Talk:List of counties in Kentucky

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Contents 1 Proposed list revamp 2 Merge from List of Kentucky county name etymologies 3 Gallatin County is missing 4 Defunct County(s) 5 Do we need the maps for each county? 6 Third -- or fourth -- in number of counties...

[edit] Proposed list revamp

I was thinking about this list, and I'd like to change it to look more like this. I think the fields in the proposed list are more interesting, and perhaps more useful, as some of the data on the existing list is only current as of the 2000 census. I'm not sure how many red links we might end up with, but hopefully, not enough to prevent a featured list nomination. Please give me your feedback. Acdixon 14:46, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge from List of Kentucky county name etymologies

After I revamped this list, it contains the same information as the list being merged from and more, plus, this list is properly cited. Acdixon 04:54, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

The merge is complete. Acdixon 18:17, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Gallatin County is missing

Just letting you know! :D Ancjr 23:17, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Oops. Sorry about that. Thanks for filling in some of the info. I've added the etymology. Acdixon 14:35, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Defunct County(s)

Suggestion to add Beckham County, Kentucky and any other defunct counties. Ancjr 13:59, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I didn't even know there ever was a Beckham County, Kentucky. Where could we find a list of other such counties? I agree it would be a great addition to the list. Acdixon 14:03, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

If if hadn't been on the "articles needing and infobox" page, I'd have never found it myself. I'll keep an eye out for more definitive information re: any other defunct KY counties. Ancjr 14:45, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Do we need the maps for each county?

With the implementation of clickmaps so that an image becomes "Clickable" and someone can click on an image to go to the specific location, I think the extra maps for each county become superfluous. When I put the clickmap in I removed the individual county images because the page will load a lot faster and is more accessbible for people on slow connections. Someone else has put them back because they feel it is important to leave them. My thought is that they are now superfluous since someone can locate a county by name or by location on the map.

When the capability for clickable maps was unavailable in Wikipedia, the use of a map on each individual county was a reasonable solution. But now, since there is a full-size map with each county labeled, I think putting the map on each county is no longer required.

I have a DSL connection and even after 45 seconds all of the images had not yet loaded. Now, someone using a modem would probably find the page load time impossible. Plus, to get all those image maps Wikimedia has to make 120 database dips and the user's browser has to make 120 image requests to get them, then resize each image to fit. So I'd like to get some kind of consensus because I think, now that we have a clickable map, mapping each individual county is now unnecessary. I also think the clickable map should be placed at the top of the page. I'm admitting that there may be someone who has a good reason to argue otherwise, and I'd like to hear it. Paul Robinson (Rfc1394) 19:36, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

There probably is a decent argument for putting the map at the top (and probably an equally good argument for putting it at the bottom), but I'm still in favor of the individual county maps for this reason – if you're looking for where a particular county is, it saves you from searching the whole map. This is especially helpful since there are 120 counties. I've lived in Kentucky for all but 15 months of my life, and I still find myself asking "We have a _______ County? Where is it?" LOL Acdixon 21:04, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree the main map could at the top (under the lead) or at the bottom - either is fine. However, I agree with Acdixon taht we should retain individual maps. They allow users to instantly see where in Kentucky any county is. This is particularly important with 120 counties (the 3rd highest of any US state). At the other extreme, the corresponding Delaware list is fine without a map per county.

WIth regard to load times... with my connection (on the far side of the Atlantic), it took 45 seconds, of which 5 seconds were the big map at the bottom. Yes, this is a long time, but Kentucky is an extreme case. Don't forget that the WP servers cache thumbnails, and so it only imposes a load if someone changes the image sizes. Tompw (talk) 11:18, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Cost/Benefit: It'd be detrimental to the page to eliminate the thumbnails - the uniqueness of this page lies in its images. The load time is worth the wait. And as a side note, caching helps with Wikipedia's internal server load, not page load times per se. Ancjr 13:23, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Third -- or fourth -- in number of counties...

Something that might bear mentioning somewhere in the article:

One list at County (United States) shows Kentucky as having the fourth largest number of counties. This article says third. A quick look shows why: Virginia, in one sense, has 95 counties. But Viriginia has 134 county-equivalents in the political sense (their independent cities are politically equivalent to counties and are not politically part of any county). Hence the discrepency.

Not sure what I'm trying to propose, but it is confusing to read in one place that KY has the third largest number of counties and in another the fourth...

--tilthouse 18:35, 20 March 2007 (UTC)