Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Illinois

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Archive 1 - Archived February 4, 2007
Archive 2 - Archived February 5 - March 25, 2007
Archive 3 - Archived March 26 - ?
Image:Evolution-tasks.png Open tasks for WikiProject Illinois.

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[edit] Assessment Push

[edit] Class

Hey all. I am making a push to assess our currently 6,000 articles that are unassessed. You can simply follow the link here Category:Unassessed WikiProject Illinois articles, and start assessing, or you coudl do it through AWB. I would also like to do the importance at the same time, that way we will have less later on. Let me know here if you are willing to do a few or even do a lot.--Kranar drogin 01:11, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Just an update for those who are assisting. We are now below 5,000 articles that are unassessed 10 days into our push. At the current rate we should be done in a month. Keep going!--Kranar drogin 15:27, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Here is another 10 day update. We are now down to 3826 article. That is about a drop of 1100 articles in 10 days. Another 30 days at this rate and we should be done. Thanks to anyone that is helping.--Kranar drogin 03:34, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I seem to be about the only one responding to this. A day late, so 11 days later we are now down to 2080 articles, with that being a drop of 1746 articles. Hopefully it won't take much more than 15 more days and we will be completely caught up on unassessed articles!--Kranar drogin 02:20, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

The push is complete. There are only two more that need "assessment" because our template does not recognize Feature List yet. Once that is done, then we should be good to go. Just a matter of maintaining now.--Kranar drogin 03:11, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Importance

I have requested a bot to make the changes to include the importance to the project. Most that haven't been rated yet will be rated Low, while some will be rated as the following:

As we go along, we can always fix the importance, this is just to get it cleared up. Questions should be put here.--Kranar drogin 05:59, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

I already rated several Illinois city/village articles. I did the ratings based mostly on population, and concentrated mostly on Northern Illinois. My assesment went something like this:
  • 100,000+ = Top importance
  • 50,000-100,000 and located in Chicago 7-County = High importance
  • 25,000-100,000 and located outside Chicago 7-County = High importance
  • 5,000-50,000 and located in Chicago 7-County = Mid importance
  • 5,000-25,000 and located outside Chicago 7-County = Mid importance
  • Under 5,000 = Low importance
And there are always a few exceptional places under 5,000 that could be classified as "Mid" (i.e. Rosemont).
But now that we have a bot involved, things seem to be getting all messed up. It seems kind of odd that a village of 250 people and a village of 75,000 people would be classified the same under this system. Also odd that I found these small towns were being rated "mid" while entire regions of the state (Northern Illinois, Central Illinois) and Lake Michigan were being rated "low". I really don't think a bot should be doing these classifications. If they are, we need better criteria. Abog 20:12, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Query

Someone posted this query about Manteno, Illinois at WP:CHICAGO that I think you guys may want to address.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 00:05, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jane Addams

In light of the recent renaming of the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway, I think it might be a good idea to try to do something about the relatively sad state of the Jane Addams article, itself. There is actually more about Addams in the article about the Jane Addams Burial Site than there is in her biography, which is really pretty sad. Perhaps this could be made a focus article for a time? Kelly Martin (talk) 23:39, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Task forces

This is something I have thought about for awhile. I would like to split the state up into task forces, but not sure how we should do it yet. Some cases people live in a certain city, so we could create some city task forces (such as Springfield for example), but then should we split the rest of the state up into regions? Grouping a bunch of counties together? What is everyone's take on this? I will let this go for a few days, and then we can make a decision.--Kranar drogin 16:30, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Right now, I am thinking of modeling the task forces similar to [1] like:
  • Northern
  • Western
  • Eastern
  • Central
  • Southern
With then we can make a few city ones possibly such as:
  • Rockford
  • Springfield
  • Peoria

to name a few. We don't have to do cities, unless there are going to be a few people that are going to specialize in only that city and nothing else. Otherwise people can just do regions then. Other thoughts or ideas?--Kranar drogin 22:24, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea, I think it needs more input. The big question, is project participation high enough to justify the work that will be put into this? Kranar and I have some things in our user spaces that could easily be moved or merged into the project space as part of the task forces. I, for one, would like to see some more input on this. IvoShandor 22:27, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
I think this is a good idea as well, but I hope there are enough active participants in each of the regions to make it work. For example, I imagine a lot of people are from Northern Illinois (since that's where 75% of Illinois reisdents live) and would want to work on the Northern Illinois task force since they have the most experience in that area. As a result, if there aren't enough people in Western or Eastern Illinois, those areas may not see much progress being made. Maybe be more broad, and do Northern (north of I-80), Central (I-80 to I-70), and Southern (south of I-70), along with Chicago/Cook County, Collar Counties, Rockford, Peoria, Springfield. I don't know. A good idea though. Abog 02:51, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I think the broader idea might be better to split the state in three with a fourth being Cook County which would basically be a redirect to the Chicago project. If that project ever folded, the page would be there to take it all in (which I really never forsee happening). So maybe four task forces to start out would be the safest bet to do for the time being. That is why none of the pages have been started yet.--Kranar drogin 03:15, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

How will the Cook County task force relate to WP:CHICAGO? I imagine most projects parented by Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities are part of larger geographic areas which may have projects. I don't feel we should be swallowed by your project. I do feel like most of what I do will be contributing to this task force.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 17:15, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
All we're talking about, is just not having a Cook County task force, every article in Cook County falls under your project, so we just want to have a redirect to the WP:CHICAGO page, and not really have any organized effort at Cook County articles, of course, we will contribute, like always, where we can. That's all we're talking about here, not swallowing your project, not sure how you read that. IvoShandor 17:21, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Fair enough. It sounds more like we are an officially recognized affiliated effort in that case.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 18:58, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Absolutely, as the Chicago Project is most likely group of editors to be able to deal with Chicago related pages and issues. We want to work together, the best way to do that is to avoid tromping on anyones toes with a "scope war". This is why I feel it is best to defer Cook County to the Chicago Project, as the main group. Not implying any OWNership issues here just saying as far as project scope goes. It wouldn't make sense for us to have a task force for Chicagoland when a project already exists. As we move down the line I think you will like our direction. IvoShandor 20:24, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of Registered Historic Places in Illinois

Well, next project I am going to start and any assistance would be great, is to work on making List of Registered Historic Places in Illinois a Feature List. I have changed it to a table now, but there are MANY red links that will need to be taken care of. So, I am hoping that I could get some help on working with this article. Currently Ivo is working on a lead, and I will work on getting the links of current articles fixed up. Once that is complete, I hope to start pumping out the articles.--Kranar drogin 03:27, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spoken Illinois

To make myself part of the project, I am going to record major Illinois-related articles for the Spoken Wikipedia. I want to make it as easy as possible for anyone to read or 'listen' to our articles. i have noticed Chicago was done, and i have begun on Illinois. anyone can jump on board.

not only this, but im also doing Spoken Wikipedia for all 50 states. Drumlineramos 01:21, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh, this will be a great idea. One thing I suggest though, is that you start with like the GAs and the FAs for Illinois. That would prolly be the best since they are the best quality. Let me know if you have other questions.--Kranar drogin 22:12, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] School pages

I have just deleted a bunch of Illinois elementary-school pages. All were marked as stubs, most had tags noting concern about notability, all had expired {{PROD}} notices. It's been months that the pages have had some editorial notes, and five days since the pages had huge warnings of impending deletion, and nobody came to their rescue. The general feeling I've seen on various WikiProjects and results from WP:AfD discussions is that only high schools are inherently notable enough to deserve their own pages. Lower-level schools need actual cited notability claims. How about having unified pages about various school districts that have a list of schools and/or to have education information in various township/city/whatever pages? DMacks (talk) 19:31, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I dunno, I'm fairly new to wikipedia, and when I took on my hometown's wiki page as my first real project I stubbed out the education section, only to get a couple notes on my talk page for it...now, I'm not saying that middle and grade schools meet some kind of notablility requirement, I'm not saying they don't. But once you start having wiki pages titled "List of Middle Schools in Illinois" it begs the question. If only notable schools are to be listed then shouldn't the list be "List of Notable Middle Schools in Illinois"? Certainly there should be no harm in the information being availible, if its a good idea or not per some other consideration is another question. I actually shudder to think at some of the things that could qualify a school as notable... I also don't see whats so inherently notable about a high school...its an artificial line, but it was drawn by consensus apparently, so thats fine, if a bit illogicalPreciousRoi (talk) 20:15, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Geoboxes

Kranar and I (well, SatyrBot) have been working on adding {{Geobox}} to Illinois cities, towns, and villages. I've gotten a couple notes that the "red dot" for the images is showing up in the wrong place - see Metcalf, Illinois and McCullom Lake, Illinois where the dot's aren't even in the right state. I don't have any experience with these locater dots, so if someone could look in to whether the image is calibrated correctly, I'd appreciate it! Thanks, -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 22:32, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I attempted to fix the coordinates per the USGS, and it didn't fix it. That is Edgar County right there, so maybe the map is off-set to the left too much. I will contact the map creator.--Kranar drogin (talk) 23:38, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Template:Geobox locator Illinois is for Image:Illinois Locator Map.PNG You need to use Template:Geobox locator Illinois2 for that map. Different maps use different calibrations. Change them to map_locator = Illinois2 and it should fix it. (I'm not a Geobox expert, but that seems to be what the problem is.) --Dual Freq (talk) 00:11, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm starting to get complaints on the maps now too. Someone is going to have to do a bot run to change the map_locator = Illinois to map_locator = Illinois2 for the geoboxes that use the different map. map_locator = Illinois2 points to Template:Geobox locator Illinois2 which is the new map. --Dual Freq (talk) 22:17, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
It will get fixed. People complain when there isn't a geobox, they complain when there is, sheesh. Just getting the bugs fixed is all on my end.--Kranar drogin (talk) 01:09, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
I'll run the bot tonight and fix that. Thanks! -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 01:11, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Sorry to nag, I was was afraid I would have to figure out some way to do it with AWB. --Dual Freq (talk) 02:02, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Its not a nag at all. I think they should all be fixed now, phew. Now comes the task of converting all the infoboxes to geoboxes.--Kranar drogin (talk) 09:40, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] USS Illinois (BB-65)

At the moment this article is a current Featured Article Candidate; why it has not been mention here is anyone's guess. At any rate, the FAC is open and all editers here are welcome to comment. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:47, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Just a notice. The FAC has passed, and I've added it to your featured content section on the project page. -MBK004 06:19, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Abraham Lincoln assassination GA Sweeps Review: On Hold

As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing sweeps to go over all of the current GAs and see if they still meet the GA criteria. I have left this message at this WikiProjects's talk page since the article falls under its scope and so that any interested members can assist in helping the article keep its GA status. I'm specifically going over all of the "World History-Americas" articles. I have reviewed Abraham Lincoln assassination and believe the article currently meets the majority of the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. In reviewing the article, I have found there are some issues that may need to be addressed, and I'll leave the article on hold for seven days for them to be fixed. Please consider helping address the several points that I listed on the talk page of the article, which shouldn't take too long to fix. I left messages for the other WikiProjects/task forces and the main contributors to the article so that the workload can be shared. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 21:32, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Adam Siczek

My great-grandfather Adam SICZEK came in 1913 from Poland to Chicago. He was carpenter and died on 10th January 1932 in Bremen Township, Cook County, Illinois. I found his name in Illinois Statewide Death Index: [2]. Can somebody help me? I search for his grave, and I don't know what I have to do :( Please help me! Where could be his grave? My email: rks@interia.pl . I'll be grateful. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.242.236.249 (talk) 20:35, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Township maps

Recently I've been applying some updated township maps to the township articles in some Illinois counties, such as Vermilion County, Illinois and Iroquois County, Illinois, and adding them to some that didn't have any yet. Kranar drogin wisely suggested that the color scheme for the new ones should be taken from existing maps such as Image:Illinois Locator Map.PNG. These maps are SVGs and show populated places and major highways for added context, as well as some details from neighboring counties. The process is automated per-county, so the rest of the state can be done quite quickly, but I just wanted to make sure the other project participants were aware. Omnedon (talk) 02:51, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I made a half hearted attempt at a township map at Sidney Township, Champaign County, Illinois as a test, but it was too labor intensive the way I was doing it. If you have a fully automated method, is it possible to have a locater map like the ones you are making now and a township only map like the second map on the Sidney page? I for one greatly appreciate the maps you are already making and I don't want to exponentially increase your workload, so if you can't do it or don't want to spend a lot of time on it, I won't be offended. Thanks for your help and the maps you've added look great. --Dual Freq (talk) 03:17, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
First of all, thanks for the positive feedback; I appreciate it. As for making more detailed maps for individual townships, that's certainly possible to integrate into the process without much difficulty. It would result in a large number of maps, of course... But I'll set up the code and you can see what you think of some initial test runs. Omnedon (talk) 03:33, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Most of the township articles are barely stubs, so don't burn yourself out doing it if its too much work. --Dual Freq (talk) 03:45, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] RfC: Mirth & Girth and importance to Harold Washington

Posted from WP:Chicago - Hey everyone... I'm requesting comments on Talk:Harold Washington#RfC: How much importance should be placed on Mirth & Girth in Harold Washington? regarding Mirth & Girth. Your input is appreciated. Thanks! —Rob (talk) 21:56, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Portal removal candidate

The Illinois Portal is currently listed for having it's featured portal status removed. It has not had an update in months, minus a couple minor edits. Please voice your comment at WP:FPRC. Soxred93 | talk count bot 21:14, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Roads in Illinois

I have added the article Stagecoach trail, and the categories Category:Roads in Illinois and Category:Illinois road stubs to contain the article. I also populated both categories. I had been working on the Jo Daviess County articles the last weeks. Editing, adding new images through wikicommons and adding content. Be welcome to take a look. gidonb (talk) 14:22, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Need "reflist" in all articles

The existing articles have proper citations in the text, but these are not visible to the reader. This specifically includes the sections "Geography" and "Demographics". The simple solution is to include the following two lines near the end of all articles:

== Notes ==
{{reflist}}

This will automatically grab and make visible any uses of the "ref" tag. You can confirm this with a simple article edit, then hit the "Preview" button to see the effect. Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 23:10, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Good call -- I have worked on many of those articles and somehow never noticed that there was no list of references. That should be fixed now. Omnedon (talk) 05:43, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hillary Clinton at WP:GAR

Hillary Clinton has been at WP:GAR since Feb. 11.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 06:18, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Radio Stations

I am currently in the process of going through the established list of radio stations in Illinois and creating articles for any that are currently noted by red links. I will create the articles using the basic Radio-Locator templates and any basic information that I can find, but I would greatly appreciate any members of WikiProject Illinois that might live in the broadcast areas of these radio stations contributing any relevant, verifiable information to the articles, once I create them.

Thanks! --InDeBiz1 (talk) 06:18, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Potentially useful images

commons:User:Dori dropped me a note that there are some potentially useful images for Illinois at commons:User:Dori/gallery/Champaign-Urbana (most recent ones are part of commons:Category:Registered Historic Places in Champaign County, Illinois). I'll see if I can find a place for them, but I thought I would drop a note here so others can use the images if they have an article to place them in. --Dual Freq (talk) 23:24, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Calling all Illinois editors ASAP

Oy! Your state has just had a very important special congressional election, and the article is in serious need of expansion. Please do what you can. Grandmasterka 15:03, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

And thank goodness it's over. I'll get on it, although I'm a 6th districtian myself. —Rob (talk) 01:20, 10 March 2008 (UTC)


[edit] WikiProject Illinois: Articles of unclear notability

Hello,

there are currently 56 articles in the scope of this project which are tagged with notability concerns. I have listed them here. (Note: this listing is based on a database snapshot of 12 March 2008 and may be slightly outdated.)

I would encourage members of this project to have a look at these articles, and see whether independent sources can be added, whether the articles can be merged into an article of larger scope, or possibly be deleted. Any help in cleaning up this backlog is appreciated. For further information, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Notability.

If you have any questions, please leave a message on the Notability project page or on my personal talk page. (I'm not watching this page however.) Thanks! --B. Wolterding (talk) 15:10, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Illinois Images

I revised Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Illinois as set out at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Illinois#Images. I also changed Template:WikiProject Illinois to include an "in:" parameter that lets the editor place the image request into a specific Illinois county. That way, Wikipedian photographers living in or near that county will know that a photo request is for that location and be more likely to take that photograph. GregManninLB (talk) 02:35, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Missing articles

We have two state parks that are missing articles, they weren't linked from Template:Protected Areas of Illinois but I added them. Lowden-Miller State Forest and Banner Marsh State Fish and Wildlife Area both lack articles. I don't think there are any others according to the DNR website, but that site is known to be inaccurate. For instance, they still haven't added Kishwaukee River State Fish and Wildlife Area to their page, although it was set aside in 2002. IvoShandor (talk) 12:09, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Talk archives

I discovered that the archives of this WikiProject's talk page were sitting in the User talk: namespace rather than the Wikipedia talk: namespace. This is now fixed! --RFBailey (talk) 02:44, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] School District Pages

I am not part of WikiProject Illinois, nor am I from Illinois at all, but I have been leafing through the overwhelming number of redlinks on the List of school districts in Illinois page; I have put a decent amount of time into writing articles concerning the school districts. Is notability going to be a problem that will reverse the hours I've put into this? I'd like to know.

--Starstriker7 (talk) 16:26, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Satyr

Have you replaced User:SatyrTN's User:SatyrBot? We at WP:CHICAGO are looking for a replacement since he is no longer active. Please respond at my talk page.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 18:43, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Important discussion on Illinoisans Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko

How much information should Obama's bio article have on his embarassing associates -- Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Tony Rezko? The Barack Obama Featured Article, part of this project's scope, now has an important discussion about this on its talk page (at Talk:Barack Obama#Attempt to build consensus on the details). Every one of these people is from Illinois, so members of this project may have a particular interest or expertise that could be valuable to that discussion. But just an open mind and an interest in the subject will do.

Some editors here think that when a U.S. presidential candidate is embarassed by someone associated with that candidate, no information about it should be mentioned in the WP biography article, even if the campaign (and therefore the person who is the subject of the article) was affected. Others think WP should only mention that this person was controversial and leave a link in the article to the WP article on that controversial associate. Still others (including me), think we should briefly explain just why that person was controversial in the candidate's life, which can be done in a phrase or at most a sentence or two. Other examples:

Whatever we do, we should have equal treatment, so anyone interested in NPOV-, WP:BLP-compliant articles should look at and participate in the discussion. We've started the discussion by focusing on how much to say about former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers in the Barack Obama article. Noroton (talk) 16:06, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

On some other pages where I've posted this, people have been responding only beneath the post, which is fine, but won't help get a consensus where it counts. So please excuse me for raising my voice, just to make sure I get the point across: Please respond at Talk:Barack Obama#Attempt to build consensus on the details where your comments will actually affect the consensus!!! Sorry for the shoutin'. I promise not to do it again (on this page). Noroton (talk) 18:22, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GAR debate on buildings under construction

There is debate on whether buildings under construction are stable enough and complete enough to be WP:GA. Currently, Good articleChicago Spire, Good articleJoffrey Tower, and Good article108 North State Street are GAs. Thus, the debate is important to our project. Comment would be useful at Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Trump International Hotel and Tower (Chicago)/1.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 20:33, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Trump International Hotel and Tower (Chicago) FAC

Trump International Hotel and Tower (Chicago) is at FAC.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 17:43, 9 June 2008 (UTC)