User talk:Aepstein607

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[edit] Welcome to the Wikipedia!

Hello, and Welcome to the Wikipedia, Aepstein607! Thanks for the contribution over on the Louis B. Marshall article. Here are a few perfunctory tips to hasten your acculturation into the Wikipedia experience:

And some odds and ends: Cite your sources, Civility, Conflict resolution, How to edit a page, How to write a great article, Pages needing attention, Peer review, Policy Library, Verifiability, Village pump, and Wikiquette; also, you can sign your name on any page by typing four tildes: ~~~~. Best of luck, Aepstein607, and most importantly, have fun! Ombudsman 19:47, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Invitation

 You're invited to be a part of WikiProject Backpacking, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to backpacking. To accept this invitation, click here!


I would also invite you to join WP:TRAILS, WikiProject Protected Areas and WP:WPNY, based on your edits.

[edit] Adirondack Park edits

Thank you for creating those articles on the wilderness areas ... I've been cleaning them up a bit, adding them to the protected areas and NY state projects etc. (For a long time there was only one NY wilderness-area article, the Slide Mountain Wilderness Area in the Catskills, which I had created. That follows project guidelines and uses the UMP heavily as a source ... you might want to follow the example in organizing any further articles on protected areas you create.

Since I mainly hike in the Catskills, I have been working on those articles, but I had started some of the High Peaks in my early days on Wikipedia. Good to see someone else taking up the slack.

You are right that the title of the Adirondack and Catskill park articles will have to change ... as section 9-0101 of the Environmental Conservation Law states, they are both simply "parks". (I hate when people say the Adirondack Park is the biggest state park in the country ... it's so not a state park in the usual sense. Both "parks" are more like national forests). The main problem was the huge list of redirects, but I have AWB now so I can fix that quickly. Maybe I should do that this weekend? Daniel Case 03:46, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Slight suggestion

Don't copy too much (like, any) text from the state's documents. It's not public domain, and it's easier to rewrite it. Otherwise it creates a lot of style violations besides the copyright violations. Daniel Case 05:22, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Ack! I assumed that a public government document was automatically in the public domain, but I now understand that's only true for federal documents. I'll check with the APA to see if there are any restrictions on how the text may be copied and adapted (Adirondack Mountain Club, for one, seems to have copied sections verbatim for their website). As for the other concerns, I agree with those too. But I do think the text provides excellent seed material to stimulate and structure further discussion. Thanks! Ari Epstein 14:56, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
I'll leave this up to assuage any concerns that might arise. I just spoke with John Banta, a counsel for the Adirondack Park Administration, and he confirmed that the State Land Master Plan is public domain although there is no explicit statement currently out there to that effect. Apparently there's bureaucracy involved in putting up such disclaimers, and concern about the need to protect some documents that contain proprietary information (particularly the maps). Still, I agree that we should work towards rewriting the articles on stylistic grounds and I will be working on that over the next month or so. Ari Epstein 15:45, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
There's some confusion as to whether some NYS docs are PD or not ... some state officials believe they are, and in some cases (GIS images that originate with the federal government) they actually are. But there has never been a statement from the legislature that they are, and barring that we cannot assume anything.

Even when it is, huge blocks of appropriated text don't make Wikipedia look good.

I'll do the move and AWB thing tonight ... it's long overdue. Daniel Case 16:29, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adirondack and Catskill Park move

Ooops. I can't just move them ... I forgot the official names already exist as redirects. Since it's against policy (and the GFDL) to change that via cut-and-paste as it leaves the article history in the wrong place, I have listed them on requested moves so that an administrator can do it. Daniel Case 14:59, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
It's all done now ... the moves and the AWBing. Daniel Case 05:38, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Further Adirondack to-dos

I have two other ideas for how we can improve the Adirondack coverage:

  • I'm planning at some point to create an .SVG location map of the Adirondack Park similar to the one I already did for the Catskill Park ... we need to give readers a clearer idea where the park is and what its bounds are than we can do with the big US locator map. Which is almost useless for showing the reader where specific management units are. So I'd also like to create one showing the boundaries of all the management units, which would then allow the creation of individual maps highlighting their locations much like we already do with counties within the state. We would use them in the infobox rather than the main US map. (And speaking of which, with a good map and picture we can also use the newer, more comprehensive {{Geobox Protected Area}}.
  • Are you planning to do articles on the wild forests and primitive areas as well? (I love that last term ... I've always half-expected that its distinguishing characteristic would be that hikers in them would be required to wear only animal skins, use stone tools, and speak to each other in monosyllabic grunts :-)). If so, we should set up a separate navbox template for the park's management areas ({{Protected Areas of New York}} is just too big to be realistically used in an article).

Let me know. Hope you're out on the trails this weekend ... wish I was. Daniel Case 16:33, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] why hello

I think I know who you are:) How's it going Ari? cOrneLlrOckEy 11:46, 1 October 2007 (UTC)