Talk:Diplomatic missions of the United States

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[edit] United States diplomatic missions

Shouldn't we put this article under "United States", not "American", seeing as American encompasses the entirety of two continents, whereas this article relates to only one country on one of those continents. I know making the move will be a pain, but I think it will better express what the article is about. Clarkefreak ∞ 19:42, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

People commonly understand 'American' in the context of nationality as referring to the United States. Kransky 10:34, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Nonetheless, there's something to be said for consistency. MrZaiustalk 20:10, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
See Cleanup MrZaiustalk 04:29, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Afghanistan's regional location was incorrectly listed

The country was listed as being in the Middle East, which it's actually situated in Southwest Asia. I fixed it. Shadowrun 23:53, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

For the other 160+ articles Afghanistan is considered to be in the Middle East. There is no definition of what countries are in the Middle East; if you feel strong about this, could you please modify all the other articles. Kransky 04:39, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Actually, there's a ton of these that look a little odd. For instance, Kyrgystan is listed as part of Europe. Do we have a source we can use to explain that in the LEAD, or should we go with a more conventional layout? MrZaiustalk 02:36, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

The current article suffers from image overload and consists mainly of lengthy lists that make poor use of whitespace. Would make a lot of sense to break into columned lists and sort images by continent, much like List of whisky brands is divided by nation. As part of that cleanup, we probably also ought to sort the images by continent. Any objections? MrZaiustalk 20:13, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Seeing none, made the proposed edit to Europe. Comments or concerns? MrZaiustalk 02:31, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Boldly made with the proposed edit throughout. Article was previously swimming in images, so much so that it was in violation of my reading of the WP:MoS and was slowing the rendering of the page considerably over slow Internet connections, I'd imagine. Also adjusted name to match usage throughout wiki. Cleanup complete. Only major question I have is this: Is it "Consulate-Generals" in the plural or "Consulates-General"? MrZaiustalk 04:29, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Got an informal answer on that last from Consul (representative). MrZaiustalk 04:39, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Hi Mr Zaius,

I notice you are new here. Firstly, before trying to redo a completely new standard, notice that we have been using the same style for 171 other articles. You might want to see what is being done before suggesting something new. And when you want to get a consensus from other users, try waiting perhaps a bit longer than four hours (as your postings at 20:13 22 July and 02:31 23 July suggest). I propose that the article is renamed back to American diplomatic missions and is reverted back to the last edit by Krokodyl on 19:33, 22 July 2007 Kransky 14:33, 24 July 2007 (UTC) (UTC)

Hello

Having seen the new 'Cleanup' on American diplomatic missions I agree with Kransky that it should be reverted back to the last edit by Krokodyl on 19:33, 22 July, 2007. Unless the new user tends to redo the other 171 other articles, I suggest that we keep it consistent. User:Aquintero82 09:19, 24 July, 2007

In no sense am I new here. That said, the style of this article was something of a mess. I understand your concerns about the move, and that should have been given more time, but, in my previous experience, positive changes like the stylistic changes this are normally welcomed - WP:BOLD et al. If all the other articles were formatted in the manner that this one was on 22 July, then they should probably be updated as well for readability's sake. The ultimate goal of this article, like any other list, should be reaching Featured List status, which would never have happened in the old format, with its ineffective use of whitespace and huge mess of images. Temporary consistency in a cat isn't nearly as important as moving towards compliance with Wikipedia:Featured_list_criteria. The image bloat of this page (which was restored by the addition of the gallery) and the former poor use of white space seem at odds with the criteria calling for a list to be "well-constructed." Also, I wouldn't mind helping with the other 171, but it'll obviously take some time - Gotta start somewhere and all that. MrZaiustalk 18:31, 24 July 2007 (UTC) PS: I've undone the move, but these articles are plainly lists. I haven't found any with considerable prose content outside of the lead. To introduce the word "list" into the name was a positive change, as was the change to the more clear country name rather than the denomyn, called for by at least one other editor above. There are several other articles in this cat that use the country name, such as the two Koreas and Chinas. As such, I must say that I am slightly offended by the tone of this conversation. Could have undone the apparently controversial move and called for it to be proposed again without invoking this tone.
MrZaius - I assumed you were new because I had not seen your name associated with any of these articles. This doesn't in any way mean your contributions should be devalued, or that styles should remain permanently in stone but it might help your case if you seek a consensus first from the other contributors who had made a body of work. So don't expect anything other than an "offensive" tone when you give existing contributors four hours in the middle of the night to respond to a totally new direction.
Saying that, there are indeed consistency issues that have arisen over the last twelve months and are outstanding, if minor ('Consulate General' vs 'Consulate-General' vs 'consulate general' etc.) or major (I lumped Kyrgyzstan with Europe as it is a member of the OSCE) . Or what denonym to use. In fact when I started I used "List of...", but dropped it after some articles attracted had a substantial amount of prose.
However there are many aspects of your new model I take issue with. It is easier to read one mission per line, listed hierarchically city-country-continent, than dumping cities after each other as you have. I fail to see what is annoying about the 'ineffective' use of whitespace - it is a list, designed to be easier to read, not a work of art (look at Lufthansa destinations, not too ugly to look at hey?). I also wonder about putting a gallery at the bottom of the page (I've seen criticism of the practice in other articles), as the photos are supposed to complement the information as they appear, and not appear as a collection at the bottom of the page.
MrZaius, I seek your concurrence with reverting the page back to what it was before. Then if you have good ideas for these articles, and are prepared to do the hard work making the changes, then tell us what you think Kransky 11:48, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
A couple of quick points - It was hardly a "totally new direction", it was a mere stylistic adjustment. The only substantive changes that I made to the actual content was to add two lines to the lead and pick a consistent way to write Consulate-General - Both of the ones you mentioned were previously in use in the article, and at least one (Vietnam) was falsely referred to as an embassy in a piped link. I and a handful of anons I've shown the article to agree that the layout is superior when compacted and not leaving the huge gaps between the text and graphical content/not requiring the user to scroll through 10 pages of content (according to my print preview) to get a feel for the text. The use of columns and tables is quite common, and the lack thereof and inneffective use of whitespace is not at all an uncommon complaint - Even if a list isn't a "work of art", it should still have an effective, professional layout. The consistency issues that you bring up about consistency of language does seem important to me, but much more so than stylistic consistency, especially if this were merely the start of a rewrite for the entire cat. Check out the variance in Category:Software comparisons et al. Again, the ultimate goal should be reaching FL status, not stylistic consistency with its peers, although I should point out once more that I am perfectly willing to help populate these changes throughout the rest of the cat.
On a related note, you said that the photos are supposed to "complement the information as they appear", but in this case some 25 photos were all just dumped in the lead. The first handful were sorted alphabetically, and the rest added willy-nilly to the tail of the list, resulting, among other things, in bunched edit links and a complete lack of cohesion with the text. They weren't even sorted by continent, so they were hardly complementing the associated prose. If anything, they are far closer to the goal you state now, as I had taken roughly half of them and placed them in the associated sections and used as many as physically possible without bunched edit links and without bleeding over into other continents at a wide-screen resolution, which is somewhat less forgiving than a standard 4:3. On the gallery at the bottom of the page, you will note that that was introduced by Krokydyl, apparently trying to preserve the 13 images that didn't fit and introducing one other that, I must say, was a very good image for the LEAD. I don't agree that the others, located in the gallery, are important enough to warrant pushing the page size up as high as it is - The text is some 73K when rendered as HTML, which is normal enough, but the total page inclusive of pictures, is over 638524 according to what I got from a wget -E -H -k -K -p http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=American_diplomatic_missions - That's big enough that, over a dialup connection, this page would currently take some 2 minutes and 30 seconds to download, assuming a connection rate very near 56kbps. It is not unreasonable to expect that that would be halved by striking the gallery, if there's any other interest in doing so. MrZaiustalk 12:42, 25 July 2007 (UTC) PS: I've also corrected for a number of places where unwarranted capitalization of the word embassy was used in captions and made a number of other minor factual and MoS-minded grammatical fixes that would be undone by the suggested revert.
There is a practical use to listing one mission per line - easier to count and organise. I also doubt that it is Wikipedia practice to dump pics as a gallery at the bottom of the page like what Krokydyl did. One problem arises is that if we have more pics than states it is harder to fit pics in (especially if they are sorted by continent - greater risk that they may not fit). Why not add the pics in on the right margin as they were before - making them smaller as they are should make them load quicker.
Otherwise I agree that there have been inconsistencies (embassy vs Embassy which is worth worrying about, and the order of pictures which perhaps is more trivial).
I will also fix the text in the main body. The sentence The United States no longer maintains embassies in Cuba and Iran, although it does maintain "Interests Sections" in Iran and Cuba sounds clumsy. Several facts mentioned are not as uniquely applicable to the US, and thus are not worth including (such as the accreditation of the US Ambassador to Andorra). aNote also the US is served by a full Ambassador in Hanoi, not a Consul. Kransky 13:06, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
My main thought with the lead was to try to summarize some of the notes from the Ambassadors list, but, as such, they are somewhat redundant. On converting the pics from the gallery to thumbnails, that would prevent sorting, as the Europe section has far, far too many pics here. With the current layout, we can't have any more than we do as thumbnails, as stated above. 20+ pics on a list is really just too many pics. See my comment above about total size. The bulk of them just simply aren't necessary, and represent similar architectural styles. I'd say we're better off with sorted images and axing half of 'em. MrZaiustalk 13:52, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Can see merit in limiting number of pics - you choose which ones are noteworthy or particuarly attractive. Can you revert to one mission per line please. Kransky 16:35, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
I'd really like to get a third opinion on that before reverting - I still feel the columned layout is considerably more functional, makes more effective use of whitespace, etc. The only other editor that has weighed in on the issue seemed primarily concerned with consistency across the cat and didn't seem to express any thoughts about the new layout being a positive or negative change if populated throughout the cat. MrZaiustalk 16:43, 28 July 2007 (UTC) PS: Just to be perfectly clear, I'm willing to take on a goodly chunk of the leg work, updating the layout of the other related pages as well.
Hello

I believe the new layout is too clustered. If I were a to see the page for the first time I'd think that it was sort of confusing. Also, the idea of pictures on the side do give an idea of what an American Embassy looks like in a certain country in order to give the reader a sence of what to expect if ever they came to see that certain building. I also see some of the information to be misleading. For example: the US has 4 consulates-general in Mexico, and 5 consulates. There are also 6 consulates-general in Canada and one consulate in Winnipeg, and so on... User:Aquintero82 22:04, 28 July, 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand what you mean by your comment about "misleading" information. No substantive changes were made. To respond to your comment about the images, no, that is not the purpose of the photos - This is not an advertisement for the State department. They are there to simply illustrate the article, nothing more. To add a completely exhaustive image gallery would render the page completely unusable over a slow connection. MrZaiustalk 14:34, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
MrZaius (I thought it was DrZaius?): how does putting cities altogether make the list more 'functional'? one city-one row makes it easier to read, count, compare and order entries. Whatever advantage your style has would have to be weighed against the effort required for us to make the change to 171 articles. 'Effective use of whitespace?' Not sure what aethetic advantage this will bring if the list of missions are all clustered together. Sorry, not convinced. Kransky 08:26, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
It actually was DrZaius up until probably ~2001, but I was getting a lot of name collisions. I still disagree that the page is more useful or easier to read without the columns, but seeing no support for the current layout, I will not object if you change it back. Note that again straight-up revert would be a mistake as there were a handful of errors that would be restored - The page is more correct now than it was when I began the 3-4 hour process to tidy things up. MrZaiustalk 14:34, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for being agreeable. I will change it back manually, as opposed to a total revert, to include worthwhile changes you made. Kransky 14:43, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Links to Articles on Embassies

As the number of articles on individual US diplomatic missions grows, perhaps a link could be made in the body to the appropriate article rather than going to the ==See Also== section to look is an article exists? Maybe something like:

Mikebar 16:33, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Virtual Presence Posts

It might be helpful if the list included US Virtual Presence Posts as listed in article Office of eDiplomacy. WHile we're at it, it might be helpful to flag the posts that have been designated American Presence Posts also. Mikebar 16:33, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if VPPs should make the cut. They really are nothing more than fancy web pages - no office, no phones, no dedicated email or staff (even sattelite in an other area). Having a web page that says a city's name is not the same as an actual staffer. Bevinbell 03:03, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
No. We don't include honorary consulates, which are a more substantial level of representation than websites. Kransky (talk) 06:45, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Lingayen Phillipines

No reference on the Department of State website - please provide reference or links will be reverted. Mikebar (talk) 06:38, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tonga

No mention on http://suva.usembassy.gov/ or on internal documents - need a source. Mikebar (talk) 07:54, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

  • [www.radioaustralia.net.au/news/stories/200805/s2247365.htm] Kransky (talk) 08:05, 20 May 2008 (UTC)