Talk:Albany, New York

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To-do list for Albany, New York:

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  • Talk about Schuyler Mansion and Washington Park
  • Discuss famous residents
  • Talk about Albany's historic relationship with immigration
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Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.

Contents

[edit] Mayors List

What's up with the partial list of early mayors only? Is there no complete list? And if there isn't, why list only those early ones? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gnhn (talk • contribs) .

Sounds like a good thing for you to go ahead and add!  :) —Wknight94 (talk) 16:04, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I was more inclined to delete the oldies! --Gnhn 17:06, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, if there isn't currently a list of old Albany mayors, I'd say keep this or else the info will be lost completely. But I agree that it might be better to have them in a separate list article, esp. if someone wants to make a complete list rather than the sampling that is here now. Basically, it's good info - just not necessarily presented in a good way. —Wknight94 (talk) 17:31, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I found a list and posted it. Is it too many? Should it migrate to its own page?--Gnhn 17:46, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Ouch. Yeah, I'd vote to move the list to its own page and then have a link from here. I don't know what others would say. I'm assuming the past mayors of Albany would be a notable subject for an article - individually and as a list - but maybe there's a standard that says otherwise. —Wknight94 (talk) 18:04, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

(resetting tab) I second the vote to move the list to it's own article. Based on the US Cities template, the Mayors list should be a part of the Law and Government section possibly with details on notable mayors in the 'Notable Natives' section. More generally, I propose restructuring the article to this template and add the {{WikiProjectCities}} tag. Antonrojo 14:44, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Okay, finally got around to moving the list of mayors to its own page. Based on resources Wknight94 and I have found, I feel very comfortable about the accuracy of this list through 1800 and for recent history, but the late 19th Century and early 20th Century information is still incomplete (e.g. there are gaps in the dates where no mayor is listed). If someone can find a source for completing that list (other than Political Graveyard, which I have deleted as a reference since it has proven to be very inaccurate), it would be great if you could finish this list and double check the period from 1800-present.--Gnhn 12:08, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Density?

If the population is 95,658 and the area is 56.6km², how does the density work out to be 4000+/km²?

[edit] Picture Request

I'm an Albany resident, and live quite close to downtown. If there's specific pictures you want, let me know, and I'll take 'em for whoever asks. E-mail address on my page. --GaidinBDJ 18:30, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)


I added two photographs I took a few months ago from State Street. Let me know if anything else is needed.--Youngtwig 17:35, July 19, 2005 (UTC)


Hello Albany people. Is there a place we could all find each other on here anyway? Is there a list of Albany editors or something? Anyway, I know we're shooting for NPOV here, but does the picture of the Agency buildings really have to feature such "typical" Albany weather? Maybe, if it ever clears up, we could get one on a Sunnier day? Billy P 19:12, 19 July 2005 (UTC)


Yeah. I plan on shooting more photos sometime soon, but it's not easy as I don't drive and I live in the suburbs (Guilderland). Hopefully I can get some less "artsy" photos, too. ;) Youngtwig 23:52, July 20, 2005 (UTC)


Do you know what the copyright situation would be on postcards? The New York State Museum sells plenty of Albany postcards that I could easily scan in if they'd be usable. Billy P 16:03, 21 July 2005 (UTC)


It's just as easy to take the pictures, and it avoids any possible entanglements. --GaidinBDJ 16:13, July 21, 2005 (UTC)


Alright, I shot some more photos in Albany yesterday. I think I got a pretty good picture of the capitol building, although someone walked into the photo. There's also some construction going on. At least there's no snow.

I still don't have a skyline photo, though. Anyone have any recommendations for a photo spot? Thanks. Youngtwig 17:49, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

If you want the Egg/ESP I'd take it from the other side of the river with a good zoom lens. Otherwise, somewhere on the 787/downtown interchange. --GaidinBDJ 14:50, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
Added a better skyline photo - the same one that the County is using in promotional material --Mets 06:26, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

The images on this page look great! I am removing the image request. -Dr Haggis - Talk 05:08, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Northern HVAC?

Why is there an external link to Northern HVAC? Seems more like an attempt at advertising than a useful addition. Or am I missing its relevance? Bbpen 18:54, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Deleted link. Bbpen 16:04, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Government?

Added short info about current mayor -- will need to be updated after the upcoming election. Would it be useful to have a Government subheading? BCampbell 18:05, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "...most beautiful" contradicts the doctrine of NPOV

The article states: "The State Capitol building... ranks... as one of the most beautiful state capitol buildings in the country." According to whom? Without attribution, this is an unsupported opinion. If an authority made that statement, please reinstitute the phrase and give attribution. (I think it's beautiful too, but we have to maintain the golden NPOV. :) ) --tgeller 23:02, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Recent changes

I'm not sure I agree with the recent changes to this article. (First off, I hate "United States state of New York" but that's not why I'm here). Some of that school stuff was interesting. Admittedly, it needed to be made more aesthetically pleasing and clearer in some spots but removing it entirely isn't what I would have done. This was just about the only link to Doane Stuart School so you might as well remove that article altogether. If the school section was taking up pages and pages, I might agree but it was a nice compact chunk of interesting facts IMHO. --wknight94 17:55, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

And why was the link to Erastus Corning removed? Wasn't it the right link? Did I miss something? --wknight94 17:59, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
I apologize if some of my edits were awkward (especially "United States state of New York," which on second thought is pretty bad.) I removed school stuff if it was only an external link (WP:NOT a phone book or directory) but I left it if there was a WP article about that school...if I made a mistake on that one, then I apologize and please revert the error. Thank you for informing me of this and make the changes you think should be made; I will comment on them in this space. (Incidentally, thank you for your non-abusive tone, which is different from virtually all comments on my talk page I have received about edits I've made :) ) Paul 18:05, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Incidentally, about the "United States state" thingy, if it were up to me I would address each U.S. state on its own and not make references to it only as a component unit of a larger entity (which of course is important to mention, but IMHO states are primarily units unto themselves and not subdivisions). This goes along with my whacky decentralist-secessionist tendencies, and is basically irrelevant, but figured I'd share. Paul 18:08, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
I'd agree about the removal of U.S. completely. I think that's sometimes the result of people outside the U.S. saying, "I have to say Queensland is in Australia so 'they' should have to say New York is in the U.S.!!". I'm not sure if that's people being paranoid or me being paranoid about people being paranoid... Remember, it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you! Regardless, I usually leave it in unless it sounds ridiculous like "Schenectady is an American city in Schenectady County, New York, United States" (American and in the United States - which is what that article used to say). No offense, but "United States state" qualifies as needing to be fixed...
I'll take your thoughts about school stuff sounding like a directory under advisement - but I'll probably put it back in some very short form (unless someone else objects) and maybe make a request for new articles for them. And I'll assume removing the Erastus Corning link was a mistake and put it back as well. And don't worry about me being abusive which only happens if someone is abusive at me first. --wknight94 18:53, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
That sounds fine...my advice would be to at least create stubs for any schools mentioned (assuming of course that they meet notability criteria). They're easy and look better than external links in articles. Paul 19:11, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Sounds reasonable.  :) --wknight94 19:16, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spectrum?

From the article: Lark street area has many hole-in-the-wall shops like the daily grind, the lark street bookshop and the spectrum 8 film theatre.

The spectrum is a hole in the wall? Also, it's rather far from the daily grind and the lark street book store... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.194.181.143 (talk • contribs) .

I'd say Be bold and re-word it to be the way you'd like. —Wknight94 (talk) 20:11, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

The Spectrum 8 is not only far from the Daily Grind, It's on Deleware Ave. (http://www.spectrum7.com/about/index.html) and not Lark St.

[edit] Population of the metro area???

The population for the city itself is given; however, as everyone knows, the population within the legislative boundries of a city is not what many people would generally consider the true population of the greater metropolitan area. The Albany-Troy-Schenectady Metro area is what many people in other places of NY would consider just "Albany", or more appropriately the Capital Disctrict. It'd be nice if here, as in many other city articles on Wikipedia, we could put both the official population stat for the city AND the population of the greater metro area (in this case the Albany-Troy-Schenectady metro area), which is according to the capital district article, the 135th Largest in North America (though no actual figure is given there). Thelastemperor 07:38, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I believe the populations here come directly from the U.S. Census and so they come with the complications of that data. I think the best you could do for the "metropolitan area" you're looking for is add up the populations for Albany, Schenectady and Rensselaer Counties. The Census web site will give all the gory detail for exactly what areas correspond to which population figures. Often, towns are located inside cities, etc. which makes things very confusing. —Wknight94 (talk) 21:42, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New region edits

I'm tempted to revert the latest regional edits. Those seem like good comments to put into the Capital District article, not the Albany, New York article. Anyone else have an opinion? —Wknight94 (talk) 16:09, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I actually got them from the Capital District page, but am fine if you want to pull some parts of them back out. Main thing I was trying to do was get the consistency between terms on the pages related to MSA, region and district, and between the ranking of the market size. Rather than revert wholesale, perhaps trim to keep cross-links and terms consistent? --Gnhn 17:05, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I'll confess to not reading super close. All I'll say is that we want to avoid having a lot of information stated in two articles at once. If you think there is an inconsistency, I'd say go ahead and remove it rather than trying to clarify by pulling over a lot of content from a separate article. Duplicate info requires duplicate maintenance. Like I said, this is just from a quick review, but it looked like there was a lot of region-specific info that was not really appropriate for a city-specific article. I.e., there was probably already too much and the recent edit added even more!  :) —Wknight94 (talk) 17:27, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I'll trim it.--Gnhn 17:46, 8 March 2006 (UTC)


[edit] US Cities Template

I propose restructuring the article to this US Cities template with the addition of the

This article is part of the WikiProject on Cities which aims to improve and standardize articles on cities, towns, and other municipalities of the world. Make suggestions for improving multiple articles on these subjects at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities.

tag. Antonrojo 14:47, 12 March 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Alternative Newsweeklies

Metroland is a proven local commodity and resource, but I'm not sure that Valley Voice merits being included here at all, or even having its own wiki. There are LOADS of free newspapers (Parent Pages, etc.) that float around this market that have more reach and tenure than Valley Voice, so including it with Metroland gives it far more prestige than it deserves thus far. I would recommend that it not be listed here until (a) it's been around a little longer, since there have only been about four issues to date, and (b) it gets recognized by an organization like Association of Alternative Newsweeklies as being a legit alternative paper. Follow the link to its page; I would also seriously question whether that wiki merits a delete as non-notable, or at least a SERIOUS review for NPOV. Thoughts? --Gnhn 17:52, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

If you don't think it looks qualified to have its own article, go ahead and send it to Afd. (It's definitely a vanity article but I found a few Google hits for it or else I would have sent it there myself. I did change its publishing company article to a redirect since having an article for that seemed like overkill). As long as it does have its own article, it's clearly associated with Albany and so it belongs in this article. I.e., if it's in WP, then it's worthy of a mention here. —Wknight94 (talk) 18:04, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
I decided to edit the Valley Voice page to get closer to NPOV, and to see if anyone can come up with a valid explanation for notability at this point.--Gnhn 16:27, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
No one came up with anything that would lend notability to Valley Voice in the past two weeks, so I sent to AfD this morning. --Gnhn 14:21, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Neighborhoods

I haven't been able to find much information on Albany's neighborhoods online. I'd really love to see some kind of resource for this. The best stuff I've found so far is the Albany Neighborhood Revitalization Plan (http://www.albanyny.org/business/econdev/revitalize.asp), but you've got to piece it all together, and it only focuses on 5 or so neighborhoods. Others are mentioned in the PDF files, though. --Youngtwig 17:18, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Performing and Fine Arts/Reorganization

I took a stab at redoing the culture section to include stuff that was really Albany specific, not just that we had tattoo parlors and piercing shops (which every city of this size has). I also dropped the Truman Capote quote, since it also isn't Albany specific. I'd like to see this section expanded further if folks are so inclined. I did some reorganizing to cluster like subcategories together, hopefully so it makes a little more sense when you're trying to find something.--Gnhn 19:40, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image/Text Formatting Glitch?

After I moved the big list of Mayors to its own page, I am now seeing bleedover of the images over text, and also that the "edit" buttons for the first few categories and subcategories are getting pushed down into the article by the image files. I've tried to play with some fixes but my coding skills here aren't all that great and I don't want to mess something up . . . if someone better knows how to get the image files distinct from the text/edit bars, help would be much appreciated in getting the page looking right again!!--Gnhn 12:13, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I've seen that several times and I think it's a Wikipedia bug. Currently, I'm not seeing that since I must be running at a different resolution but it does happen at various times. If someone knows of a mistake on an editor's part that causes that, I'd like to know as well. —Wknight94 (talk) 13:31, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I think I figured out the problem; moved some images around to ensure they weren't breaking over edit boxes.--Gnhn 12:30, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, moving them around sometimes helps - but I think it still depends on what screen resolution people are using. I haven't figured out what the pattern is but I'm guessing they're aware of the problem. —Wknight94 (talk) 12:53, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Syracuse DAB

Editors of Albany, New York: I thought that you would be interested in looking at the talk:Syracuse page. Currently, a group is attempting to remove the disambiguation page located there in favor of the article for Syracuse, Italy. Seeing as this change might have precedence affecting other upstate New York articles, I hoped that you would be interested in chiming in. Thanks for your interest one way or the other.

[edit] Arbitron ratings

I removed the Arbitron ratings from the main page for a variety of reasons:

  • Their presence on the main Albany, New York page is very clunky and out of place. I could make a case for having them on the Media in Albany, New York page though.
  • The official Arbitron name for the Albany market is Albany-Schenectady-Troy-Saratoga and much of what goes on in the ratings doesn't reflect the tastes of Albany proper. Anyone who has spent considerable time in Albany proper (or lived out of town and heard the Andrew Wilkow take on the city) knows that there is no way that WGNA-FM is #1 in the city limits.
  • It could be slighty risky to put rankings in an article given the veritable witchunts Arbitron's legal department has gone on in the past given threatening letters to certain message boards (but not others) that even posted rankings. I should mention that I am against such practices (given it falls into the area of potential fair use violations on their end) and left a position for one of said boards for that among other reasons.

Besides, other cities don't have their Top 10 stations posted on their city pages. Why should Albany be so different, especially with the demographic differences between city and suburbs? Scrabbleship 11:42, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with your edit 100%. That had been bugging me too, and as it got more and more out of date, it looked worse and worse on the main page.--Gnhn 13:57, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the Arbitron name for the Albany market is Albany-Schenectady-Troy, not Albany-Schenectady-Troy-Saratoga. --Kuroki Mio 2006 12:14, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Note on image deletion

Unfortunately, it appears that we have had many of our images deletion due to two reasons, the first being that many people have forgotten to properly cite their images and apply the correct licensees. The second is the fact that we have some people here at Wikipedia who go out of there way to make life difficult and have become the self-nominated imaged police. Since their actions have had a significant affect on this article, we need to be extra cautious to make sure that we follow proper guidelines. However, if you see images missing, please do a Google search or check answers.com, download them, and restore them, as they are most likely legal but improperly cited.

[edit] Pronunciation

I am wondering how the name of Albany is actually pronounced by natives of our capital city. I am from Orange County, NY and have alway pronounced it "aul-buhnee" with the "al" sounding like the word all. but whenever I travel out of state people pronouce it "al-bahnee" with the "al" sounding like the name Alan. So I'd like to know which is correct. Thanks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Strideranne (talk • contribs) .

The way you're saying it is correct. —Wknight94 (talk) 17:42, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
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