User talk:Phizzy

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[edit] A welcome from Sango123

Hello, Phizzy, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions; I hope you like the place and decide to stay. We're glad to have you in our community! Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Though we all make goofy mistakes, here is what Wikipedia is not. If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to see the help pages or add a question to the village pump. The Community Portal can also be very useful.

Happy Wiki-ing!

-- Sango123 (talk) 20:41, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

P.S. Feel free to leave a message on my talk page if you need help with anything or simply wish to say hello. :)

[edit] Michigan ancestry map

Much better! Thanks - JohnInDC (talk) 21:04, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I took a look at your user page - nice collection. Allow me to offer that some of your other maps would be similarly improved by confining portrayals of obviously land-based characteristics to land. Absent some clear indication from the Census Bureau, for example, that MSAs are intended to include substantial adjacent (and uninhabited) water area, I think the western Michigan MSA map should confine the MSAs to land. JohnInDC (talk) 13:50, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
I understand your concern, but the Census Bureau does seem to make it clear that the MSAs include the water area. At the links below, the area of the Holland-Grand Haven MSA is stated as 1632.0 square miles, which includes the Great Lakes water area. Similarly, the area of the Muskegon-Norton Shores MSA is stated as 1459.3 square miles.
http://www.2010census.biz/compendia/smadb/TableE-13.pdf
http://www.census.gov/compendia/smadb/TableB-01.xls Phizzy (talk) 14:58, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
I've updated the Grand Rapids-Muskegon-Holland CSA map. The borders are still defined out into Lake Michigan, but I've only highlighted the land in red. Does that look better? Phizzy (talk) 15:01, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
Good grief, you're right. The MSA is *intended* to extend into the water. All I can say to that is, it looks screwy.
Hey, how about if you lighten the red shade over the lake area, so that the land portion is red and the water portion is more pinkish / translucent? That would convey that 1) the MSA does literally include the water area (which strikes me BTW as totally stupid given what an MSA is supposed to reflect) but 2) you recognize that water is not the same as land. It also avoids the visual problem of making the state look like it actually *does* extend into the water there.
I liked the revised version - that little change makes it look like some care went into it. Funny how a subtle thing can make a difference like that. JohnInDC (talk) 15:12, 23 May 2008 (UTC)