User talk:Stilltim

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[edit] Welcome

Hello Stilltim, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and vote pages using three tildes, like this: ~~~. Four tildes (~~~~) produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! Tobycat 17:21, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Philip Phillips

Great question. I wondered the same thing when I started editing. There are two special notices on that article:

  1. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality.
  2. This article needs to be wikified.

Before explaining how to remove them, let me explain how they are added. If an article looks like a valid topic but the writing is in rather poor shape (or in the wrong tone), the "cleanup" notice is posted. To make that notice appear, people place the following text, including the curly brackets, at the top of the page in the edit window: {{cleanup}}

It is a similar deal when the article needs formatting (section breaks, proper format for the introductory sentence, links, etc.). Making those style changes is called "wikifying" a page. To put a notice requesting that a page get wikified editors put the following text at the top of the edit box: {{wikify}}

Note that you can have as many notices as you want at the top of an article so you may see multiple tags.

Now, how to remove them is pretty easy...just remove the {{cleanup}} or {{wikify}} tag from the top of the article while in edit mode and save the page.

These are all types of templates, by the way, which are pretty cool tools. There's more info on the commonly used templates at Wp:templates. Thanks for asking. Have fun!

[edit] Delware governor project

Wow! I'm flattered that you should ask for my advice. Welcome to (editing) Wikipedia! I hope your project goes perfectly; judging from your contributions, you've already made huge progress. There's no full template for governor articles, but here are a few tips for the intro, which is somewhat standardized:

Start with the full name in bold. Try to get middle names if known. Don't include "Governor" or any other title at the beginning. Immediately following the full name, out in the date of birth and death in parentheses, separated by an ndash. After that, state their nationality, profession, and state. Soon afterwards mention the political party, and after this a brief summary of the person's career. Be sure to make the words flow, and not to use either the pronouns or the name too much.

Try looking at John Holmes (U.S. politician), Albion K. Parris, and John Chandler. And for research, I recommend the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress [1] (public-domain, searchable) and the Political Graveyard [2] (gigantic, searchable, and extremely comprehensive).

Good luck! If you have any other questions or concerns, don't hesitate to contact me. I hope you'll have a long and enjoyable time here. Warmest regards --Neutralitytalk 06:20, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome

Hi Stilltim - it's always good to see another First-Stater here. Just wanted to say hello. If you have any questions, drop me a message on my talk page →Raul654 01:52, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Governors & other politicians

Welcome to Wikipedia. Always good to see people who want to help.

If you want a basic set of categories for politicians, you'll find that there are a lot of them to use.

When writing an article for a politician, read their history. If they were a physician, search for a category on medicine (a good place to start would be to go to the Medicine article on Wikipedia, and to search in the category for a "people" subcategory, such as Category:Physicians). Politicians are also frequently ex-military, so Category:U.S. Army soldiers or Category:U.S. Navy sailors, for example, are very often used by me.

There are also a bunch of categories that most politicians fit into; in the case of Delaware people, they would probably fit into Category:U.S. Senators from Delaware or Category:U.S. Representatives from Delaware (the latter will be created soon by me). Also, Category:Governors of Delaware.

In terms of a standard format for articles, be sure to include the succession boxes, birth/death categories, stubs if necessary (Template:US-politician-stub), and a picture if possible.

Also, I noticed that in Elbert N. Carvel, the article had two spaces in between paragraphs, which isn't necessary. Only one space is necessary. Also, the succession box goes at the very bottom of the page (just above the categories).

If you want a template to wrap around a picture of a politician in a longer article, try Template:Infobox Politician that I created. See Phillips Goldsborough for an example of how to use the template.

Enjoy your time here and keep up the good work. Feel free to put any questions or comments on my talk page. --tomf688<TALK> 18:45, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

You seem to be using the categories correctly. There is no "standard" to category naming, but when placing categories in articles, it is not necessary to place both Category:Governors of Delaware and Category:Delaware politicians into the article. This is because the governors category is a subcategory of the politicians category. Category:People from Delaware is different than Delaware politicians, since someone can be from Delaware but isn't necessarily a Delaware politician, and vice versa.
As for single spacing and putting succession boxes at the bottom, that is the unwritten standard on Wikipedia (you will find that on just about every article, the succession box goes at the bottom and paragraphs are single-spaced). --tomf688<TALK> 19:25, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Chicken?

So what's the deal with the blue hen graphic? I gather it's something to do with Delaware, but I can't find an actual explanation, and without any explanation it's a little weird to see it on all these pages. /blahedo (t) 09:50, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

That's right, it's a well-known state symbol for Delaware- in Delaware, but perhaps not so well-known outside. I'm trying to make these articles look a little more appealing, hence the graphics, but now recognize the need for some explanation. I'll work on it, just don't want to disrupt the focus on the subject of the article...somewhere I saw how to get a description when moving the cursor over top, that may be the answer once I figure out how to do it. Thanks for the heads up.

stilltim 12:27, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Pennsylvania

Nice work on the switch over to the new version, you beat me to it, and nice work on the addational information that you have contributed to Delaware, it's about thime the first state got some respect. As for the template i am cool with everything but that yellow color, i think i you might have caught it off the flag or something, it's just thats it's a bit bright, i ave been looking into some other types to tone it down, any thoughts? --Boothy443 | comhrá 03:58, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Yeah i was thinking of going in the buff or old gold direction, the results were ehhhh, iffy to say the least. I was also considering a blue, but it would have to be lite as not to mask the links. In the end it might have to be warshed out in the end. --Boothy443 | comhrá 03:15, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
oh thats nice, i didnt come acorss that color, yeah i think thats a winner. --Boothy443 | comhrá 03:26, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Delegation

I like some of what you've done to the Delaware delegation article, but the senate table seems very crowded. Do we really need the president there? --Golbez 16:43, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm putting the President there because the terms seem kind of lost in time without some sort of more familiar reference point. It's intended to help the reader understand where these folks fit in relative to the larger world. I thought about adding major events as well, but agree that would jam it up a bit too much. It's an experiment.

stilltim 16:56, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

An experiment.. okay. Let's see how it works compared to the other articles; I have a few footnote styles I need to experiment on as well. Personally, though, I think it crowds it too much and is pretty much irrelevant information (For example, most of the individual articles won't say what president they served under). --Golbez 17:22, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Interesting elaboration on Comegys, though personally that may be too much (or too specific) information. Is who was the head of the Catholic Church or France relevant, but not, say, who was head of Mexico or Canada? We have "world leaders of this year" articles.

I made many state delegation articles based on what info I had at the time; I got through most of the simple ones, like Delaware. I stopped until I could get a better reference work; obviously, it's been a long while. I still plan to, of course. I kind of like the idea of mentioning the senate terms separately, but it still clutters up the table, with way too many years. Makes it a little difficult to read. I have an idea to try on that, though.

And yes, these are specifically the DELEGATIONS. An alphabetical list of all the senators/reps would go separately, possibly as a category.

As for the colors, I'm unsure. Perhaps we need to check for a specific wiki convention on Rep/Dem party colors. :) The problem with making them brighter is they tend to make the text harder to read, especially colored wikilinks; I much prefer a "washed out" look. These are only supposed to be subtle indicators, not glaring signals.

You seem concerned that our goals don't mix; based on what I've said, do you still feel that? I say this because I'm still not entirely sure what you mean. You want to turn the delegations page into a timeline, I would say no, it should specifically be about the delegations, not a general timeline of Delaware federal political history. Have I misinterpreted you? And thanks for the response. PS - I did make most of the articles, but my original inspiration was the North Carolina page, if you want to see how this started. --Golbez 19:14, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that was my idea exactly - have thin, shaded textless boxes alongside the years, alternating grey and white for each senate term. I can try it later. As for an example of what I was speaking of, see List of state leaders in 1990 and List of religious leaders in 1990.
Yes, Wiki is very fun when it's new. Then you get old and bitter like me. ;) Just kidding. Working on those tables was great fun, and I look forward to being able to work on them again and fleshing them out. But sometimes it's hard seeing someone work on your baby, but I have to learn to let go - or at least offer constructive criticism. :) --Golbez 19:48, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Name disambiguation

Re: links on Deleware delegation. I named one of the articles after the one that already existed (even if it is very bad). The Wiki norm seems to be Name (occupation). I felt as you when I first started, see William Bradford for one such effort that I got away with. I also found that every time I used dates I got into discussions with people wanting to correct me, so I gave up and now I go along.

Re: what to use as (occupation). I feel worst chioce is (politician), although (American politician) is still worse. I've used state a number of times, especiaaly when there are multiples with a name (e.g governors). A fairly extensive check can be made using eith political graveyard or the growing nndb. I guess we keep trying... Thanks for the comment,,, Lou I 17:59, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Image Tagging Image:TCDuPont.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:TCDuPont.jpg. I notice the image page currently doesn't specify who created the image, so the copyright status is therefore unclear. If you have not created the image yourself then you need to argue that we have the right to use the image on Wikipedia (see copyright tagging below). If you have not created the image yourself then you should also specify where you found it, ie in most cases link to the website where you got it, and the terms of use for content from that page.

If the image also doesn't have a copyright tag then you must also add one. If you created/took the picture then you can use {{gfdl}} to release it under the GFDL. If you can claim fair use use {{fairuse}}.) See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other images, please check that you have specified their source and copyright tagged them, too. Note that any unsourced and untagged images will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thanks so much. --Michael 11:18, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Category note

Just a brief note to explain: I removed your category from Van Dyke since it is circular. Governor of Delaware category has as a parent the category 'Delaware Politicians' which has as a parent 'People from Delaware'. In general, if we point to a more specific category, then we don't need a pointer to the more general category. Thanks, 09:40, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Delaware Images / Template

No problem, man. I think your are great for contributing, and none of us, least of all me, are perfect. --Mm35173 14:47, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Image permission

I see that you have uploaded a number of images with the description:

"Per Jeff Hague, Registrar of Regulations, Legislative Council, State of Delaware, image is not copyright and is used with permission."

What exactly does this permission entail? Evil Monkey∴Hello 01:35, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Blue-crab-5in.jpg has been listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded, Image:Blue-crab-5in.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please look there to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you.

[edit] Image:BLUE CRAB.jpg has been listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded, Image:BLUE CRAB.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please look there to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you.

[edit] Dates as Dab'g qualifiers in titles

_ _ I noticed your edit abt 2 days ago on List of people by name: prefixed Van, where you used a date range to disambiguate article titles, and perhaps the other similar ones i saw were among the places where i've noticed your name.
_ _ I think your thoroughness in bypassing even single rdr's that result is admirable, and it's good to see editors attending to missing bios. But i am surprised at your choice of vital stats to distingush people. Sometimes its longer and sometimes shorter than a word or two, but IMO even a four-digit number involves more effort to read and compare than even two or three words that have a natural relationship. Are you choosing that approach based on some recommendation, or is it you own idea? If no one recommended it, what is your reason for using it? Thanks,
--Jerzy•t 05:27, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

At my talk, you answered (reformated by J, as with my own, above):
  • I've given this a good deal of thought and realize that everything else being equal, ultimately what is needed in the name field is for it to be unique. For people, as the inventory gets larger, location or occupation will eventually be the same, especially for common names. I am even running into it my small efforts, see Nicholas Van Dyke, father and son. B/D date will almost never be. This is really a database management issue, not a lookup convenience or data entry issue, although it may not be readily apparent as such to to an individual writer working on just a few people. This approach is not original to me, but was suggested by another writer who acknowledged it was not the Wikipedia norm and had given up trying to explain, see William Bradford. Not surprisingly he is an IT professional as well, used to working with large databases. I hope this helps explain. I have put some other nutty ideas I have about bios on my talk page. I love writing these articles and am learning things everyday. All of my ideas can be exchanged for your better ones, so your comments are appreciated.
    stilltim 02:44, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

_ _ Thanks for this very clear response; yes, the Van Dykes are the ones i referred to; it doesn't look like Bradford was another of yours that i noted, since that's not yet within the LoPbN BRs that i'm watching closely. I'll certainly make a point to look soon at your detailed arguements there. (I gather you mean at Talk:William Bradford.)
_ _ (BTW, i dunno which of us edits more bios, but i'd be willing to bet i'm in the top 0.1% of editors by amount of attention paid to bio titles. FWIW [grin].)
_ _ It certainly is a DBM issue. But (based perhaps only on ignorance of what you've already said beyond the above) i'm inclined to argue that it is wasted energy trying to outthink all the cases in advance: titles are easy to change; due to our redirects, references don't need to be changed (desirable as that is) until they become part of a dbl rdr; and in any case What links here make them easy to trace and to automate the "repair".
_ _ Further, IMO it's not just a DBM issue, nor therefore is uniqueness in the name field all that is needed. My impression is that most users, after clicking a lk, next turn their attention to the biggest text at the top of the next page, viz., the title. When following a piped lk, that is arguably wasted effort, but with piped lks (which these will always be, except when followed from MoS-compliant Dab pages) there is a human-factors issue: the Principle of least astonishment.

[ARRGH! How sweetly bizarre! I just thot i put "Principle of minimum surprise" in the search box, and to watch my reaction, you'd have thot i'd been slapped unexpectedly: the page delivered was Acrophobia (and i'm not going to bother figuring out why). Please take that image as a timely natural metaphor.]

This and some of these are WP-namespace examples of it, but the one i was looking for is Wikipedia:Redirect#What needs to be done on pages that are targets of redirects?, which discusses a close analog of pipe-lk'd titles. When the title is not the same as what the user clicked on, IMO it should reassure them as much as possible that it isn't an unchecked lk to something that no one has yet dab'd, and that reassurance should be realizable with as little user thot as possible. (Here's a negative example of the principle: within the last couple weeks, i was suspicious to see only one blue lk among an author's many rd-lks to his works, so i clicked on the lk for his novel, which read Zack at that time; it was the title of a rdr to Zack (Final Fantasy VII)! -- a video game fictional character, not a book.
_ _ To come back to specifics, a date range amounts to encoded information that is meaningless until decoded, and may not even be helpful when you've converted

(1787-1859)

into, say,

between the Constitution and secession

(Especially not, if the reader and the subject of the bio are from different countries.) If time periods really are the best choice, a case like my Davey Moore (1960s) and Davey Moore (1980s) (but note that those titles were temporary expedients and deserve reconsideration by someone who knows more about boxing than is contained in "Who Killed Davey Moore?") uses the reader's attention much more efficiently than any pair of four digit numbers can. Or to return to the Van Dyke example we've both mentioned, IIRC "(son)" and "(father)" would probably be more useful (and certainly less demanding), and if and when they are not sufficiently detailed, there's nothing wrong with either "New Hampshire; son", etc., or "politician; son", etc. -- or with "New Hampshire politician; son", etc. when that much distinction becomes necessary.
_ _ Finally (for the moment!), as a DBM issue, it is also a human factors issue: picture a user who wants to come back to the same page, from memory, by the shortest feasible path, i.e., without sorting thru the entries on a Dab page again. They may well succeed in remembering whether it said "... New Hampshire; son" or "... politician; son" at the top of the page, but they don't have any chance of remembering the 8-digits-and-hyphen version. And if they come up with the wrong one of those two non-numeric ones, they may well immediately try the other; whether they succeed on the second try, or give up and go thru a Dab page, they may create a redir from the non-existent one to the article one (as i just did from Principle of minimum surprise and from Principle of minimum astonishment, even before it occurred to me that mentioning them would offer a case in point for this discussion.) And BTW, note that even if "politician; son" becomes ambiguous, it will remain useful to those who have remembered it, by automatically turning into a rdr to the old one, when the article is renamed (or maybe into a very-special purpose Dab -- most likely if people misremember the former title of the other bio that is eligible for that title).
_ _ Now, i'd be rude to expect you to reply before i've read & responded to the talk you referenced, so i'm not soliciting your reply to this, by writing it before doing my homework. But my getting some response to you written down might be immediately useful to you, and it will actually increase the likely speed of my better informed and probably more complete reply.
_ _ (I should remember to keep an eye on yr talk page, if you like continuing to consolidate our discussion in one place here.)
--Jerzy•t 05:37, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Redundant categories

My thinking regarding categories is that they are not strictly hierarchical (sp?). But if they were for bios there would at least need to be ones reflecting 1) when they lived, 2) where they lived, and 3) what they did. The last category gets so big it gets qualified by all sorts of things, often location. Such a qualification of the "what" should not require the deletion of the "where," because the articles in the "where" category will be incomplete as a result. While I admit there is some redundancy, with "People of Pennsylvania" when they are also "Pennsylvania politicians" that redundacy is OK because it prevents a serious omission. I believe this follows Wikipedia standards. I would like to restore a couple you have removed.

stilltim 03:04, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Where people are from is important to who they are, and is important for categorization. I like strictly hierarchical categorization, but I realize that you and others on Wikipedia don't. Someone who is a Senator is clearly a politician. Furthermore, anyone who has read the U.S. Constitution or studied it in school at any level knows that a U.S. Senator from Delaware must, by law, reside in Delaware, and therefore be a person from Delaware. I realize, though, that not everyone who reads the Wikipedia article about a U.S. Senator from Delaware has ever read or studied the U.S. Constitution. I think that having the same person in the "People from x", "Politicians from x", and "U.S. Senators from x" categories is just too many, but I'm not sure which of the first two to give up.
Also, it had been (and still is) my intent to go through the rest of the Senate cleaning up categories. Could you tell me what sorts of things you plan to restore, to save both of us extra work?

NatusRoma 03:15, 14 October 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Great work on Delaware

...related topics. Keep up the good work.

Image:WMBarnstar.png

Take care, Molotov (talk) 21:25, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Your important queries

You wrote:

1. Do you have an automated tool that gives you the ability to add or delete things from many articles at the same time? If so, would you be interested in sharing it?

I use the Firefox browser from Mozilla. It's open-source and copyleft, completely free, and the best browser in existance. More to the point, it has a feature called tabbed browsing, allowing a user to have many different pages open in a single window. I use that function alot, especially on Recent Changes and New Pages patrol.

2. What information do I need to supply you with to make you comfortable with the content of the articles I write, so that I may avoid future instances of your deleting significant portions of my work? Please see articles on the Governors of Delaware.

You belittle your own truly amazing work here by saying a single image constitutes a "significant portion." I wish I had the knowledge and writing ability for my home state that you possess in reference to your home state and those who have guided its development.

The chicken.
Enlarge
The chicken.
3. I would be grateful if you could take the time to read my user page, as I have yours, to try and understand my intentions. As I state on it, feedback is appreciated. I recognize my work is not perfect, and am simply experimenting to find ways to produce a better product.

And please continue to expirement, by all means.

But now, the reasoning behind my edits. First, to clarify things for anyone else wondering, I removed the image at left from thirty-five (35) pages mainly dealing with notable Delaware politicians and statesman. In each of those pages, the image at left was located at the beginning of the main section after the table of contents, without fail.

When I first saw this image on one of the pages, I was entirely perplexed by its presence. Initially, I assumed it was a vandal trying to make some sort of statement or to just plain vandalize the page. Digging into the history, however, I saw that the page had not been vandalized, and in fact had largely been written by two individuals, yourself and one other editor. Clicking on the image revealed that it was the state bird of Delaware, and that it was on many similar pages. I immidiately understood that someone was trying to bring all Delaware articles together by introducing the theme of the state bird. However, there are specific and significant problems with including it on the pages:

  • As is (just the bird), to the uninitiated (or in other words, most of the readers of the page) it is frankly confusing. One shouldn't have to click on multiple things to gather the significance of an edit.
  • So lets say you thumbnail the image and explain what it is. Even then, it is still confusing. One would be wondering, for instance, why the state bird is on Joe Biden's page: did he choose it? Did he cast a pivotol vote in its selection? etc. The answer is, naturally, no, so to rectify the situation you'd need to explain even further: "This is the state bird of Delaware and it's on Delaware related pages." Then it just gets in the way and distracts from the article.
  • Including an image on any article that does not somehow have something directly to do with the image is not encyclopedic in the traditional or wiki sense. Indeed, your strategic inclusion of the flag, seal, shield etc. of Delaware (and occasionally other states) through all of your Delaware bios are also thoroughly confusing - what purpose do they serve?

I understand what you are trying to do, and it is logical for a website, but not an encyclopedia. What you can do is create a Wikiproject with Delaware as the focus, and use the bird as the symbol. Then the bird will be on all project related talk pages, which is perfectly acceptable.

However, upon further inspection of the issue as I was removing the images, I noticed that the copyright info wasn't in line with what is acceptable for Wikipedia. The image page specifically states the website from which the image came - this is good. The problem is, the image is copyrighted to somebody - if its not the webpage's owner, than to whomever took the picture, and inclusion of the whole image does not constitute fair use under any circumstances. As a result, it is not allowed on wikipedia at all (until such time that the original owner releases it to the public domain/the GDFL/Creative Commons, or current copyleft status can be definitively confirmed). And even then, it would only be appropriate on articles about the animal, the state, and state birds in general.

I hope you see what I was trying to do here, both in terms of cutting down on potential confusion, staying in line with encyclopedic standards, and following the new stricter rules of image use laid down by Jimbo, and by no means did I intend harm to "your work" (though you should already know by now that the nature of the Project means that someone, somewhere, will eventually edit the pages you have created).

A suggestion I have for you that will greatly improve your articles is removing all those little, unexplained images (the flags and shields and seals) - they will make your articles easier to read, and bring them in line with the rest of Wikipedia.

I cannot stress enough the importance of your presence on the Project, and I hope this does not discourage you in any way. I hope you have a good night, --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 23:15, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Succession box use

I'd like to make a comment about your use of the succession box template on the Caesar Rodney article for his service in the Continental Congress. I considered and discarded the idea of doing this when the boxes first began to appear. My reasoning was: Delegates were generally appointed by a resolution in the state assembly, with a single resolution naming a slate of delegates. There usually isn't a tracable "A replaced B" kind of logic to it. We do have boxes for the presiding officers that I can live with, but I'd ilke to discourage them for delegates. What do you think? Reply here or my talk page, thanks,, Lou I 16:35, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. You can answer here since I've added your talk page to my watch list. Most of the times I've done this with a user's page, I drop it when any discussion goes quiet for two or three weeks. You just click the 'watch' tab when viewibng a talk page. LouI
Re. Personality descriptions: I agree that we'd be better if we had these, but I've had some trouble with these, and even physical descripions. There is a tendency for some editors to disagree with anything you might say. We are woefully missing almost any humanizng material in biographies. In fourteeen screens worth of Thomas Jefferson article we never mention that he was moderately taall, thui, or red-haired. The only way I've found that stands up to objections is to look for a quote thst contains a description. Adams diaries, Jefferson, Jay, and Adams letters are a good source for these. <personal rant> I can't see that it is better the report that 'John Adams, in a letter to his wife, described Jefferson as a man of "impressive height and bearing with bright red hair".' I can just write that he had red hair. But someone will strike it as an opinion.</personal rant> LouI
I have no good way to keep Succession boxes from wrapping. I have a bad (brute force) way, simplty code the underlying html table directly and you can set width yourself. I've only used it on a bx that seriouly annoyed me. Good luck, and if you find a better method, let me know. Thanks... Lou I 16:25, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Committee of 100 (Delaware)

Thought you might be interested in contributing to this new article. --Briangotts | (Talk) 16:27, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Delaware image category

Hi. Just curious if you had plans for the Category:Delaware Government images category you created? If not, I'll probably list for deletion since it's empty. wknight94 19:17, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The Movement

What does this one think of the movement? --Kin Khan 02:04, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Anglican userbox

Hi, it may interest you to know there is now an Anglican userbox. It's {{user religion|anglican}}. --Angr (t·c) 09:50, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

The userboxes are mostly for fun. Sort of like bumper stickers for your user page. You're certainly under no obligation to use them, but some people like them. Of course Episcopalians are Anglicans, and certainly feel it's redundant to have both Category:Anglican Wikipedians and Category:Anglican and Episcopalian Wikipedians. I created A&E WPians in September, and User:Celestianpower created Anglican WPians in October, presumably without being aware the A&E WPians already existed. I guess I used the more inclusive name not because Episcopalians aren't Anglicans, but because many aren't aware that they are (thanks to U.S. parochialism). There are a lot of teenagers on Wikipedia, and I think a lot of teenaged Episcopalians in the U.S. don't realize their church is part of something bigger that uses the name "Anglican". I certainly didn't when I was a teenager. If we do ultimately have just one Anglican Wikipedian category, I don't think it's necessary to subcategorize it further. There aren't that many Anglican Wikipedians in the first place, and even Category:Baptist Wikipedians and Category:Wikipedians in the Baptist church (another redundancy that ought to be resolved) isn't divided up into Southern Baptists, American Baptists, National Baptists, etc., etc. --Angr (t·c) 13:04, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Delaware Userbox

  • It's not a problem that you changed the userbox. I was actually waiting to see how long it could be up like that before someone decided to standardize it with the other State userboxes. I think you are looking for something like this.
This user lives in Delaware.
Try messing around with the parameters to change the colors, font, etc as needed. I'm going to change the Delaware flag so that it takes up less width. After I make that change, you may need to change the 80px to something like 60px. Enjoy! --R6MaY89 20:03, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
This user lives in Delaware.
I saw that you implemented the code on Template:User_Delaware so I changed it there to make the flag less fat. I moved my version to Template:User_Delaware2 so that I could still use it. --R6MaY89 01:10, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Web-screenshot tag

Thank you for contributing to Wikipedia. I've noticed you've uploaded some images tagged with {{web-screenshot}}. This tag is not meant to be used for images that came from Web pages; it's meant to be used for images of Web pages (such as Image:Google screenshot.png, for example). I've retagged the images below as having no license information. Please make sure that Wikipedia has permission to use these images. Then edit the image description pages to include information about the licenses these images are under. You may find an appropriate tag at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags or Wikipedia:Template messages, or if none of these fit you may write a description of the license yourself. You may want to refer to the image use policy. If the use of this image on Wikipedia is a copyright violation, please follow the steps at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion to nominate this image to be deleted. If you have any questions, please feel free to post a message on my talk page. —Bkell 20:00, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Image:Mattdenn.jpg – There's a good chance this is provided under some free license, if it was created by the State of Delaware.

[edit] Willard Saulsbury, Jr.

Why did you revert my edit to sort this stub into a more specific stub category? FYI, it is the policy of WP:WSS to sort stubs into the most specific stub category possible and Category:Delaware politician stubs is a daughter cat of Category:Delaware stubs.--Carabinieri 23:01, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] {{Questions-DE}}

Hi Stilltim, just a question. I saw this tag on the new article John Hunn (1818–1894). I've never seen it before and was wondering if it is part of a project? My first thought is that it belongs on the talk page, not in the article, but I was just wondering. Cheers.--Bookandcoffee 21:50, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah I think you're right about the potential of this place, but I know there's been quite a bit of talk about Wikipedia self-reference. Wikipedia:Avoid self-references and Wikipedia talk:Template messages#Moving templates to talk pages, so I think you might find some resistance to the idea. That said, it's worth exploring ways to engage people, and I like the thought about advising vandals. (BTW, I stole the "leave mssg." idea from someone else, but now I can't even remember who! It's handy, and it keeps newbies from leaving messages on my user page. :) --Bookandcoffee 22:28, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ruth

Referencing you recent edits.

  • I reverted your change to the infobox. It seems to me the generic politician infobox is to be prefered to one that is organized around one particular office. Most politicians, including Minner, have served in several offices, and I think their infobox should reflect that. Furthermore, I think the infoboxes ought to be consistent for all politicians. The Governor box or the Senator box just doesn't do justice to such office holders if they have done something else- and most have. Additionally, I do not think it very useful to repeat information that is very clearly stated in the succession box nearby, nor is it sometimes possible to reliably state that a person is the "25th Governor." At least in Delaware there are several equally legitimate ways to count. The one thing I don't like about the infobox I use is the size of the picture. Not being a programmer, I do not know how to make the picture bigger, and would like to. Your assistance in that way would be much appreciated. I hope you don't mind my doing this, but I have given this infobox matter a great deal of thought before reaching these conclusions.
  • I have left the needs attention notice in place because I would appreciate more specific information. It seems to me that what is lacking in this article is considerably more detail about her positions. Frankly I had hoped that people with more knowledge of them than I would flesh that out, at least until I found a reliable source to do it myself. Eventually I will add it. But that sort of information would be in the top 1/3 of the article. In the bottom 2/3 I have added all kinds of things I don't see anywhere else. Is that what you think needs attention? Do you believe that information should not be included, needs to be expanded in some way, or just needs to be presented in another way? I acknowledge I have done some things no one else is doing, but think I am being consistent with Wiki policy while exercising some "boldness" that might result in a general improvement of all articles.
Your thoughts and opinions on these things are of great interest to me, as I am truly seeking to produce the best article possible. In fact, this article is getting lots of attention from me and if you have some ideas we can agree on, I will make the changes. stilltim 12:07, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
  1. The ordinal number was a human error. I believe it should have read 72nd.
  2. Some of your comments suggest a disregard for the policy against Wikipedia:Ownership of articles.
  3. The lower part of the article appears rather disorderly and could use a some work, which wasn't what I came to do.
  4. I don't think the information is bad, but yes, it would benefit from a cleaner, more uniform presentation.
  5. Although I'm sure you mean well, the "Add your organization if you have information on this subject available to the public" message, at best, is unencyclopedic, and at worst is an invitation for link-spammers.
  6. The template you reverted to unnecessarily contains other nested templates. Please read Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates.
  7. When Ms. Minner leaves office, changing to a generic Template:Infobox Politician might be appropriate.
  8. Spouse (as used in the other 30+ articles I've added this template to thusfar) is understood to mean "current spouse" as it replaces the "first lady/gentleman" parameter used previously.
  9. Naming two spouses, then, implies that she's a bigamist, when she's actually a double widow.
  10. Most current governors of U.S. states have, in fact, held other offices previously. This template is intended for active governors. See the pre-emptive text for Jon Corzine, who will become New Jersey Governor in four days.

— FREAK OF NURxTURE (TALK) 12:50, Jan. 14, 2006

[edit] templates

Do not create template forks. If you have a concern or a function you'd like to see, discuss it on the talk page of the template in question. Do not go on your own and create a too-specific template. This leads to drift over time. For example, there are no less than 42 templates for universities, which can and should be able to fit into one common template. Going back and cleaning up this is rarely the job of the creator of those extra templates, so you just make more work for other people. -- Netoholic @ 06:39, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I do have a concern with the office-specific Governor and Senator templates. At last check they did not adequately handle the problem of persons holding multiple offices, particularly historical figures such as Thomas McKean. You are obviously aware that I have slightly modified the Governor infobox and made it generic and somewhat flexible. It is intended to be a demonstration that the presentation you seek in the G/S templates is possible in a template equally useful for historical people. Nothing would please me more than to join the community in developing and adopting such a template, and I have so stated.
Because I much prefer to concentrate my limited free time on research and building content, it seems I have not learned all the proper ways to illustrate and advocate improvements. Your friendly assistance and guidance would be much appreciated. I will try and find the proper places to note these points. stilltim 11:21, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
And, as I said, if you think a template does not meet your needs, post on the talk page of the template that you are thinking about forking. Infoboxs, to a large extent, are not meant to be flexible. The templates are designed and intended to prominently display the person's highest level of office. The infobox is not a replacement for information that should appear elsewhere in the article. It is a summary. Pretend it isn't even there when writing the article, then you or someone else can take the relevant information and summarize it into an infobox. To document all of their offices, use separate section at the end of the article, where you can devote a full, appropriate amount of space it. Use succession boxes. -- Netoholic @ 12:09, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the response. Please see the Template talk:Infobox_Governor for my early morning thinking. I appreciate your serious consideration of my points. stilltim 12:23, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Delaware House template

Tim, (FYI) I am deleting the template DelawareUSHouse. All the articles use Template:DelawareUSH. Since no other state (perhaps Vermont or RI? )is likely to use a house member template, I dont forsee any general objections to the USH template name. If you have a concern, let me know on my talk page or e-mail. Thanks for your good work, Lou I 18:11, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Biography stuff

To be honest, I had forgotten about our previous conversation about the succession boxes and assumed they were simply placed up where they were accidentally, thus I moved them down by reflex. I also like how the generic politician infobox has evolved, although I don't like that changes were made to the template and then not implemented in articles that already contained the template by the person who changed the template. --tomf688{talk} 23:20, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Du Pont family

Hi Stilltim,

My concern about the genealogical information was that it contained many people who were not notable. I don't think simply being a member of the DuPont family is notable in itself. My view was that it was an indiscriminate collection of information. But, I could be wrong. We can discuss it on the talk page, and you could put in a RfC to get other user's opinions. --JW1805 (Talk) 00:22, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikimeetup Delaware

I've "officially" announced the meetup, as we had discussed. See Wikipedia:Meetup/Newark Raul654 06:04, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Biden and dealing with bad edits

One way of dealing with persistent vandalism could be semi-protection of Biden article (like George_W._Bush). I still think that enough people have Biden on their watchlist and are able quickly revert vandalism, and it doesn't become such a problem. feydey 13:55, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] succession box at Thomas McKean

I'm not sure why you keep moving the succession box to the middle of the article. Wikipedia convention is to put this at the bottom. --JW1805 (Talk) 01:27, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

  • There needs to be a consistent look to all the articles. Every other article with a secession box has it at the bottom. It doesn't make any sense to put in the middle. --JW1805 (Talk) 03:31, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I've put a post on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) to see if we can get some other comments on where seccession boxes should be. Your comments are welcome there as well. --JW1805 (Talk) 03:59, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deleware templates

We seem to have two Delaware templates Template:DEHistory and Template:Delaware. They are being used inconsistently. The main Delaware template should be the one on the Delaware page, since that is the one that has the division into cities and counties. The History template (which doesn't really have anything to do with history) seems to be showing up on articles about people from Delaware. This really isn't the function of a template like this. If the template doesn't contain a link to the article, in shouldn't be in that article. We shouldn't have every article about an American include the state template of whatever state they were from. It would be better, I think, I merge some of the links into the main Delaware template.--JW1805 (Talk) 03:45, 16 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Meetup reminder

Just a reminder that there will be a meetup in Newark, DE, this saturday at 3:00 PM. (Since people have complained after previous meetups that they had forgotten about it, this message is going to everyone listed on Wikipedia:Meetup/Newark) Raul654 15:37, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Follow-up to the meetup

See Wikipedia:Copyright FAQ (which I wrote). In particular:

Taking a work in the public domain and modifying it in a significant way creates a new copyright on the work. For instance, the Homecoming Saga by Orson Scott Card is a re-telling of the Book of Mormon. Therefore, the books in the Homecoming series can be copyrighted.
However, the new work must be different from the original in order for a new copyright to apply, as the court ruled in Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corporation.
The Bridgeman Art Library had made photographic reproductions of famous works of art from museums around the world (works already in the public domain.) The Corel Corporation used those reproductions for an educational CD-ROM without paying Bridgeman. Bridgeman claimed copyright infringement. The Court ruled that reproductions of images in the public domain are not protected by copyright if the reproductions are slavish or lacking in originality. In their opinion, the Court noted: "There is little doubt that many photographs, probably the overwhelming majority, reflect at least the modest amount of originality required for copyright protection.... But 'slavish copying', although doubtless requiring technical skill and effort, does not qualify." Raul654 10:44, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, I think I had seen this note, but in view of the importance of getting it right wanted to see or hear explicitly that this applied to photographs of 2 dimensional PD pictures included in a recently published work with a recent copyright.
The meetup was a wonderful afternoon for me and I very much appreciate being included. You are to be highly commended for your work and, for what it's worth, I am very impressed with the knowledge and wisdom of all the members of the group. Please call on me if there is anything I can do to assist you...as I will certainly be seeking your advice. (Is this the right way to respond? please confirm.) stilltim 21:50, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Help with templates

I've gotten myself, inadvertantly, into a Revert War with User:Jack Cox over the format of governors' templates. See the histories of, for example, {{MAGovernors}}, {{NYGovernors}}, and {{DEGovernors}}. I believe that font-size 90% is sufficient, but he is adding <small> as well. He reverts me with ALL CAPS in the edit summaries that my way is ugly. I've replied that his way is too small, and inconsistent with other templates, such as {{USPresidents}}, etc. (See, for example, the bottom of article on Franklin Roosevelt. He has modified the templates for the governors of all the states. Can you help me with a message on his talk page? You'll find mine there already (User talk:Jack Cox#Governor Templates). If you disagree with me, of course, please reply here or on my talk page. Thank you. —Markles 19:05, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] John Dickinson (1732–1808)

I noticed this article, and thought that it would be good to move it to John Dickinson (lawyer). Then a look at he history showed that you had moved John Dickinson (lawyer) to John Dickinson (1732-1808). Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Qualifier between brackets or parentheses recommends avoiding numbers in article names for people. Think of an editor adding a link to another article. Would it be easier to type "(lawyer)" or "(1732–1808)" with an endash? I think the second case would be more prone to mistakes. Of course, (delegate) or (governor) might be better than (lawyer), since John is not remembered for his work in the courtroom as much as in Congress. I had planned to rename the other guy to John Dickinson (inventor). Would it make you hopping mad if I renamed (moved) these articles? If not, what qualifier do you think would be best? Chris the speller 16:00, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't be hopping mad, especially since you were kind enough to discuss it first. Using dates as a qualifier is intentional, as I think they are the most specific, least arbitrary, and follow the practice used in most published encycolpedias. They are particularly useful when you get the same name, same profession, same residence, etc.- a frequent occurrence with uncles/nephews/cousins. The larger WP gets the more likely it is that these situations will appear. So in order to be consistent, I have tried to use this approach if there was not some middle name or suffix distinguisher. There is considerable debate in the WP community about this, and there are obviously good points to be made all around, but I think more and more the thinking is moving in the date direction. I think that most people use the copy/paste to create links- rather than typing it out. I also have a concern that if one person creates a John Dickinson (lawyer) article, another may go and create a John Dickinson (delegate) article without knowing they were the same. I have seen several instances of this. The dates are unlikely to be as easily confused. So, I would ask you to leave it, and others you see as is, and recognize the naming convention recommendation reflects the thinking of a much less comprehensive database than exists now.
If you know where the considerable debate is, please point it out (I'll watch this section), and I will get involved in it. For now, I will leave John alone, as you ask. Just don't get angry at the next editor who follows the guideline and leaps before he looks (or asks). The (lawyer)/(delegate) split can be avoided by adding a redirect at (delegate). I could get behind the dates better if there were more than two people, or if they were born and died in different centuries, but until the guidelines change, I don't think disambiguating using the dates should be the first resort. Chris the speller 17:36, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Your concern about my getting angry makes me wonder if I might have a reputation. The courtesy and knowledge shown by your comments are the best antidote to any potential anger- and I thank you for indulging me. The conversation I refer to connects above on this page and there are examples. My intent is to produce a quality product, as I know yours is, and I don't pretend to have any exclusive intelligence on these issues. Like my friend who worked on William Bradford, I am willing to let it go. In any case, I can assure you, I will not be angry. stilltim 19:00, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Nothing about reputation, just recognizing the tendency towards a feeling of ownership that some editors have after they put a lot of work into an article (even though we should not). I often check with major contributors to an article before renaming, for that reason and for the reason that they might have good judgment about what would make a better article name. I have renamed quite a few articles from date qualifiers to professions, and haven't had any fights yet. Jerzy (above) makes some good points against using dates, I think. It would take a consensus (more than you and LouI) to overturn the present guidelines, but your user page is not the best place to build such a consensus, and I am confident that the opposition would be considerable, if not formidable. And this is coming from a DBA, data modeler and database designer. John Dickinson makes a pretty good poster child for the avoidance of numbers, but I am leaving it alone for now as promised, but I still plan to bulldoze others where it seems the editors just wanted a mechanism that allowed them not to think very hard about good article names. All the best, and happy editing! Chris the speller 21:03, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] THANK YOU

I would like to commend you for all of the work that you have done with the Wikipedia articles involving the State of Delaware. I would love to do the same thing with the people of West Virginia, but I don't have the time. Byrdin2006 23:32, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fiftieth United States Congress & Fifty-first United States Congress

I LOVE what you're doing with the 50th and 51st Congresses!—Markles 15:08, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

  • Thanks, It's nice to hear something positive. I thought I had 10 Congresses all ready to go, but the detail at the end is much harder than I thought, particularly meeting some of the particulars of the 109 template- like the seniority/district sort.

Here's some ideas, per 109th Congress standard: —Markles 20:20, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Delegates at large

  • Don't need "A/L" for delegates at-large.
    • I wondered about the A/L note too- and will take it out

[edit] Birth/death dates

  • Avoid the birth-death dates. They're just unnecessary to this article.
    • I like the birth/death dates. There are an awful lot of people here with like names- and that's the best way to quickly tell them apart. The are not in the way, and I believe are very necessary when trying to figure which John Brown might be referenced.
      • I don't think they're necessary unless, perhaps, they're for a redlinked name.—Markles 10:29, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
      • Can we remove the birth-death dates for blue-lined names as they become blue-linked? (Such as 7 of the 12 Reps from Massachusetts in Forty-second United States Congress#House of Representatives) —Markles 22:16, 22 April 2006 (UTC) Well? What do you think? I think the dates are excessive, especially when they're unnecessary. —Markles 21:47, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
        • I respectfully disagree. They are neither excessive nor unnecessary. They are often very useful in making identifications, as discussed above, there is plenty of room, and cosmetically they look fine. The point of an index- which this really is- (or nav box) is to make it easy for the reader to find the subject they are looking for without taking extra steps, like reading three or four articles, or doing another search in a browser (re alpha argument on nav box). Regarding the idea to do it partially, it would be very difficult to delete dates for linked names only and would look strange at that. It's really one way or the other. I've taken them out on some articles, temporarily, to see the result, and frankly saw no improvement. I don't understand your reasoning for making such an issue of this. I am giving you substantive reasons why they should be there, please show me some equally substantive reasons why they should not be there...or let it rest. stilltim 01:01, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] States as section headers

  • States/Territories ought to be section headings
    • I don't mind the States/Territories being section headings, so much as I like the readability of them being indented and in the font they show in as I have them. Is there a way to do this without making the states look just like the chamber? If so, tell me and I'll make it so.
      • They don't look too bad on my OS/browser/skin combination, although they are similar. I think we should keep them as section headers and suggest to some of the wiki programers that they make "==" and "===" section headers look more different. Can you change them back in the 50th Congress? —Markles 15:08, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
        • It's the "====" (four equals) that are not different from the "===" (three equals). The two and three are fine. If you can get whoever to make the four equals do another indent, that would be a perfect solution. I agree the font is not as important, and I'm OK with them being section headers. I think the readability of the article is more important than the TOC, though, because this section of the article is itself really just an index, and most will use it rather than the TOC. But we ought to be able to do both the way we want.
        • I'm sure you understand that I am building all this off-line and just pasting it into the article. Hence when updating anything, I have to repaste everything. So when I find redirects, correct mistakes, or learn more info, the changes go back into my off-line template or database. This updates all the lists automatically. It would never get done otherwise. So, see what you can do with the programming, let me know the result, and I will build it into my off-line template. I haven't learned the nocks and crannies well enough to know how to ask the question.
        • Also, I'm not happy with the way the special date notes look and will be experimenting a bit. Your feedback would be appreciated, plus I really want your specific guideline for what dates or portion should be wikified. Also, do you think there should be fourth list, strictly alpha, regardless of chamber or party. I have thought not, but could build and maintain it or any other combination easily if you or others would like.stilltim 16:59, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lame ducks

  • That whole lame-duck discussion seems excessive as it will be in most other ordinal congress articles. Can we just say "lame duck" but leave it in quotes? Those sessions are widely considered to be lame duck sessions, and they were the impetus behind the Twentieth Amendment.
    • I am familiar with the Twentieth Amendment. The "lame duck" phrase has a negative POV implication that implies a problem to modern ears, but was not so much of an issue in another time. Hence the desire to explain the facts. I agree the explanation is long and would be OK with a simple "lame duck" following rather in the too prominent middle position, like "Second session: December 1, 1890 to March 2, 1891 — a lame duck session."

[edit] Date linking

  • Can you wikilink the dates when individual Reps/Senators left/took office?
    • I can build the links for any dates very easily in my DB, but frankly am thoroughly confused with your criteria for what dates to link and not to link. (ref your changes to the Joe Biden article). I could care less what the answer is, but would like a clear spec that addresses months/days & years.

[edit] TOC vertical space

  • no vertical space before {{TOCright}}
    • OK, with the TOC, that was just me being sloppy- or learning

[edit] Linking to censuses

  • link to the Census article as such: [[United States Census, 1880|Tenth Census in 1880]] (omit "United States" from piped link).
    • I will link the Census as you want, but there is no article for the Tenth Census, so it leaves this horrible red mark at the head of the article. Why don't you create a stub for all the missing censuses, and I'll do as you ask.

[edit] Also

Markles, you sure are watching me closely...I'm not sure how to take it!? I'm happy to team up with you on getting this stuff done- we obviously have lots of interests in common. I appreciate you taking my concerns seriously and can assure that when you do I will be very flexible and easy to work with- and we will get a lot of good content built. I have to keep reminding myself that's the point of the exercise, not some of the silliness we get tangled up in. stilltim 20:57, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

  • I'm not watching you (don't worry). I'm just keeping up with the Congress stuff. —Markles 22:23, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] {{USCongresses}}

Why are you creating a manual table at the bottom of the Congresses, when there's a template at {{USCongresses}}? And, for that matter, have you decided not to make these Congresses the same format as the 109th?—Markles 21:18, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

  • Why do you write with that tone? I have waited for your response to my numerous questions, and hearing none, have assumed you had no preference, and proceeded. I am following the 109 to the extent that it is consistent with itself, where not I stayed consistent as previously noted. Don't you think the table is an improvement over the template? Trying to be courteous, I didn't want to change the template until receiving feedback.stilltim 21:30, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
    • SORRY-- REALLY SORRY! I'm really not good at leaving these messages. I really didn't mean to express myself like that. I thought I had replied to you already, I'm sorry if I left some out. Feel free to change the template if you'd like to. That's the Wiki way, right? I really do love the work you're doing here!!!—Markles 23:18, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Shading colors

Hey Stilltim! Hi there. Look what I've done with List of United States Representatives from Delaware. I've just added shading templates. Is this OK? This should make your work easier with similar articles. You can find most of the templates here: Category:Party colours templates. —Markles 10:40, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

  • Good morning Markles. Yes, this is a very nice addition and will reduce the labor and help with standardization. The only downside is that when the data is coming from a template, some yahoo will inevitably decide to change the template and effectively vandalize all the articles. But maybe this is sufficiently esoteric that it will escape their attention. BTW are you a Brit? I figured you were from Boston. stilltim 11:04, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sessions of Congress

Your template, US Congress Sessions, needs to be changed. A "session" of the US Congress is a specific term meaning a time between commencement and adjournment. You would have to say "Congresses." —Markles 21:53, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

  • Agreed, the term is imprecise, but it seems to be used in this context as well, see Category:United States Congress by session, as well as in some US Gov publications. I will change it. stilltim 22:34, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your edits of "sessions of congress"

It disturbs me that you remove kilobytes of text at a time without leaving a reason. please stop.--Frenchman113 on wheels! 22:52, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

  • Sorry, just replacing text with a template, no change in presentation or content. I'll add a note. stilltim 22:56, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of Governors of Delaware

While bumping my way around Wikipedia, I found the List of Governors of Delaware. I notice that you have done much work on that page. This is just my opinion, but I think that if the political parties (if aappropriate) of the Governors in the Presidents under the Constitution of 1776 is filled out, this would make an excellent candidate to become a Featured lists.

PS: Your talk page is quite lengthy. You may want to consider archiving part of it. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 22:46, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

  • I concur with the Featured lists suggestion! —Markles 23:07, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Thanks. I'd be glad to add whatever would be appropriate, but these folks did not belong to a party. Would you like to see the column dropped? Or "none" perhaps in the column? I'll read up on how to archive. stilltim 02:04, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
    • I think your changes are good. Do you want to nominate it? Or should I? If you nominate it I'll be sure to support it. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 20:13, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
    • You may if you wish. I very much appreciate your positive feedback, but am not really into the competitive aspects of this. And I fear the greater exposure to those out there who will nit-pic it to death. stilltim 22:56, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
      • I nominated it as you suggested. BTW, there is no need to fear the exposure of getting it featured. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 23:18, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I'd also like to thank you for your assistance in resolving objections in the nomination. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 19:15, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of counties in Delaware

I have put back the FIPS codes in the list of counties of Delaware because I am attempting to include them in every state's list of counties. (Some states have not yet been completed, but I'm working on it as I go along.) I think you should have looked at the FIPS state list before simply changing Delaware's county list page to only a link to the state list because the county list does not appear in the state list. This would (eventually) cause Delaware to be the only state that does not have its own county FIPS code list if this was not fixed. I am changing every state's county list to include this information as I think it is relevant to county lists. Paul Robinson (Rfc1394) 21:30, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

  • I did look and I do see what you are doing. I know your intentions are good and you are putting hard work into this effort, but the point I was trying to make is that if you think this information is important enough to include in WP, and I would not argue that point, it would be better to build a FIPS county list in addition to or as part of the state list. There are undoubtedly hundreds of codes that apply to each county for various purposes and they all may be important, but obviously can't all be displayed on every list of the counties. There is no problem with having a note directing the reader to an article with some or all of these codes, but, meaning no disrespect, to give this particular code the prominence your design has done makes this seem to be primarily an article about FIPS codes rather than the larger objective of the article which is simply to provide basic high level information about the counties, how they came to be, and a link to more detailed information. Please consider enlarging the FIPS state code article or creating a FIPS county article instead of piggybacking onto the county list articles. I think the end product will be much superior. I am also concerned about the massive proliferation of navigation boxes on all articles. The US counties navigation box you added is completely redundant to a perfectly functional Category:Lists of U.S. counties that can be accessed from the line below. There is, therefore, no need for this nav box. stilltim 21:57, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Joe Biden article

I just wanted to thank you for keeping the Joe Biden article under control. It looks like it's a bit hairy in the discussions. -- ×××jijin+machina | Chat Me!××× -- 14:02, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anglicanism and the Anglican Communion

Hello! I noticed that you have identified yourself as an Anglican, and so I thought that you may be interested in checking out a new WikiProject - WikiProject Anglicanism. Please consider signing up and participating in this collaborative effort to improve and expand articles related to Anglicanism and the Anglican Communion! Cheers! Fishhead64 23:53, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Source for political party information in Congress entries

Thanks so much for adding so much material to the entries for the particular Congresses. This is really impressive.

I'm curious about what source for poltical parties you're using. Is it Martis's Historical Atlas of Parties in Congress or something else?

  • Thanks for your comment. It means a lot to get positive feedback. I'm trying to make sure I like the exact format before adding other Congresses, which I can easily do. The party counts come from the US Congress [3]. Perhaps I should footnote that. BTW, I would appreciate it if you would sign your notes in the future so I get to know who you are. Its nice to know who your friends are! stilltim 21:04, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ordinal congresses

I'm going to stop messing up your very good contributions to the early congresses. However, here's a boilerplate template I've created: Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Congress/Ordinal congresses. Hope it helps! Keep up the great work! —Markles 19:33, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

  • I appreciate your desire not to be "messing up...[my] contibutions." It is hard to work on something as complex as this with no base line to work from. It is my expressed desire to establish that, and I have no illusions that my preferences are more valid than yours or the community in general. Therefore, while I hope to convince you (and others) that my ideas are the good, I hope I am flexible enough to incorporate the good points of others. In such an attempt, at one time or other, I have incorporated nearly every suggestion you have made, and honestly want your input- but do ask that you equally strongly consider my points, and once agreed to, support the agreement. Frankly, no one else in the wikiworld seems to be watching this work, or care enough to comment.
  • Regarding your template, I'm not sure how it can be useful to me. Obviously, I have a template I am using off-line to pull in the data and manipulate it. I'm certainly not typing all these names. Hence all those awful spaces which while invisible to the reader, are messy- and I will clean up at some point. I do have a few formatting concerns from looking at the template, some major, some minor. Here they are.
    1. Major- there is no standard lead paragraph. Every good article should have one, and if they are similar articles, the same information should be presented in an identical manner.
    2. Major- the nav boxes at the end are horrific. Too, big too many, and largely redundant. The nav box we previously agreed upon may not be perfect, but it is small enough, and looks much less amateurish. I'm sure it can be improved, but I think the nav box situation in all WP articles has become a major problem. Most need to go, and the remainders need to be cleaned up- big time. Much of their purpose can be achieved through work on categories. I need your help with this particularly.
    3. Major- The party summary in a table is way out of place in an otherwise line article. For cosmetic reasons we have to go one way or the other. That's why I'm putting the membership changes on another article, maybe the party summary table should be handled the same way. Now if we could find a way to create a pie chart and incorporate it as an image- that would be real nice, as would some good maps, but no boxes. Those things are on my to do list. Any suggestions? The "busy look" you observed on one version of the 1st Congress was exactly right, and resulted from mixing tables and line data.
    4. Major- (slightly out of scope) The major events and major legislation sections are sadly lacking. A bullet list of random items is not nearly good enough. In fact, these sections should be the meat of the article, written as narrative, and the list simply an attachment.
    5. Major- (but out of scope) The articles on the Congressmen are mostly awful. It's all I can do not to get off on a tangent and try and clean them up to a consistent standard.
    6. Less critical- We have to use the same terminology as the Congress. They call the non-elected officers, officials, not employees. They call the Vice President the "Vice President," not the President of the Senate. I thought we had reached a good middle ground on that, although I would prefer the later be gone.
    7. Least critical- The names of leadership and officials have to go on their own line if there are more than one. Therefore, since it happens often, we should always place them that way, otherwise it is confusing and IMO, ugly.
    8. Minutiae- A) The MOS recommends not using links in section headers. B) the Major Legislation "main article" title can be cleaned-up.
  • I'm sure you've noticed I've dropped the dates at your specific request, although I think it is a major loss. It seems, for now, you and I are the ones that are going to get this project done, so I am doing my best to work with you and look forward to a real cooperative effort as we go forward. Are you going to Wikimania? I might...and it would be good to meet you. stilltim 20:43, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Joe Biden: Indian Controversy

Would you please tell me why you removed the part I inserted into Joseph Biden's article about the Indian-American comments he made? I am not sure what rule that paragraph broke. If your reasoning is that the paragraph contained information widely available on the Internet, I will put it back. We don't simply reference people to outside sources. Instead, we do our own versions of a story while crediting sources. I'd appreciate if you could follow up on this. Stiles 23:34, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Your prompt response to my question is appreciated, and while your reasoning is certainly understandable, it is not in accordance with accepted practice on Wikipedia. Many other articles feature information, whether seeminly minute or not, and present them to the reader. As editors, we don't evaluate the weight of a given story, but rather its notability. That notability is determined by its presence in the news, amongst other factors. The Biden remarks have been reported by many news agencies, and they have also attracted the attention of several Indian-American organizations. Not only that, the remarks have been on the minds of many Indian-Americans. We can't omit information, simply because a politician has been in hot water many times over, and that this may result in an article containing many similar stories. The fact that Biden has is criticised often times does not change the fact what happened is of interest to many, and is of notable nature. If you disagree with this, please raise awareness of what I wrote, and as Wikipedians, we'll be able to consider the matter on the talk page of the article. If it turns out the majority sees what I wrote as being entirely unnecessary, although certainly not in the eyes of those news agencies which have already featured the story, the piece will be removed. In the mean time, I will add the piece once again. Thank you. Stiles 01:14, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 9th United States Congress

  • Honorifics- I took them out because keeping them in would mean we should also put "Hon." before Congressmen's names or "Sen." before Senator's, etc.. I figure we just need names here.
  • Abbreviated party designations- In the current congress (109th), we just use "D" and "R". It seems excessive to the eyes to have "Federalist" and "Democratic-Republican" repeated all over the screen when a simple "F" and "D-R" will suffice. If, and when, a party is rare, it could be spelled out fully in those few cases.
  • Extra spaces - Why did you revert the entire article? I had deleted a lot of extra spaces.
  • Running out of disk space - There's no point in putting in excessive information. It takes a while for slow computers to read long files (see Wikipedia:Article size) and it's hard for a reader to find the information they want if there's too much extraneous repetitions.
  • Delegates - linking to Orleans Territory brings the reader to United States Congressional Delegations from Orleans Territory. I have just changed it.

—Markles 04:31, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Biography July Newsletter

The July 2006 issue of the Biography WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you. plange 08:37, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] License tagging for Image:BustGeorgeClinton.jpg

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  • oops, now added...stilltim 01:11, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Biography Newsletter August 2006

The August 2006 issue of the Biography WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you. plange 01:49, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi,

I increased the size of the Trumbull picture in the McKean article because I wanted to add the location of McKean in the picture and wanted people to see it. (I just added that info, although I don't think it was there when you shrunk back the picture size. I suppose a reader could just as well increase the size of the thumbnail if they wanted. Is there a particular reason you shrunk the size back to that picture? Would it be all right to leave it larger? Best, Noroton 23:37, 8 August 2006 (UTC) (Noroton)

[edit] Question about photo source

Hello, I am trying to locate the archival copy of this photo you uploaded of the Old Brick Capitol for reproduction in a book. http://www.pddoc.com/photohistory/v7/images/2004-077b.jpg Can you tell me where you found the image? Yours is the only one I've been able to locate.

Thanks very much, Laura McGuire

It is in the "The Photographic History of the Civil War" on-line. Just drop the "images/2004-077b.jpg" from the url you have. stilltim 21:18, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Help with Delaware template

Hi Stilltim,

It looks like you disapproved of my edits to the Delaware template yesterday. In the spirit of being bold, I went through all 55 states/insular areas on Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. states/state templates and standardized the templates. (94% page width, 75px flag in the upper left corner, section headers down the left side.) I admit that I know very little about Delaware, since I'm a Michigander living in American Samoa. That's why I need your help. I'd like the Delaware template to have the same layout as other U.S. possesions, but since I'm not an expert on the state, I could use your input on how best to lay it out. Anyway, I hope you're willing to work with me on this. Thanks for your help. Lovelac7 20:24, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

P.S. I like your "places I've visited" layout on your user page. It's better than mine. Lovelac7 20:24, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

  • Hello Lovelac...what's a Michigander in Samoa doing behind a computer instead of enjoying paradise? We all dream of being in such places. Seriously, I appreciate your note and will try and share my thinking with you. I have found the "standard" nav box to be very limited, and frankly not very pleasing to the eye. It uses up tons of space delivering minimal information- and much too heavily geographical. It is really not appropriate for use on a biography or historical article. So, being bold as well, I have tried to design a simpler, smaller and more attractive nav box, that is relevant for all articles that can be associated with a state. Template:Delaware is the result. I have also made a Template:PAGeneral box for that state, although I have hardly used it at all. I have also created Template:USCongressTerms for articles relating to Congress, although I strip off the lower portion for individuals and customize it to indicate the years terms they served. see J. Caleb Boggs for instance. From these boxes the reader can move anywhere, not just geographically. I think there is a general tendency to have way too many big nav boxes on these articles, and this is my attempt to suggest and experiment with an alternative. I once created a DEHistory template that looked like the PAGeneral, and used it, leaving the Delaware template a standard. This created a big fuss with certain individuals who did not object to the change, so much as two templates.
  • I would enjoy working with you on this, but I warn you the merciless editing I have experienced over the past year has forced my thinking way "out of the box" in trying to find solutions. I would love to see the same layout nationwide, and I'm sure my design could stand much improvement, but the overall goal is to dramatically reduce the size and number of nav boxes on these articles by routing readers into appropriate categories...and to make the boxes a little more professional looking. I could go back to two nav box designs, but the Delaware template as you modified it would never be used, because the new design works better for all articles. And it would in other states as well. Please give it some thought...and enjoy paradise! stilltim 21:13, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
    • Take a look at the changes I made this morning (or evening in Delaware). I tried to get this edit to have the same footprint as your edit, as well as the same information. The only link I added was a general link to Category:Delaware. Other than that, I kept your colors, links, and layout.
    • By the way, Samoa is fun, but I still like editing Wikiepdia as much as I did back in Lansing, Michigan. Believe it or not, it can get pretty boring on a tropical island, just like anywhere else. Still, I'm thankful to be here. Lovelac7 22:49, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Delaware

Stilltim: I appreciate your attachment to Template:Delaware and your desire to keep it the way that it is now (it looked great before, and it still does!). I was the same way with Template:Colorado before I realized that some state templates are so inconsistent with each other that something had to be done. I personally don't mind if the Delaware template remains as it is; it merely presents the links in a much more concise way than what Lovelac7 and I have been trying out on the other state templates.

Regarding the location of the flag images, that's something that several templates had previously, an image of the flag on the left and an image of the state seal on the right. I love the work that you've done on Template:Delaware; it's a fantastic template that will be easy to maintain and the colors juxtapose each other well. I'm all for keeping it the way it is. Feel free to tell us how to standardize the rest of the state templates (and how they can complement Delaware's) over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. states/state templates. Thanks for your concern! ;) — Webdinger BLAH | SZ 01:35, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Stilltim, I got it fixed as much as I could without compromising the look of the template. Here's what I've achieved:
  1. The content is now centered to the title and not the entire area of space; I added in a 75px margin to the right of the content.
  2. I removed the bold-facing on "Topics." Is that what you wanted or is it the title that you wanted me to remove the bold-facing?
  3. I removed the margins as much as I could, but there is still a 2px margin that refuses to disappear. I'll try again tomorrow.
Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you! ;) — Webdinger BLAH | SZ 03:33, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
Hey, Stilltim, I'm finished with the requests that you placed on my talk page; what a difficult template to work with! It looks almost exactly like the United States Congress template you have on the J. Caleb Boggs page as for spacing and borders. And thankfully, it looks passable in Internet Explorer. Please, if there is anything more you would like me to do, feel absolutely free to contact me again on my talk page. Thanks! — Webdinger BLAH | SZ 00:55, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Biden intro

Hi, I restored information you removed from the introduction, but I wanted to leave you a note in case you want to discuss it. To me it seems significant that he was elected to the Senate at such a young age, and his original national fame was a result of his presidential bid in '88, thus the links. Regards, Kaisershatner 16:02, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Your removal of this information with no other comment than "remove repetitive info and POV" is not very nice. The information wasn't actually repetitive, and I'm not seeing the POV problem. This time, would you care to discuss it at the Talk page? Kaisershatner 15:24, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
I apologize for not sounding nicer, it wasn't meant to sound that way. I liked much of your addition to the introduction and actually am using it as a model for other articles as well. The age comment and the previous election seemed less important, and therefore not as critical to repeat in an intro. Both are covered prominently in the body of the article. The previous election actually has a TOC entry and whole paragraph. I have tried to keep intros very concise, and you were correct to expand it in this case. The removal of the POV word was an edit someone else made and was not in the intro. stilltim 15:57, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your comments. I get a little prickly about being reverted without comment, so I'm sorry if I was a bit clipped in my response. My guide for the intros is to follow the basic ideas at WP:LEAD and Wikipedia:Summary_style, and thus the introduction actually should duplicate the major subheadings of the article that follows. Further, I think Biden's age at initial election is significant- wasn't he pretty young for a Senator? To me, that's notable about him. Kaisershatner 21:36, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The messy stub...

um... I stuck it there. Thanks for the compliment. Navboxes are on all 50 other AG's +DC, PR, Guam, USVI, and the NAAG article. Do you really want Danberg to stand out? Middle initials in title where necessary (George W. Bush) but otherwise completely optional: I am keeping it simple, stupid. - CrazyRussian talk/email 04:04, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

As to the navbox, please put it back in. If you want to use cats instead, get it deleted through WP:TFD. Until and unless, I think you should opt for uniformity. - CrazyRussian talk/email 04:08, 10 September 2006 (UTC)


Borrowing a bit from Barry Goldwater, "uniformity in the pursuit of excellence is no virtue." How do we improve articles if we always opt for uniformity? I do not want to delete the nav box. It is quite useful on any article about the office of Attorney General or on the NAAG article, and probably many others. I also don't mind the Danberg article standing out. I suppose I could remove the nav box from the other 50 articles, but I think that would be too bold. I'm just trying to gradually introduce the idea that a nav box listing everyone that has done anything the subject of an article is famous for...may be too much (like this sentence). Perhaps you can suggest some forums to do so. I also recognize that middle initials are optional, but since that's the way he always signs his name, see [4], seems like we should do it his way when there is a choice. That actually would be the simple way...

Regarding my "compliment"...that was thoughtless, and I regret saying it. My apologies. I need to stop doing this in the middle of the night. I should have read your page and realized you were working a project. Regardless, I hope what I did improved the article, and that we can work together going forward. stilltim 03:23, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Hehe... no problem. Say what you will, I think the box should stay on. As for the middle initial, move it if you wish, just update incoming links. Oh, and downtown Wilmington is a seriously scary place. We got out of there quick. We enjoyed the nice state park in Northern Wilmington on the old Dupont estate. - CrazyRussian talk/email 03:29, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Biography Newsletter September 2006

The September 2006 issue of the Biography WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you. plange 00:02, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] License tagging for Image:Delawarearms.gif

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[edit] Featured list candidate

I thought you'd like to know that List of United States federal legislation has been nominated to be a Featured List. It needs 4 votes by October 2, 2006.

As I have labored hard on the article, I would appreciate your looking it over. You can find a discussion here: Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of United States federal legislation.

Thank you!

—Markles 23:09, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moving Sykes and Van Dyke

A while ago you asked me to help move "James Sykes (physician)" to "James Sykes (governor)", and "Nicholas Van Dyke (1769-1826)" to "Nicholas Van Dyke (senator)", reversing the current redirects. I agree that this needs to be done, and you could do so yourself if the redirect pages didn't have edit histories. Just list them in WP:RM under "Noncontroversial proposals". If you have any trouble, please let me know. Chris the speller 02:54, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question on historical senators biographies

I'm currently working on John W. Johnston, a senator from Virginia in the 1800s, and wanted to find out what you thought a good TOC structure should be? I found this that you guys worked on User:PaulHanson/Style_guide but wanted to see what you guys felt was proper for content, etc? Namely, is it encyclopedic to mention any bill introduced by the said senator? Should details be divided up by which session of Congress it occurred in? Greatly appreciate any guidance you can give. --plange 03:06, 16 October 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Image:Delawarearms.gif

Thanks for uploading Image:Delawarearms.gif. I notice the 'image' page specifies that the image is being used under fair use, but its use in Wikipedia articles fails our first fair use criterion in that it illustrates a subject for which a free image could reasonably be found or created. If you believe this image is not replaceable, please:

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[edit] Congressional delegation discrepancy

for Virginia-- I posted a notice -- do you know which is correct? Besides wanting to fix whichever is incorrect, I'm using the List as a to-do list with all the red links. Also I wanted to populate the congressional pages (Virginia's 9th congressional district) with their historical data... Thanks! --plange 05:00, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Delaware senate election

Sorry that it took a while to respond. The source that I used was this CNN page, U.S. SENATE / DELAWARE. – Zntrip 17:41, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Early Congresses

You have done a lot of work on these articles and I don't wish to be critical. But I am finding a lot of errors in the numbering of House members. Look at Pennsylvania in the 4th Congress for example. The numbers make no sense at all, even allowing for the fact that the 4th District elected two members. And why assign district numbers to the members from Connecticut (for example), when they were elected at large? Adam 01:03, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

  • Please feel free to be critical. The district assignments in the early congresses for certain states are very questionable. Pennsylvania and Virginia are particular problems. On-line congressional records that I have found are reliable only from the 24th Congress. I can find no good source prior to that, specifically for district assignments. To the best of my knowledge, the answer is not in the [5] as you suggest. So I actually just left the districts assignments from contributors prior to me. I tried to note on the discussion page that there was work to be done there, as well as for some of the party designations. On some congresses I just left them alpha with a footnote claiming ignorance, but what is there in the 4th in PA seems like it has some basis in fact. I just don't understand it or know where it came from. It seems there were multiple instances of multi member districts, possibly with non consecutive numbering, but I have nothing that says this...only guesswork. I am resigned to having to do some real on-site research to find a good source for this information, but do not have the time just now. If you know of a good source, please advise, even if in Philadelphia, I can probably track it down. Your interest and help is appreciated. stilltim 01:46, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. One of my strange enthusiasms is electoral cartography (see my website). About ten years ago I found and photocopied an atlas of congressional districts from 1789 to the 1980s, which I still have. I am currently making a complete set of US District maps. Here is the citation for the atlas. It gives the name and district number of every member elected to House from 1789 to 1983, although unfortunately not their party (for this you have to cross-reference with the bioguide. The atlas shows clearly (for example) that in the 1790s PA had 12 districts, of which only the 4th was a "double." It also shows that CT and NH elected their members "at large" (CT continued to do so until 1837). I am reluctant to take on the task of redoing all these articles, and it seems strange that an Australian should have to do so. You or another US editor should be able to find that atlas in a library somewhere. Adam 02:07, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Here is a sample. It has taken me a week to get up to 1797, so I expect this will take approximately the rest of my life to finish.

Pennsylvania Congressional Districts, 1797
Enlarge
Pennsylvania Congressional Districts, 1797
  • Wonderful information, thank-you. I feel like I've died and gone to heaven! I'm sure I can find it. Regrettably this effort of mine is an avocation and competes with a full time job and family/household responsibilities... Once I locate the atlas I will make the corrections. The last time I looked, the bioguide was not complete with regard to party. They seemed to have stopped towards the end of the alphabet. Stay tuned, and thanks again. stilltim 02:23, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I am not posting my maps of current elections to WP, because I want to maintain my website as a separate entity until such time as WP can protect its contents against vandalism, which won't be any time soon under its current administrative arrangements. (see The Problem with Wikipedia at the bottom of my User page). But these historical maps are another matter. I was going to wait until I had finished the whole sequence before I uploaded them, but that might be a long time. So perhaps I should upload them year by year as I do them. But I don't want to incorporate them into the existing articles, which are, with all due respect, too cluttered already. I might create a sample article, United States Congressional Districts, 1797, and see what you and others think. Adam 02:57, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a very sensible approach for the maps. Links would be good. The 1797 PA map actually refers to the 5th Congress, and if posted might be more understandable if labeled that way. I would be interested in your thoughts about presentation of information on the Congress articles, although the current layout is the result of very difficult negotiation with another editor. I generally agree with your comments about WP. Basically it needs an editorial board to keep the crazies at bay. What bothers me the most are the too zealous "editors" who contribute nothing themselves, but spend vast amounts of time disrupting serious contributers. Fortunately I've noticed that they generally go away after a few weeks. What I need the most is the ability to produce maps like yours to illustrate the articles I write. Someday I'll learn how to do it. stilltim 03:30, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

So you think United States Congressional Districts, 5th Congress would better reflect American usage? Or perhaps United States Congressional Districts: 5th Congress (1797-1799). Adam 03:34, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I think the first would be fine. I have borrowed the material you pointed out and am about to post corrections for the first 9 congresses. You have been a great help!!! stilltim 01:54, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I will create a sample page tonight and see what you think. When you are corrcting the lists in the existing articles, you will notice that the lists of members given in the atlas make no distinction between members elected on election day and members elected to fill vacancies during the term. So you will still need to use the bioguide to disambiguate when you find two members listed for the same district. Adam 03:33, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Here is a possible layout for the maps. I have deleted the names of the Congressmen elected. There seems no point in duplicating what is already in the articles you are working on. Tell me what you think. Adam 11:13, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

As I said, the maps are beautiful. I do notice a couple of errors (?) when comparing to the atlas I have...South Carolina & Virginia. Also the atlas shows at large districts as diagonal lines with party coloration. Can you do that or some equivalent? I do understand, and have good data for transitional members. I am working from the Historical Atlas of Political parties in the United States Congress, a later companion to the Atlas of Congressional Districts. It has maps that look very much like yours, except the color is reversed. stilltim 01:58, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiproject Biography

Hey. Just wondering, i was lookign through the full list of the articles in Wikiproject Biography, and the list keeps breaking up. Every time I try to fix it, another section of notes for someone messes up the table. I them noticed each time that the notes you're putting in when you're discussing your rating choice are apparently messign up the table. Basically, it you look here: Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Biography_articles_by_quality/5 and get to the point where the table stops, you'll see what I'm talking about. My main questions are if you were aware of this, and if not, how could the format be fixed without removing your stuff completely? You seem to put a lot of time in each one so I don't want to remove them, but they're also messing up the numbers of each kind of bio on the main page. --Wizardman 05:37, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

  • I was not aware of this, thanks for pointing it out. Not being much of a programmer, I do not know what in my syntax causes the problem. I was trying to respond to the request to document "present staus" and progress. There is nothing sacred to me about how the information is presented, and if you or others could suggest a better way, I will use it and modify what is out there. stilltim 11:50, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
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