User talk:Servais

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Hello, Servais, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If 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. Again, welcome!  --Flockmeal 04:16, Nov 28, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding whether or not Arlington is the smallest

Hello Servais; the "list of smallest counties" that you linked to seems to have its facts wrong. Bristol County, Rhode Island actually has a total area of 45 sq. miles, and Kalawao County, Hawaii has a total area of 52 sq. miles (both according to their pages), compared with 26 for Arlington, making Arlington the smallest.

Non-Wikipedia sites backing up my claim that Arlington is smallest: [1] (for #1- read the second bullet under "Nationally"), [2] (for #2- read the first sentence), [3] (for #3- search for the word 'Arlington'), [4] (for #4- search for the word 'Arlington'), [5] (for #5- search for the word 'smallest')

--B Sveen, November 29th 2004.

Thanks for replying, but in the future, please put your reply on another User's talk page, not the User page. The county in Hawaii is not a real county by definition (the definition of a county is a self-governing area, that county is not self-governing). And even if we were to take the land area alone of the county in RI, Arlington is still smaller if we were to subtract that federal-owned land in Arlington from Arlington's total land area, which would make Arlington 22 sq. miles; this is something I have seen people do before in local newspapers (Arlington Journal or one of those local papers, I forget which one)
Perhaps we can compromise by saying that "Arlington is the smallest self-governing county in the United States", an indisputable fact as noted by Sara Collins of the Arlington Historical Society : go here and search for the word 'self' --I don't think Sara Collins is blowing smoke in anyone's face, she is not lying or falsifying. --B Sveen, November 29th 2004.
Here's an article I found on the official Arlington County government website (www.arlington.va.us) that makes the claim that Arlington is smallest : [6] (search for the word 'smallest'). I've searched google using various criteria but haven't found a single site that makes the claim that Bristol County, RI is "the smallest county in the United States", except wikipedia. (a few call it "the smallest county in the smallest state"--but that's not the same as saying the smallest county in the country of course)
I think that water is counted just as much as land is when total area for a given place is determined, that is what is done for the USA for example. On the United States page, there is a table in the upper right that says "Area: Total- 5,984,685 sq. miles; % Water- 4.875%" (the land area is 5.7 million sq. miles, the water area is 300,000, which makes the total nearly 6 million), so I think we would be justified in calling Arlington smaller than Bristol if the same criteria that is applied to nations is used. Add to that the fact that apparently no one claims (at least none that I have found) that Bristol is the smallest in the country, and that makes Arlington the smallest. Maybe the phrasing "Arlington is the smallest self-governing county in the United States" would be best to avoid possible problems.
But I'll leave it totally up to you whether or not you want to change it (and what phrasing you use) or whether you want to leave as is; I guess I've bothered you enough in the past 24 hours :-) Good nite. --Bert