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Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States politicians/Archive 3

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Task: Deal with the two Overlapping cats of Office Holders

Category:American politicians explicitly contrasts itself with Category:Political office-holders in the United States:

This category lists politicians who are associated with the United States through nationality. Most, but not all, have been involved in the politics of the United States. For individuals who have held office in the political institutions of the U.S. (regardless of nationality), refer to Category:Political office-holders in the United States.

(And they have roughly parallel trees of descendants below them, without there being any workable means for users of one descendant to be aware of its opposite number, or of the distinction it supposedly inherits as a descendant of its parent Cat.)

In fact two separate distinctions are involved, but not acknowledged there:

  1. Politicians vs. office holders, perhaps even more controversial.
    (I think our general practices indicate that Cats for both "politician" and "office holder" includes "former ...", except where "current" is explcitly stated.)
  2. American nationality vs. holding an office that exists via the authority of the United States Constitution, directly (Federal government) or indirectly (state, local, and Puerto Rico).
    ("Former" is so seldom used re nationality, that i doubt we have any consistent criterion for including or excluding former nationalities.)

IMO "politician" means someone steadily involved in the setting of government policy, and includes

  • All holders of elective offices. (Note the lack of Cats for holders appointive office may or not reflect the intent to exclude them).
  • Candidates for elective office who hold a major-party nomination, or who are given a interesting chance of winning by journalists with a track record of ignoring candidates who claim to be on a role and finish 30 points behind the winner: serious candidates.
  • All political appointees at "policy-making levels" (not, i think, as vague as that sounds).
  • People hired by serious candidates ("Candidates.." point above) to organize their election campaigns.

However, i exclude political activists who don't fall under at least one of the above. My reasoning is that there is a fairly bright line at the bottom of those four groups, but nothing but the muddiest of lines to separate them from either

  • everyone who puts on a lapel button with a political or social slogan, or
  • everyone who spends all the time they can afford writing and giving away political writings that will never affect the outcome of an election, nor otherwise be shown to have influenced the policies of anyone within the four groups.

--Jerzy•t 22:13, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with your listing of politicians, except that I think that U.S. politicians should include candidates for the "main" third parties (as listed at Template:USParty, as well as the main two, as well as notable independents (there has been a growing number of notable third party/independant politicians, such as Independant Gov. Ventura of Minn. and Ralph Nader. --Tim4christ17 talk 23:52, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Politics and government/United States merge into this project?

I think this project should be resurrected and have the U.S. section of WikiProject Biography's workgroup (linked on this article's main page), which has essentially the same mandate (and 4 currently listed members), merged into it. There's good information on both this page and the Biography workgroup's page, but I'm sure things would work more smoothly if they were merged. I don't think the Biography people would mind, and they might even incorporate a WikiProject Politicians banner into the current Biography WikiProject template, like they did with the British Royalty one (to make things easier - one template is easier to apply than two, and several parameters from the WikiProject Biography template would be useful to use for us to use as well.) Unfortunately I don't have enought time to organize a merge, but if someone else does, it'd be nice.--Tim4christ17 talk 23:52, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Let me know if there's interest - we already have a parameter for politicians - just add politician-work-group=yes to any WPBiography template --plange 14:15, 25 September 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 22:43, 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 14:40, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

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 22:29, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

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