Talk:Colstrip, Montana
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Welcome to the discussion on Colstrip Montana's wikipedia page. I am Matrix07, a former resident (and frequent returnee) to Colstrip.
[edit] Dialog between P.primo(talk) and Ltvine(talk) regarding edits to Colstrip
The following dialog is copied in time sequence from each user's talk page.
I reverted your edits to Colstrip Montana. I grew up in Colstrip and put the external links there for a reason - it is difficult to find good information online for Colstrip. In general your edits across Montana web pages are probably a service because they were not maintained, but this one is being maintained. P.Primo
- I see that you reverted my edits to Colstrip, Montana because you felt that inclusion of all the external links was valid. I'll let those stand. However, in the process of reversion, you also reverted other edits that you did not argue against. For instance, the creation of a thumbnail of the full size photo in the article and the inclusion of a 'Notes and references' section were also done away with by reversion. I assume because you did not mention these you view them as valid. I'll put these other edits back in place. -- Ltvine | Talk 19:09, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
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- Update from 15 FEB 08
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- I reverted your image edits. The text describing Castle Rock Lake goes with the picture. There is nothring wrong with the larger picture of the lake at the bottom of the wiki page, other locations have done similar - see the page for Stanford University... The image of the Colstrip sign belongs at the front (start) of the page - this is the City of Colstrip's sign. Also the links for the Gazeteer and U.S. census that you have added are not specific to Colstrip when you follow them, so I have removed them. You may want to check this for the other Montana towns you have edited, the link is most likely not specific to those towns either... —Preceding unsigned comment added by P.primo (talk • contribs) 03:35, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
End of copied dialog from user talk pages
As it appears P.primo and I are in the midst of a developing disagreement concerning the Colstrip, Montana page, I have copied our discussion specific to this article from each of our talk pages and added it above for reference. This way other interested editor's may make informed comments and be a party to the discussion.
In replying to User:P.primo's latest specific reversions, I offer the following arguments.
- "text describing Castle Rock Lake goes with the picture."
Granted, no dispute. Wikipedia articles always read better to me when pictures are placed near the text that describes them, or vice versa.
- "There is noth[]ing wrong with the larger picture of the lake at the bottom of the wiki page, other locations have done similar - see the page for Stanford University"
I dispute this contention and rely on Wikipedia's Manual of Style guidelines for images which can be found at WP:MOS#Images and state that these "guidelines should be followed in the absence of a compelling reason to do otherwise". They address specifying thumbnail size. It is not necessary in most cases because a reader can specify a thumbnail size in their user preferences--the default being 180px. Cases where forcing a thumbnail size is appropriate include (a) images with extreme aspect ratios, (b) detailed maps, diagrams, or charts, (c) images in which a small region is relevant, but cropping to that region would reduce the coherence of the image, (b) a lead image that captures the essence of the article. In addition "some users . . . configure their system to display large text; forced large thumbnails . . . leaves little width for text, making reading [for those users] difficult."
You have forced the photo of Castle Rock Lake to a thumb size of 800px. What is your compelling reason for doing this? An 800px thumb size does not appear to be appropriate given that it is not of an extreme aspect ratio, nor is it of a map, diagram or chart. It also does not appear that "a small region is relevant", or "that cropping would reduce the coherence of the image" since both the text and the caption refer the the lake which is the major subject of the picture.
Futher, you rely on an example in the Stanford University article as support for your forcing a thumb size to 800px. In reviewing that article I noticed that the editors there do indeed appear to force images to a particular size, but without a compelling reason as the majority of images there are photos of typical aspect ratio. For these I edited the article to follow the guidelines. The two exceptions in the Stanford article are the image in the {{Template:Infobox_University}} which appears to require a forced thumb size to display properly and the panorama which uses the {{Template:wide image}}, a specific template for panoramic type images. This template responds to the width of each reader's browser and provides a scrollbar to pan through the image. Is this the image you were referring to in the Stanford article? Using this template for your Castle Rock Lake image would allow readers to pan through it, but I believe that using a non-forced thumb size is the solution because it still allows users to easily see the full size image by clicking on the thumbnail rather than scrolling through it in a panorama window.
- "The image of the Colstrip sign belongs at the front (start) of the page - this is the City of Colstrip's sign."
Agree in part, Dispute in part. While I agree this image could work as a lead image for the article, it should not supersede the {{Template:Infobox Settlement}} or come after the lead paragraph in the layout. The {{Template:Infobox Settlement}} provides a place for a skyline image and caption. And its evident from the two photos that Colstrip has a unique skyline. I believe the image should be cropped in width and placed inside the {{Template:Infobox Settlement}} for that reason--because it illustrates the city's skyline, not because there's an a "Welcome to Colstrip" sign in it. (Which, by the way, is illegible even in the full size image).
- "Also the links for the Gazeteer and U.S. census that you have added are not specific to Colstrip when you follow them, so I have removed them. You may want to check this for the other Montana towns you have edited, the link is most likely not specific to those towns either..."
I dispute this contention. Back in late January and early February there was a nomination and subsequent discussion for the deletion (TfD) of the template ({{Template:GR}}) that produced geographic references in thousands of articles related to U.S. places. You can find the nomination and discussion here. Along with all those other thousands of articles, Colstrip, Montana also references this template. The reason for the nomination was because it controvened the principle of avoiding self referencing. A compromise was reached and the {{Template:GR}} was recoded to remove self-referencing. But, as a consequence articles that did not include <ref></ref> tags do not show the relevant external references. Colstrip contains the Geographic references {{GR|1}} and {{GR|2}}, but the references won't show up unless <ref></ref> is included in a 'References' section or a template like {{Template:reflist}} which uses <ref></ref> is included to produce references. Now, I'm not a template coder so this is the best explanation I can produce, but I do know that it is completely legitimate and required for verifiability's sake to include a 'References' section.
I'm currently in the process of supplying {{Template:reflist}} to all Montana cities and counties which invariably use the Geographic references called in {{Template:GR}} in lieu of a bot coming along and doing the same thing.
As to your contention that you removed them because they aren't specific to Colstrip, I say the two referenced sources--the US Gazetteer ({{GR|1}}) and American FactFinder by the U.S. Census Bureau ({{GR|2}}) do contain the referenced facts for location and population respectively. There is no way for readers of the article to refer to these sources or others until my earlier edit is restored.
Now, having said all this, I'm not going to revert any of the edits related to these issues because I believe its fair and demonstrates good faith to allow for a timely response--at least a week but not more than two weeks. And making that response here will allow other editors to add their voices should they care to. In addition, I really hope to gain more input from you User:P.primo and other Montanans on other articles related to the Montana WikiProject. I'll put a note on your talk page that I replied to your latest comments here. Thanks for reading all this, and best wishes. -- Ltvine | Talk 22:57, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
- Not wanting to get into this too deeply, but I thought I would say that Ltvine's explanations and reasonings seem thoroughly sound to me. In its current form, the article needs some substantiative format and content edits; for now, though, I've just added an "External links" template to the article, since the number of those clearly should be pared down. Pitamakan (talk) 23:04, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
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- P.Primo - As mentioned before, the external links on Colstrip are not excessive. Compare them to the external links for the Bozeman Wiki page, which Pitamakan has been editing. Indeed, both of you have a huge list of contributions across many topics and most towns in Montana, which is to be commended, but also indicates your roles as editors, and not content providers. If you look at my contributions, they are focused just on Colstrip, and way less than 500. Do not confuse the volume of contributions with lack of expertise. I have been involved with the Internet and various forums since 1983... There does have to be compromise between wide-spread editors and actual content providers.... By way of compromise I have shrunk the Colstrip Castle Rock Lake picture to 256px on the right for LtVine.
