Talk:Lake Worth, Florida

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is part of WikiProject Florida, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to the State of Florida on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.

	This article is supported by WikiProject Cities, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to Cities on Wikipedia. For more information, or to get involved, visit the project page.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the Project's quality scale. (If you rated the article please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)

	This article is part of WikiProject Miami, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to South Florida on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the assessment scale.
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the assessment scale.

Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art is closed

[edit] William Calley

Would some of you chime in for a consensus on this mention of William Calley as a famous resident? I vote no. (I've reverted once, but I'm not going to go back and forth.) I disagree with "famous residents" sections in general, but I'm not everyone. I cannot find WP policy on the subject, however it just doesn't seem encyclopedic, especially when the person in question doesn't even live in LW anymore. Should we include him in Palm Beach County as well? Florida? United States? He went to school and worked there, too. - Chris 04:47, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Although you may agree with these sections, they have frequently been upheld. Also, there is typcailly no requirement that the person be a current resident (again, see Fort Lauderdale for examples). Your point about FL / US is a straw man argument -- there is no precedent for a list of this sort at that level of generality and there is no evidence that anyone is trying to create such a precedent. I added Calley because he is an extremely well-known individual who lived in Lake Worth. Hopefully this list will grow beyond him -- I am sure there are some other notables from Lake Worth -- but he is the one I know right now, so that growth will have to come through good ol Wikipedia cooperation. Posterofwilliamcalleyinfo 05:07, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I vote no as well, but given the number of articles he is listed under, this at least makes some sense. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:29, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

If you are going to look at logical fallacies, you should compare your Ft. Lauderdale point with this or this. Why should I assume it's kosher because it's done at Ft. Lauderdale? And the PB/FL/US argument is a straw man? You are arguing that an article for a named, geographic area have a list of famous residents. In my wacky little head, placing a person as a former resident in a city is the same thing. Should a famous person be listed at every town or city where s/he lived? Would you put this list in the William Calley article? - Chris 14:26, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't trying to get into fancy logic games (obviously I am not as smart as you, so you win). I was just giving an example of one of the many pages where individuals with a connection to a city similar to Calley's connection to Lake Worth have had their inclusion on the city page upheld. My specific point with PB/FL/US is that there is no general precedent for including famous residents at a broader geographic listing than city. Should a famous person be listed every town/city where he / she lives? Perhaps not everywhere, but Calley's time in Lake Worth is a prominent part of most short bios of him. Thus, perhaps a standard would be places where said person has spent a notable period of his life.On the other end, the standard, arrived at through consensus on other sites, clearly does not require that the person was born in a place or currently lives there. Look, I recognize that this is a debatable point. I just dont appreciate some users suggesting that my Calley edits have been in anything less than good faith -- at the very least, they fall in the grey area between notability and non-notability. Posterofwilliamcalleyinfo 14:51, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I hope you don't think I was suggesting you were not editing in good faith. I have nothing on which to assume otherwise. I think your username draws attention and probably some prejudice (in the purest sense of the word), but there's certainly nothing wrong with being a "poster of William Calley info". My disagreement with this issue is really more high-level, with the very inclusion of sections particularly for famous or notable residents (past or present). You are right, there is no precedent for such lists at larger geographic levels; I simply feel the precedent even at the city level is bad. In my personal opinion, an article on a city (or any geo-political area) should not include any reference to its residents unless their notability is directly related to the city itself (e.g. the mayor, founder, conqueror). Can you imagine if there was a "famous residents" list for New York City or LA? For the moment, I've put out a feeler for guidelines or policy on this subject as I am not aware of any that exist. I think this is just a matter of opinion, of which mine appears to be the minority. You won't see any reverts from me on this unless someone points out a guideline supporting my opinion. - Chris 15:41, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

It appears that there is indeed no guideline or policy on the subject. And, after reading the comments from others, I see the point in articles for smaller cities; for larger lists, categories (e.g. NYC or LA) or dedicated articles (e.g. List of people from Miami) are the way to go. Sorry for being a pill. - Chris 15:56, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Famous/Infamous residents: William Calley redux

To revisit this question: upon reviewing numerous biographical articles on William Calley, I note that there is only the slimmest of connections between Calley and Lake Worth, notwithstanding the claim above that "Calley's time in Lake Worth is a prominent part of most short bios of him". Calley graduated from high school in Miami and attended (then-)Palm Beach Junior College (PBJC) for one year. While most people in the area generally consider the college to be "in" Lake Worth (even though technically it is in an unincorporated part of the county), most people don't consider attending college somewhere for a year as making you a "resident" of that place.

After dropping out of PBJC in 1964, Calley apparently went back to Miami and drifted from job to job. He worked for the railroad that year ("He got a job in 1964 with the Florida East Coast Railroad and soon became a conductor."[1]). He then returned to Palm Beach County, including apparently a short interlude in Lake Worth proper ("Eventually Calley left Miami. ... He went to Palm Beach where he had attended school and took a job as a bellhop, later went to Lake Worth and washed dishes in a restaurant. Then he drifted westward. He became a salesman, an appraiser for an insurance company in New Orleans, still essentially rootless." [2]). He left Florida in 1965 ("In 1965, he started drifting west in a brand-new Buick Wildcat." [3]). He enlisted in the Army in New Mexico on July 26, 1966.[4]

Given that timeframe, with the second semester of college, then working on the railroad and as a bellhop all in 1964, Calley can't have spent more than a few months in Lake Worth at the dishwasher job before departing Florida in 1965.

There is really no basis upon which to call Calley a famous/infamous resident of Lake Worth, and unless someone can come up with a more convincing argument otherwise, I will remove the reference. To the extent Calley is an infamous resident of anywhere, it is Columbus, Georgia, where he has been living for the past several decades. After that, one could make a case for Miami, if one is determined to tie down someone described in most articles as "drift[ing]" and "rootless" before entering the Army.

Note that this is not an attempt to whitewash any questionable details about Lake Worth. The Charles Whitman and Mark Foley connections to the town are well-documented.

Separately, Wade Korpi should be removed from the famous/infamous residents list. I don't see how a college sophomore baseball player qualifies as "famous". If and when he goes pro, that may change. By contrast, Lake Worth High School grad Otis Thorpe, with 17 seasons in the NBA, should be on the list. Airbornelawyer 07:55, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I have added and removed some names from the list. Please note: I removed "Joseph Noto- Classical Musician" because I could find no reference to this person by searching for various permutations of the name and variants of "classical music", "music", etc. If the name was misspelled, or if there is a source I missed, please provide. I included Lake Worth native Andy Hansen, although he does not appear to have a Wikipedia page yet, because he did play 9 seasons of professional sports (albeit as a somewhat mediocre player). Hansen and Mayo Smith both went to Lake Worth High School. Although I don't believe Smith's current Wikipedia bio notes his Lake Worth connection, an October 21, 2006 Palm Beach Post column on his widow did address it.[5] Airbornelawyer 21:58, 17 January 2007 (UTC)