Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Alaska

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Please see my query re the Recent Changes page (on its talk page). Deirdre 09:17, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Senator Stevens 2 Typing mistake 3 Aleut Restitution Act of 1988 4 Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team cooperation 5 Image request 6 Arctic Region Supercomputing Center 7 naming for the alaska route 8 Shields 9 Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Alaska 10 Project tag 11 Pioneer Peak photos? 12 History buff needed 13 Nominate articles for Portal:United States 14 New "People from [city]" Categories 15 Contributed to Mat-Su College 16 BC & Pacific Northwest History Forum 17 British Columbia Coast - possible expansion to Pacific Northwest Coast 18 Amchitka 19 Invitation to new WikiProject 20 Diane E. Benson and Elizabeth Peratrovich 21 Project directory

[edit] Senator Stevens

The Ted Stevens page needs some work. He's been getting hammered by a lot of issues recently and the only people that are updating his page are his detractors. I'm not a big fan of him right now either, but it would be nice if people who knew more about his other politics would counterbalance some of the criticism Slarson 07:33, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Typing mistake

I am currently working on the German translation of the Copper River article. In the description it is talking about a "wide marshly plain". I could not find marshly in a dictionary and the two simular words 'harshly' and 'marshy' make both sence. Could you please verify this information? Thanks, --Julian Maximilian 21:44, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

It can't be harshly, since that's an adverb and adverbs don't modify nouns. It's "marshy"; I've fixed it. —Zero Gravitas 22:13, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Aleut Restitution Act of 1988

Hi, all. I stumbled across a red link in the page Aleut, and did some research on the Aleut Restitution Act of 1988. What you see there is the product of an hour's worth of research. However, the page may benefit from multiple editors' revisions, so it would be nice if that page were put up for collaboration.
On the other hand, would that page even fall under this WikiProject? Thanks Kareeser|^Talk! 05:23, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
P.S. That particular page is in dire need of a category, as I am horrendous at sifting through category lists...

If it's more than tangentially related to Alaska (as this certainly is) it definitely qualifies. Thanks for starting the article! —Zero Gravitas 07:13, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the cricial fixes to the article, ZeroGravitas! I had not realized my mistake in calling the Aleuts "Aleutians" until you fixed my error, and until then, I did not know that I could have realized simply by searching "Aleutian" on Wikipedia. Thanks again! Kareeser|^Talk! 14:27, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team cooperation

Hello. I'm a member of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing articles using these criteria, and we are are asking for your help. As you are most aware of the issues surrounding your focus area, we are wondering if you could provide us with a list of the articles that fall within the scope of your WikiProject, and that are either featured, A-class, B-class, or Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Do you have any recommendations? If you do, please post your suggestions at the listing of all active Places WikiProjects, and if you have any questions, ask me in the Work Via WikiProjects talk page or directly in my talk page. Thanks a lot! Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 18:44, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image request

Soemone requested a map of the Inside Passage, which I think is a good idea. It would be great if anyone has talents in that direction or if there is GFDL-compatible map available. Also, do others think it to be a good idea to have a "Things to do" on the main project page? Luigizanasi 17:16, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Arctic Region Supercomputing Center

I did a small article (maybe 20 minutes of work put in) for Arctic Region Supercomputing Center. It's got plenty of sources out there (I added 4 for this just-past-a-stub) and believe it has potential. Anyone want to add some more? -M^ask 05:16, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Hey, it got on the Did You Know? box on the main page the other day. coolies. -M^ask 01:01, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] naming for the alaska route

it seems ADOT calls the alaska state highway X as Alaska Route X. Would anyone object if i change the article names to match this (from Alaska State Highway 10 to Alaska Route 10? If i'm misktan, then I'm sorry. atanamir 01:56, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Do you have a source for this reference? —akghetto ^talk 09:05, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

[1] "Alaska Route Numbers" at the top, and "alaska route 1" is referred to in [2] atanamir 09:14, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone mind? If not, i'll go ahead with the moves / renaming. atanamir 09:11, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, page 68 of the latter pdf document reads "The George Parks Highway (Alaska Route 1) parallels the Susitna River on the east en route to connecting Anchorage and Fairbanks". Go for it. This will be a small task. — Apr. 10, '06 [05:04] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

done. atanamir 05:30, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

You missed a few references within the text. I've fixed the ones on my watchlist (Alaska Highway, Klondike Highway and Top of the World Highway) but you might want to go back & do a search on the others to make sure you haven't missed any of the references to "Alaska State Highway". Luigizanasi 05:38, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

ah, thanks for reminding me. I forgot to look for instances of state highway in those pages. I just went through and they all should be gone. atanamir 05:43, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Shields

I have redesigned the alaska route shields as per [3] on the ADOT site. The font orgiinally on the PNGs was wrong; the PDF shows a heavier weight font being used (FHWA Series EM), which i have used in the new SVG shields. atanamir 09:36, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

• For numbers greater than 9, though, the EM font is too wide; I have kept the font used previously in the PNGs. atanamir 09:53, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Huh. I'm pretty sure that in real life I've only seen the narrow font, as here or here; DOT/PF must've changed it. —Zero Gravitas 16:58, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I got a 'forbidden' error when trying to access those images; any reason why? atanamir 20:58, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Would you rather the shields be in the skinnny font then? It deosn't really matter to me. atanamir 20:59, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

No, no, whatever they're using right now is clearly the right one to use; I just didn't know they'd changed. —Zero Gravitas 21:22, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Alaska

Many articles covered by this WikiProject lack photographs. As part of a subcategorization of the requested photos category, there is now a category for Alaska articles needing photos - to use it, just add {{reqphotoin|Alaska}} to the article's talk page. I have only added a few articles to the category so far, but it would be an easy way to make an extensive list Alaska-related articles lacking photos. I hope you find it useful! TheGrappler 08:59, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project tag

(moved from the template talk page after belatedly realizing that probably only AKGhetto and I would see it there)

Lately I've started noticing how big and obtrusive the Alaska box is, compared to other WikiProject tags with about the same amount of stuff in them. What if it were a bit smaller, to eat up the blank space, like so:

This article is part of WikiProject Alaska, an effort to create, expand, organize, and improve Alaska-related articles to a feature-quality standard.

Any thoughts on this, or am I the only one who cares? (as I suspect is likely!) —Zero Gravitas 18:28, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

No comments after about a week, so I'll take that as a tacit approval and just do it. —Zero Gravitas 22:02, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Comment left on template talk page...—akghetto ^talk 22:36, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pioneer Peak photos?

I just created an article on Pioneer Peak, but it's sadly unillustrated. I'm not easily able to get out to Mat-Su to photograph it, but maybe someone here is? Or knows where sufficiently free pictures are? It just isn't right not to have a picture of Pioneer Peak... —Zero Gravitas 03:12, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Oops, I missed the one in the Palmer article, but one that's just the mountain itself would be better... —Zero Gravitas 03:22, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] History buff needed

Please check out List of current and former capital cities in the United States and make sure that Alaska's capital cities are listed accurately. A word of warning: the page does contain quite a bit of complicated wiki formatting, so if you're not comfortable editing it, just post your changes on the talk page and someone more experienced will apply them to the article.   JEK   19:40, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nominate articles for Portal:United States

I've worked for the past month to update Portal:United States and keep it better maintained. Though, I think the portal would be even better with broader participation. One way to do that is instead of choosing the "selected article" myself each week, if others would nominate articles and help make decisions. (same goes for pictures, though these are stocked up through July 29) If there is anything related to Alaska (or anything else related to the U.S. - culture, music, literature, geography, history, politics, ...), please nominate. I'd also like people to weigh in on the nominations and help select what should be featured. Thanks. --Aude (talk contribs) 23:16, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New "People from [city]" Categories

Hello, everybody. I am the bozo who just recently created the five new subcategories in the "People from Alaska" category. I thought that some of you might want to know why they were created, and why they often have so few pages in them.

The majority of the states have "People from [state]" categories which have at least 200 entries, sometimes over 1,000. This is clearly an unworkably large number for anyone wishing to use the category for research purposes. In 8th grade in Rapid City, South Dakota, the social studies class asked us to write, over the course of the year, reports on two or three people who were or had been residents of the city. Because of that, I have reason to believe that they could be used and probably are used for research purposes. To make such research easier, I looked at the list of metropolitan statistical areas and basically entered in one new category for each metropolitan statistical area, and, in the case of Alaska, three others as well.

I know that many of these categories might well be, in the eyes of you who know more about the cities in question much better than I do, misnamed or otherwise faulty. I apologize for any mistakes I may have made along those lines, and I would welcome any corrections, including deletion, that any of the rest of you might choose to make.

I thought you all should know why these categories were created, and felt some degree of responsibility for letting your know. I wish you all the greatest good fortune in making the coverage of your state in Wikipedia of the greatest scope and quality possible, and I hope that I haven't annoyed too many of you by my recent actions. Badbilltucker 13:12, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

The Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau categories are pretty good ideas, at least in my view, and thanks for making them. They don't hurt, anyway. I've sorted a few bio articles into those categories but haven't systematically gone through all of them yet.

I'm curious about why you chose Homer and Bethel, though; they aren't the next largest cities, and I can't think of anyone notable from Bethel other than Evan Ramsey. —Zero Gravitas 17:23, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Contributed to Mat-Su College

I just added a bit to the Mat-Su College article. It's my first contribution so I hope I didn't seriously screw anything up. I've taken a number of classes there ('fore I transfer out to a real college). I'll try to get a picture up of the place (and perhaps each building?) sometime next week. Please check it and let me know if there's anything I need to do different/change/add/remove/etc. Thanks! --Talon Razor 22:20, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] BC & Pacific Northwest History Forum

Please see RE BC & Pacific Northwest History Forum re: Talk:List of United States military history events#Border Commission troops in the Pacific Northwest. If you think maybe I should also move some or copy some of my other stuff from NW history and BC history pages and various Indigenous peoples project article/talk pages let me know; I never mean to blog, but I'm voluble and to me everything's interconnected; never meaning to dominate a page so have made this area to post my historical rambles on. Thoughts?Skookum1 03:49, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment on my posting of this: if anyone has any questions or wants to debate any issues relating to Oregon Country/Columbia District/Pacific Northwest history/historical geography, colonialist or aboriginal/indigenous or related to AK, YT and other related topics, please feel free to drop by the forum and start a thread/topic, or just butt in at yer leisure.Skookum1 05:50, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] British Columbia Coast - possible expansion to Pacific Northwest Coast

This more concerns Alaska than Washington, but please have a look at British Columbia Coast, which includes a directory-list of inlets/fjords, islands, rivers and so on. Obviously the boundaries are human creations, and the natural boundaries are more like from Cape Flattery to, er, at least Glacier Bay/Alsek River. If you think this would be useful to your Alaska Project let me know and I can work on expanding and renaming the page (it's linked quite a bit already, though....). Been bugging me for a while as an o-c kind of thing; have thought of expanding it to include Puget Sound, northern Olympic Peninsula, but if I do that then it's a propos to do it for the Panhandle, too...Skookum1 00:35, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Amchitka

I've been working on this article, de-stubbing, and thoroughly sourcing. I'd be grateful for any feedback. Thanks, Jakew 18:38, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Invitation to new WikiProject

A new WikiProject has been started, and may be of interest to members here. It is WikiProject National Register of Historic Places. It covers all listings on the Register, in all states and territories. Should you be so inclined, please feel free to join. And spread the word to any other interested parties. -Ebyabe 19:35, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Diane E. Benson and Elizabeth Peratrovich

I started an article on Diane Benson (Tlingit playwright and candidate for US House of Representatives) in late August, I think, and it got nominated for deletion and voted on (7 people voting), and then deleted quite recently. I was still working on the article. I'm a little annoyed by this, and would like to know if anyone here also thinks that she was worth a Wikipedia article. The archive of the deletion discussion is here. If people think that she's worth an article, we need to ask for a deletion review. The whole thing seemed to go pretty quickly...I'm a little shocked at how fast it all happened (maybe two weeks or less?), and I wish I'd thought to mention the deletion nomination here while the discussion was going on. Now I've started an article on Elizabeth Peratrovich (about whom Benson wrote a play), but I'm finding I'm a little paranoid about whether somebody's just going to delete that, too, because it might not immediately fit the suggested guidelines for notability or biographies or whatnot. Deirdre 01:39, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Deirdre, I second your objection to this deletion. I'm unable to determine why the article was deleted -- reading the AFD, there was nothing like a unanimous opinion, and no conclusion. I find it troubling that people would delete the article for a credible challenging candidate in the lead-up to an election. People come to Wikipedia to look up the candidates in a political contest, and it shouldn't be Wikipedia's policy to do favors for the incumbent. This is a repeated theme on Wikipedia talk:Candidates and elections, which was referenced by parties for and against the delete. If Benson loses the election and is never heard from again -- perhaps an AFD would have merit then. But during the election? That's worth contesting. It's also interesting to note that none of the four delete votes come from members of WikiProject Alaska who might be better able to judge the Notability in this case. There were an equal number of keep votes, and one of them came from a WikiProject Alaska member -- that's you, Deirdre. Had I known about this before, I would have voted "keep", and I would be happy to join you in requesting a review. -- Shunpiker 05:18, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

There was hardly a consensus for deletion, four to three by my count, and one person changed their vote from delete to neutral. Definitely a case for deletion review just on procedural grounds, and I would also support you just because she is a Tlingit playwright and including her helps fight systemic bias. But a better case needs to be made about her notability as a playwright. You might also want to contact User:James Crippen who is an authority on the Tlingit. Luigizanasi 05:36, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks--I've left a comment with James Crippen, asking him to weigh in on the deletion review. However, I couldn't find it on the review page; does this mean that I need to create it there, or did I just look in the wrong place?Deirdre 00:13, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I figured it out. There is now a deletion review for Diane Benson, here. Please go comment. Deirdre 03:40, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

The deletion has been overturned. However, now it's up for deletion again, as a procedural matter. I'm confused. Deirdre 21:22, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 18:36, 25 October 2006 (UTC)