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Call for nominations: Best Congressional District Article

Which one of our STATE's Xth congressional district articles would be a good model to use to develop a boilerplate. Looking to set up something similar to our /ordinal congress boilerplate.--G1076 22:16, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

May I suggest the Louisiana articles for this? They're all in a different state of repair and I plan sometime to integrate the infoboxes mentioned above into them. See e.g. Louisiana's 2nd congressional district or Louisiana's 1st congressional district. --- Deville (Talk) 02:48, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
I would nominate Tennessee's 5th congressional district. It also includes historical boundaries, which seem to be missing from most district articles. Kaldari 20:03, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
Nice, thanks for this! I was wondering the same as I work on Virginia's! --plange 20:18, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
What source do you use for the historical congressional districts? I'd love to include this information for Pennsylvania's districts, but I haven't found a usable source. Npeters22 16:08, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Found article, U.S. Congress Representatives from Guam

I ran across this at Category:Uncategorized from September 2006, but I have no idea where to put it, so I thought I'd leave it here for someone to work with. Thanks.--Bookandcoffee 21:33, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Use of US Postal Abbreviations

I've posted a question/proposal at Template talk:CurrentCongDeleg#Use of US postal abbreviations on which I would appreciate some feedback. Briefly, I'm suggesting the elimination of the use of US postal abbreviations. –RHolton≡– 19:00, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

AfD in progress completed

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/U.S. Congressional Delegation from XXX--G1076 17:51, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Use of cite.php-based footnotes for delegation lists

Please check out United States Congressional Delegations from Oregon; I switched to cite.php-based footnotes so one could navigate between footnote text and its uses. This replaces the technique used occasionally in other articles on delegations (e.g.United States congressional delegations from Alaska). 66.167.137.46 22:14, 30 September 2006 (UTC).

Party colors for election results tables

Admiring the fine work of Tomf688, I've decided to start putting election results tables in the articles for Texas Congressmen. Some of the opponents come from parties like Libertarian, Green, Natural Law, etc. which don't have previously created colors. Was anyone planning on adding to the list or should I just use whatever I see fit? Thepedestrian 19:07, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Take a look here (Category: Party colours templates (United States))for some ideas--G1076 02:57, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Party shading/Pro-Jacksonian2

Template:Party shading/Pro-Jacksonian2 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. G1076 17:25, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Major discrepancy

Which is right?? I was making a stub for John Breckinridge and noticed on United States Congressional Delegations from Virginia that he wasn't in the 11th Congress row for the 5th district so I added him, but someone else is in his column for the 13th column and so I looked at 13th United States Congress and he's listed there as serving the 5th district and the name that was in his column represented the 6th district - this led me to compare the rest of the entries at United States Congressional Delegations from Virginia and just in a cursory glance, a lot differ from the lists on the their corresponding Congress page list. Which are right? I don't want to change United States Congressional Delegations from Virginia if it's right... --plange 05:21, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

  • I do not remember the details, but recall some significant impossibilties in the data to which you refer. I tried to straighten them out in the 11th United States Congress article and various other Congresses, but honestly am concerned about district assignment accuracy in the early Congresses, particularly in Virginia. A very useful project for someone to do (hint hint) would be to find the primary source of this information and make sure we have it right. If someone doesn't do it first, I will, but its not at the top of my list. stilltim 13:11, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
    • I'm willing to do it, do you know if there are reliable sources online? --plange 15:38, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
      • I have never seen a source for district assignments on line for the Congresses before the 24th Congress (1835), and I have looked hard for them. I'm guessing the information will have to be found in printed materials at the state level, in this case perhaps the Library of Virginia in Richmond? (I think I'm closer to it than you are) There is something screwy going on with these districts, a possibility is that there were several multi member districts, or some other arrangement that we are unfamiliar with today. stilltim 04:03, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Stub category proposed adopted

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals for discussion of the proposed {{US-Congress-stub}}/Category:United States Congress stubs combination. This stub can be used instead of US-gov-stub or US-poli-stub. This stub tag can be used for the ordinal congress articles, congressional district articles, congressional committees, etc.--G1076 07:04, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

  • New stub template and category have been approved for use. Use {{US-Congress-stub}} for all place- and thing-type articles instead of US government stub or US politics stub. Continue to use US (or state) politician stub for people-type articles.--G1076 18:11, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

New wikipedia development

Check out Wikipedia:Updating information. It seems that some new tools are in the works for tagging information that is sure to change some time in the future. This could be an invaluable tool for our project. Especially since a large number of our articles have information with an expiration date.--G1076 04:36, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

AfD in progress completed(2)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Historic Members of the United States House of Representatives--G1076 18:24, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

  • The result was DELETE. This deals with two Congresses which already have proper articles. It wouldn't make sense to redirect this to any individual Congress, or House, and it's not useful on its own. If completed, it would be a truly gigantic exercise in duplication. -Splash - tk 23:23, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Party affilitation template

I propose that we create a party-affiliation template that would look something like this: 

{{pol|Arlen Specter|R|PA}}

and output this: 

[[Arlen Specter]] ([[Republican Party (United States)|R]]-[[List of United States Senators from Pennsylvania|PA]])
Arlen Specter (R-PA)

Maybe this already exists somewhere, but I don't know where to look. If this is something that others think would be a good idea, I can make it happen. Not sure what to call it though. Template:Pol is available. – Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 21:11, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Membership/delegation listings - alphabetical or state-by-state

I apologize in advance if this has been discussed elsewhere previously, but on a quick review I didn't see it. Is there a plan to uniformize the organization of the nth Congress articles (e.g., 64th United States Congress, 92nd United States Congress, etc. insofar as the listing of Members is concerned? In some Congresses, they are organized alphabetically across all states, and in others, on a state-by-state basis. I can see an argument for either but as I am going to be doing some editing (including adding the Delegates and Resident Commissioners to the Congresses lacking them), I was wondering if there was a consensus on how to proceed? Regards, Newyorkbrad 20:32, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

  • Project Congress has a boilerplate/guide for all the Ordinal Congress articles. I believe that the current "standard" is sorting by state for each chamber, then by seniority in the senate and by district in the house, and the territories follow both.--G1076 23:58, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Project Directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages:

and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 22:42, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now moved the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. B2T2 14:39, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Talk:Herbert Kohl (senator)

Please come opine there about a proposed move to Herbert Kohl, which is currently a disambiguation. - CrazyRussian talk/email 08:23, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Pre-announcing WikiProject: House Races 2006

I've posted an announcement at Talk:United States House elections, 2006#Pre-announcing Wikiproject: House Races 2006 about a short-term project (a month or so, I assume) to build a campaign article for each competitive/notable House race that is listed in the United States House elections, 2006 article. Comments about this (proposed) wikiproject are welcome (please post at the other talk page, which has details - thanks.) John Broughton | Talk 22:11, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

FWIW, if anyone reading this is into elections, this is a terrific and fun project. I urge everyone here to take a look. – Sholom 13:46, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Infobox "name" field - format?

I've posted a question about this at Template talk:Infobox Politician#Infobox "name" field - format?. Those interested might want to take a look there. [The question is whether, for example, the name in the infobox should be "Dick Lugar" (which is the title of the article), or "Richard Green Lugar", his full name, or "Richard Green 'Dick' Lugar", as appears in the first sentence of the article, or what?] John Broughton | Talk 16:09, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Proper noun of "Congressional"

Is there a standard for this? It seems that in many different Congress or Congressional-related articles it is capitalized or not capitalized. Is there, or should we come up with, a standard for this word? It's tricky because it's in the title of some many different articles.

Jarfingle 23:28, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Holm O. Bursum

Why has Holm O. Bursum's page suddenly vanished? There is now glaring red ink on the Former Senators page. Valadius 02:50, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

It had been deleted because it was copied nearly verbatim from this site, which does not clearly indicate the copyright status of the material. I've recreated a stubby entry based on the public domain Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress. older ≠ wiser 03:19, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Ordinals in reference to (C?)congressional districts

Also, what is the standard on this? All page titles refer to the district's number in the ordinals' number form (e.g., 1st district), however, many pages relating to c/Congressional districts also write out the ordinal in word form (e.g., first district). What is the standard? Number or word form?

Jarfingle 06:01, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Updating or Splitting Articles like: Partisan mix of congressional delegations

Partisan_mix_of_congressional_delegations: This and probably a number of other articles could be benficially split to inticate the (statistic here) information relevant to a particular historical congress, instead of merely marching forward with the current info for the current (un-named ordinal) Congress. I have no idea how many articles there are like this, but this one is particularly prominant as a candidate for starting an ordinal series. I tagged it with the {{Template:Split-apart}} template tag in hope that some more involved people in this project would take on this issue, before it and other articles without an ordinal in the title get transformed into 110th Congress info.-- Yellowdesk 15:59, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Former House and Senate Members

List of former members of the United States House of Representatives

Moved to Talk:List of former members of the United States House of Representatives#Completion progress

List of former United States Senators

Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 03:27, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

United States House of Representatives

United States House of Representatives is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy (Talk) 14:14, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Talk Page Templates

Just wanted to let you know, i'm going to be focusing on putting templates on all the Senator articles. If anybody else is going to do that, please let me know so I we don't step on each others toes. Just H 04:34, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

AFD:Partisan mix of congressional delegations, 109th congress

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 22:28, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Defective image

I reccomend you check out Talk:Edward J. Patten and see if this is a bug in my browser: The seal of Congress on the Project Congress infobox is HORRIBLY rendered, looking very bleached out and unreadable. 68.39.174.238 21:43, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

It looks really bad to me too, but when I click on the image itself it looks alright at full scale. Maybe it's being resized oddly? – DustinGC (talk | contribs) 19:39, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
It looks bad to me as well. I know some template redesign was occuring; GoldRingChip was leading the effort. Myabe that has something to do with it. --Daysleeper47 16:33, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

New category

I created a new category (Category:Special hearings of the United States Congress) because I found several articles which would fit. Thoughts on the category creation and relevant articles would be appreciated. Thanks, Daysleeper47 16:36, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup request

This page was mentioned over at Category:United States Senators: "Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Congress#List of United States Senators from X - For a discussion about merging over 100 US Congress-related articles." However, no such discussion appears in this page anymore. It would be nice if someone in the know updated that category description. —Tokek 02:01, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

  • This discussion has been archived here. The consensus on the broad issue was to create three articles for each state's congressional delegation: one chronological covering delegations by congress, and one alphabetical listing of all representatives and one alphabetical listing of all senators. I'll take out the reference at the category page. --G1076 03:40, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

New category proposal

For the sake of organization, I propose creating Category:Lists of United States Senators à la Category:Lists of United States governors. The category could include:

  • List of United States Senators from X
  • List of current United States Senators
  • List of former United States Senators
  • List of Presidents pro tempore of the United States Senate
  • Party leaders of the United States Senate

—Tokek 02:01, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Specific acts/bills

Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask, but I came to the Wikiproject looking to nominate Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 as a Collaboration of the Week and looking through the Wikiproject pages, it wasn't immediately clear to me that specific acts and bills are within the scope of this project. Are they? If not, is there another Wikiproject that would be better suited for it? Thanks. schi talk 00:38, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

There are a number of existing articles on specific US Congress bills or acts, for instance, Securities Exchange Act Of 1934, The Securities Act of 1933, Circuit Judges Act of 1869, First Judiciary Act of 1789, Internal Revenue Act of 1862, Internal Revenue Act of 1864 and an overview article called Acts of Congress and a related article List of United States federal legislation, as well as articles on many Acts of Parliament. So, yes, I think well within scope. David 01:52, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
While specific legislation passed or debated in a particular congress are integral to the articles within Project Congress, the legislation articles themselves are not a part of the scope of the project. Try Wikipedia:WikiProject Law--G1076 02:22, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
I came here to ask that question, and I see that it's been answered; but after looking at Wikipedia:WikiProject Law, I'm dissatisfied that that would be the place for addressing articles specifically about legislation, particularly because not all significant legislation actually becomes law. For what it's worth - I'm a relative newbie here and have no idea how to do it or how much interest there would be, but if someone were to start a Wikipedia:WikiProject Legislation (U.S.), I'd be delighted to contribute. --MoxRox 20:47, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Double redirects from House committee renaming

User:GoldRingChip moved United States House Committee on Education and the Workforce to its new name United States House Committee on Education and Labor, as well as moved several other House committees to their new names. They did not not, however, followed through with cleaning up the double redirects (see, for example, the 'What links here' for United States House Committee on Education and Labor, where there are three dozen double redirects that need to be fixed). Although the move page says: "You are responsible for making sure that links continue to point where they are supposed to go.", it looks like other editors might have to step in to clean up this mess. BlankVerse 01:23, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Barack Obama FAR

Barack Obama has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:00, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Gerald Ford FAR

Gerald Ford has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:05, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Categorisation by party?

I was surprised to see that categorisation of U.S. politicians (including, but not limited to congressentities) is so low, and what recent creations Category:Democrats (United States), Category:US Republican Party politicians and such like actually are. Is there some tortuous history behind this? And more to the point, is anyone activity working on these? Would it be useful to anyone to populate a "category missing" cleanup-cat with articles in a "U.S. politician" category, but lacking any "by party" category? If I'm missing some part of the picture here, please let me know... Alai 05:48, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Committee pages

Please keep an eye on the pages for the Congressional committees. I have seen numerous edits of vandalism this week from several users who are putting the named of musicians on the page in place of Members. I have reverted all House committee edits where this has occurred but the Senate committees may need checked. --Daysleeper47 13:41, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Succession boxes: Order of precedence

Hello. Just letting you know that User:ModRocker86 recently put in a succession box for the United States order of precedence in a number of articles on Senators. I don't believe the box is being used correctly in this case. Gzkn 08:47, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I had not seen this note, but have been removing these "order of precedence" boxes from senators' articles when I see them. As I have said elsewhere, this is merely ceremonial protocol - who sits next to whom at official dinners, who is introduced before who else, etc - maybe interesting to some people, but also potentially confusing to readers to have coupled with actual succession boxes. "Order of precedence" is not a common term in the United States, and it may be misconstrued to mean order of succession to the presidency in the event of a catastrophic event, or something like that - I don't think it is self-explanatory, and I don't think its importance rises to the level of being included on individual Senators' pages where it has been added. And, as someone pointed out elsewhere, the yellow banner that was attached to it makes it look as though it is the most important item, when in fact it is very much not so. I have no problem with there being an article about this, of course - and its internal list - but I do not think this template should be used in congress members' articles. Tvoz | talk 07:34, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Agree. I had removed it from articles I saw it on. A couple of editors objected, but I agree ccompletely with your analysis--succession box, no; article/list, yes. older ≠ wiser 13:37, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Agree as well.--Roswell native 13:39, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I bit the bullet last night and went through the Senators (and discovered a few I never heard of!) and removed the boxes - some were with yellow banner, some not, by the way. So far the only one I've seen reverted is Ted Stevens and I'll direct their editors here. Tvoz | talk 19:12, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks to the invitation from Tvoz. I generally disagree with the reasoning for removing Order of Precedence info boxes from the pages of those where they currently exist. I'll agree that "order of precedence" isn't commonly used in the United States, but I think we need to give the readers of these pages some credit. Many of those pages also list "Order of Succession" and so I doubt a reader will be confused that they mean the same thing – if they did, why would there be two separate boxes? Additionally, those boxes are hyperlined to their respective articles...if a user is confused, then they can click on those boxes and find out more information. The idea that we need to censor or de-list information on an individual Senator's page because we're concerned that those lowly readers might get confused runs counter to the spirit of Wikipedia, in my opinion. The goal should be to put more information out there - not less. The subject is clearly notable, verifiable, and should be included. If you'd like to change the wording from "Preceeded" and "Succeeded" to other terms, I'd be insterested to see what other things out there could better describe the order. But the idea that we should just remove them because "some people" might get "confused" doesn't hold water with me. JasonCNJ 16:46, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
First, please don't use the word "censor" in this context. No one is censoring anything. We limit information on pages all over the encyclopedia, all of the time, unfortunately, because of space concerns and questions of notability, etc - it may be the ideal of Wikipedia to have more information overall, but I see legitimate stuff removed every day from articles in order to keep the piece trim. I don't necessarily agree with that, but it's a fact - so actually wikipedia doesn't really stand for more information more of the time. As for the specifics, yes, people can follow the link if they want to, and get more information, but the problem remains that this terminology is obscure in the US, and easily misinterpreted without readers knowing that they are misinterpreting it. I'm not attacking the readers - I'm saying that the ideal is for each page to stand alone clearly, not rely on people knowing that they need to click on something in order to correctly understnad the information. Just so you know, the editor who added the boxes told me that he did it for uniformity, but he didn't think they were all that important. I agree with Gzkn that this is a misuse of the succession boxes and would encourage you to include the information in the article text if you think it is important, but not use the box. Seems to be the consensus among the few editors who have weighed in here, so why don't you discuss it with the other Ted Stevens editors and see if you all think order of precedence is really a necessity. I'm not a member of this project - I am an interested bystander who happens to do work on several politicians' pages - so I'm not speaking for the project. But I think they are right to set standards for pages that provide some amount of uniform structure, of course with variations for individual needs, and to me the order of precedence - again, a rather arcane ceremonial protocol issue - doesn't rise to the level of needing to be included on individual pages, and certainly not with a box that suggests succession, not seating plans. Tvoz | talk 02:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
There are still several order of precedence boxes on pages for Presidents, Cabinet Secretaries, etc. I do not beleive Succession boxes have to necessarily by limited to chronologically held positions. I beleive we need to have all or none here at wikipedia. The only question is which position would I take. I'm leaning toward "ALL" : putting the order of precedence succession boxes back on the senators pages.--Dr who1975 20:26, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Barbara Boxer

Hi, the article for Barbara Boxer is horribly biased in her favor. There are precious few counterpoints to her stances, and the bills mentioned are always described in terms of benefits to whomever. You'll notice on Talk:Barbara Boxer people have been complaining about this for months. Because it's an article on a senator, and I find nag templates to be close to defacement, I'm not going to add one. However, I think it needs to be seriously addressed. ... aa:talk 10:29, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Freshman class of the 110th - articles need new (free) images

With the swearing-in of the 110th Congress, there are several articles that should be able to be updated either now or within the next few weeks as the official photos of freshman Representatives and Senators are posted on their respective pages. These free photos need to be uploaded to replace any fair use photos used from campaign web sites or the press. I've started on this but not all house.gov sites have been updated with a photo yet. To keep track, I put together a table based on the list of freshman class members of the 110th United States Congress, starting for now with just the House members. I'll go through as I have time but if others want to contribute as well, feel free! This table should help coordinate our efforts. – PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 00:50, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

unexplained acronyms

Hi, I've noticed that articles that related to America often use acronyms like 'D-NE' after politicans names. e.g. "Bob Kerrey (D-NE)" (The New School) and "Larry Combest (R-TX)" (Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002). It's since been explained to me what these mean on Talk:The New School#unexplained acronym, but I'm guessing that others will also be confused, and so maybe they are not suitable. Is there policy / documentation on these? Would it be acceptable to create a redirects from the acronyms to the party (i.e. (i.e. redirect D-NE to Nebraska Democratic Party) ? John Vandenberg 12:25, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

  • The convention of adding (Party abbreviation—State abbreviation/district) to the end of any mention of an elected official's name is, as was indicated in the discussion you linked, largely adapted from its widespread use in American print media. I'm not entirely certain it's appropriate in an encyclopedic context (others can of course chime in concerning this), but a quick browse through WP:MOS reveals two relevant points:
  1. The U.S. postal codes, such as TX for Texas, should not be used to stand in for their states in normal text.. Then again, it's pretty clear they're not used in this case as "normal text."
  2. Postnominal initials: "Writers should remember that the meaning of the most obvious (to them) postnominal initials will not be obvious to some readers. When postnominal initials are used the meaning should be readily available to the reader. This is most easily done with a piped link to an article with the appropriate title."
I think that in articles that discuss federal legislation or other acts of the legislative branch that would pertain directly to the duties of the elected official in question, it would generally be fine to include their party/constituency designation as long as it's appropriately hyperlinked. Depending on how widespread this use is, it might even be helpful to devise a template that would substitute in the appropriate abbreviations and links. – PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 22:39, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Deletion review

I direct your attention to Wikipedia:Deletion review for someone to initiate the process following the delete/redirect resulting from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of United States Representatives from Minnesota. I've left a note at the closing admins talk page [1].--G1076 07:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

The following statement should not be construed as canvassing, votestacking, forum shopping, internal spamming, cross-posting, solicitation, promotion or any other behavior prohibited or otherwise frowned upon. This statement void where prohibited by law.

The AfD for List of United States Representatives from Minnesota is up for review here: [2] --G1076 12:49, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Informing a Wikiproject of an ongoing deletion debate has never been considered canvassing (btw, the policy is a guideline, and is now here: WP:CANVASS). In any case, the DRV has overturned the initial verdict, so the article is to be kept. Technically I would have to relist at AfD, but since no one actually wants to delete I pointed the discussion here. ~ trialsanderrors 01:17, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Announcing WikiList Workgroup

Project Congress now has its first workgroup, the WikiLink Workgroup. This project will help to shape the future organization of the various project List articles (congressional delegations and lists of senators and representatives). Current controversies from within the project participants and wiki community with respect to these articles can solved in a more comprehensive manner within this workgroup.--G1076 00:44, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Style for House and Senate committee members

Since there is no official style guide for committees and caucuses yet developed, I wanted to check the opinion of the group as to one aspect of committee pages that we might be able to standardize across all article. That is how committee members are currently lists, both at the full committee and subcommittee level. Several House articles use a table that colors all of the Democrats and Republicans (House Agriculture Committee) in their own columns, while Senate pages appear to prefer tables that colorize each member by row (Senate Agriculture Committee).

I have been creating new subcommittee articles to fill in the gaps from the House committee and Senate committee lists. I have been continuing the House format with those articles and the Senate format with Senate articles, but wonder if this group thinks we should have a standard format for both bodies. The House format is much cleaner and visually appealing, while the Senate format is more distinctive for each member, and allows for separate indentifcation of the two Independent senators. Moreover, House committees can be quite large, so lumping all majority and minority members in their own columns saves space. With Senate committees, there are fewer members so space is less of an issue, though I believe having the minority and majority members displayed side-by-side (Senate Appropriations Committee) is more readable than having them follow one another further down the page (Senate Armed Services).

I have posted draft styles for the member tables on my talk page here User:Dcmacnut/DCTemplates as well as a few other ideas on committee style sheets I'm working on. Feel free to comment or make any suggestions.Dcmacnut 21:19, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Congressman Leo J. Ryan

Texas 32nd article

I stumbled on the article on my district, found that it was a stub, and cleaned it up a bit. I'm new to Wikipedia editing, and was wondering if I did an all right job.

161.253.48.175 22:41, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

U.S. Capitol shooting incident (1998)

This article is up for peer review in several locations. I basically created it from scratch with the help of two previous (since merged) articles on Russell Weston Jr and Detective John Gibson. If anyone wouldn't mind, please take a look and provide your comments. I hope to expand it soon but am running out of information, at least on the internet. --Daysleeper47 15:27, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposed Template for Congressional Record Pages

I noticed there are templates for easy citation of federal bills, public laws, and the U.S. Code, but nothing for retrieving or citing specific page in the Congressional Record. Either that or I haven't found one yet. I've created a rough template (in my usernamespace) that I cribbed from existing ones that accomplishes this. User:Dcmacnut/Templates:USCongressionalRecord It works pretty well. If no one objects, I can create it permanetly in the official Template: namespace.

Example

Opening proceedings of the 110th Congress in the U.S. Senate:

Comments

  • It's a good idea, and your draft has been nicely implemented. I suggest you put it up in the real world for all to see/use/edit! Can you use parser functions to replace "switch" with a formula to get the results you need for converting years into volumes?—GoldRingChip 01:09, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I also suggest a shorter abbreviated name, like {{USCongRec}} or something like that.—GoldRingChip 01:15, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
    • I'm not familiar enough with Template syntax to implement a parser function. The switch formula was cribbed from the UnitedStatesCode template, but that one only has a handful of options. The volume number is not necessary to retrieve the page, but is probably needed for proper citation. I will post the code in a full template, with a shorter name. If anyone has suggestions on making it the code simpler, I'm all ears.

Speedy for Guam's At-large congressional district

Guam's At-large congressional district has been nominated for speedy deletion.--G1076 21:43, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

The speedy tag's been deleted, but the article requires attention and clean-up. Newyorkbrad 22:01, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

John Edward Porter

This guy was given an awkward animalistic infobox there, I've moved that down and added a Congressional infobox there. Wooyi 22:30, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

please help

Recently I have finished the infobox for Bob Barr and John Edward Porter but I cannot find their marital information or their religious affiliation, someone who can help please add these info. Thank you! Wooyi 22:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

His third, and current, wife is Jeri Dobbin, confirmed from the web archive page of Barr's official website Dcmacnut 16:45, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Thank you, I added it on the article. Wooyi 21:42, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Infobox malfunction

In article for former congressman Mac Collins, the infobox malfunctioned when i tried to add it, I don't know why. Wooyi 02:27, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

fixed. --Roswell native 02:50, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Current congressional delegation article

Template:Current congressional delegation article 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. --G1076 18:51, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Religion parameter discussion

A discussion has begun here to establish consensus regarding the religion parameter. All editors are invited to join the discussion. This message has been cross-posted to other relevant talk pages. Thanks. --MZMcBride 04:03, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

"Sub"-page nomenclature

Hey there,

I've stumbled across some of the pages created by this project, and noticed that, well, the names aren't really either that understandable to someone not already steeped in this projects' naming system, and it's somewhat out of kilter with the MoS.

Currently, the names for the proper articles are at "<n>th United States Congress" which is a good, clear name, but the quasi-sub-pages are at "<n>th United States Congress - State Delegations" and "<n>th United States Congress - Political Parties". There's also "<n>th United States Congress - Membership Changes", but I can't actually find a use of it, so have no clue what it's meant to be; I'm presuming it means people appointed outside of the normal election cycle.

I think much better names for these would be as follows:

Membership lists
"<n>th United States Congress - State Delegations" → "Members of the <n>th United States Congress by State"
Membership lists
"<n>th United States Congress - Political Parties" → "Members of the <n>th United States Congress by political party"
Membership changes
"<n>th United States Congress - Membership Changes" → "Special elections and appointments to the <n>th United States Congress"

If people think that this is a good idea, I can have my bot make all the moves (and related clean-up, etc.) without any problems.

Longer term, the first two pages can be got rid of once we push the underlying data to a WikiData table and have views onto them; I think it might be possible to create them right now with the sortable table framework, but it might take a lot of time and some action now would be better than leaving them in this state, IMO.

So... thoughts?

James F. (talk) 19:07, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Could you point us to these sub-pages? I am not seeing any current articles with either the existing or proposed wording you mention.Dcmacnut 19:43, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Sure - 34th United States Congress also has 34th United States Congress - State Delegations and 34th United States Congress - Political Parties.
James F. (talk) 23:01, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. It appears that these kinds of articles don't exist for the 39th Congress to present. Given that very few articles fall under this, I would have no objections to the move. However, the articles duplicate information already contained in the main <n>th Congress articles, so why not just recommend merging the information with the main article? There are no equivelant articles for the current or recent congresses, and several that do exist, List_of_current_United_States_Senators for example, are recommended for merging with their main article. I see no reason to maintain a separate "state delegation" article and "politcal party" article for each Congress.Dcmacnut 00:46, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Employees

This evening, I was updating the employees section of the congress articles (105th-109th), and determined that the list of which employees we are including seemed rather arbitrary. We have all of the officers listed, and in addition have the house reading clerks and the historians. However we do not include positions such as the senate legislative clerk (equivalent to the house reading clerk) or the legal council. I am proposing that we only include those officers listed in the Congressional Pictorial Directory (http://origin.www.gpoaccess.gov/pictorial/index.html). This would include:

Additionally, the bottom of the house section has the following note:

Unless someone sees a need for it, I will remove that note.

Thank you for your input meamemg 04:17, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Assessment?

You might want to set up an assessment department to assess articles for Work Via Wikiprojects, which is aiming to get a large amount of assessed articles for possible inclusion into Wikipedia 1.0. Eyu100(t|fr|Version 1.0 Editorial Team) 02:58, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Donald A Bailey

More than a year ago I wrote an article on Don Bailey, former congressman and Auditor General of Pennsylvania. Is it possible for someone to review it?

I just registered a few days ago.

--J. J. in PA 03:22, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Category:Committees of the United States Congress

I've been diffusing these out of the category into more specific ones over the past few days and had started to put the subcommittees into very specialized categories, like shown in Category:Subcommittees of the United States House of Representatives, which has for example Category:United States House Appropriations subcommittees. GoldRingChip then contacted me here to debate whether or not the Subcommittees category should have all the subcommittee articles in it or if they should be broken down by their respective standing committees. He suggested coming here to see what the project's opinion was, which was a good idea. Thus, what do you guys think? --Hemlock Martinis 06:14, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree with GoldRingChip on their assessment of this. It does strike me as overcategorization to have subcategories for each subcommittee, and 100 or so articles for a category really isn't that bad. Especially since we have a page that does differentiate the subcommittees by their parent committee - this article could be referenced in Category:Subcommittees of the United States House of Representatives for further clarification. Great work in taking the initiative in categorizing things in the first place, though! – PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 06:22, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree with GoldRingChip and PSUMark. The original Category:Committees of the United States Congress was too long since it included all subcommittees, joint committees, and defunct committee articles. It was too confusing and needed cleaning up. I like the separate categories for full committees, subcommittees, and defunct committees, but I think all subcommittees should be included in their own category like the Category:Subcommittees of the United States House of Representatives that was recommended rather than being subcategorized by parent committee. The main committee articles already serve as a defacto category for each parent committee's subcommittees.Dcmacnut 15:40, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm going to assume that's consensus! Thanks very much, I'll get back to work immediately! --Hemlock Martinis 06:08, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

So How Do I Join

Hello, I've been working very hard for the last few weeks on collecting historical data for the historical Seniority of the United States Senators. I have specific plans to better source this data and expand it further back because I would like to eventually present my finding to the Senate Historical Office who has already admitted that the Senate Seniority List is flawed (if you go back past the 50s you can see that all the incoming Senators for a given date are merely sorted alphabetically by last name) so that they can correct the issue. This is going to take a few weeks but my first question to the Project is... how do I join?--Dr who1975 02:40, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Aloha!

I've finished the List of United States Representatives from Hawaii. The list is complete(!!!), but do we want to include any Delegates from before Hawaii was admitted to the Union? Does the list make sense? Are the notes succinct, but explanatory? Did I leave any glaring errors?

Mahalo. --Ali'i 20:23, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I had looked at the MA one for guidance on the COTW (California). I piped Honolulu throughout, deleted the See Also, and might be able to get to the Delegates later today. Off to finish wikilinking dates. Thanks again. --Ali'i 13:49, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposal: {{U.S. Senator box}}

I've proposed removing "alongside" from {{U.S. Senator box}}. Check it out, please: Template talk:U.S. Senator box#Proposal: Remove "Alongside".—GoldRingChip 22:43, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

PLEASE VOTE: The Congressional Barnstar of Honor (WikiProject U.S. Congress)

The Congressional Barnstar of Honor
For substantal, notable, or significant work on Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Congress, or work of substantial interest to members of that WikiProject.--Dr who1975 01:04, 10 March 2007 (UTC)


Please vote for this at new awards proposals, if you have an alternate submission for the image. I would love to see it proposed as well.--Dr who1975 01:04, 10 March 2007 (UTC)


New Rarley Used Succession Box

GoldRingChip, please forgive me. If it's any consolation, you inspired me to do this.
Whereas,
1. Senators are often former Representatives.
2. Occasionally, the guy that succeeded a Rep will also succeed him in the senate.
3. The {{Succession_box_one_to_two}} and {{Succession_box_two_to_one}} boxes do not have certain features that are unique to the {{USRepSuccessionBox}} and {{U.S. Senator box}} boxes (in particular the alongside feature).

In my infinite boredom (I mean wisdom) I have created the following rarely needed, rarely used succession boxes.

{{Succession box two to one U.S. Rep to Senator}}
{{Succession box one to two U.S. Rep to Senator}}

Now, so far, I have only identified two sets of Senators that fit the criteria for these boxes, Dan Quayle to Dan Coats, and Spark Matsunaga to Daniel Akaka. I thought I could do it with Jim Jeffords and Bernie Saunders but there was a Congressman who separated them for 2 years in the house. If any of you know of any other senators who could use this box please implement it or let me know and I'll implement it.--Dr who1975 14:18, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Hey, I found a third one. Jonathan Chace to Nathan F. Dixon, III. It;s interesting because Dixon took a break before suceeding Chance in the Senate.--Dr who1975 04:42, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
William Hathaway to William Cohen--Dr who1975 15:38, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Copyvio tag for MN-2

Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2007 March 27/Articles. A proposed copyvio fix is here: Talk:Minnesota's 2nd congressional district/Temp--G1076 00:50, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

If you look closely, [4] is a U.S. government site. The contents are public domain. That doesn't necessarily make it OK to copy and paste everything verbatim, but I don't think it is a copyvio. I've removed the copyvio notice – feel free to re-write the material. Your proposed revision looks fine. older ≠ wiser 01:29, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Contempt of Congress

Given the recent Congressional investigations into the U.S. Attorneys scandal, I decided to be bold and completely rewrite the contempt of Congress article. I am missing a few details and I have to publish a list of sources (which I will do tomorrow; it's getting too late) but please check it out, improve it, and let me know what you think. Thanks. JasonCNJ 04:54, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject user category

It is recommended that Category:Wikiproject U.S. Congress Wikipedians be renamed to either Category:WikiProject U.S. Congress participants or Category:WikiProject U.S. Congress members according to convention. It is left up to the project participants/members to choose which they would like. Please hold a discussion here and when there is consensus make the change. Thank you. --NThurston 20:28, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Peer review

Do we have a dedicated peer review? Or do we just leave a notice here on the talk page. Howard Cleeves 23:41, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Name of Senate committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs changed

User:UnitedStatesIndia has changed the name of committee to the "Senate Homeland Security Commmittee" - NOTE THE SPELLING ERROR. The same user has also changed the committee name for Joe Lieberman, and possibly elsewhere. I also see many edits to articles on members of Congress by this editor. Chrisbak 05:20, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Delawarians

Someone appears to have gone through and removed succession boxes for Delaware politicians. This is most annoying, as it makes navigation through a particular office with succession boxes impossible. Was this any kind of central directive, or some kind of maverick thing? john k 07:21, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

John M. Clayton is a good one. I added succession tables back in at Louis McLane and Thomas F. Bayard. Also James A. Bayard (elder). john k 15:07, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

  • That's odd. It ought to be restored and I don't know why it was removed. I suggest you restore it to whatever it had before. Ditto for any others you find. It's important that articles maintain formatting consistency throughout wikipedia. —GoldRingChip 15:27, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this was my feeling, as well. It appears that all this was done by User:Stilltim. john k 15:42, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

'Signature' field on certain infoboxes

What is the justification for having a field containing the image of the person's signature on a general-information/general-interest infobox? I fail to see why it is worth including in a 'summary' box. Am I missing something? -Grammaticus Repairo 07:26, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

How does one go about getting such a field removed from the infobox? -Grammaticus Repairo 22:44, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure which specific infobox you're referring to, but I would assume it's on the list here. The various infobox templates are about to be merged and the signature field is used heavily throughout some of them, so I don't see it being removed any time soon. But please don't take that as meaning you don't have a fair point and shouldn't raise it on the Infobox Officeholder talk page. Hopefully that helps. Cheers. --MZMcBride 00:42, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Grazie for the info! -Grammaticus Repairo 02:51, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

12th Amendment FAR

Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.—Marskell 07:25, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Peer review of Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy

The article Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy touches on presidential, congressional and government-agency wikipedia projects. In case you're interested, a peer review request has been posted to Wikipedia:Peer review#Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy. – Yellowdesk 14:54, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Vito Fossella

I've done some work on this article. WOuld someone be so kind as to look in and perhaps leave suggestions for improvement or even edit out any errors? Thanks in advance. Howard Cleeves 20:20, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Congressional "events" and naming

There are several articles which relate to events surrounding Congress however they all have different naming conventions. Would it be possible to come up with a standard for naming. A quick search produced:

We have different uses of capitalization, dates, and phrasing. Perhaps we can use one standard or at least change some things around so they are close. Any ideas? --Daysleeper47 22:31, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

My first reaction is that we only capitalize the initial word in the article, e.g. House banking scandal, unless the event in question is more commonly known by a formal name. I can't think of any events to have earned such a formal wording, other than perhaps impeachment trials, i.e. Impeachment Trial of name of public official. I recommend this because technicall the word "congressional" is never capitalized as an adjective in normal usage, such as congressional staff member, but is capitalized when part of a proper noun or the initial word in a sentence, like Congressional Black Caucus. With respect to dates, I recommend using puting the dates at the end of the article in parenthesis, like the shooting incident articles. That makes searching for the item easier. 1983 Congressional page sex scandal becomes Congressional page sex scandal (1983). However, dates should only be used in the article names to eliminate confusion, such as the two shooting incidents. The page scandal as well, as it would differential between the 1983 scandal and the 2004 Mark Foley scandal.

As a general comment, I not sure the March 29 Capitol Police incident deserves its own article. The matter was a major event for certain, but it did not result in the entire evacuation of Congress and ended peacefully. I'm not saying it should be deleted, but just making an observation for comment.Dcmacnut 00:36, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Lists of United States politicians

Please see my request at Category talk:Lists of United States politicians. I think we can use some of the data from User:Valadius's work at List of former United States Representatives.—GoldRingChip 20:49, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Infobox (and information) needed

Perhaps this wikiproject can help: Isaac M. Jordan was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1882, though the page does not state to which branch (well, there is a category, but it's not confirmed in the text), or to which district, and there is no infobox. Perhaps someone has seen (or can help me find) a list that would have him on it. I will look for a response here. —ScouterSig 04:06, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Talk:Act of Congress

I was hoping someone can answer the question on the talk page. Thanks, Yonatan talk 02:46, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Cross namespace redirects

This WikiProject had a redirect of the form WikiProject Foo. These are routinely deleted per the self reference policy. You should choose a redirect of the form WP:Foo instead. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:52, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Then you might as well just type in the entire name. It's just as inconvienient. Kingjeff 15:53, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Feedback request for navboxes

I had previously left a note over on Talk:WP_USGA, but stumbled onto this WP, which appears to have a much larger and more active audience.

Regarding the navboxes of Wikipedia:WikiProject_U.S._Congress#Positions, many have been changed from hardcoded layouts or the older {{NavigationBox}} to the much shorter v-d-e show/hide format, usually via {{Dynamic navigation box with image}} or {{Navigation with image}}.

Is there a preference, either of the WikiProject or of its editors? Personally, I'm a fan of the {{Dynamic navigation box with image}}. Less space, overlap the image onto the title bar slightly. Either way, for articles which have several, like Tom Foley, Bob Dole, or Gerald Ford, a consistent style would probably be best.

See old NavBox style vs new DynamicNavBox w/ Image for {{USHouseSpeaker}} as an example.

Thanks — MrDolomite • Talk 05:55, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Speaker of the United States House of Representatives FAR

Is currently under review at Featured Article review, please add feedback or help to retain at Featured Article status. Judgesurreal777 17:55, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Speaker of the United States House of Representatives has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:25, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Maps of Congressional Districts for the 110th Congress

As noted on the Congressional District subpage, there aren't any high-qualify public domain maps of the districts for the 110th Congress. So far, this only affects Texas and Georgia, the only two states to see redistricting between the 109th and 110th Congresses. Not knowing when NationalAtlas.gov will update its site with new maps, I've started creating new maps for Georgia using the Census Bureau's official cartographic data sets for the 110th Congress, GIS mapping software, Photoshop, and a lot of patience. You can see my first attempt at Image:United States House of Representatives 110th Congress Georgia District 1 map.png, and compare it to the old Image:United States House of Representatives, Georgia District 1 map.png from the 109th Congress. I would welcome any suggestions. If there is consensus, I can finish the other 12 districts. It would at least give us an accurate map of the districts in the iterim until the federal government provides a high-quality public domain version.Dcmacnut 04:40, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Barack Obama FAR

Barack Obama has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:37, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

List of former members of the United States House of Representatives

This list is the largest article on Wikipedia (600k in size). To ensure centralised discussion on what to do with it, could any interested editors please discuss the issue over at the list's talk page. → AA (talk) – 16:34, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Questions? Ask them through Wikinews

Hello,

I'm Nick Moreau, an accredited reporter for Wikinews. I'm co-ordinating our 2008 US Presidential election interviews. We will be interviewing as many candidates as possible, from the Democrats, Republicans, and other parties/independents.

I'll be sending out requests for interviews to the major candidates very soon, but I want your input, as people interested in American politics: what should I ask them?

Please go to any of these three pages, and add a question.

Thanks, Nick – Zanimum 14:56, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

United States Congress featured article review

United States Congress has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Sdornan 18:06, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

project template

As Category:WikiProject U.S. Congress articles has grown so big, can someone create subcats? Such as biographies; districts; places; things; etc?—GoldRingChip 14:54, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Are you looking at adding subcategories to each article's talk page, or creating sub-templates for Project Congress?Dcmacnut 16:04, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Jean Schmidt FAR

Jean Schmidt has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.--SallyForth123 00:55, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Speaker and President pro tem consistency

There has been a fairly heated debate over what may be a relatively mundane question on the Speaker page. The issues are whether or not a picture of the current officeholder is appropriate in the body of the article, and, if so, where should it be placed? There is a related question about whether the lists of previous speakers/presidents pro tem should be included in the article itself or on a seperate page.

As it stands now, the pictures of both Pelosi and Byrd are on the top right of the respective pages. The Speaker entry includes the list of previous speakers, the president pro tem page does not. Regardless of what consensus is reached, I believe that consistency between the pages is important, since they are so related. So, thoughts? JCO312 16:48, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Results tables for districts and representatives

Hi. I noticed awhile back some of the various tables towards the end of politician's articles detailing their electoral history. I was wondering: is there any interest in expanding these sections to other articles, and possibly standardizing their style at least somewhat? Robert Byrd, Charles Bass, and Joe Biden's tables are all laid out somewhat differently. Additionally, some use their own hard-coded colors rather than a standardized template, which could lead to parties being identified in an erratic fashion.

I'd like to humbly suggest something in the style of what I added to Nancy Pelosi#Electoral history a bit back. For candidates who run for several different offices in a short period of time such that having separate tables for each office would be clunky, an "office" column can be added as in Harry Reid#Electoral history. Currently, most tables only examine general elections; finding sources for relevant primaries might be annoying and difficult, and best explained in prose. There's also the question of how often losing candidates are notable; is being a major party candidate that loses once significant enough to grant you a Wikipedia article? I think the answer is "no," but not sure. Another issue that was brought up at Talk:John McCain: is the creation of a horizontal scrollbar when there are several third party candidates a problem? Considering other pages like United States Congressional Delegations from California, I don't believe it is, but if it is seen as undesirable, I suppose a div tag with style="overflow: auto;" can be wrapped around the table. I don't think that's necessary, but it is an option. Any thoughts on all of this?

Part of the reason I ask is that I recently wrote a Python script to devour the Clerk's records on their website... at least their HTML ones. (If anyone knows a site with a good database of old election results NOT in PDF, that'd be great.) Stylistic changes in how the parser outputs the tables should be pretty easy. These results can hopefully be added to, at the very least, the articles on specific Congressional districts; New Jersey's 2nd congressional district is an example of how this would look in the long term. They can also be cobbled together for articles on the Representatives themselves. So, before these tables start getting moved to the article space, we should probably decide any stylistic issues. (Though that said, help on putting these tables into articles would be greatly appreciated, since machine-generated content does need a second pair of eyes to make certain it makes sense, and some things on the Clerk's website are annoyingly vague, like how Massachusetts has several races in which an entity simply called "write-ins" is getting 20%+ of the vote, yet the clerk's office doesn't explain whose name was on those write-ins from somebody clearly campaigning.) Anyway. If you're interested, check out User:SnowFire/USCongressResults and feel free to comment on any changes that could be made. SnowFire 22:50, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

New Congressional district maps

The new congressional district maps (for the 110th Congress) are now available at [5]. Can someone upload them to wikipedia, please??—GoldRingChip 16:48, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Why don't you do it? john k 19:00, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

New Colors?

Why did the color for Republicans change on the congressional delegation pages?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Josephabradshaw (talk • contribs)

Please join the discussion at Template talk:Party shading. A small group decided to make a unilateral change to the party colors by swaping the green for Democratic-Republican with the Red for Republican, Because of some alleged complaints by Republican Party officials that the current color was too "pink." Asthetical and political considerations aside, the change is too major. Besides, the Democratic-Republicans have roots in both the modern Demoractic and Republican parties, so a color other than Red or Blue should be used for that party.

I've reverted the edits back to the original colors, but am having trouble seeing if my edits have worked on my page (still showing the "new" colors). If we are going to alter the Republican party shading color to be less offensive to a vocal minority, than there needs to be broader consensus.Dcmacnut 17:46, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act featured article nomination

Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act recently achieved Good Article status. I've nominated it for featured article status - please see Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act. Comments would be welcomed. – ChrisO 19:26, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Senate Select Committee on Disarmament

Could someone check out the article on the United States Senate Select Committee on Disarmament? I am updating the list of defunct congressional committees and can't find a record of this committee anywhere I've looked. The article itself consists of just one line, which is merely a self reference stating the committee once existed, with no dates or sources to back it up. Does anyone have a source or record that proves this committee was a real one?Dcmacnut 03:58, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Article One of the United States Constitution

Has been put up for featured article review, please come and help improve it/comment on its nomination. Thanks! Judgesurreal777 04:07, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletions (WP:PROD)

United States Congress Candidate for Featured Article Removal

United States Congress is a candidate for removal of its featured article status. I've attempted to make several modifications to the article, addressing grammar, deleting unnecessary information, correcting spelling, and adding in-line citations to the few facts that appeared to need them. However, the bulk of comments indicate it needs in-line citations throughout the article, even though it is extensively sourced already and in-line citations are to be used only "when appropriate" per WP:MOS. Could someone take a look at the comments at Wikipedia:Featured_article_review and see if my view is on track or simply way off base here? It seems that I'm the lone voice for keeping the article's status. If it's truly lived past what made it featured in the first place, I guess I'll relent, but I don't think in-line citations should be its downfall, particularly since those that were needed have been added.Dcmacnut 15:25, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

House Ethics Committee

I can't find an article on the United States House Ethics Committee/United States House Committee on Ethics. Am I missing it? Is it covered in another article? ·:· Will Beback ·:· 06:58, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Found it: United States House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. I'm gonna create some redirects and a dismbiguation page. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 07:02, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Question about redistricting

Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Succession Box Standardization#Question about redistricting for a question I have about how to present geographic discontinuities due to redistricting in succession boxes. Thanks. older ≠ wiser 15:26, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Request for Admin-ship

I'm requesting to become an Admin. Please comment on your support or opposition HERE. Thanks. —GoldRingChip 16:24, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Party color templates

I recently noticed that an editor User:Padfoot714 has made several color changes to Template:United States political party shading. which I have since reverted because they seem to be too large of a change to implement without consensus. Please see the dicussion at Template talk:Party shading.Dcmacnut 15:59, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I've proposed a new color scheme for the party shading key at Template talk:Party shading#New color scheme. Several have already indicated their support, so please comment if you are intested. I'll likely make the changes early next week if I don't hear any major objections.Dcmacnut 03:33, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Vermont's 1st/At-large congressional district

I'd like to create a new article for Vermont's 1st congressional district. It would be an obsolete district occurring when Vermont had multiple districts. Since there were multiple representatives, technically it shouldn't be under this header since those reps were not elected statewide at-large. Thoughts?????.....Pmeleski 11:30, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I have no firm opinion. Keep in mind that several states with current at-large districts have their "1st district" articles redirected to the at-large article. We'd need to change those, too, to be consistent. Also, several members served during the "changeover" from individual to at-large district, so it would create challenging is portraying the electoral history of the district. Moreover, South Dakota was at-large until the 1930s and then had districts until 1982.Dcmacnut 14:39, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

POV pushing by the Marijuana Policy Project in House member articles

The Marijuana Policy Project has edited several house member articles to include mention of a July 25 vote on a medical marijuana amendment called the Hinchey-Rohrabacher medical marijuana amendment. All of the additions are to members who voted against the amendment. No one that voted in favor of the amendment has it mentioned on their article. In the majority of cases is the only vote specifically mentioned in the article. I'm not questioning the main articles notability. I'll leave that to others. However, I think including this and only this vote on a specific member's article, and limiting it to only those who voted against the amendment, only serves to further the MPP's POV on the issue and violates WP:NPOV.

Edits have been added from IP 69.143.122.156 and User:Bmorris8745. The edit summaries all say "added by MPP" or "added by Marijuana Policy Project."

I've tried to revert several of the edits, but can't get to them all. Anyone want to help? See a list of the articles this affects.

Note: The article for Dana Rohrabacher links to the amendment's article, but I think that one could be considered appropriate. Rohrabacher has been a medical marijuana supporter for years, and is co-sponsor of the amdendment.Dcmacnut 17:22, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Explanation

Votes on single pieces of legislation appear in many house member articles. Deleting language for this specific vote seems arbitrary. Bmorris8745 26 September 2007 —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 19:50, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

That may be, but the addition of this particular vote seems to be more than merely informative. Every person that voted against the amendment had their article amended, while those who voted for it did not have it included. I do not doubt that on a case-by-case basis, including individual votes may be appropriate, such as if the subject of the article made noteworthy comments about his or her vote or has taken strong positions on the issue in the past (e.g. vote on the Iraq War). If a member of Congress has made medical marijuana one of their key issues in office, then including this vote may be noteworthy. However, simply including in all articles simply because the vote occured does not, in my mind, rise the level where it needs to be included.Dcmacnut 20:36, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
Additionally, the line has to be drawn somewhere on including individual votes. Otherwise articles for Congressional members would be huge and unwieldy. On Wikipedia, that line is determined by consensus, and the fact that these particular edits have been reverted by numerous editors demonstrates consensus against including them. A look at Bmorris8745's edit history indicates that this issue is his/her only focus, at least for now. Wikipedia is a legitimate encyclopedia, not a political forum. Ward3001 21:07, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Would there be any opposition to including the roll call (perhaps in table format) on the hinchey amendment article .64.0.86.58 21:54, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I assume you mean in the Hinchey-Rohrabacher medical marijuana amendment article rather than individual Congressional members' pages. A quick look at other pages on pieces of legislation does not indicate that roll calls are included. So unless someone can find contradictory evidence, I don't think this legislation deserves to be singled out that way any more than any other legislation. Furthermore, there is an external link to the roll call in the article. That should be quite sufficient for anyone who is interested. Ward3001 22:08, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Generalizing {{Infobox Government agency}} to handle more than just agencies

Hi everyone. I just made a proposal at {{Infobox Government agency}} to generalize it to handle more than just agencies. In a nutshell, it would move the code to {{Infobox Govt Unit}} and then the agency template would call that. For non-agency pages, they could just use the more general {{Infobox Govt Unit}} instead of the agency template {{Infobox Government agency}}. This will allow all of the articles on government departments, offices, bureaus, commands, administrations, and programs to have a standard infobox, instead of just agencies. Right now this template is used in departments and offices (for example United States Department of Defense), but with incorrect subtitles (i.e. it labels it as an agency instead of a department), which my proposal will fix. With the addition of these changes, it could be used for a number of Congressional articles (Congressional offices, programs, etc.) instead of just agencies. I'd appreciate people reading the proposal and commenting on it at Template talk:Infobox Government agency#Proposed new version. Thanks, --CapitalR 00:05, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

It should be noted this user has been unwilling to even discuss this matter at the infobox's talk page, being more inclined to enter a revert war over it yesterday which led to the article's protection. There now appears to be a bit of forum shopping going on to find a venue amenable to his ideas. I would suggest the talk page of the template is a better venue. Orderinchaos 04:14, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

FAR notice

United States Senate has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. --RelHistBuff 17:18, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I've noticed that a lot of current representatives have a suite of the same external links. However, when you look at several articles, it's sometimes difficult to figure out what links might be missing. Furthermore, if we wanted to change the language of the links, we would have to edit every single entry. For this reason, I've started {{CongLinks}}, which combines {{CongBio2}} and {{VoteSmart}}, and adds several more links. All of the parameters are optional, but if we include the full suit on each contemporary legislator, it should be easy to make modifications across all post-1991 legislators at once.

Comments? Cool Hand Luke 07:14, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

United States Congressional Delegations from Virginia

Do anyone have any information about who represented the various Virginia districts for the first eight Congresses (from 1789-1807)? They are missing from United States Congressional Delegations from Virginia. —GoldRingChip 15:11, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Archive the talk page

Has anyone considered archiving this talk page, perhaps by year? It is growing rather long and hard to find the active, relavant conversations. --Daysleeper47 14:53, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

There are active, relevant conversations??? ;-) --Ali'i 15:41, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Templates for Deletion

Splitting

Someone has decided to split United States Congressional Delegations from New York into several articles. I think some discussion is in order here.--Appraiser (talk) 17:24, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Party Identification

In these two articles, it appears that the same people, in the same offices, in the same periods of time are being assigned to different political parties. Which one is right? Does it matter? List of United States Representatives from New York & United States Congressional Delegations from New York Mbisanz 06:20, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

See:
  • George O. Belden, Jacksonian on one, uncat on other other.
  • Samuel W. Eager, Anti-Jacksonian on one, uncat on other.
  • Guy R. Pelton, Whig on one, Opposition on the other.
  • Isaac Teller, listed on one, unlisted on the other.
  • Thomas E. Stewart, Conservative Republican on one, Republican on the other.
Thats not an exhaustive list, but more a representative one. If it would aid the discussion, I am willing to go through the entire list. Mbisanz 17:44, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, I was looking for a "gold standard" of sorts. I'll take a look at NY later this week and hopefully harmonize the 2 lists to the indiv congress lists. Mbisanz 20:36, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

List of lists

Here's a new article I started: List of United States congressional lists. Check it out and see what you'd like to add. It's sort of a meta-list article. —GoldRingChip 02:23, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Random votes getting undue weight

I watch a number of congressional bios, and I keep seeing single purpose editors adding details about a particular vote, usually to a bunch of bios at once. An example of it is this set: [6]. But I see it for all kinds of issues. They're often unsourced and non-neutral, but even if they're both sourced and neutral it still puts undue weight on a single issue if we have a five-paragrph bio with a whole paragraph on a vote. If we maintained a vote database of our own, or had an article on every bill, then we could link to those but we don't (and we shouldn't either). What's the best way of dealing with this kind of editing? ·:· Will Beback ·:· 05:41, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

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