Talk:Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania article.
Article policies
Archives: 1, 2, 3
This article is within the scope of the following WikiProjects:
To-do list for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: edit · history · watch · refresh

Feel free to add your item:

  1. trim article from 47kb to around 32kb; see WP:SIZE
  2. proof and increase reference density of History of Pittsburgh; see its discussion page
  3. Add more detail to Culture of Pittsburgh article
  4. Add details on "north SHORE" -- highway signs were updated a few years ago
  5. Improve grammar, spelling and sentence structure.
Archive
Archives

2004 - 6/2006
6/2006 - 12/2006
2007


Contents

[edit] Featured article for the 250th anniversary?

Seeing is how 2008 is the 250th year of the city of Pittsburgh, wouldn't it be great if we got this article up to Featured article status? I can't find too much history for this article in terms of review (PR, GA, FA), but I would think that it makes sense to begin getting the article up to meeting the Good article criteria first, and then nominate it for peer review, and then put the finishing touches on it before nominating for WP:FAC? In terms of a timeline, I would think we could get GA by March or April, do a peer review in May, and FA by July. Of course, it's a long process, and I can't really do this by myself. Anyone willing to help? Any suggestions on what needs to be added to the current, B-class article? Dr. Cash (talk) 16:29, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] skyline image

Image:Pgh17.jpg
old skyline image

I've removed this image from the infobox and nominated it for deletion because it appears to be copyrighted, and was stolen from the website gocarlo.com by Conk 9. I can't find any evidence that "Conk 9" is the owner of the gocarlo.com website, but his talk page indicates that he's "claimed" several images as his own work, which could have more copyright issues involved. Either way, the pgh17.jpg image also has the "Go Carlo" watermark still embedded in the lower-right corner, which is also indicative of image copyright issues.

Too bad, because the image is very nice. It's going to be hard to replace. Any thoughts? Dr. Cash (talk) 17:27, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I concur with Dr. Cash on everything regards the 250 year anniversary. I am down here with 1st Cav so I can't help on the photo. Can some kind local photographer please go out on Mt. Washington and get us a nice skyline photo, explicitly license it under the GFDL and post it here? Botendaddy (talk) 02:31, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

The photo problem has been solved, and a new image has been uploaded that is licensed under CC and GFDL. Dr. Cash (talk) 03:01, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] German immigrants 1847

FYI: de:Pferdsbach. --ST ○ 15:49, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Unsourced, poorly-worded, and horribly 'trivial' information removed

The following paragraph was removed from the 'government and politics' section. It is not sourced, and seems to be bordering on POV, and not to mention rather trivial. Lots of cities have budget shortfalls and financial challenges. Why is Pittsburgh's situation any different than anyone else?

Like many American cities, Pittsburgh has recently faced financial challenges and budget shortfalls. Although the cause of the city's budget shortfall is debated, many cite the success of the medical and academic sectors, since the nonprofits are tax-exempt. Despite the budget crisis, the city has continued to grow, as evidenced by the recent addition of the American Eagle Outfitters corporate headquarters, renovation of the former Lazarus-Macy's department store into high-end retail, office, and condo space, and multiple mixed-use towers under construction downtown. As further evidence of recovery from these fiscal problems, Pittsburgh had a $15 million surplus in 2005.

[edit] Media

I've reverted recent changes by an anonymous editor to completely destroy the media section in favor of a section with multiple second-level headings, very short text, little prose, and multiple tables. Such lists are acceptable for daughter articles, such as Media in Pittsburgh or List of films and television shows shot in Pittsburgh, but this article should focus on the prose; it will NEVER achieve either WP:GA or WP:FA status if all we have is a collection of lists and tables. Remember, we're writing an encyclopedia here, not assembling a collection of lists. It might help other editors to review some of the guidelines on US city articles, here. Dr. Cash (talk) 14:21, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] education

The daughter article on Education in Pittsburgh was eliminated because it doesn't make sense at this time and is far too short to be of use. We need to focus on improving the prose of this article, splitting out separate articles only when necessary. A separate article also increases the possibility of a POV fork at some point (although, in this case, the text was almost identical anyways). Plus, there have been less than 20 edits to the education article in the two years or so since it was created, so I think it's seriously premature. If content grows at some point, then it can be re-added. Also, having two separate lines at the top of a section, one for a main link and another for a see also link, violates the manual of style, and is bad form. Dr. Cash (talk) 22:43, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Would you care to specify what is "weasely language; edits took out a lot of specificity and added more unnecessary 'popular colloqualisms"? All edits I made are backed up by cited references and improved the description of the actual "character" of the institution. 1. "Pitt" is much more than a colloquialism, and referred to throughout the article without previous proper definition as the alternative name of the University of Pittsburgh. It is necessary to have somewhere in the overall article if it is not mentioned in the education section. It is also worth noting the founding date since Pitt is the oldest school in Western PA, and has been a part of the Pittsburgh community since the inception of the city. 2) A defining characteristic of Pitt is the massive research programs undertaken at the school. This research has a critical economic impact on the region and demands some mention. The other major defining characteristic is the focus on biomedical and health sciences, of which the schools of medicine, dental, nursing, rehab, public health and pharmacy are all nationally ranked (US News) and near the top of their fields in research expenditures and output (collectively #6 in total NIH funding with ~$450 million in NIH funding alone). The massively influence of the Pitt-affiliated medical center (UPMC), along with these schools and research programs, more than warrants the brief mentions that I incorporated for the "research" and "biomedical and health sciences". In fact, it would be derelict not to include their mention or not to indicate the research component of the University. 3) The highlighted programs were inappropriate considering their place on the national level. E.g., you cannot single out Asian studies over European or Latin American studies. It is more accurate to generalize the emphasis on international studies as a whole. In addition, information science at Pitt is more notable on a national level than Pitt's engineering, business or law, but all of those programs are notable regionally. I did not remove those mentions as I did not originally write this entry for the article. I only added ones that better reflected the actual "character" of the institution. Your reversion of the edit seem to indicate you either have some bias or lack familiarity with the institution. Seriously, WP:CON. If you want to take each line piece by piece and discuss it, I'm game.CrazyPaco (talk) 02:42, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
Your original edits, I found to be poorly phrased, sub-par, and poorly thought out. It looked like you were just quickly adding crap to the article instead of actually thinking something through, which is why I reverted it. These new edits are fine, with some minor exceptions, which I have taken care of -- most notable is that Pitt is ranked 57th nationally in the 2008 US news & world report, not 20th, and that's what the citation indicates. Cheers! Dr. Cash (talk) 14:45, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
That's interesting, because the new edits (re: Pitt) are exactly the same as the ones you originally reverted. BTW, it is not bad form to place footnote citations mid-sentence. See WP:ref tags. This is a stylistic preference that doesn't matter much to me, but personally I think it is more convenient for an individual that may be interested in more information on a specific point in a list, as opposed to having to dig through the footnotes manually. But, having them all at the end is appropriate as well. Also, the #57 ranking is overall university ranking, not public university ranking as I had listed. Doesn't much matter to me which is employed, but the text must be consistent with the ranking selected to be listed. I prefer "public" because it helps define how the university is generally categorized by nationally publications (as opposed to the actual state-related private/public hybrid that is its real classification), but I really don't care that much. If I was going for straight homerism, I would have used rankings like the Center for Measuring University Performance or one of the world rankings. That said, I'm reverting it to the #20 public university and changing the reference accordingly, which for US News direct source, requires a subscription to see [1], and since I don't own the actual magazine with the page number available, I will have to use an alternative source because you disliked the original one that conveys the exact same info but would assume that one knows the public/private categories. If you feel strongly about that and wish to revert, please remember to remove "public" from the description of the ranking. CrazyPaco (talk) 17:18, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
Ok, whatever. The changes (overall) were not the same, and seemed to me to be more POV-oriented. But I was looking overall and not just so much at the Pitt stuff. Anyway, I see how the rankings are now -- both 59 and 20 are technically correct depending on which metric you use, so that's fine. I still think that these US News rankings are pretty much ridiculous anyways, but many people seem to think it's like the bible or something?! I almost wish that wikipedia would seriously de-emphasize these things when writing information about colleges and universities. Dr. Cash (talk) 18:26, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
I absolutely agree with you on the US News thing. I wasn't the one to insert the US News rankings originally, so I don't feel justified removing them because they are a metric readers are probably most familiar with, so I left it in and changed it to the public categorization for reasons noted above. Honestly, thanks for your help. I think the section, and article, is reading a lot better thanks to your edits.CrazyPaco (talk) 18:35, 23 May 2008 (UTC)