Talk:Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

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  1. August 2006 – August 2006

Contents

[edit] To Do list

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Thank you. This article is shaping up pretty well, and we'll be seeking Featured article status soon. With your help, we'll all have something to be proud of! ClairSamoht 01:22, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

I'm marking this as in need of cleanup due to style changes and additions that make the article tone inappropriate in some cases and make it feel like advertising in others. More care needs to taken with content and form to prevent this. --Improv 01:27, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

  • Thanks - could you please give some specific examples of each (inappropriate and advertising)? Ruhrfisch 03:33, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
    • The problems are spread pretty well throughout the whole article. A few to highlight:
    • Poor style in the history section: ..and Matthias Kreider was known to be in the area as early as 1691,[11] but there's no evidence anyone actually settled in Lancaster County..
    • Poor grammar: Governing the new county was a challenge. When solution were arrived it, they set a pattern followed..
    • Bragging about stuff invented in the region
    • Population growth section has poorly structured clauses: The Roman Catholic church created a hispanic diocese[57] but the School District of Lancaster, with 52.3% hispanic students,[58] is struggling.[59]
    • The tourism section is a rambling mess with entirely the wrong tone, part of it sounding like a cheap television documentary, e.g. "Enter Harrison Ford", part of it advertisement like the McCormak quote.
    • The article is very well sourced, and that's quite cool, but I think it's full of stuff that needs to be trimmed out and reworked by someone with a good command of English. I may do it myself, although whoever added a lot of the stuff to it probably will be disappointed at how much I'm going to trim. --Improv 12:48, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
A nomadic hunter/gatherer is not a settler. A settler is someone who settles down at a fixed location. Kreider may have been the first white man in the area, but unless he actually settled someplace, members of the Herr community were probably the first settlers. Would you recommend listing Kreider as a settler, even though that's not true? Would you recommend simply mentioning the Herr community as the first settlers, giving the false impression that nobody had been here before?
I'm not sure where you got the idea that listing a cheap cigar, notorious for the foul funk it exudes, is bragging. It's history, no more, no less.
Some organizations have coped with the growth of hispanics better than others. The Census didn't gather data in 1960 on hispanics, which is why there aren't better stats on their growth. And SDL, which cannot legally create special facilities just for hispanics by dint of the "equal protection of the laws" clause, isn't faring as well as private organizations like the Roman Catholic Church, which is trying to accomodate a need, and most protestant churches, who are pretending the need doesn't exist. Follow the link, and you'll see that SDL has a goal of not meeting the educational needs of students until 2014, and they're skeptical they can actually meet that goal. Given that there's been some improvement, calling it an abject failure is pretty POV, but they certainly aren't setting the world on fire. Struggling seems pretty NPOV to me.
The tourism industry isn't a bunch of people coping with strangers who are stranded here because their transmissions failed. They market the idea of visiting the county. Talking about tourism without discussing the focus of advertising is like talking about McDonalds without discussing food. And you can't ignore tourism as a major economic factor. Tourism is the second-largest industry in Pennsylvania, and Lancaster County is a big part of it.
After the Interstate system made the Lincoln Highway obsolete, after the gas crisis, after TMI, the local tourism industry was dying. Harrison Ford was viewed as the savior by the industry (and I admit, a nude-to-the-waist Kelly McGillis and some earthy joking intrigued people with the notion that the Plain weren't necessarily prudish.) Wikipedia:What is a good article? demands compelling prose, not mind-numbing sawdust.
The gist of the tourism narrative is that the industry has its ups and down, and the industry has gone through a sea change, and is currently in a down phase. However, there's no consensus that the industry will remain down, and the McCormack quote is necessary to make the article NPOV.
Full of stuff that needs to be trimmed out? To qualify for "Good Article" status, the article requires broad coverage of the topic. "Featured Article" status, which I'm hoping to eventually achieve, goes further, requiring comprehensive coverage. Removing items because they don't agree with your particular personal bias is vandalism, sir. Let's work through consensus. ClairSamoht 16:13, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
You may want to check up on how we define vandalism here -- I think you're using the term incorrectly. Removing items because they're inappropriate/poorly written/etc is the basis of editing (in the editorial sense), and makes articles better. This article feels nowhere near the quality needed for featured article status - it has the problems I've listed above, along with several others. NPOV is not purely about what is phrased -- it can also cover situations relating to what is covered. I'll make a try at cleaning this up sometime soonish -- let me know if you think it makes the article better. --Improv 19:57, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
  • I tried my hand at cleaning up the history section. What do you think? It needs more and mroe recent history. Do you think each Township name needs to be wiki linked? Ruhrfisch 14:56, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
If I may make a suggestion, use the <ref=name> citation format to combine several citations inside a single sentence, then you can put all the citations for a sentence in a single citation which will go at the end of a sentence. This should lower the density without comprimising reference quality. Homestarmy 14:43, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

From the tourism section: "Tourism is a significant industry in Lancaster County, employing 47,000 and producing more economic activity in 2004 than the entire McDonald's chain."

Not only is this an unorthodox yardstick of economic activity, but I doubt it. McDonalds' annual revenue for 2005 was over US$20 billion; Lancaster County tourism seems to have only brought in a little under US$4 billion in 2004. I'm removing the claim. --Andymussell 21:57, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

The article could use a good round of copy-editing. The flow of the narrative is quite broken up, especially in the History section. I just fixed a sentence that had no verb, but the bigger issues are beyond my current awakeness level. I'd suggest reordering the subsections as 1) Natives, 2) Boundaries, 3) Slavery and the Christiana incident (definitely needs work within it), 4) 19th century statesmen and 5) 2006 Amish School Shooting (which should be killed off in a few months, because while it was tragic I don't see any evidence that it was encyclopedic). I'd move religion out to be a separate section at the same level as History, given the general attention of tourists to the Amish & Mennonites. GRBerry 03:19, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Massively over footnoted

This page is massivly overfootnoted, making it nearly unreadable. JBKramer 13:50, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The effect is almost one of academic parody, and very distracting. --ScottMainwaring 15:02, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Not only that, some of the "facts" are wrong and when you look at the source, it does not even agree. For example, the article says in the first paragraph that the Amish and Mennonites immigrated to Pennsylvania in the 19th century. However, I know that the vast majority immigrated in the 18th century. When I checked the source, it said this "Some Amish migrated to the United States, starting in the early 18th century". By the way, the source was from the internet and was a site dedicated to religions in general and not specifically to the Amish (the type of source that typically could have false information itself. So the wrong fact which is footnoted does not even agree with its source, and the source is from the internet on a site not even dedicated to the subject matter at hand! Stettlerj 17:15, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
I have added cleanup tag. To my taste this article must be cut down or split, and the number of footnotes have to be at least halved. Unfortunately overly long and overly referenced articles seem to be a systemic problem in Wikipedia. (Igny 19:00, 29 September 2006 (UTC))
  • I checked 21 random articles (1 was a disambiguation, so I didn't count it). 70% had nothing labeled as a reference or footnote or source (of these 7 (35%) had no references or external links, 7 (35%) had only external links (but at least there's something outside the article referred to)). Of the 6 that had references (30%), 4 (20%) had only one reference and 2 (10%) had two references. Some of the articles with refs also had external links, but I did not keep track of that. Given the fact that verifiability is supposed to be a key factor in Wikipedia articles, I think complaints about too many references are a bit misplaced, don't you?
  • By the way, we are working on splitting out parts of this article. See Transportation in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania for a start. Any help on editing would be appreciated. Yours, Ruhrfisch 16:07, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't think the complaint is about too many references in Wikipedia, which clearly isn't the problem, but their uneven distribution such that this article has so many that it gets in the way of readability. I.e., "Wikipedia has too few" and "this article has too many" aren't logically inconsistent. --ScottMainwaring 17:47, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
    • I agree that both are problems (and I have tried to do some clean up of excessive refs on this article in the past, see [1] for example). It just seems to me that no refs at all in something like 2/3 of the articles is a far bigger problem than too many in a very few articles. I would compare it to having no roof on a house vs. too many Christmas lights. If I had to choose, I would rather have this problem. I will work to make the refs here conform to accepted density / style. Thanks, Ruhrfisch 23:10, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree, and had given up even trying to read, let alone contribute, to this and the city article. Below is a good example of the level of footnoting gone amok (note the triple footnote): "As of 2000, Lancaster city is more hispanic (30.8% hispanic) than Philadelphia (8.5%) or New York City (27.0%).[67][68][69]." Hillsboro 20:14, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

  • First off, I put the sentence in question into that form last night. It used to read "Today, Lancaster city is more hispanic than Philadelphia (8.5% hispanic)[73] or New York City (27.0%).[74]" I thought it best to put the actual % hispanic number for Lancaster in, and moved all of the references (footnotes) to the end of the sentence (as the text seems to read better when footnotes are not breaking up the sentences). There are three separate % numbers that need to be referenced, from three different (though related) sources. This data (% hispanic in a city) needs a reference as it is not common knowledge, and if I reference one, I have to reference all three. I think I can combine the three into one reference giving all three sources and will try that next, but last night I was more focused on checking refs and moving them to the end of sentences / paragraphs for readability. Ruhrfisch 23:20, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:LancasterCountyHeart.jpg

Image:LancasterCountyHeart.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 22:45, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Outdated Information on Governmental Officials

The paragraph under "Government" listing the various governmental officials in the County dates at least to pre-Novemver 2007 and needs updating. Matt2h (talk) 14:23, 3 April 2008 (UTC)