User talk:Maggiecattwo

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[edit] Welcome to Wikipedia!!!

Hello Maggiecattwo! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. If you decide that you need help, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. You may also push the signature button Image:Wikisigbutton.png located above the edit window. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. This is considered an important guideline in Wikipedia. Even a short summary is better than no summary. Below are some recommended guidelines to facilitate your involvement. Happy Editing! -- Kukini 21:39, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
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[edit] on changing links to New England town

I'm curious if the change over from town to hundreds of links to New England town have been done manually. Quite a bit a work. Wow. Yellowdesk 01:18, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes. I've been working on them a little at a time when I get a chance. Up to this point, I've done all five counties in RI; all of Barnstable, Bristol, Dukes, Essex, Franklin, Hampden and Hampshire counties, MA; and started Middlesex County, MA. The "List of New England towns" page has links for every town, county-by-county, so I've been working off of that. In addition to what I've done, someone else who I've had no direct interaction with did all of Berkshire County, MA, and Ripogenus77 (who has posted on the New England town talk page) has done some towns in ME. (I've also done a couple of scattered towns in MA outside of the above counties, and I think there was one town in one of the above-noted MA counties that had already been linked by someone else before I got to it.)
Do you know of any way to automate this process? If not, feel free to pick a county.... MCT 02:42, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
I don't personally know, but I have the impression from what I've seen on a few history pages that it's possible to take a list of pages, search for the appropriate section, insert a line, and then manually save it, if it looks right. Javascript probably. Similar to what administrators use when reverting a lot of vandalism over many pages. When I next encounter that kind of thing, I'll post it here. - Yellowdesk 01:06, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Just noticed that Brighton had changed in Essex County, Vermont. I can probably do Orleans County if you want. I would think this would be hard to automate due to difficulty in determining exact word "town" in the underlying text without something else piped in before it that might be something other than "New England town." There has got to be a lot of this type of change that needs to be made. I was intending to put it on the Vermont discussion page, but I doubt that the county editors all monitor that. Putting it (with a bot) on the county discussion pages might inform people it needed to be done. Not that anyone would actually do it though!  :Student7 01:49, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
Okay. Just changed Orleans County Vermont towns. Not much help, but a little. Thanks for your great idea!Student7 02:12, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
I suggest going to Wikipedia:Bot_requests. Somebody can write a tool with the purpose of fulfilling this task for you. I probably could myself, but it would be a long way away in happening. Autocracy 00:04, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Groton Long Point

You may be interested in the discussion about the legal status of Groton Long Point at Talk:Groton Long Point, Connecticut. Any additional information you may have would be very helpful. Thanks. --Polaron | Talk 16:49, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

A few comments on that and related items:
1) I saw the information that you posted at Talk:Borough (Connecticut) concerning the dates of incorporation/disincorporation of boroughs in Connecticut. I will incorporate that information into the "Historical U.S. Census Totals" pages (e.g., Historical U.S. Census Totals for New Haven County, Connecticut). Where did you find all that?
Most of the incorporation years I got from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, which lists many borough incorporation dates. (There were 26 boroughs at that time). Some of the other ones I got from three journal articles. I should probably add these references in the borough article. Some of the post 1910 disincorporation dates were from your Historical Census series.
Most of the post-1920 incorporation and disincorporation years in the Historical Census series articles are from the Census reports themselves. Sometimes the Census didn't provide an exact year, however (in a few cases, they didn't even provide any ackowledgement or explanation that a borough had disappeared from the Census); the 1960, 1970 and 1980 reports in particular make no attempt to provide years at all (all information in those reports concerning municipality changes is in the form of "Xville borough disincorporated since the 1970 Census" or something along those lines). Other data was obtained from the current online version of the Connecticut State Register & Manual, but its coverage of incorporation and disincorporation dates for boroughs and cities not currently in existence is hit-or-miss (mostly miss, especially the ones that have been gone for a long time). MCT 16:15, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
2) The discussion about Groton Long Point is interesting, but I don't really have any direct knowledge of Groton Long Point. It sounds similar to the municipalities in Massachusetts that call themselves "towns" but are considered to legally be "cities" by some elements within state government. Groton Long Point apparently considers itself to be a special-purpose district but some apparently consider it to be legally a borough. I will update the Historical U.S. Census Totals for New London County, Connecticut page to reflect this issue.
I would think the distinction between a borough and a special-purpose district is that a borough could theoretically do pretty much anything a town could do (even though any given borough may not exercise all of the powers theoretically available to it) while a special-purpose district would be restricted by its charter (or by the act creating it, etc.) to perform only certain prescribed functions. From a Census standpoint, the distinction is more important than the town/city distinction in Massachusetts because it determines whether the Census keeps data for an entity at all. The Census Bureau tabulates data for boroughs (and recognizes them as "incorporated places") because they are "general-purpose" municipalities.
I believe that I got the 1990 incorporation date for Groton Long Point from Census materials, but from the discussion it sounds like it may have been in existence as an entity prior to that, and 1990 is simply when it became recognized as a borough by the state (or possibly even just when the Census Bureau caught wind that the state considered it to be a borough).
The legal status of Groton Long Point is apparently a contentious issue in the town of Groton. It is basically a special purpose district but with "multiple purposes", to the extent that it has all the powers of a borough.
3) Along similar lines, I read with interest your comments about the City of Winsted on the Talk:List of municipalities of Connecticut by population page. I have long wondered what the story is with Winsted. I'm pretty sure that the 1980 Census states that Winsted was disincorporated, but it sounds like the Census may have simply decided to stop recognizing it as a city at that point, either on grounds that the nature of its relationship with the Town of Winchester makes it more of a special-purpose district than a general-purpose municipality, or that it does not really maintain a separate, active existence from the Town of Winchester.
In doing research on incorporated villages in Vermont, I've found that two villages which the Census reported as having disincorporated between 1970 and 1980 actually still exist on paper, but have had inactive village governments since well before the 1970s; it appears that the Census simply stopped recognizing them as villages between 1970 and 1980 (see Historical U.S. Census Totals for Caledonia County, Vermont and Historical U.S. Census Totals for Windham County, Vermont). The City of Winsted may have been dropped from the Census rolls at the same time for similar reasons. Unless you're aware of something that happened with Winsted's city government between 1970 and 1980 that might explain the Census' action, I think I'm going to add language similar to that on the noted Vermont pages to the Historical U.S. Census Totals for Litchfield County, Connecticut page to explain the City of Winsted's disappearance from the Census after 1970. MCT 05:45, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm not aware of anything that changed in the legal status of Winsted around 1980. The date of consolidation with Winchester was definitely in 1915 while the date it was chartered as a city was 1917. But from the beginning, consolidation was as a town and there have never been separate city officials. Maybe the town just stopped submitting a separate form for Winsted to the Census of Governments. --Polaron | Talk 04:29, 20 February 2007 (UTC)