, which makes me believe Wikipedia qualifies, as long as a fair use rationale is listed on the image page and it's done for each page the article is on. I was more concerned with the Wikipedia end than the library's since it looks like Wikipedia is strongly encouraging media be on WikiCommons. It might be worth contacting the library as you suggest about WikiCommons, but I suspect that the response, similar to what you have run into, would be that their lawyers would reject open licensing out of hand without even considering it. Awotter (talk) 04:32, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
The usage guidelines for SPL do not match what Wikipedia requires (because of the GFDL licesning), so they would have to be done off a purely fair use rationale. So they could be uploaded, but they need a proper fair use rationale for each page, and they need to not be replacable by a free image, etc. Note that SPL doesn't really grant fair use, far use was granted first by case law and then by statute in 1976 with the copyright law. Even Getty Images can be used under fair use, they have no choice. The key is will a court of law buy your fair use rationale if the copyright holder decides to sue you. The person uploading is the person exposed to copyright violations, not Wikipedia.
Another way around is to get SPL to give you permission on a picture by picture basis, like you did with that Mo's picture, then you can avoid Fair use, but it is again very tricky. Aboutmovies (talk) 21:31, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, I don't even play a lawyer on tv so that helps. I'll just use them on a case by case basis if the image meets the rationale criteria then. thanks for clarifying it. Awotter (talk) 00:53, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

One other possibility to consider: For pictures which are sufficiently old (i.e. the photographer or rights holder has been dead for a sufficiently long time), they may be in the public domain, in which case the SPL cannot really enforce any copyright restrictions on them. Simply reproducing a public domain work on a website doesn't create a derivative work which would have a copyright--if you photocopy or scan-and-post a PD photo, the resulting copy is also public domain. The Oregon Historical Society has lots of 1800s-era photos, letters, and other documents, whose copyrights have long expired. Courtesy probably merits crediting SPL or OHS (or whoever) as a source for the photo--but if it's in the public domain, we can use it how we like. --EngineerScotty (talk) 03:45, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

RFC on 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack

Template:Navbox

Please see Template talk:Or hist navigation. I went ahead and was WP:BOLD and changed the formatting of the four "Oregon History" templates, using Template:Navbox. I think they are simpler, look nicer, and will be easier to manage in the future. Share your thoughts at Template talk:Or hist navigation, but then we can go ahead and delete the Template:Or hist navigation template itself, as it is an orphan, I think. Curt Wilhelm VonSavage (talk) 11:30, 24 November 2007 (UTC).

I disagree with this change, I think they looked better before (centered text, placement of of the image), and more closely mirrored the look of the {{Oregon}} template. I'm all for being bold, but a change like this to a series of templates, especially ones that are closely associated with an active WikiProject, should have been discussed first. Could you please define "look nicer" and "easier to manage" so I can understand your point of view? Katr67 (talk) 20:05, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Katr, "boldness" can go too far. When a change affects a large number of articles, and is of a technical enough nature that few editors would know how to revert or build on the results, I think advance discussion is the courteous thing to do. (I do, of course, recognize that this was done entirely in good faith.) That said,Curt, it would be extremely helpful if you could provide a clear image/screenshot of "before" and "after," so that we can all see clearly what we're discussing. -Pete (talk) 20:30, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for posting those. Seeing them side-by-side, I don't really have a strong preference. On the one hand it's nice to see the larger state seal, but it increases the depth of the nav box, which should be as compact as possible. So, I'm fine with either. -Pete (talk) 23:38, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Okay, thanks. My main point is that Template:Navbox makes it easier for other users to see where to add new entries, it formats/aligns betters at the bottom of the page with other templates which use the same style, and it's a bit more compact as far as aligning and spacing the entries within the template. Now that Pete has changed sentiment from oppose to ambivalent, I'd like to hear from a few more editors. If consensus is to go back to the old version - I will gladly revert it back myself. Curt Wilhelm VonSavage (talk) 23:43, 24 November 2007 (UTC).
The centered text is better, but I still prefer the left-aligned image and the broader bar at the top. At least it's no longer periwinkle. Oh, and not to imply Pete was implying I thought the changes were in bad faith, but for the record, I agree that of course the changes were made in good faith. Katr67 (talk) 00:21, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for commenting, and thanks for acknowledging that the changes were made in good faith. Perhaps I was a little too bold, but of course, if consensus develops to go back to the old version, I'll gladly switch it back myself. At the moment, though Aboutmovies (talk · contribs) hasn't yet commented here, it looks like we have 2 for old version, 1 for new version, and 1 ambivalent. Curt Wilhelm VonSavage (talk) 00:25, 25 November 2007 (UTC).
The version with the image at the right causes excessive text wrapping at browser widths near and below 800 pixels, though at widths of 1400 and above, it seems more streamlined. I'm slightly preferring the original version however. —EncMstr 03:47, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps there is a way to fix the text wrapping, maybe by putting the image itself in a "thumb" box with a caption? Curt Wilhelm VonSavage (talk) 03:50, 25 November 2007 (UTC).
As noted on my talk page and Curt's talk page I prefer the original due to the picture placement since it mirrors the {{Oregon}} template, which it was modeled after. Related to that is the text wrapping issues that squeezing the text into that smaller area creates, stretching the template. Aboutmovies (talk) 21:55, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Okay, anyone else have any other thoughts? You mean stretching the width of the template? Because that is exactly the same for all {{Navbox}} templates. Curt Wilhelm VonSavage (talk) 00:36, 26 November 2007 (UTC).
Actually its the length, but looking at the comparison it looks about the same in length. But I also prefer the larger text for the name, and the way in which the groups look more grouped. As in the newer version has more of running into the next group. Plus the group labels appear more dominate than the title in the newer version. Again, just my opinion and preferences. Aboutmovies (talk) 00:56, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I made the title of the template appear larger in the templates, using <big></big>. Does that look better? Curt Wilhelm VonSavage (talk) 01:00, 26 November 2007 (UTC).
Yes and no. Bigger helps to make the title stand out compared to the individual entries and the row labels, which I think is needed. The problem now is the title bar seems too small compared to the text. If you can get the picture back into the title bar it will increase the size and appear less ackward. Aboutmovies (talk) 01:05, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Working on it, I can get the picture to appear back in the title bar, but on the right-hand side. Still working on getting it on the left-hand side. Curt Wilhelm VonSavage (talk) 01:32, 26 November 2007 (UTC).
Yes, that looks better. What about the backgrounds for the "entries" section? There is a color difference between the sections to help the reader see the different sections (topics/people/events). The older version appears to have had a darker "gray" to oppose the white, and though there is still a difference between the sections, it is less noticable on the newer version which at least on my monitor makes it appear that the sections run together. Aboutmovies (talk) 02:00, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Agree that it looks better, but I'm on a very good monitor and don't see any background shading bars. —EncMstr 02:09, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! I made the even groups' shading a teensy bit darker. What do you think now? Curt Wilhelm VonSavage (talk) 02:09, 26 November 2007 (UTC).
I see it, but it is quite subtle. Is there a standard shading used in cases like these? —EncMstr 02:11, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes, it's actually even more subtle, and it's the standard default at Template:Navbox. I just added a tad more of a contrast. Curt Wilhelm VonSavage (talk) 02:17, 26 November 2007 (UTC).

Contents

No need to decide now, but Curt bringing up the point that his version would be easier to add to, makes me think that at some point, we should ask that people discuss additions to these boxes on the talk page. Soon, if we keep up the pace of article creation, the boxes will become unwieldy and defeat the purpose of ease of navigation (at least I think that's a navbox's purpose...). AM made good initial selections, and the everyone else had made good additions, but we should we aware of the possibility that as we add content on Oregon's history, one person's important event/person/etc. is going to be someone else's historical footnote. I think a polite note visible in edit mode would be sufficient--I certainly don't think WP:ORE should all WP:OWN about it, but since several us know about the history and scope of the templates and the articles in them, WP:ORE members should at least be notified of potential changes. Katr67 (talk) 00:21, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

1985 Rajneeshee assassination plot

Created template Template:FormerORCompanies

As Tektronix is now officially a subsidiary of Washington, DC based Danaher Corporation, and no longer eligible for Template:ORCompanies, I went ahead and created Template:FormerORCompanies to hold those companies which used to be Oregon-based (and notable), but which have been bought out, moved elsewhere, and/or gone out of business. Right now the list of companies in the template is highly incomplete (I can think of several local banks not there, as well as a few high-techs and forest products companies). Other than Tek, I haven't added the template to any of the listed company's Wikipedia articles, pending discussion here.

I do think it's a notable issus, as the state seems to have a large number of large businesses which have either moved on or been bought out--including some of the state's biggest players. That (along with allegations that the state isn't "business friendly") might be worth an article in itself.

--EngineerScotty (talk) 21:48, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

What a depressing way to start the week. ;) Better get the template on Willamette, too. -Pete (talk) 21:52, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
See Category:Defunct companies of Oregon for additional ones. As to the article, I'd say it would work better as a section in Economy of Oregon, when that article gets created. Aboutmovies (talk) 21:54, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Oh, and when I say "depressing," I hope it's clear that I mean to say "nice work." One other suggestion: putting the year of sale or moving in parentheses would, I think, make this a much more informative template. Maybe that info should be migrated into a table for the article, when it gets to that point. But in the short term, it would be great to have that info collected in one place. -Pete (talk) 21:59, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Revisit merger of Mount Hood Village, Oregon

Someone clearing a merge proposal backlog went ahead and merged Villages at Mount Hood, Oregon into Mount Hood Village, Oregon. I'd like a few more people to revisit the merge discussion, just to make sure there is consensus for this decision. The discussion is at Talk:Mount Hood Village, Oregon. Thanks. Katr67 (talk) 22:37, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Woodburn Company Stores

Apparently this article has existed quietly as a stub since 2006, not categorized under any Oregon cat, and is now up for deletion following what apparently has been quite the edit war, though I haven't looked into it. Might be notable? I dunno, I don't shop, but I guess lots of people do... Katr67 (talk) 20:19, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

It's not my idea of fun, but hundreds of people sitting in an early morning traffic jam on Black Friday to shop there makes it notable in my book. I think the deletion request is kind of silly just after a cursory glance at the article.Awotter (talk) 23:55, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Cascadia

There was quite a bit of controversy back when this compromise dab page was created last year. I believe the controversy may have died down, due to certain editors being less involved in the wiki, but now an editor is attempting to turn this back into an ordinary dab page. I'm not sure I agree, but I was too involved in the compromise solution to know for sure. Anyone care to step into that particular tar pit and take a look? Thanks! Katr67 (talk) 20:30, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Hard to tell from the talk page what the controversy was all about, so maybe you could summarize? It looks like the new version omits several topics that are explained on the old dab page--region, bioregion, landmass, basin--but which don't have their own articles. I'm guessing the controversy was regarding the bioregion and region entries. Is there some reason those articles won't ever be written? If they will be, can we add them to the page as redlinks? Or was there a decision that they should not ever be written? I think I prefer the new shorter version rather than long explanations. --Esprqii (talk) 20:55, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm a bit fuzzy on the guidelines for these types of pages, but it seems like the original page provided sufficient context and information to justify keeping it as it was. I don't think it should have been altered so much with out addressing the original concerns. Awotter (talk) 23:03, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
In looking over the discussions one thing else needs to be pointed out Cascadia is not technically a synonym for Pacific Northwest, it defines a somewhat more specific geographical area than what is traditionally included with the PN region.Awotter (talk) 23:50, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Re: guidelines: The recent changes made to the dab page are perfectly in line with the WP:MOSDAB guidelines. The previous version of the page had a bit too much explanation and context vs. a normal dab page. Is that OK? That's what I'd like to find out.

Explanation: very short version: Skookum1. Explanation: short version: The term Cascadia was seen as a sort of U.S. regionalist, factionalist, environmentalist, made up bunch of bull hockey and absolutely, positively, never ever should it be implied that "Cascadia" is a synonym for "Pacific Northwest". I may a bit biased, your mileage will vary. Check the page history for various commented out notes regarding the controversy. Katr67 (talk) 00:28, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I guess my take is Pacific Northwest can extend beyond the contiguous area of the Cascades, but maybe I'm the one defining too narrowly re: the definition of synonym. I agree there was more info than necessary for a DAB page, but the one for Columbia might be worth using as a guideline. Specifically, the use of Cascadia as a: Government(Nation, State, County, City, Town) Geographic Region: and Other: category as needed. We can debate Cascadia West (Banana Slugtopia) vs. Cascadia East (Jackalopia) later. Awotter (talk) 01:20, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
That's why I proposed the slightly watered-down version "sometimes used as a name for..." as opposed to synonym. Synonym says to me that your average PNWerner would use the terms interchangeably, or at least know what "Cascadia" means. I haven't heard anyone use the term personally nor have I seen it in the media. Therefore, while I think it's a valid term (and I kinda like it even), I wouldn't say it's a synonym. Semantics maybe...but YMMV. --Esprqii (talk) 02:08, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Salem Municipal Airport

redirects to McNary Field, I don't know why this bothers me or if it matters, but it seems this should be the other way around, the official name on the City website is Salem Municipal Airport. I've lived in Salem seven years and have always seen it referred to as Salem Airport. Awotter 02:56, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it's a pilot thing: we always called it simply "McNary". —EncMstr 03:16, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Add if you look at it from say Google Maps it says McNary Field. I think that is also the name you see when you drive by on 22. Aboutmovies 06:17, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Hi all, sorry for the slow response here, as for why the article is labeled "McNary Field" it is to match the FAA Form 5010 Airport Master Record. Also, just to give you a heads up I have created a disambiguation page for the name Salem Airport for other uses of that name. Enjoy, --Trashbag (talk) 23:48, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

2007 storms

Any thoughts about whether we should start an article on the PNW storm of December 1-3, 2007? Its seriousness is becoming more and more obvious and comparisons to the Columbus Day Storm are flying fast and furious. The only wiki mention I can find so far is here: Winter storms of 2007-08#December#December 1-3 (Pacific Northwest). I'm not sure of the naming of the article, and whether it's premature to start an article. Interestingly, there is already a Early December 2007 North American winter storm article that would have to redirect. Thoughts? --Esprqii 20:33, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I doubted last year's storm was very serious, but as the news came in, it was apparent that it was a big deal: Hanukkah Eve Wind Storm of 2006. I would imagine this year's storm has a similar level of notability, judging by the news and rumors I've heard. Katr67 21:12, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Vernonia evacuated by the National Guard, canoeing in my former neighborhood in Olympia, Interstate 5 closed? Etc: http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/2007-12-04-northwest-storms_N.htm Yes, start an article. Declarations of states of emergency are not far behind. Katr67 (talk) 21:20, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Start with December 2007 Pacific Northwest storms, similar to the original article about the above storm. It can be moved when it gets an "official" name. Katr67 (talk) 21:22, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
OK. I'll break out the existing text to its own article when I have a chance a little later, unless someone beats me to it. (Feel free...) Also it needs some OR/WA flavor, that article seems very BC-centric. Too bad there is no handy holiday to hang the name off of this time. --Esprqii (talk) 21:25, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Is there anything on Wikinews you could start with? Also Gregoire and Kulongoski have both declared states of emergency for WA and OR... Katr67 (talk) 21:32, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. My Google calendar data for Austria says Sunday is "First Advent". I just added to Interstate 5 this update which seems reasonably notable. —EncMstr 21:35, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Sadly, nothing in Wikinews of note about Oregon at all, except it looks like Kitzhaber won't be running for governor. I'll just get it going and hope the weather geeks latch on to it soon. --Esprqii (talk) 23:04, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I started the article but it needs much more work. Please chime in. --Esprqii (talk) 00:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Image licensing

This logo for Portland Public Schools is tagged GFDL, in other words the uploader claimed to have created it. This isn't credible; PPS would be the only entity that could own the logo, even the graphic designer who created it would not have the right to license the image. So, any suggestions on how to resolve this? Is just replacing the license tag with one about logos and fair use be the proper way, or should it be discussed or noted somewhere? I'm sure it was just a misunderstanding about the arcane licensing rituals around here, so I'm not looking to scold anybody…just wondering what's the right way to deal with this is. -Pete (talk) 09:40, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

While you are probably right that the image is mislabeled, you are somewhat incorrect about the licensing by the original designer, they may have granted the school district a limited license and retained other rights which is a common practice if they are working under contract. They may even have done the logo for free and released it under a copyleft license.Awotter (talk) 22:02, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Hi Pete, I left a message on the uploaders talk page and I emailed the school districts website, they have a standard copyright notice about all images there asking for clarification and I'm betting I need to put some notice on the image page if I can track that down! Awotter (talk) 22:23, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
I doubt the uploader created the image. I see this a lot. Nothing sinister going on except I think people think uploading=creation. Sometimes I list these on the copyright violation board, but I would imagine we can just stick a fair-use rationale on this and call it good, since it's a low-resolution image. I see the uploader hasn't edited since July. Katr67 (talk) 23:22, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I couldn't resist and it probably won't (shouldn't?) stand

(Linus)Pauling is one of a small group of people who have been awarded more than one Noble prize, only one of two people to receive them in different fields (the other was Marie Curie) and the only person in that group to have been awarded each of his prizes without having to share it with another recipient. Pauling is also the only known Oregonian to have been awarded his High school diploma after receiving his Noble prizes and advanced educational degrees.

(bold is my addition here) I like to think he would have laughed. Awotter (talk) 09:51, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

People from Oregon categories

As some of you have no doubt noticed, I have been attempting to sort out the Category:People from Oregon category to make it a little more usable than a long list. Following the standards of some other states, I added a Category:People by city in Oregon subcategory and moved the "People from City, Oregon" categories under that.

There are a few more cities with enough people from there to justify their own categories (Springfield, The Dalles, a few others), but there are also a lot of people from small towns that will probably never have enough notable people to justify having their city-specific category. I have seen some states have "People from County county, State" categories, e.g., "People from Malheur County, Oregon." I was thinking that would be a useful addition for our project. Any other thoughts on whether this is a good idea?

Second, the current Category:People from Portland, Oregon category includes people from all the surrounding counties. I guess that's OK, but is someone from Oregon City really from Portland? Especially if that person is from Oregon City from when the OC was the big city and Portland a little backwater? And now with Beaverton and Gresham being in the top 10 cities in terms of population in the state, does it make sense to categorize people from there as from Portland? I realize that they probably still have to say, "I'm from Gresham, which is a suburb of Portland" but still... Should we just keep the all-inclusive "People from Portland" category, or should we introduce more precise categories? --Esprqii (talk) 19:56, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Counties are a big deal in eastern states, but we don't do that here: license plates don't have the county of residence for example. What about regions?: category:People from Portland, Oregon Metro area, category:People from Oregon Coast, category:People from Willamette Valley, category:People from Oregon Gorge, category:People from Eastern Oregon, category:People from Southern Oregon, and maybe a very few others. —EncMstr 20:05, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm not so keen on the county or region idea, I'd say put people in categories for cities that have enough people to justify it and leave the rest just in the Oregon cat. Also, I've always been adamant that Springfield != Eugene, Ashland != Medford, and generally Things Within a 100-Mile Radius of Foo != "From Foo", so yeah, I'd say put the folks from Oregon City, Gresham, etc. into their own cats or in the Oregon cat, but *not* Portland. Please just don't ask what "From" a place actually means. :P Katr67 (talk) 00:32, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
P.S. Thanks for sorting this out! Katr67 (talk) 00:33, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
I meant to mention the "from" angle. If you're born there, you're definitely "from" there whether you like it or not. Other than that, it's totally fluid. I've run across several people who are in "from" Oregon categories, but I cannot find any connection to the place in the article. I'm just going to leave them as is and leave the task of figuring out their origins to future biographers. --Esprqii (talk) 00:43, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, I just ran across this Category:People by county in Oregon, which doesn't really help us because we don't have any sub cats to put in it, but maybe it's time to make some. Frankly I think this thing is just a bit more unnecessary overcategorization, but YMMV. No use fighting it, I imagine. Katr67 (talk) 21:40, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Years ago I moved to an apartment in Mountain Park in NW Lake Oswego. I dutifully mailed my change-of-address voter registration to Clackamas County because of all the nearby road signs indicating such. After an unusually long 3-4 weeks time, a reject notice indicated I was in Multnomah County and should register there. Fine—so I sent one. A few weeks later, they said, "no you're in Clackamas County." Turns out the seven buildings of my complex were (arbitrary) divided between the counties: buildings 1-3, Clackamas; buildings 5-7, Multnomah; building 4: downstairs is Multnomah, upstairs is Clackamas. So.... If I lived there, where would I be "from"?
The categories don't hurt, and aren't terribly hard to keep updated. Still, I like the "people from Oregon" as a catchall idea as the best and most representative of how I think of our state. —EncMstr 23:32, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
EncMstr, that's a pretty wacky tale! I agree that "by state" is just fine. It would take a fair amount of work to re-categorize everyone by county, and I'm not convinced that it would serve much purpose. If somebody's fired up to do it, I suppose it's OK, but I'd place it pretty low on the priority list. I agree with EncMstr that in most cases, I'm more interested that someone's "from Oregon" than that they're "from a specific county." -Pete (talk) 23:47, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Holy gerrymandering, batman! Katr67 (talk) 00:00, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
To follow up on my categorization from a week or so ago, I pretty much touched everyone who was in the "People from Oregon" category and if there were more than about 10 of them from a city, I made appropriate "from city" categories. That left about 200 people, most of whom were from the Portland metro area. I was still torn as to whether to make "People from Beaverton" and "People from Gresham" and "People from Lake Oswego" categories, or just one all-inclusive "People from the Portland Metro Area" (and then leave the Portland category to people only from that city). Any opinions on that?

Anyway, sorting the metro people would leave about 150 people, a lot of whom would fit into a county category (lots of Eastern Oregon and Oregon coast people). What would be left would be people who have in their bios that they are "from Oregon" but it doesn't say where. Anyway, the county categorization couldn't hurt. --Esprqii (talk) 00:33, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Missing nav template?

Er, what happened to Template:Wikipedia:WPOR-Nav? -Pete (talk) 02:58, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I tried searching for that page names in the logs and it returns nothing. Does anyone know who created it?Awotter (talk) 05:18, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

It was Theophilus75 who created it: the discussion is here. I redirected the redlink on the front page WP:WPOR-Nav‎ to Template:WP:WPOR-Nav, but there was no deletion log and no move log. Strange. Katr67 (talk) 05:34, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm thinking they changed the software to make the "WP" automatically change to "Wikipedia"? But there wasn't actually anything at Wikipedia:WPOR-Nav though there was a redirect to the template at WP:WPOR-Nav. So there actually isn't a Template:Wikipedia:WPOR-Nav either... Katr67 (talk) 05:39, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
I just went through the deletion pages and it looks like there is some kind of change upcoming or completed and a slew of Template pages were deleted with a note about redirects. Are we ok now? 05:59, 13 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Awotter (talk • contribs)

Merge proposal opinions needed

I had tagged (the now defunct) Columbia Basin Conference for merger into OSAA when it was a one-sentence stub. It has now expanded, but mostly consists of an alphabet soup of scores, which makes me go cross-eyed. Would a couple of you sports-minded folks mind taking a look and see if any of the tables are necessary or salvageable and whether the article should indeed be merged? Nobody has done much work on the high school sports conference articles for a while. Katr67 (talk) 22:48, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Ack! A defunct high school sports conference? With tables of standings that are unreferenced? I'd say we should move the text part and list of schools into OSAA under a new subheading called "Defunct conferences" and leave it at that. I'm sure we could dig up a list of other defunct conferences. --Esprqii (talk) 23:23, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
This is a tough one, I played around with the tables and they can be improved. The article would still need references and unless any notable facts about the conference were added it would just be like an almanac entry. I'm still new and I gather that's not necessarily a bad thing. You could then add a "Defunct conferences" section to OSAA I suppose and wikilink it.Awotter (talk) 02:50, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

National Guard merged

Back in August an editor (non-WPOR) merged Oregon Air National Guard into Oregon National Guard without any prior discussion. Personally, I don't think they should be merged, as one it appears many other states have a separate listing for the air guard, two they could both be expanded into good sized articles, and three both are notable enough to have their own articles. Thoughts? Aboutmovies (talk) 21:14, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up, I think you're right. I think there should be separate pages for Oregon Air National Guard and Oregon Army National Guard. Oregon National Guard should probably redirect to Oregon Military Department, which should make it very clear that there are more detailed articles on the specific divisions of the National Guard. -Pete (talk) 22:03, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
The Oregon Military Department and the Oregon National Guard are two closely related but unique entities and I think they should remain as they are and not be merged. The OMD oversees the NG during peacetime but also is authorized by law to maintain troops solely for use in Oregon that cannot be federalized. It has to do with provisions in the US Constitution governing state militias and the National Guard Act. Awotter (talk) 05:11, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Intro page for participants?

Hey everyone. I was thinking it would be a nice idea to start an intro page for both old and new members to introduce themselves, list areas of interest and expertise, general location (totally optional), and perhaps even have a who's who kinda section/FAQ, as in "Who are best people to ask about tables and images?" "Who is good at citations?" "Who is the most anal about apostrophe's? [sic]" etc. As the project grows, some of us in our cozy little cabal core group go back a year or more and know each other pretty well, but it would be great to let everyone new know we don't bite (hard). My proposed location for this is Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Oregon/Introductions, which should be linked to the member signup section, maybe even in our basic WP:ORE template. If someone would like to write up a quick intro paragraph or fancy it up in some other way, please do! I have no idea what the best format should be for something like that. And please add yourself! Katr67 (talk) 20:30, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Funny, I was just thinking (more or less) the same thing. It also might be a good thing to get a little more organized about welcoming those who sign up. -Pete (talk) 04:27, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Template:Clackamas County, Oregon

I need a third opinion (or three). Since Villages at Mount Hood, Oregon (a village) was merged with Mount Hood Village, Oregon (a CDP), User:Nyttend insists that the CDP be mentioned in the template. I think the designation "Village" is important to note in the template as well. I had linked both, but was reverted since one is a redirect. Then I linked to the village and was reverted because the article is about the CDP. Though it's also about the village. Check the page history, edit summaries, and talk page for more info. Perhaps the articles should be unmerged until the next census? See also the talk page for Mount Hood Village. Thanks. Katr67 (talk) 22:51, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree that a link to Village (Oregon) is appropriate for the template, I just don't have a good suggestion on how to include it. It seems a little strange to have a line with only one village(s), but maybe that's the best we can do. It looks like we're allowed one city (county seat) along with the CDPs and cities. To heck with it, I support this version as the best can do. If Clackamas would have just kept this template in mind, they might have made it a hamlet. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 02:32, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

User:AlexNewArtBot/OregonSearchResult misfiring?

Anybody else notice that the AlexNewArtBot seems to be missing a lot of new Oregon articles lately? Of course, I've only noticed it in my area of interest, but Bill McKalip, Ade Schwammel, and Grace DeMoss to name a few all somehow slipped under the bot's radar, despite numerous mentions of Oregon. They were touched by the Alexbot however, as they made it into some of the other search results. Previously, sports articles with any mention of the state would trigger the bot. I'm just worried we're missing a bunch of new articles. --Esprqii (talk) 19:17, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Um, check again? Katr67 (talk) 22:02, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
Uh, wow. I have no idea why I didn't see those. I must've looked in the wrong archive or something. Weird. Isn't it time to hide, er, archive this page? --Esprqii (talk) 06:23, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
Quick! Look over there--it's Stephen Colbert! Katr67 (talk) 17:45, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
OK, I'm not totally crazy. There was one that got missed: Jay Locey. Lotsa Oregonian creds but not in the search list. Look quick before the gremlins fix it! Why did it miss that one, huh huh???! --Esprqii (talk) 07:43, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
That is weird. It got Percy but not Jay, and they were created about the same time... The search log even caught an obscure Richard Brautigan novel, though it didn't pop up in the final search results... Katr67 (talk) 17:45, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
an obscure Richard Brautigan novel? Hey! I bought it! It was no Willard and His Bowling Trophies: A Perverse Mystery but that couldn't be helped. Awotter (talk) 22:59, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I own all but 3 or 4 of his books. :) Us crazy people from Eugene have to stick together. Katr67 (talk) 00:07, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, it's not just you, Esprqii, it looks like the bot missed my magnum opus, Manning, Oregon, though it caught the equally stunning Gales Creek, Oregon earlier. Katr67 (talk) 18:50, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, are you sure?
Made ya look! Anyway, yeah, something weird is happening there. I hope there aren't a bunch of fab new articles that we're missing out on. Should we go ask Alex what's goin on?
Yeah Manning! I linked that one way back from my one and only tunnel article! --Esprqii (talk) 19:03, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I found a new category

For you fans of Old Dead PersonsTM: Category:Burials in Oregon. Its use should probably be limited to those folks whose interment info is listed in their articles. Have fun. Katr67 (talk) 02:05, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Peer review notice

1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack is on Peer Review. Your comments would be appreciated, at Wikipedia:Peer review/1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack. Cirt (talk) 02:55, 2 January 2008 (UTC).

Mount Angel Abbey needs a rewrite

I'm hoping to interest someone in a rewrite of this article, which after a bunch of copyediting, naturally, I discovered is a big ol' copyright violation of the abbey's website. Before I reduce the article to a mere stub, does anyone want to volunteer to write at least a short original piece (with sources!)? Katr67 (talk) 22:31, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

That sucks. Sometimes copy vio articles suck you in, and then you realize you've been duped. Probably best to stubbify and then leave a note on the talk page with a link to the previous version for any future editors who want to improve the article. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 07:46, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Massive recent template changes and new template

Please see recent history of:

  1. Template:Oregon Early History
  2. Template:Oregon Modern History
  3. Template:Oregon Native History
  4. Template:Oregon Pioneer History

I reverted the massive changes made to all of these templates by Hubertfarnsworth (talk · contribs). Feel free to change it back to the blue coloring and different formatting, but I thought that there was a consensus at WP:OREGON to leave it with the brown coloring and present formatting. Please also see the new templates created by this user, and the placement on tons of Oregon articles (please check Hubertfarnsworth's contribs):

  1. Template:ORHistoryEras
  2. Template:ORHistory

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do not think that these tempates are in-line with the consensus from the prior version of the four history-navigational templates, above. Cirt (talk) 21:01, 6 January 2008 (UTC).

I have nominated Template:ORHistory for deletion and notified the creator because it just duplicates a template that already exists and was decided on by consensus (I wasn't involved in that) so I don't think it's necessary. About the second template, I'm not sure if that's a good idea or not. If it stays it should most definitely match the other templates.Awotter (talk) 23:48, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
Anyway, we already had this one: Template:Oregon History, though it's currently not being used on any articles. Katr67 (talk) 02:58, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Bias note, I created the original templates. I think the four prior templates are better, as they have more specific content to Oregon's history (wheat?!), and one large template if it had everything needed to help the reader would be far too big. Plus once the corresponding articles for each time frame are completed, then it allows for a good match and navigation between the history sections. With the color, I went with brown to match the road signs along the highway that point out historical/cultural points of interest, and to make them different from the blue {{Oregon}} template visually, but sort of match conceptually with the format. Aboutmovies (talk) 01:32, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Though I'm sure the project would welcome input about improvements to these templates, as Cirt found out, it's nice if the changes are discussed first. The "template of templates" seems odd to me. (And the brown/periwinkle color combo blechy.) Yes, once the the template series is complete, it will be easy to navigate between history topics without one generic Oregon History template. If the creation of the ORHistory template is because of the perceived inadequacy of the incomplete system, maybe we could entertain the modification of the template as a stopgap measure (personally I think the old system was fine), and take this as an incentive to work on completing the template series. Note that the template's creator has no history of posting on talk pages whatsoever, so unless he communicates with us about his concerns, I'd prefer to assume the old system ain't broke and doesn't need fixing. Katr67 (talk) 02:33, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Actually, it looks like he modified an existing template created by Ajbenj. Again, the changes are odd, linking to various sections of the same article instead of to separate articles about Portland. Katr67 (talk) 02:38, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I took a look, and so far Hubert hasn't responded to a single comment made on his talk page. I think this might be a good issue for WP:RFC (unless he drops by to clear up what he's working on, which would be preferable.) -Pete (talk) 03:53, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

More changes to be discussed

If you don't have the templates watchlisted, note that Hubertfarnsworth has made some new changes and requests no reversions or deletions pending discusion... Katr67 (talk) 00:24, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Hello, sorry I haven't posted earlier, I'm not very good at this. It is I, Hubert, who have caused such consternation here and thus owe an explanation. In fact, I was writing extensive ones while also posting some further revisions in response to what had been said here when suddenly I was messaged by first Katr67 and then Pete. Because I wasn't used to getting those, I jumbled my browser windows to read them both times and twice lost everything I had written on here for hours. Therefore, before any further reversions, deletions, or criticism occurs, I'll try to make this brief. About a week ago, I started going down through the links on the U.S. histories template. My purpose was to make sure that all the redlinks were filled in and that articles existed for everything else. For History of California and History of Michigan, I either created or expanded a page with relevant links and templates so that there was a place for someone to write a larger article later on. By the time I got to the Oregon link on the U.S. Histories template, someone had noticed what I was doing and got rid of all the redlinks through either new pages or redirection to the main state pages. When I first found it, the Oregon link went here, with no real page at all. I resolved to create one that at a minimum had the Oregon template, the U.S. Histories template, a new template for quick Oregon history navigation, and an Oregon stub so that the page would get proper attention.
The first work I got done was this ORHistory template. I created it by reading some Oregon articles on here, finding topics referred from some books I own, and my own personal experience in the state. It conforms to several other state history footer templates and the color matches the Oregon template. Within it is an attempt to be chronological. For example, modern settlement began with the fur trade which eventually declined and was followed by the lumbering of the forests and the subsequent wheat farming on the cleared land. Afterward, the arrival of the railroads led to greater growth and urbanization most notably in Portland. There apparently was already an Oregon History template, but I didn't find it until long after all the work I did was done and I saw the link on this talk page. It is apparently never used and my appraisal of it is dim. Top ten lists don't belong in historical templates any more than stupid pet tricks. However, while I was building the new template from existing pages, I did come across specific templates for Oregon Native History, Oregon Early History, Oregon Pioneer History, and Oregon Modern History.
Please note that they had redlinks, didn't link to each other much, had inconsistent parameters, used different state seal images, and had no one place in which to be viewed together. Their use were scattershot and almost random. My solution was to standardize them as follows: Native, Early, Pioneer, and Modern. I again elected to keep the form and colors of the ORHistory template while also making them consistent with each other but not altering the link lists in the slightest. At this point, I also chose to make these templates the list header links on ORHistory.
Additionally, I created ORHistoryEras as sort of a basket to hold the four templates I'd just finished revising. It looked much better before the reversions, especially because the clash of purple and brown made even me uneasy. Finally, I did away with the redirection with this, which finally included all of the Oregon history templates I'd found and the other features I'd intended in the first place. If there had been no previously existing templates about the history of Oregon, then I likely would've simply made ORHistory and included it with the other two boxes. However, since there were others, I felt an obligation to include and conform them all. Incidentally, I was disappointed to find there was no credible template for Portland. I found the PortlandOR template on exactly one page, was poorly coded, and had been orphaned after its creation. My solution was this, which is based on my creation of the San Diego template, has many of the same features as the other Oregon boxes, and has an expanded list of Portland topics. Now for a personal note. I am very sorry if anyone has become angry or upset with the edits I have made. I also apologize for not having the talk page that I really should. While working with a previous username, my edits of some very different material inspired someone to create some very negative realworld consequences for me. Without getting into too much personal misery, it's an experience I'd prefer to avoid again. On WP:Oregon, there's a reference to one of my favorite Wiki guidelines: Be Bold. In that spirit, I tried to clean up what I thought was a mess, so while heeding offered advice, here are my final unilateral versions of Oregon history stuff:
These are my last edits on these items for a long time and maybe ever. Keep in mind that these links may not stay current state due to revision, deletions, vandalism, or other alterations. They basically represent "my vision", particularly the History of Oregon article. My bottomline suggestion is this: have an article, not a redirection, and have a good one. I must say, though, I'm most proud of the Portland template. I can't imagine why a city that important didn't have a worthy one yet, but that goes for San Diego as well. Hopefully, people will enjoy it and the Oregon history page and contents too. The artistic part was the hardest, especially trying to make text appear white all the time. Fair warning: I'll be adding these items to the pages that link from them. What I'd really like to see, though, is a History of Oregon stand alone article that dramatically exceeds what's on the main page, the way most states have just a link away. Well, I'd better stop before I'm blocked or start a war or something, feel free to either message me or post a comment on my manifesto here. If anyone needs me, I'll be in the angry dome! Hubertfarnsworth (talk) 05:04, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Hubert, thank you for finally taking the time to communicate with us. Also, thank you for creating the Portland template. That said, and not to sound too condescending, but please read items such as WP:BOLD before using them and citing them. Note in WP:BOLD that it specifically calls out templates for special treatment. When you come across a template you would like to edit, check the talk page of the template to see if any discussions may have already occurred and see if there are any WikiProjects that may watch the template as indicated by project tags. Also, before creating templates, I personally search around to see if others exist first. Next, since you like to create navigation templates, you might want to read Wikipedia:Navigational templates. Though not a policy by any means, it is a good place to see where these templates may already exist and have useful tips. For instance, it talks about navigation between articles, not templates and you have the templates linked between each other, which I have not seen anywhere else and disagree with.
Next, if you were involved in the ongoing creation and improvement in the topic (Oregon history) as many of us here are, you would know what was going on. The redlinks (redlinks are OK) in the templates were for to be created articles, and when all of these were done, the system would make more sense (or you could have asked to begin with and it could have been explained). As to the old {{Oregon History}} template with the top ten lists, what exactly is your point? Not ideal, really, you think maybe that is why it was not used anywhere? That is exactly why it was not in use, it was just hanging out until it could be refined, and more importantly until an actual Oregon History article is created. Sorry, but your not even stub would actually be more effective as a redirect to the category (or back as a redirect to the section on the Oregon article). A collection of templates is not an article. Lastly, as to edit warring, nobody here has engaged in an edit war. A few reversions are not an edit war, but not responding to calls for discussion are less than ideal. I hope you continue to edit on Wikipedia, but be aware of the caveats of Be Bold, if someone asks what you are doing then reply, and working with wikiprojects is more productive than ignoring them. Aboutmovies (talk) 06:12, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree with much of what Aboutmovies said above, but I'd like to applaud Hubert's efforts to be bold…it may not have been the "prettiest" way to get the collaboration rolling, but it was apparently an effective one. Thanks, Hubert, for taking the time to explain your motivations; and again, I feel for you on losing big chunks of text, it definitely sucks when that happens; so thanks for persevering and rewriting all that.
I think we of WikiProject Oregon have to also take some responsibility for this mess, because we've been talking about making a comprehensive History of Oregon for approximately nine gazillion years, without ever getting around to it. It occurs to me that making a basic article will not be hard at all, and maybe we can just move past arguing about whether a redirect or a stub with templates is "better," when we all know that both are pretty poor solutions for such an important article. I'm going to copy the text from Oregon, divide it into sections that correspond to the four templates, sprinkle in a few things from Wikipedia:WikiProject Oregon/History of Oregon, add the templates, and call that a "starting point" good enough for inclusion in main space of the encyclopedia. Any objections? -Pete (talk) 06:22, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
  • I'm sorry but I think that all of these massive changes simply look hideous and should all be reverted back to the consensus versions from a month ago, when we last had a big discussion about this. And why all of the duplicate templates that have the exact same links on them? Why a need for a "Brief history of Oregon", directly below another template that serves the exact same purpose? This is very silly and these changes should be reverted across all templates and the duplicate templates deleted. Cirt (talk) 06:29, 11 January 2008 (UTC).
  • Cirt, go ahead and revert wherever you see fit, as far as I'm concerned. Hopefully now that we've got a discussion going, we'll be able to incorporate the best parts of what Hubert's brought -- clearly there's a big desire to improve things at the heart of his actions. But we have to take it at a pace and in a way that's comfortable for everyone. I'm personally going to put my energy into the History of Oregon article, because I think as we flesh out articles, it will become easier to make templates that complement them. So for now, I'll leave the template wrangling to others who are handier with that stuff than me anyway ;) -Pete (talk) 06:51, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm trying to assume good faith but frankly I find this all very irritating. Be BOLD my ass. Posting a manifesto about your controversial templates and then promptly templating dozens of articles without waiting to see what folks have to say about them is a crappy way to be a Wikipedian. Hopefully I can follow up this uncivil post with something more constructive. In the meantime I hope Farnsworth reads up on core Wikipedia policies and learns more about the collaboration process so he doesn't run into something like this in the future. As Pete has said: "WikiIsSlow". P.S. "Well, I'd better stop before I'm blocked or start a war or something..." You really, really need to read up on policy if you think you're going to be blocked for this. We don't block for simple disagreements. People get blocked for repeated violations of policy, for which they will be given ample warning, not for ticking off several members of an active and admittedly territorial WikiProject. Katr67 (talk) 15:40, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

The discussions for these are at:

Cirt (talk) 07:45, 11 January 2008 (UTC).

TfD nomination of Template:Oregon Brief History

Template:Oregon Brief History has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Cirt (talk) 07:26, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:ORHistoryEras

Template:ORHistoryEras has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Cirt (talk) 07:29, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:ORHistory

Template:ORHistory has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Cirt (talk) 07:31, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Oregon History Eras

Template:Oregon History Eras has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Cirt (talk) 07:34, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Oregon History

Template:Oregon History has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Cirt (talk) 07:37, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Or hist navigation

Template:Or hist navigation has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Cirt (talk) 07:40, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

How it Could Have Gone Better, a melodrama

<disclaimer>The characters in this melodrama are not meant to represent any actual Wikipedians, living or dead.</disclaimer>

  • Helpful Wikipedian: Hi guys, I just noticed that, frankly, the Oregon history templates are a mess, and the history article is a redirect. I mean c'mon--no history article?! I have some great ideas about how to improve these, and I'm going to go ahead and turn that history article into something you can expand upon later. I have a vision about how these should look.
  • WPORE Member 1: That's nice, but I don't see anything wrong with the current system. Take your vision and go plague some other state with it. (aside) Circle the wagons!
  • WPORE Member 2: Thanks for contacting us. Did you notice the ongoing discussion about the history article on the talk page? We really do need to work on that article. What did you have in mind? Oh, and those templates? We already had a big discussion about them. You can read about it above, that will give some background.
  • Helpful Wikipedian: Cool, I'll read all that in a minute. In the meantime, [[here]] is my fabulous new history article!
  • WPORE Member 1: Bah! REVERT!
  • WPORE Member 2: Hmm. I'm not sure that's such a good idea...
  • Helpful Wikipedian: Give me a chance to explain. By the way, I changed all the templates too.
  • WPORE Member 1: Aiieee! REVERT!
  • WPORE Member 2: I can see you mean well, but I think we had better discuss these changes on the talk pages.
  • Helpful Wikipedian: I guess you're right. It's too bad you reverted my changes, but I'll go start a discussion on the talk page.
  • Narrator (as read by Alan Rickman, who has nothing to do with Oregon but whose voice might cause more women to join the project): Helpful Wikipedian read the pages that were pointed out to her and she learned some new stuff about how Wikipedia works. WPORE Members showed the Helpful Wikipedian how to work on something in userspace and get comments on it before replacing something in mainspace. WPORE Members finally got off their collective asses and made some progress on the history article, the Helpful Wikipedian did not feel bitten, and very few swear words were exchanged. A good time was had by all.

Days go by...

Epilogue: After several days of discussion the Helpful Wikipedian and several WPORE Members hammered out an excellent compromise solution. It took forever, but it was worth it, and even WPORE Member 1 agreed that everything was much better than what they had started out with.

It continued to rain nearly every day in the land of Oregon, but at least WikiProject Oregon lived happily until the next time somebody had a really good idea.

THE END

Katr67 (talk) 19:19, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Awesome! Maybe we should act this out in a YouTube video to promote WP:ORE, or stick it on a Signpost :) -Pete (talk) 07:17, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Helpful Wikipedian: But it doesn't rain that often in Oregon. In fact, last Saturday was kinda nice & sunny...
  • WPORE Member 1: Don't say another word! Of course it rains all of the time in Oregon! The only mystery is why Oregonians are able to identify the sun.
  • WPORE Member 2: You're right, it doesn't rain as much as people who don't live here think. However, if they knew the truth, more of them would come here to live -- so whenever anyone brings the topic up, we either lie or change the subject. Did I tell you how I got sunburned in Seattle?
llywrch (talk) 16:24, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Oregon State Capitol

FYI, our newest FA is on the main page, so watch out for the vandals (though it is also protected from new editors/anons). Aboutmovies (talk) 00:44, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

What a wonderful job! I added an aerial photo of the fire damage from the Marion COunty archives I had uploaded awhile back for the Salem (never even thought of adding it here doh!).04:43, 10 January 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Awotter (talk • contribs)
Wow, I had no idea this was going to be on the front page until I saw all the anon edits... Katr67 (talk) 05:52, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

RfC on Movie article lead

There is an RfC Lead section dispute for the article on the film What the Bleep Do We Know!? Your input would be welcome! Dreadstar † 17:46, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Moolack Shores

Request assistance in working up, enhancing, and somewhat cleaning up Moolack Beach. Referenced some, but needs a lot more work. Great place, Moolack... VigilancePrime (talk) 09:17, 12 January 2008 (UTC) :-)

Image request: Free-use images relating to 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack in The Dalles, Oregon

Any help here would be most appreciated. Specifically, free-use images of restaurants, perhaps salad bars within the restaurants, of the restaurants that were affected in the bioterror attack. I will list all locations that would be helpful:

  1. Wasco County Courthouse -- 511 Washington St The Dalles, OR 97058
  2. Albertson's supermarket in The Dalles -- 1218 W 6th St, The Dalles, OR
  3. Portage Inn
  4. Johnny's Cafe (restaurant)
  5. The Chuck Wagon (restaurant) "Chuck Wagon Lounge" -- 209 E 2nd St, The Dalles, OR
  6. Arlo's Restaurant
  7. Arctic Circle Restaurant
  8. Burgerville USA -- 118 W 3rd St, The Dalles, OR
  9. Kopper Kitchen
  10. Pietro's Pizza Restaurant -- 107 2nd St, Hood River, OR
  11. Recreation Cafe
  12. Shakey's Pizza Parlor
  13. Skipper's Seafood Restaurant "Skippers Seafood 'n Chowder" -- 1465 W 6th St, The Dalles, OR
  14. Taco Time -- 1108 W 6th St, The Dalles, OR

(locations derived from Weaver, Carus, and Tucker, Toxic Terror, pg. 132.)

With the Hatfield Courthouse, did anything actually happen there? The federal courthouse was the Gus J. Solomon United States Courthouse until 1997ish. Aboutmovies (talk) 01:00, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
No, you are correct, it would have been the Gus J. Solomon United States Courthouse - so a pic from the parking garage of that building would have been the location. Cirt (talk) 06:33, 13 January 2008 (UTC).
Anyone possibly think they can get some free-use pics of any of these locations? I'd love to know what to expect... Cirt (talk) 03:29, 14 January 2008 (UTC).
I don't think we have any editors at WP:ORE in The Dalles currently. We did, but he burned out a year ago. I personally have no idea where the parking garage for the courthouse is in Portland, though if there is one it is probably now off-limits to non gov folk since 9/11. But is that even the building you need. The article says the federal office building, which would be the Edith Green - Wendell Wyatt Federal Building. An article I just pulled up had the plot set in the garage that is underneath Terry Schrunk Plaza, which is across from the Green-Wyatt building. It is likely the US attorney office was in that building until the new courthouse was completed. User:Ajbenj has uploaded a lot of Portland pictures, but they have not been very active as of late. User:Cacophony has as well. So if nobody already has one of the plaza, I'll try and swing by there at some point, but it probably will be weeks if not a couple months before I'm there and the weather is good. Aboutmovies (talk) 05:05, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Okay, sounds good, but quite frankly I'm more interested in the locations mentioned above in The Dalles... Cirt (talk) 06:19, 14 January 2008 (UTC).
I made a fairly poor pano of Shrunk Plaza a while ago. I could give it another go if desired. Cacophony (talk) 06:31, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Sure, sounds good. Cirt (talk) 06:43, 20 January 2008 (UTC).

Cirt, got the note on my talk page - I don't have photos of any of these. — Zaui (talk) 16:45, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

In some of these cases, it's going to be hard to find the exact buildings -- if they are still standing. It's been over 20 years since this happened. For example, are the two Pizza places still in business? There was a "Kopper Kitchen" in Portland near the PSU campus which closed a few years back; I don't know if that was because they lost their lease or the chain went bankrupt. In other words, if someone can recover the street addresses then a willing Wikipedian driving thru The Dalles could take a half hour & take some pictures. -- llywrch (talk) 23:59, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Some of the above restaurants went out of business as a result of the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack. A bunch of them are still in business. I will check this out, and cite the street addresses of those above, next to the entries. Cirt (talk) 00:21, 16 January 2008 (UTC).
 Done, see above, I have added in bold the addresses of some of the locations that I would like images of. Cirt (talk) 04:18, 18 January 2008 (UTC).
I'll be rolling through there next week and will try to get at least a couple of photos. Cacophony (talk) 05:34, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Yay, thank you! Will they be regular shots, panoramas, or both?  :) Just kiddin, whatever you bring back will be most appreciated. Cirt (talk) 05:36, 20 January 2008 (UTC).
I struck out the ones that I got photos for today, I'll upload them when I get home. All of my shots were of the buildings from the street, I'm not sure how to approach them about talking a picture inside being that it is private property. I'll see what I can do about the finding the others, but at least we have a start. The Dalles is a nice place! Cacophony (talk) 06:48, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Oregon Airports

Greetings everyone, Oregon now has an article for every active public use and private use airport/heliport/seaplane base within the state (I believe we are the first). Please take a moment to review a few articles and pitch in on anything you may know. Also, feel free to create links to individual articles so the don't appear orphaned. If anything it's fun to check out the airfields near you may live. Some fun tidbits:

  • Oregon has 358 private use airports and 98 public use airports - a ratio of approximately 4 to 1.
  • Of the 450+ airports in Oregon only 10 are certified for scheduled airline service.
  • Ever see an airport that had a dirt runway and a water runway?

--Trashbag (talk) 00:31, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Good job... except I'll ask the obvious: Do we need an article on every such facility? Do we need an article on the Willamette Falls Community Hospital Heliport when we don't have an article on Willamette Falls Community Hospital? (Especially since Willy Falls is primarily a local hospital--it's heliport is probably only used to transport seriously injured/ill patients to other hospitals like OHSU, which are capable of providing more advanced care? If the aviation-related WikiProjects think that having an article for every landing strip or helipad in the US is is a good idea, I'll not complain; but many of these facilities plainly fail to come close to satisfying WP:N. --EngineerScotty (talk) 23:20, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
I think they would almost all fail notability as well. I know Trashbag's logic is that these small landing facilities are the majority of landing places of aircraft. However, that same logic would also allow articles on every citizen (the vast majority of people are not politicians/celebrities) since famous people get articles and articles for every house in the world, again since we allow articles on notable buildings as demonstrated by RS and the vast majority of buildings are dwellings. I think most would agree articles on every home/person is not desirable. Also, WP:AVIATION cannot make up their own inclusion criteria, as notability is a Wikipedia wide policy/guideline. They can propose changes at WP:N and support them, but until then these are not notable under any automatic inclusion criteria I am aware off. Each would need to meet the guideline through substantial coverage in RS, and I doubt that exists for most. Aboutmovies (talk) 01:42, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Seems to me that whatever info is included in the individual articles, that's not already on the list articles, could be added as new columns. Then, the article pages could redirect to the lists; the reader still has the ability to access all the info, but we no longer have articles on non-notable entities. Seems like the best of both worlds, no? Of course, any airports that do meet WP:N could still have articles, linked from the lists. And, maybe interesting tidbits like those Trashbag mentioned above could find a home in articles like the forthcoming Economy of Oregon? -Pete (talk) 01:52, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Wow, that's a heck of a pat on the back... Well, whether you believe you need an article on every such facility I would like to congratulate you on taking pride on being the first state in the Union to have all of them. Glad to support your project... Let me explain my logic so that people don't put uneducated words in my mouth. Yes, every legal landing facility in the United States is notable. "A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." Each of these landing facilities are clearly documented (Significant Coverage - there is more info here about any specific airfield then you will ever want to know) by a federal agency (Reliable Source). I will admit that my first attempt at nailing down these articles they could use more meat, which will be reflected in my next series of focus.
Each of these landing facilities draw attention to the amazing aviation community that Oregon cherishes. Ranging from the reaction of "I didn't know that was there" to, "I can remember it but its long gone." Each of these are important points of notability as to how these facilities contribute to the Culture and History of Oregon. Pardon my frustration to the reactions above after investing quite a considerable amount of time into this project about a field am rather passionate about.— Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:Trashbag�|Trashbag�]] ([[User talk:Trashbag�|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/Trashbag�|contribs]]) 23:13, January 18, 2008
I’m sorry, but what part of WP:RS does this database you used meet? Remember reliable source has a specific Wikipedia meaning. For instance, the peer-reviewed part which is unlikely. The great accuracy? As you stated: “Yeah, I pulled my data from the FAA so no doubt there are quite a few errors.” So obviously there are issues with accuracy too. In general, the most reliable sources are peer-reviewed journals and books published in university presses; university-level textbooks; magazines, journals, and books published by respected publishing houses; and mainstream newspapers. The FAA database is not really a classic reliable source. Next, substantial coverage per WP:NOTE? I don’t think so. If all you can pull is a few lines of text, then the coverage is not particularly substantial. The info is little more than what a phonebook would provide for people (name, address, phone number), or any database on pretty much any topic. For instance, from the FAA, they keep a database of licensed pilots, and I would not consider every person with a license notable. Using my brother’s entry as an example, there is a fair amount of info on him, and there would be more if he was a commercial pilot. Or to take databases even further, local governments keep detailed records (birth certificate, death certificate, Social Security info, etc) on almost everyone in the US, but those records do not make all those people notable. If you go to the state archives you can retrieve the files of people who have been dead for a certain time frame (newer records are with a different agency) and those files can contain copies of the will, death certificate, birth certificate, and other related documents, but this does not mean they are automatically notable. These are government records, plain and simple, not published, reliable sources that confer notability on the subject. If the database had more coverage, such as the history of these places, pictures, etc. then you would have more of an argument. Otherwise the DMV’s vehicle registration list would allow me to write an article on my car, the actual one I own as identified by the VIN Aboutmovies Saturn L300. And then there is the issue covered by WP:NOTE and RS, it is reliable sources. It is generally accepted that more than one source is needed, unless there happens to be a book on the topic. The number and nature of reliable sources needed varies depending on the depth of coverage and quality of the sources. Multiple sources are generally preferred. Also see footnote 6 that follows that quote. I would also question the independence of the source as the government requires the owners to file these “reports” on their airfields in order to be legal landing strips, right? Sort of like me filing for a business license if I want to run a business, though not every little business is notable.
As to putting words in your mouth, then what did you mean by this earlier response regarding notability: [1] In regards to the "notability" of this airfield, private use airports account for a vast majority of landing facilities in the United States. In Oregon, there are 358 Private Use Airports, and only 98 Public Use Airports [1] and there by out weighing them nearly 4 to 1. I am starting articles on all airports in Oregon and thereby it doesn't seem fair to leave this little guy out. The FAA has declared this a legal landing field and thereby deserves its own notoriety.?
A few of these may actually be notable, but not based on the FAA database. For instance the water and dirt landing strip airport I have heard of before when it was for sale (I believe under a different name). In fact I want to say it was part of the former Rajshnessee compound, but I may be confusing two different ranches. Those airports/heliports that have been covered in the media or covered in a book would likely qualify (e.g. the Flying M Ranch, though I heard it is no longer a resort/dude ranch and don’t know if the runway is still in use). But by and large, these would fail WP:AFD. Here is an analogous example: Unless a structure is demonstrably historic (like the Eiffel Tower) or otherwise serves an important function to a wide population (such as structures with rotating restaurants, publicly accessible observation decks), stub articles of utilitarian radio and television masts which are only referenced in the FCC database are generally deleted. On a side note, you might want to WP:CITE the source in the article to demonstrate notability. Aboutmovies (talk) 09:06, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Here is what I mean by reliability. The Federal Aviation Administration is THE authority on any legal landing facility in the United States and territories therein. Period. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Tough nuts if you personally do not like that. Every other journal, publication or website including our precious Wikipedia will get their information from them. In their own words: the FAA "is the single authoritative government source for collecting, validating, storing, maintaining and disseminating aeronautical data concerning the United States and its territories to support real-time aviation activities." Thereby in regards to "coverage" every source on the planet talking about a United States Airport will refer to the FAA for the data I have generated for these articles.
Here is what I mean by accuracy. The data supplied by the Federal Aviation Administration collected in the Airport Master Record Form 5010 Database is published to all aviators in the form of the Airport/Facility Directory. This data is considered "accurate" enough to allow thousands of pilots to perform thousands of operations (landings, takeoffs, touch and goes) a day with a prudent margin of safety. So think about that the next time you step on an airliner or have a friend or loved one flown by medical chopper to one of these private helipads that the pilots themselves are using this data. How accurate would you consider that with you life on the line?
To clarify further, Public Airports are inspected once every three years by a designee of the FAA. In the state of Oregon this is done by the State Airport Inspector unless the landing facility is certificated under 14 CFR Part 139 then the FAA inspects them on the same time basis. Private airports provide data for their Form 5010 only at the time of creation or transfer of ownership. In addition their data is provided by the owner and is allowed to be estimated (such as the references to some Lat/Longs being off at private landing facilities). Yes there are errors in their data, for goodness sakes a human entered them and they have a Quality Management system to deal with them. I wholly concur with you that the citation/references portion of the previous article creations is not clear and will be in my next endeavor. --Trashbag (talk) 04:33, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
So what exactly is sad Trashbag? As to the FAA being the source, so what? The phone book (on or off-line) is the source for contacting people, but that does not make the individual people notable. The fact that everyone uses the FAA helps to establish the FAA's notability, but not the individual airports/heliports. The DMV is the source for getting people's driving information, but again it doesn't establish notability for the drivers listed. By the way, I'm still wondering by what you meant with your ratios? Aboutmovies (talk) 09:15, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
As another matter, notability requires coverage in secondary sources, and per Wikpedia, administrative records such as this are primary sources. The FAA database can be used as a source, but since it is a secondary source it has no impact on the notability. Aboutmovies (talk) 11:37, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Photos of Portland: Any requests?

I am a hobbyist photographer living in downtown Portland, and I want to help improve WP by taking photographs of any buildings, landmarks, etc., around here that aren't already pictured. I haven't found many pictureless articles just by browsing around, so I thought I'd ask if there is anything that people would especially like to have photographed. Thanks. -- David McCabe (talk) 02:30, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi there, photo contributions are always welcome. You can try requested pictures in Oregon and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Oregon/Graphics. Other than that, there is a bit of a shortage of pictures of cities outside of Portland. Eastern Oregon primarily. I would also recommend uploading to wikimedia commons for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that your files don't get moved there without you knowing. If you have any questions about uploading or similar, feel free to leave me a message. User:Cacophony is also a good image resource in Portland. Oh, and if you are confused as to why someone in Boston is talking about Portland, thats because I am at the end of a 6-month stay in Boston. Anyway, best of luck. -Fcb981(talk:contribs) 04:06, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
  • David, this is great -- I've been without a decent camera for a while, racking up ideas. I'd love to see a photo of one of the toy horses tethered to the sidewalk that popped up all over town (I just saw one on NE 42nd just S of Fremont), or one of the "ghost bikes" to commemorate people killed on their bicycles. Either of those would be a good addition to the "Portland" page. Also, a photo of the statue of Harvey W. Scott on top of Mt. Tabor would help out those articles. As for downtown stuff...nothing springs to mind, but I'll let you know if I think of something! Thanks! -Pete (talk) 01:17, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Just because there are already images in the article doesn't mean that we couldn't use more! Even if you have photos to add that are similar to existing photos, putting them in their respective Commons category adds value to the project as well. I would suggest also taking nighttime, daytime, and interior photographs of buildings. There are many Portland articles with poor quality, low resolution images that could easily be improved with some time and effort. But as mentioned above Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Oregon is a great place to start. Thanks, Cacophony (talk) 00:02, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Cape Perpetua

New article by Orygun, there's probably a DYK someone could pull from it. Katr67 (talk) 22:40, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Admin nomination

EncMstr, one of the most accomplished editors of our project has been nominated for Administrator. Go have your say! -Pete (talk) 00:23, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Oregon cities proposal

Since we seem to be having an issue lately (again) concerning the notable resident's sections at city/town/community articles, how about we come up with a WPOR guideline we can point to. And while we are at it, other city/town related "rules" that we generate from consensus. Then make an alter "talk page" template that we can use (not that people read those too much). I did a similar template for Oregon companies due to all the POV pushing and COI they tend to attract {{Oregon Companies talk}}.

My proposal for people inclusion, and I think its what we've been trying to do: Only list people with an existing Wikipedia article, and that article must mention the location or have a footnote citation from a WP:RS that accompanies the entry into the city article. Additionally, the person must live(d) in that specific individual city and not the neighboring city. As in do not put people from Ashland in the Medford article or people from Forest Grove in Portland article, unless they actually lived in both cities.

Thoughts, other city related guidelines? Aboutmovies (talk) 19:03, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I like it. I think you've hit on all the salient points. -Pete (talk) 19:10, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree that the above is the general consensus about notable people. I'd add that the footnote on the city page is only a stopgap measure, and that if a person is indeed notable enough to be mentioned in a city article, then the city connection should always be mentioned in the person's article as well. Also note that though we tolerate the listified version, though most of these won't be FA candidates, the preference for FA is for prose, not lists.
We should also hash out what is considered encyclopedic and make a note about original research. Many of the small town articles (and cities too) have info added by someone who looks around and says: "We have a gas station, a general store, a post office, a grain elevator and a few houses. The fishing in the Foo River is great, you can buy bait at the store." Though it's nice to be able to paint a picture of a place by explaining that yes, it's really small, since this is an encyclopedia, we really need to encourage the use of reliable sources, population figures and images. The gist of that part of the message should be "Wikipedia is not WikiTravel". Katr67 (talk) 19:21, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

WPORE guiding principle:

Including notable residents in a city or community article is acceptable if:
  • The person has a Wikipedia article (affirming notability), and
  • There is a reliable source which is cited establishing that the person lived or lives in the place. Living in a neighboring (or distant) place does not count.
  • It is strongly preferred that the biographical article mentions their living there.
  • A list of such residents is tolerable, though a description (prose) of their interaction with the community is much preferred (and necessary in order for an article to reach Featured Article status.)

—EncMstr 20:50, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Looks good. I added a parenthetical at the end of the last point. -Pete (talk) 08:44, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I found the following templates which may be useful: Template:Needsource, Template:Needsource2, Template:Importance inline, Template:Bio-notability. We could create one specifically for the issue if need be. I list these because unless we have a written "guiding principals" page to cite directly, all we will be actually doing is cracking down with a more accurate warning message template. Maybe that is all we need to do? Zab (talk) 04:52, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Dammasch State Hospital

Anybody know what's up with Dammasch these days? Recent anon addition says it was demolished. Previous uncited, promotional version says some housing development has its HQ there. Can we get this straightened out? -Pete (talk) 08:44, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Spam?

Is this spam? http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cave_Junction%2C_Oregon&curid=130825&diff=187074985&oldid=186654257 - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 22:41, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes. I'll report it WP:WPSPAM. Katr67 (talk) 23:52, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Talk:Christmas Valley, Oregon

Need some suggestions on how to handle some good faith info added by a new editor. Thanks! Katr67 (talk) 20:03, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

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