Talk:Idaho Falls, Idaho

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I think it is disputed whether Idaho Falls or Pocatello is the third-largest Idaho city, although Meridian is rapidly closing in, as is the county around Coeur d'Alene Idaho.

Idaho Falls and Pocatello tend to leapfrog each other in this regard. I'm going by the 2003 Census estimates, which places Idaho Falls (51,507) just ahead of Pocatello (51,009). Meridian (41,127) and Coeur d'Alene (37,262) are both growing fast, but still have a way to go. --Faustus37 18:39, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Find sources: Idaho+Falls — news, books, scholar Addhoc 12:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] External Links

The external links section seems to be in constant turmoil. User 'upfromdown' appears to be vandalizing, each of their only three edits on wikipedia have been the same, they replace links with the idahofalls magazine or youridahofalls url but leave the 'community discussion site' description.

User 12.165.127.150 / User:Idahofallz what you are describing is not vandalism unless you view it as such because it does not promote your personal website. Promoting your website on wikipedia is both a conflict of interest and viewed as likspam.
Notice brand new user Strawberrysweets (registered only days ago) made exact same edits as previous user upfromdown. Exact edits were very particular with deep-linking, indicating both upfromdown and strawberrysweets are same user. user Idahofallz and 12.165.127.150 are same, either way my edits are tracked to same person, so I am not trying to camouflage my edits.

For guidance, look at the city of Austin, Texas. Their page contains numerous blog and podcast links because those blogs and podcasts are specifically relevant to that city (as opposed to just being based in the city).

Idahofallz 16:23, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Repteated Linkspam by 12.165.127.150 / User:Idahofallz

User 12.165.127.150 and user User:Idahofallz have repeated placed linkspam and promoted their personal website on this city page. Placing links to your privatly owned website is in violation of wiki rules and is a blatent COI. Alternative links have been placed to both better alternatives for the represented links. This is evident as to the repeated monitoring and promotion of the Idahofallz website on this and other online sites.

If you continue to self-promote your website on this page you will be reported to wikipedia admins. Strawberrysweets 11:49, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I went to report the turmoil on this page regarding external link edit wars to the Wikipedia admins myself, and they state to first try resolving disputes via these discussion boards, so that is what I'm doing.

First, the point of this page is information on Idaho Falls. External websites are allowed on all subjects, if they link to other good information, if even commercially owned. Precedent is already well established on other city wiki pages for external links to websites about those cities.

Second, according to your logic, the only external link should be to the city's official website. The newspaper, magazine, IFz blog site, and the other sites that contain more ads than content should all be removed as they are privately owned.

Instead, you replaced the idahofallz link (which is noted for being extremely informational for people seeking Idaho Falls information, and is often cited as the best source of information on Idaho Falls) with links to two websites both privately owned and already listed (against your own logic and sloppy edit).

If you meant in your logic that linked websites should be business owned and not privately (as in citizen), then the youridahofalls website link should be removed as the rest are registered Idaho businesses (yes IdahoFallz.com is a registered Idaho business).

Third, the manner in which Strawberrysweets/Upfromdown replaced links hijacked another website's copyrighted tagline. The phrase The Idaho Falls Community Discussion Site is clearly displayed as the IdahoFallz.com tagline, and has been for nearly two years. However, this user/users edited it so the Idaho Falls Magazine discussion forums displayed the name The Idaho Falls Community Discussion Site.

So either all of the commercial links should be removed or none of them. I believe they should all be left in place, since they provide information on the city of Idaho Falls for those seeking those resources. Some have much higher ad-content ratios, but I have checked all of these and they at least provide some valid city information.

Please discuss this further before engaging in further edit wars.

Sept 11 - Edit wars continue. I left out the IdahoFallz.com site as someone said the rules prohibit discussion sites. IFz provides much local information on the city, but okay. Then the same user removed the IFz 1500+ pictures link, which was just pictures no discussion. They removed this pics link, but left the other links to clearly commercial sites.

So I decided to play their game and agree to delete all the commercial links, leaving only the official city link. What do you know, within a couple hours three of the commercial links were back (guess we narrowed down the culprit to one of those organizations). Their claim was that some of the links were useful.

Uh-uh! All or none. Or let's discuss criteria for what is actually useful information for those seeking Idaho Falls information.

I notice the person(s) performing these external link edit wars consistently fail to enter discussions on this page, despite repeated attempts to engage them, and notices in the edit remarks section asking them to discuss before making changes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.119.162.210 (talk) 00:35, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Request for comment

Regarding external links and accusations of vandalism and linkspam.

You can see the history of the Idaho Falls city article external links section has been in turmoil. Wikipedia rules on external links seem to be interpreted both conservatively and liberally. For guidance, I researched other city websites and noted liberal additions of external links to include locally-focused blogs.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the purpose of external links for a city article should be links to information that is most valuable to an uninformed person seeking information on that city? Or should external links be only to official government sources?

For instance, the Idaho Falls newspaper and Idaho Falls magazine were linked, though they do not offer their content for free online. Such links would appear to be useless for getting information related to the city of Idaho Falls.

For another instance, IdahoFallz.com was linked, which is a popular website dedicated solely to the city of Idaho Falls. Over 1500 Idaho Falls pictures, several hundred articles, and several thousand comments are featured which are focused on the city of Idaho Falls. Additionally, a live chatbox is provided, on which Idaho Falls residents talk each day and night. Many visitors seeking information about Idaho Falls have been able to visit IFz, ask questions about Idaho Falls, and have received immediate answers. Many outside visitors have remarked strongly that IdahoFallz.com was the best source they found, noting that it was even better than the city's own official website. Further evidence of the significance of IdahoFallz.com as an Idaho Falls information source is that the city newspaper and magazine editors leave occasional comments, and the Idaho Falls mayor has interviewed with the site owner.

Seems to me like IdahoFallz.com would fit the bill for being a valid information source for those seeking Idaho Falls information. There are a few Google ads, but the ad-to-content ratio is very low.

For another instance, links have been planted to youridahofalls.com and idahofallsidaho.net, both of which feature very few Idaho Falls images, and much advertising. I believe it is unlikely that these sites provide very useful information to visitors, but I have not edited them out in the past because of the liberal nature which external links are used on most other city websites.

A section of the IdahoFallz.com site is an image gallery containing over the over 1500 clear and remarkable Idaho Falls pictures displayed on the main site. This gallery site presents a clearly different interface, and focuses on simple picture display rather than any discussion. This gallery section was created because the 1500 photos are displayed randomly only two at a time in the main site, and many people requested an area they could see all the photos. I added this link since other photo sites were being added to the external links, and this Idaho Falls photo collection clearly is larger than any other source. Again, it seems to be a valid information source for someone interested in Idaho Falls.

However, lately it seems the same person or persons working together at different IP addresses keep specifically targeting the removal of the IdahoFallz.com link. You will notice some edits actually removed the IFz URL, replaced it with a dead forum at the city magazine website, and left The Idaho Falls Community Discussion Site as the display text, despite this text clearly being the copyrighted tagline for the IdahoFallz.com website. This tagline hijacking has occurred a few times now.

When someone pointed out that the external link rules prohibit linking to discussion sites, I quit trying to replace the IdahoFallz.com link. I disagreed because of the valuable content described earlier, but I decided to leave it alone for awhile.

Then I noticed the IFz gallery link was also deleted, but the youridahofalls.com and idahofallsidaho.net links were left. This move did not jive, so I replaced the IFz gallery link. I finally decided to go with the opposing sentiments that external links should not go to commercial websites, and deleted all external links besides the official city website.

Here is the evidence of Nyttend's possible conflict of interest. idahofallsidaho.net is a network of town-state websites, with numerous other city websites. I began pulling up various city article pages and noticed these commercial city-state websites were being linked also. I deleted a few of those, then noticed user Nyttend reverted at least one of those for Nampa, Idaho. It is my belief that user Nyttend may work for this company, and only wants their own commercial websites linked from city article pages.

Furthermore, I am being accused of vandalism, but I feel my efforts are in good faith (which is not vandalism as defined by Wikipedia). I have tried to engage these other users several times in this talk page, but all they do is accuse me of doing wrong.

So besides the edit war going on, we need clarification of what is acceptable for external links. Please visit these links for 10 seconds and you will see which ones look spammy. Thank you.

Well, I guess I'm being called an Essjay, since you can see that on my userpage I claim to be a college student in Pennsylvania and say nothing of working for such a company. RFC people: please check my contribution history. To my knowledge, I have never seen this website before the last few days. Please note that my reversion of the deletion of this link on the Nampa page was because, to all appearances, the IP was attempting to disrupt Wikipedia to make a point. Be well aware of this: I'm not an Idaho editor (I've only been working with Idaho to add county templates to its place articles), know very little about Idaho, and am definitely not planning to focus on it.
I have reverted the deletion of various links because I believed them to be bad-faith deletions by someone angered because their favourite link was not allowed. Let the community (or even one RFC commentor) disagree with me, and I will abide by that decision. I have, in the meantime, removed the newspaper link, since I wasn't aware that it required a subscription to do almost anything.
By the way, in case you doubt all of what I say: look at the pictures posted by Commons user Nyttend (which claims to be the same person as English Wikipedia user Nyttend), of western Pennsylvania and various places in Ohio. I cannot prove the not-working-for-the-computer-company, but you can see at least that I'm not in Idaho by the recent dates of my pictures that I have posted.
And one last thing: thanks to the IP for remaining calm in this RFC :-) Nyttend 03:44, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
I note that two commercial links have been "allowed" to remain, please look at both sites and explain why you believe those should remain but the IFz discussion site and the IFz pics-only site should not remain? What objective criteria makes these two links more useful than the removed two links? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.119.162.210 (talk) 13:22, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
  • RfC response: remove youridahofalls.com, idahofallsidaho.net, and idahofallz.com: problem solved. None of those links add anything to the article, anyway. Dlabtot 23:55, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
That's what I am saying. Either they should all be removed or none. I think some do add to this article, but if any need to be removed, then let's get them all out and only allow official city links like the city page, the zoo, library, chamber of commerce, airport, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.119.162.210 (talk) 01:43, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] No mention of SL-1 Reactor accident?

I'm surprised to see there's no mention of the 1961 incident, the first fatal nuclear accident in the United States. That seems noteworthy, especially for a town already noted for its nuclear testing station. Mcr29 (talk) 04:08, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

It didn't really affect the town so much that I know of perhaps some research is in order? I didn't even know about it till I was 20. (born in 1984). Regardless the town was pretty small at that point in time. If you can find a source or a newspaper clipping that would be awesome. We have a paper called "The Post Register" there. Perhaps someone can research it on Inter-Library Loan? Zethus (talk) 09:06, 17 March 2008 (UTC)