Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Texas/Archive 1

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

WikiProject: Texas proposal

There has been alot of talk on the Texas talk page about a History of Texas article. I think this is an ideal time to propose an idea I've had for a while now: a WikiProject: Texas. Texas is one of the most diverese, some might say divergent states in the U.S.. Historically Texans have assumed that their part of the state is entitled to speak for all of Texas, which of course has led to bad feelings in the past for various reasons. I think it would be great if some of the Wikipedians interested in Texas formed a WikiProject dedicated not only to ensuring that Texas is presented holistically but also dedicatd to making wikipedia have the best resources on Texas on the web. I would like your opinons on the proposal and also see if you are interested in participating if the project is formed. -JCarriker 03:47, Aug 15, 2004 (UTC)

The non-existence of History of Texas is very disturbing. If any state deserves its own article about its history, it's Texas. I'm going to have a bit of a full plate with other projects (Wikipedia and otherwise), but I'd be interested in keeping an eye on it. I have access to the library at Lamar University, so I can at least do some fact checking on request.
We're going to have a tough time beating out the Handbook of Texas for the title of "Best online Texas resource". If only that thing was public domain, a zillion Rambot stubs could go to full articles in an instant. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:20, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
That there thing is mighty awesome, but not without its mistakes. --H2O 23:05, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

End moved discussion.

I've been doing a series of Texas biography articles and I shamelessly use the Handbook articles as a jumping-off point (...since I worked on a number of them myself) -- but I rewrite and add a lot of material from other sources, too. And bibliographies. If that doesn't satisfy the wikirules on copyright, I guess I'll have to go back and do some more extensive rewriting. I've added myself to the participants list, by the way. --Michael K. Smith 17:00, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
You're not the only one to have done that. I was just saying that it'd be a lot faster if we could legally set up a "Handbook of Texas-bot" to import their text verbatim. -- Cyrius|✎ 18:20, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I too, shamelessly use the hand book for bios. I wouldn't worry about it. :) -JCarriker 04:53, Aug 17, 2004 (UTC)
One advantage Wikipedia has is that the Handbook of Texas does not contain images. -Nv8200p talk 14:49, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Sign me up!

Where do I sign up? Do I need permission or do I just add my name to the list? I have never participated in a "project" before - so I don't know the procedure. "To present a holistic view of Texas rather than the view of one region of Texas." That is an excellent goal, although not as easy as it sounds. For what it's worth, I am a native West Texan, but did live in East Texas (Lindale) for a while. I have also spent time in the Valley. I am an avid reader of Texas Monthly, and I am amazed by the diversity of my home state. If anything, someone will have to help me tone down my enthusiasm. --H2O 23:15, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

To do

Given the apparent pent-up demand for a to-do list over at the newly-created Wikipedia:U.S. Southern Wikipedians' notice board, I started one here. I'm also growing convinced that the standard WikiProject template isn't terribly appropriate for us. -- Cyrius|✎ 23:03, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

History of Texas.

Given that the non-existence of History of Texas was largely responsible for this Project's creation, I started work on a temporary at Wikipedia:WikiProject Texas/History of Texas. I'd have put it in the main namespace, but it'd be silly to do so until we've got minimal coverage of everything from Spanish exploration to the present. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:47, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm In

Hello, I would like to help in this Project. I am a newbie but I have posted a few articles on Texas already, including Anahuac Disturbances, San Bernard River, and Attwater's prairie-chicken. Johntex 02:54, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Texas Universities on Texas

There's a little dispute going on about Texas#Education, specifically which universities should be featured in images. A poll was started at Talk:Texas#Vote for Colleges of choice on which schools deserve to be shown, but it has been postponed due to negotiations between the two parties. I just thought more than two people might be interested in this issue.

One problem may be that the section is currently just a cumbersome list, which makes the image selection question significant as it's the only way to highlight an institution. Compare Texas#Education to California#Education, which contains a text writeup on the university systems and most prestigious private institutions, while the full list is at its own article. --Laura Scudder | Talk 03:19, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Sign Up?

Hi, I'm a native Texan with alot of little nothings that maybe I can put to use. I've just now started contributing, and would like something structured to work on cause my mind rambles. Anyways, add me to the list, point me towards central texas or historic or sports topics, and I'm ready to roll. Joe I 01:01, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

Well, Texas always needs some cleaning up work, and the History of Texas cycle could be a productive area of expansion. The pending tasks list on the project page says we should expand Spindletop. Other than that, the candidates for the Wikipedia:Texan Collaboration of the Month are articles others think need work. If none of those float your boat, work on whatever strikes you. — Laura Scudder | Talk 20:07, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikiportal

Continuing Texas' quest for world domination, I set up a Wikiportal for Texas. Please feel free to help out over there. I'd appreciate it! RADICALBENDER★ 05:57, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

New imdb-like template for Handbook of Texas citations

66.167.139.208 04:59, 11 September 2005 (UTC): I just manually wikified a few of the references to the Handbook of Texas. As project members have already noted, it is a critical source for Texas-related entries. Google estimates over 750 entries using the phrase "Handbook of Texas" within the English-language version of Wikipedia, and I'm about to add one or two more.

To help with future references, I've added an imdb-like template called {{Handbook of Texas}}. It takes two arguments, an id and a name, and produces results like the following:

Stephen Fuller Austin from the Handbook of Texas Online

Comparing the template entry

  • {{Handbook of Texas|id=AA/fau14|name=Stephen Fuller Austin}}

with

makes it self-evident what the id needs to be.

66.167.139.208 06:29, 11 September 2005 (UTC):I just finished using the template about a dozen times, as can be seen here. There's another ninety minutes of my life I won't get back. :-)

By the way, Category:Handbook of Texas citations is up for deletion. I'm not a big fan of the category on the template, but I can see its uses and don't see any reason the category needs to be to be deleted. — Laura Scudder | Talk 19:58, 26 September 2005 (UTC)


The template shown above is now redirected to this one. The arguments, however, are the same as before. --JFreeman 19:05, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I've systematically eradicated {{handbookoftexas}}, in favor of {{Handbook of Texas}}. This is the last; no more redirects, not that most people care... --studerby 03:18, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Suggestions

Hi, I grew up in Austin, but I can't really joing this WikiProject as I have a lot on my plate already and besides I don't live in the U.S. anymore, let alone Texas, making it difficult to verify a lot of stuff. But I would like to make some requests:

  • Serbin, Texas is possibly the only Wendish immigrant community in America and is definitely worth writing about. Wends and Pastor John Kilian already link there.
  • Tonkawa should be de-stubbified
  • Karankawa language redirects to Karankawa, which is just about the people, not the language. It would be nice if at least a stub could be written about the language

Thanks! -Angr

  • Per your request, I have created a stub on Serbin, but infortunately I am too busy to work on your other requests at this time. Sorry. -JCarriker 21:17, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
The stub on Serbin looks great! Thank you! --Angr/tɔk tə mi 22:45, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Review request (looking for someone in the know)

I don't know who added it, but an addition was made to Lincoln (state), saying that there was once a proposal to lop off the part of Texas in 1869 "west and south" of the Colorado River, and to call it the state of Lincoln. The problem is, I don't see that that leaves much left of 1869 Texas... I've commented that section out pending a reliable source, and explained my twofold rationale at Talk:Lincoln (state). I'd appreciate it if someone who knows more about Texas history could review this, and delete it from the article if it's nonsense. Tomer TALK 02:43, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Reptiles of Texas

Greetings, I'm from Austin. I just joined the project. I've been working on some articles on the reptiles of Texas, and if anyone else happens to have an interest in that area, I could certainly use some help, especially with copyediting, it is a big list. :) Thanks. -Dawson 05:38, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team cooperation

Hello. I'm a member of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing articles using these criteria, and we are are asking for your help. As you are most aware of the issues surrounding your focus area, we are wondering if you could provide us with a list of the articles that fall within the scope of your WikiProject, and that are either featured, A-class, B-class, or Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Do you have any recommendations? If you do, please post your suggestions at the listing of all active Places WikiProjects, and if you have any questions, ask me in the Work Via WikiProjects talk page or directly in my talk page. Thanks a lot! Titoxd(?!? - help us) 18:48, 23 March 2006 (UTC)


USS Texas (BB-35)

Would the Battleship Texas count as an appropriate topic under the purview of Wikiproject:Texas? Also, can anyone suggest where/how/who I could check with for suggestions on what to do to get the article just a little closer to Featured Article status? To my eye, it looks pretty close. But I'm still new-ish to Wiki so I didn't want to stick my neck out juuuust yet by nominating it ;) - thanks in advance for any suggestions! Longshot14 23:54, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

The article needs some work. There are major issues with the article that is going to have a lot of objections such as the intro needs to have a lot of more text and there are no references/inline citations which are pretty much required these days for FA-status. Just read past pass/failed FA nominations because the objection voters repeat those arguments ad-nauseum. --Don Vito Corleone 01:19, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
I'll look into what I can do about that over time, though doubtless there are those better equipped to make such changes/additions. Thanks very much! Longshot14 18:15, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
USS Texas (BB-35) would definitely count as part of this project. Feel free to nominate it to become the collaboration of the month. I think you'll get some help improving the article just by listing it here. Johntex\talk 19:14, 27 March 2006 (UTC)


Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Texas

Some articles covered by this WikiProject lack photographs. As part of a subcategorization of the requested photos category, there is now a category for Texas articles needing photos - to use it, just add {{reqphotoin|Texas}} to the article's talk page. I have only added a few articles to the category so far, but it would be an easy way to make an extensive list California-related articles lacking photos. I hope you find it useful! TheGrappler 05:29, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Nice idea - thanks for the start. I've been looking through a lot of the south texas articles and have noticed the lack of pictures for seemingly important and easy to access places. Kuru talk 13:28, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
I am going to create a subcat of this for Texas State Highways. I would like every article in our project (WP:TXSH) to have a photo and at present, very few do. I don't want to deluge your cat with a lot of highway articles. Will make it easier on us as well if we don't have to sift through articles not related to our project. --Holderca1 14:57, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I've Joined

Hey guys, I'm here to help and have signed myself up. I'll help where I can and feel free to ask for anything. Thanks. Minfo 20:52, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

"Child" WikiProjects

No one mentioned them. And would anyone be intrested in the TexasWiki?--GangstaEB & friends 07:12, 25 June 2006 (UTC) 01:55, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Texan Collaboration of the month

Image:Texasflaginstate.png Texas needs your help!!

The good news is the most recent Texan Collaboration of the Month - Juneteenth has recently been featured on the Main Page! The bad news is that we chose this article six months ago and we haven't kept up to date with choosing and improving a new article.
This page is traditionally administered by Katefan0 and JCarriker, but since they are both semi-retired, Johntex is filling in. (Yet another reason to hope Katefan0 and JCarriker come back soon!!)
We are going to pick up right where we left off. Please visit Texan Collaboration of the Month and help select the new collaboration - we'll begin working on the selected article 1 July 2006.

History buff needed

Please check out List of current and former capital cities in the United States and make sure that Alaska's capital cities are listed accurately. A word of warning: the page does contain quite a bit of complicated wiki formatting, so if you're not comfortable editing it, just post your changes on the talk page and someone more experienced will apply them to the article.   JEK   19:56, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

  • Alaska? What's that big iceberg have to do with us?  :-) I assume it is a copy paste error. Johntex\talk 19:59, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm always getting Washington-On-The-Brazos and Washington-On-The-Yukon mixed up. Kuru talk 20:43, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Nominate articles for Portal:United States

I've worked for the past month to update Portal:United States and keep it better maintained. Though, I think the Portal:United States would be even better with broader participation. One way to do that is instead of choosing the "selected article" myself each week, if others would nominate articles and help make decisions. (same goes for pictures, though these are stocked up through July 29) If there is anything related to Texas (or anything else related to the U.S. - culture, music, literature, geography, history, politics, ...), please nominate. I'd also like people to weigh in on the nominations and help select what should be featured. Thanks. -Aude (talk contribs) 23:23, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

New "People from [city]" Categories

Hello, everybody. I am the bozo who just recently created the new subcategories in the "People from Texas" category. I thought that some of you might want to know why they were created, and why they often have so few pages in them.

The majority of the states have "People from [state]" categories which have at least 200 entries, sometimes over 1,000. This is clearly an unworkably large number for anyone wishing to use the category for research purposes. In 8th grade in Rapid City, South Dakota, the social studies class asked us to write, over the course of the year, reports on two or three people who were or had been residents of the city. Because of that, I have reason to believe that they could be used and probably are used for research purposes. To make such research easier, I looked at the list of metropolitan statistical areas and basically entered in one new category for each metropolitan statistical area.

I know that many of these categories might well be, in the eyes of you who know more about the cities in question much better than I do, misnamed or otherwise faulty. I apologize for any mistakes I may have made along those lines, and I would welcome any corrections, including deletion, that any of the rest of you might choose to make. With that in mind, I have also generally populated the categories with only one or two names, to ease in the process of deletion or renaming.

I thought you all should know why these categories were created, and felt some degree of responsibility for letting your know. I wish you all the greatest good fortune in making the coverage of your state in Wikipedia of the greatest scope and quality possible, and I hope that I haven't annoyed too many of you by my recent actions. Badbilltucker 13:37, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

tagging articles

User:WatchlistBot has started tagging Category:Texas articles with {{Wikiproject Texas}}. There will soon be a recent changes where all texas articles can be veiwed. If any errors occur, please see me, User:WatchlistBot or User:Mom2jandk(who currently runs it). THNX :) Joe I 07:19, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Y'all have a lot of articles! I've started the tagging, but it's a long way from done. I went ahead and created the article list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Texas/Articles and you can see the project watchlist at Special:Recentchangeslinked/Wikipedia:WikiProject Texas/Articles. I have a question for you. Should Category:BNSF Railway be part of the project. I started tagging it, and then realized it maybe shouldn't be. What do you think. Ingrid 01:27, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
It's part of Wikiproject Missouri and the headquarters are in Fort Worth, so I see why not. Joe I 01:42, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Is there anyway to make the images not show in Wikipedia:WikiProject Texas/Articles? Joe I 02:38, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm going to need to reorganize my code a bit to handle the size of the project, so I can set it up to run with less supervision. I won't have time until next week. I can fix the image thing, no problem. Ingrid 03:17, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

The categories are done. Please review the list. Please especially check Category:68k emulators and Category:68k microprocessors -- someone removed the tag from processors but not emulators. Both or neither should probably be tagged. Also please check the railway categories, and Amtrak categories. Once someone checks them, I'll get started tagging all articles in these categories. If there is a category that should be tagged, but not all articles in the category, I can do that too.

Category:68k emulators and Category:68k microprocessors tags were both removed. Joe I 23:06, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Someone might also want to look at the sports team names, and try to make them more consistent. This is not relevant to my bot, but I noticed that sometimes it's "<school> <mascot> ladies basketball", sometimes "<school> Lady <mascot> basketball", and other inconsistencies. There are also some categories like "Fort Worthians" that should probably be "People from Fort Worth" I think. There's a standard somewhere. Ingrid 23:55, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I almost forgot, I wasn't sure how to tag some of the geography ones. Check Category:Geography of Texas and its subcategories. This might be something where some articles need to be tagged and others not. Ingrid 23:59, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any problem tagging all in Category:Geography of Texas. Everything I saw was either completly or partialy located in Texas. Joe I 23:11, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. The problem I ran into was Category:Mississippi River which is in Category:Gulf of Mexico which is in Category:Texas which doesn't seem to need a Texas project tag. Gulf of Mexico (the article) should probably have a tag, but the category, I don't know, and the contents of the category, I don't know. I'm not sure if there were other examples, but that's the one I remember. Ingrid 20:42, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

The way I've got my code working right now, it will tag all articles in all categories that already have the tag. I've taken out categories that I wasn't sure should have this done. Someone might want to consider these categories individually, and tag by hand if needed. I'm going back over the numismatics project right now, and will resume tagging texas when that's done. Here are the categories to check:

Ingrid 23:09, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Can you please stop the overzealous bot and tagging of articles that have very little mention of Texas itself? An example is Talk:Bell Helicopter Textron. This is just the Texas-based unit of a huge congolomerate that has very little to do with Texas itself. The article barely mentions the state. This unit even has most of its employee base outside of Texas. —Joseph/N328KF (Talk) 18:26, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Further to the above, I note that a tag has appeared on Talk:Arban Severin. Whilst the subject was indeed born in Texas, and spent much of her childhood there, she is now resident in the UK (and married to a Brit). You may need to refine your bot so as not to make your Project unwieldy.LessHeard vanU 18:45, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
I'll take a break from tagging until someone from the project replies. Bell Helicopter Textron was tagged because it is in Category:Companies based in Texas and Category:Fort Worth, Texas. Arban Severin was tagged because it is in Category:People from Beaumont, Texas. This project will be huge if all articles in all Texas categories are included. The bot needs to either tag all or no articles in a given category. There were some complaints about other articles which weren't related to Texas even though they were in categories which have some relation to Texas. I didn't keep a list though. Let me know how to proceed. Ingrid 19:07, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Another example, Brent Krahn was just pointed out on the bot's talk page. He played for the San Antonio Rampage for 14 games. Ingrid 19:32, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
I think in general it is OK to have a few over-tagging events. The point of the tag is to encourage people to participate in this wikiproject, and for people from this wikiproject to participate in improving the tagged articles - both of which are admirable aims. Johntex\talk 20:09, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

The bot has reached the G's, and the Wikipedia:WikiProject Texas/Articles page won't save (but I don't get an error message. Someone else told me that there was a limit to the number of links per page though. I'll have to split it, which means you'll have to have multiple watchlist pages. For now, I'll just split it alphabetically (although I'll have to update my bot to do that, so it might take a couple of days). In the future, if you categorize your articles by importance or anything, I can split them that way. Ingrid 22:30, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

What about splitting all the images off on to their own page? Joe I 08:39, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I would definitely do that, but it's not going to be enough. There are thousands of regular articles, and they will not fit on one page. Ingrid 22:34, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

First of all, some questions have been raised at User talk:WatchlistBot about whether certain articles (especially people) should be included in the project. I've removed any article that anyone has a problem with. If someone wants to check those, or the categories that I've untagged, feel free. And then there's the issue of hand-tagging the categories that are mixed. I've also updated the output to split it onto multiple pages. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Texas/Articles. We're up to "S", so it should get done soon. Ingrid 02:47, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Texas Collaboration of the month - August 2006

Hello fellow Texan Collaboration of the Month editors,
We have made some good progress with Texas over the past month. However, I am not sure if we have improved the article enough yet to contemplate nominating it for FA (or at least GA). I propose that we spend one more month on it before choosing a new topic.
I further propose that we archive the existing list of future candidate articles. Some of the nominations are quite old. I think we should take fresh suggestions during August for a new article to collaborate on in September.
I look forward to your thoughts. Please put comments at Wikipedia_talk:Texan_Collaboration_of_the_Month#August_2006. Thanks! Johntex\talk 01:01, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


Famous Texans entry in Category:People from Texas

Currently Famous Texans is listed as a page in the Category:People from Texas. When one hits the link to the page, one finds that it is only a redirect to the Category:People from Texas, in effect making the category itself appear as one of the pages in the category. A suggestion has been made as to how to resolve this, but, not noting myself the history of the Famous Texans page, I thought that I might do best by contacting you and informing you of the situation. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 15:30, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Centralized discussion on UT Tower shooting link

An editor wishes to add the following link to multiple pages:

"VOICES From The Tower"

I have asked them if we can have a centralized discussion about this link, rather than have the discussion across mutliple pages, and they have agreed to have the discussion here. Johntex\talk 17:44, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I would consider what the user wants to add to be spam. Of course there are other commercial sites linked on Wikipedia. That's not the issue. The issue is whether it's appropriate for these articles. I don't think it is. 2 major problems with that site. #1 is that it's main purpose seems to be to sell a CD. #2 it has a definite agenda. Neither of those things are generally good for external links. Links should not be to sites that push something to sell on all or nearly all of their pages (which is why sites like amazon are generally not allowed) and generally, shouldn't be opinionated as much as the site you link to is. My main concern is #1 though. It mentions this CD on almost every page of the site. I just don't see how we can get around that. --Woohookitty(meow) 17:53, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
The site is exclusively about Charles Whitman and the University of Texas Tower Tragedy. All pages refer to events, documents and photos from the event. The tragedy happened at the Austin Campus of the University of Texas, within the City of Austin, the State of Texas. The Cd is interviews with people directly related to the event. Victims who are noted in the article, Officers who were there that day, Professors of Whitman, observers who are linked to the article, documents from the investigation, friends of Whitman, issues with the City of Austin, Texas. The site notes that it is under construction, however, there is enough information there now for adequate references. Other links on the Wikipedia article go directly to commercial sites that are either commercially based, or have information that is totally biased from unresearched sources such as news accounts and magazines who wrote limited or false information about the tragedy from the start. Since Woohookitty claims the site has an "agenda" without clarifying what the agenda is (in his opinion), the site should be allowed to be linked to all applicable pages.71.121.103.147 18:23, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
One thing I'm concerned about is your desire to add this to "all applicable pages". In addition to all the pages you list above, the website is also talking about something that happened in the United States on planet Earth, in the Solar System during the 20th Century and involving rifles and stairways. Do you think the link belongs on all those articles as well? Johntex\talk 20:40, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

No. Here is my hopes. Charles Whitman and sub articles, City of Austin, University of Texas, Mass Murderers, Austin Police Department, and only a few others where it would be appropriate. The expansion you gave would be well beyond the scope. Also, a tumor (Glio-Blastoma) site may be appropriate also.71.121.103.147 21:22, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

The general topic of your site has little to do with any of those pages and would not significantly expand them in any way. Wikilink those articles back to the Whitman page if there is a corelation, but spamming the same external link across every single tangentally related page would not be acceptable. I would also echo Woohookitty's concern that you're pushing that CD pretty heavy, but there is probably enough content there to mitigate that; I didn't look over the entire site. Kuru talk 23:21, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
  • According to The Daily Texan [1], the website is run by Houston McCoy and his associates.John Moore with some profits shared to Houston McCoy. I recommend we work it into Houston McCoy, but not the other articles. Johntex\talk 23:30, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
I very strongly believe it doesn't belong on pages like APD or UT, I strongly believe it doesn't belong in articles about Whitman, Martinez or others. If we put it on the Houston McCoy article, I would personally 'suggest' that it be labelled as "Site run by Houston McCoy about the shootings", not "Voices from the tower". As a stand-alone link, as WHK said, it doesn't qualify for inclusion, its only reason for inclusion is because it is authored by the subject of the article. Sherurcij (Speaker for the Dead) 23:33, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

It has a page on martinez. A several pages dealing with Whitman. Interviewees all dealing with Whitman. A few pages dealing with McCoy. Images of the tower with explanations of what took place and where. The title is Voices From The Tower. Martinez has a link to his book written by him. The City of Austin page mentions the incident under history.71.121.103.147 00:15, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

That's great. Unfortunately, adding your promotional link to many semi-related articles is the very definition of external link spamming. I don't see any reason why this would be an exception. Sherurcij's point above about the wording of the link itself is also important to note - point-of-view external links can sometimes be added, but they must be labeled appropriately. There seems to be quite a bit of history at those articles (Whitman, McCoy); so I will defer to the editors that are more familiar with the content there. Kuru talk 00:41, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

All right, All right!!! First, Johntex, nice article, but Houston Mccoy is not running the site or contributing other than helping with the facts on his pages with the facts. If you note your own source, it does not say McCoy is running the website and McCoy has no associates in that regard. The website states it is under construction, perhaps it has been posted to soon. Due to the incompleteness of the site, I respectfully withdraw the inclusion of the site for future consideration. I will remove the link since it is copyrighted. Thanks everyone!71.121.103.147 01:11, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Removing With Explanation

I am again removing the discussion pursuant to Sherurcij's misinterpretation of the GFDL license. The reasons are in the license itself:

1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS This License applies to any manual or other work, in any medium, that contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms of this License. Such a notice grants a world-wide, royalty-free license, unlimited in duration, to use that work under the conditions stated herein. The "Document", below, refers to any such manual or work. Any member of the public is a licensee, and is addressed as "you". You accept the license if you copy, modify or distribute the work in a way requiring permission under copyright law.

According to the license, Mr. Moore holds the Copyright to the website under discussion. Mr. Moore was not contacted for permission to use the link or any pages within the website. That there are public documents used within the website, that can be gotten by legal means for anyone so inclined to do so. That Mr. Moore expressly wishes to not have his Copyrighted work on Wikipedia in any form for any purpose.71.121.103.147 17:34, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but you cannot just 'remove' discussion because you don't want to. Now, to start with, every single one of us involved in the Whitman article know that you are John Moore, you've been given the benefit of the doubt for months now, you've evaded multiple bans, and we still are polite and explanatory with you, please respect that. Your discussions on the talk page are not "copyrighted", and you therefore have no ability to remove them. Before you ever hit the Save Page button, you have to see the words You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL. - if you consider the discussion over, we can probably all agree to html-strikethrough it, so it's clear that it's resolved, sound good? Sherurcij (Speaker for the Dead) 20:49, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Now you speak for the living too!!! Amazing! Why would John Moore post a link to his website, and then try to get rid of it?! Rather counter-productive and a waste of time in MHO! You obviously do not understand my error nor your mis-application of the GFDL. And furthermore, why is this discussion even taking place since the link can not be used without the copyright holders permission? If you can explain the last sentence, then let's proceed, if not, let's move on to something more productive, in an individual capacity of course. The GFDL is not the issue here!71.121.103.147 22:07, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
I thought you sounded like a person looking to be an authority Sherurcij. Could your motivation be to try and re-nominate yourself again for an Administrator position? Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Sherurcij From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia < Wikipedia:Requests for adminship Jump to: avigation, search The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a request for adminship that did not succeed. Please do not modify it. Sherurcij Final (12/8/6) ended 15:13 27 November 2005 (UTC)
You...don't even make sense. First of all, let me introduce you to an IP address, and what it is. Why the same IP address is posting a link to a website, and then "trying to get rid of it" is beyond me, but there is absolutely no doubt that you are John Moore. I agree with you though, you are largely wasting your time with this issue - you have 2 wikipedia admins, 3 editors and a lawyer, none of whom appear to give you any credence, and have banned you multiple times. Find a new hobby. I'm unclear on what an RFA has to do with your continued trolling and vandalising of Whitman-related articles, perhaps you could clarify? Or are you just showing off that you've discovered how to use google, and thus posted the second link that turns up for "Sherurcij" ? Sherurcij (Speaker for the Dead) 00:15, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not here to fence with you, just to remove the website link, that's all! Is the attorney supposed to scare me or something? That aside, the website link is not going to be allowed on Wikipedia by Mr. Moore, period! So again, what is the purpose of discussing a non-issue? Close down the discussion for brevities sake!71.121.103.147 01:08, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Invite

Wanted to let you know that WP:BIOGRAPHY has added a "work group" called Politics and government, and so wanted to invite you to participate on any biography-type articles. The section for TX is here and if there's interest, we can beef it up to look like the newly-created Virginia one plange 05:37, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

/signup

I'd like to help out too!

ChangeOfFate 02:45, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Featured?

Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Texas Joe I 08:57, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

La Plaza Mall

Your project may be interested in the AfD on La Plaza Mall, McAllen, Texas. --AlexWCovington (talk) 06:19, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Just joined

I just signed up for the project. I have begun working on Category:Ghost towns in Texas. I will probably work on some of the dead internal links stemming from those articles.

UIL

Should Social Studies (UIL test) and Spelling and Vocabulary be added to the project, since they are UIL tests? -- VGF11 19:33, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I've added the template to these pages, since I never received a response. -- VGF11 01:36, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Great Job!

Fantastic job on spreading the knowledge and greatness that is the great state of Texas. WE know what outsiders don't, but we will help them get a little taste of the sweetness that is the Lone Star/Friendly state. Keep up the good work. --ProdigySportsman 23:50, 25 September 2006 (UTC) Allen, Texas

Westminster Theological Seminary

An anon added Westminster Theological Seminary to this project. There is a small satellite campus of WTS in Dallas, but do you think it belongs? --Flex 01:29, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

It's still tagged as a part of the project but the article itself contains no mention of the satellite campus in Dallas. UNless someone can give a good explanation in the next week or so I'm going to untag it since it seems to only be remotely associated with Texas (and this remote association isn't even in the article). Harlock jds 13:18, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Magic Time Machine

Anyone know of Magic Time Machine? There's one in dallas and one in sanantonio, and one was in austin. If anyone knows of some media source articles on them, please let me know. Joe I 02:10, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

AfD Nomination

2005 Texas Longhorn football team has been nominated for deletion. Please join in the discussion if you wish. Johntex\talk 01:08, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

John Denver?

I noticed that his article has been tagged at part of the Texas Project. Other than attending a university in TX for a while, does he have a particularly strong connection with the state? Joyous! | Talk 18:25, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Invitation to new WikiProject

A new WikiProject has been started, and may be of interest to members here. It is WikiProject National Register of Historic Places. It covers all listings on the Register, in all states and territories. Should you be so inclined, please feel free to join. And spread the word to any other interested parties. -Ebyabe 19:56, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Articel in need of Texan help

Namely the recently rescued from bias and copyright violation Deregulation of the Texas Electricity Market. It needs some people who are familiar with it to help fix it up from its current state. Thanx. 68.39.174.238 03:49, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 19:19, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

San Augustine

The San Augustine page has no history of the town whatsoever. I think it needs more than geography and demographics. I've got an 1850 plan of the town of San Augustine for starters [Map] There needs to be more information about the people who made the city prosper such as: Elisha Roberts who who was one of the founders of San Augustine, and the Reverend George Crocket who documented the architectural history of San Augustine and the people and places of local and distant origins. He was Rector at the Episcopal churches of San Augustine and Nacogdoches and his sermons open a window on the religious teachings in rural East Texas of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Crocket was involved in the formation of the Boy Scouts of America in San Augustine and helped shape many of the institutions that make up modern life in eastern Texas. These are additional sources on the Texas Tides page: a sketch of the downtown courthouse: [courthouse]. Texas Tides 15:18, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Houston peer review

The Houston, Texas article is currently being peer reviewed. Your advice on how to improve the article is appreciated. Thank you for your assistance. Postoak 05:19, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 22:23, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Please Review

Hello, I am getting ready to propose 2005 Texas Longhorn football team for consideration as a featured article. The article has had one reveiw already and I believe all issues raised there have been addressed. I have also used the semi-automated review script to look for small things that need to be changed. The article is meticulously referenced with 121 in-line sources. It contains both free-use images and appropriate fair-use images. It attempts to follow the standards set out by the relevant wiki projects.

In watching the nomintaion of the OU football program, I see that the OU article has received some objections on the grounds of supposedly being overly positive and for listing too-many awards. I have reviewed the 2006 UT article in light of those objections and I am prepared to argue that every positive thing said is relevant and attributed to a specific source. As for the awards and accomplishments, I think all the ones listed in the UT article are notable and justifiable, but I'd like to get more feedback from other editors so I invite you to review the article if you please. Johntex\talk 09:54, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Nomination

After a long delay, I finally nominated the Amarillo, Texas article in the Featured Articles candidates section. It is mostly a pessimistic nomination. Just don't think it will pass in its first nomination. Although, it is better than most failed FA city candidates. It just not well written. Please express your opinions. If you hate it, I will not like you. It is better to have a failed nomination than a faux Texas-related "Featured article." --J. Nguyen 03:44, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Houston FA nomination

The Houston, Texas article has been nominated as a feature article candidate. Please stop by and provide your input. Thanks! Postoak 03:54, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Dalby Springs, TX

Dalby Springs, Texas looks like a verbatim copy from the Handbook of Texas Online. Just a heads up, I tried to get rid of what looked like was copied, but someone didn't agree.A mcmurray 04:30, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Austin districts

Someone please address the request below. Im not qualified enough for the job, so Im pasting the request here:

Hi Zereshk. I have detected a temporal inconsistency in the Austin, TX article, politics section. The inconsistent phrase reads "Of Austin's six state legislative districts, three are strongly Democratic, and three are swing districts, all of which will be held by Democrats when Valinda Bolton assumes control of District 47 this January.". I am tempted to change it to something like "Of Austin's six state legislative districts, three are strongly Democratic, and three are swing districts. Currently all six are held by Democrats", but since I do not have political knowledge about the region I judged it wiser to ask someone living there. ¿Could you please take a look at it? Charles Dexter Ward 22:01, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks.--Zereshk 06:50, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I think his phrasing is both accurate and clearer. Paxsimius 05:15, 13 March 2007 (UTC)


South Padre Island... Can I put up Links?


Somebody -I'm guessing and administrator- has put up a sign to prohibit the formation of more external links emanating from the South Padre Island, Texas article.

I suggest that several links be formed in order to further complete this article. Most of them are official representatives of the city (commerce, tourism, etc.)


Complying to the notice set in the article, I first mention the links in this discussion page, so a Wikipedia administrator reviews them and may agree to let them be formed on the article itself.

They are:
Padre Island Conventions & Visitors Bureau
Padre Island Chamber of Commerce
Town of South Padre Island
Padre Island webcams and live info!
Padre Island Spring Break
Padre

As you can see, I already have the links, I just need the "permission" to put them up. Who can I talk to?

Thank you.

--Valdezlopez 16:38, 15 March 2007 (UTC), Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico

  • You have come to the right place. We can discuss this here. Personally, I think the first 3 links above have some value, but the others are too much, I think. I look forward to hearing other opinions. Johntex\talk 06:01, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
My response at Talk:South Padre Island, Texas is very similar to yours. Top 3, OK. The rest are not. Postoak 06:09, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

"TX" abbreviations

I don't know if it'd be easy to do in an automated fashion, but there's some cities and counties that don't have a redirect from the TX abbreviation. For example, if I search for "Wink, TX" or "Winkler County, TX" then neither of them goes to the correct article (Wink, Texas and Winkler County, Texas). I was used to doing this in the search, because it works for most things that I've searched for. But there are at least some that don't work. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.182.97.121 (talk) 05:03, 20 March 2007 (UTC).

I don't know an automatic way to do this. Maybe someone else can help. Johntex\talk 05:59, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Also, searching for "texas counties" or "counties of texas" leads to a dead end. These should obviously redirect to Category:Texas_counties (evidently I don't know how to format a link to a category) or List_of_Texas_counties. 24.182.97.121 05:06, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I fixed this so that Texas counties, Texas Counties and Counties of Texas all point to List of Texas counties. From there, people can also get to the category.
Thanks for your feedback on both these issues. Are you finding Wikipedia to be helpful resource, in general? Johntex\talk 05:59, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Category Handbook of Texas citations

This was deleted today. Was anyone aware of this? I would have voted against it if I knew about it. Postoak 02:39, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

It seemed a little stupid. If anything, inline citations should've had their own template.. and the template should've carried <includeonly>[[Category:Handbook of Texas citations]]</includeonly>.. instead of just adding the category at whatever page it happened to be noticed at. -- drumguy8800 C T 19:58, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Assessment

Hey, I started Wikipedia:WikiProject Texas/Assessment. If an admin could change the template (I posted the change on the talk), that's all that's left to be done, I believe. Thanks. Joe I 01:02, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

New articles

Dear Wikipedians, a list of possible Texas-related articles found by bot is available at User:AlexNewArtBot/TexasSearchResult. Colchicum 15:10, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Most wanted articles

There are currently 54 articles listed at WP:MWA#Texas that might be of interest to this project. --Sapphic 20:18, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

La Entrada al Pacifico

Should it be included in this? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Eaglesmarty08 (talk • contribs) 00:17, 17 April 2007 (UTC).

First Texas FA unwatched

I have been retired for Wikipedia for some months, but I have reverted vandalism and made a view updates to the Marshall, Texas article, the first Texas FA and the oldest surviving city FA. The article has undergone several acts of vandalism that stood longer than they should have, the addition of an eighth city commission district for example with no changes to the above paragraphs mentioning a government of seven commissioners for example. Many of the sources are online, and suspicious facts can be confirmed through Google or Yahoo!. I will no longer check the Marshall article for vandalism occasionally; other than the addition of a picture here and there, I do not intend to edit Wikipedia anymore. I will no longer take any responsibility for the accuracy of the information in an article at a project that I retired from. -JCarriker 17:30, 13 May 2007 (UTC)


Texas Battlegrounds

I think a great wikiproject texas project would be a comprehensive listing with associated articles for all the battlegrounds in the state of Texas. we would have to include subsections for Pre Colonial/Colonial, Spanish Texas, Mexican Texas, Texas Revolution/Republic, Civil War, Indian Wars. There is currently no such listing that I know of. Let me know what everyone thinks of this idea. TexasHistory 15:10, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Texas Civil War Battles (From the wikipedia civil war battles page)


Some Texas Revolutionary Battles I found on Wikipedia still many more missing and need articles created for them.

TexasHistory 15:43, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Spanish Period Battles (need more)
Mexican-American war (need more)
Indian Wars (many more missing)

TexasHistory 16:01, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Navigational Boxes for Counties in Texas

I've seen articles for counties in other states with their own navigational boxes. So far I see none for Texas counties. I suggest that although it will take some time, that Texas county articles include navigational boxes for cities and towns within the county they're located inside. So far I've stepped up to the plate of creating the first two county templates for a Texas county: Template:Harris County, Texas and Template:Travis County, Texas. And I've marked certain places with a symbol denoting that portions of the jurisdiction lie in two or three counties. Let me know what you think of that. Thanks. GETONERD84 21:55, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Conan the Barbarian

Someone added the Wikiproject Texas box to Conan the Barbarian. Isn't that a bit too distant - a fictional character whose originally creator was Texan ? -- Beardo 22:16, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Not at all, this is directly related, as it's creator lived and wrote in Texas. Reguardless of it being set in a far away place, It was written here--Scorpion451 21:15, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Texas wine

Howdy! I just recently created the Texas wine article and was wondering if any members of the Texas Project would be interested in adding to the articles. I personally have never had the pleasure nor opportunity to enjoy Texas wine so any pictures of the wines/bottles/wineries/vineyards would be a huge asset. Of course all contributions are welcomed and appreciated. Thanks! AgneCheese/Wine 01:22, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

New articles for tags

I just placed my name on the Texas project list. I recently wrote some Texas related articles. Consider placing a Texas tag on the new articles talk pages. Some of the articles I wrote include Ron Stone (reporter), Texon, Texas,Neil Frank, Dewalt, Texas, ATP Oil and Gas, Raymond Nimmer, etc. VK35 17:42, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Tom Vandergriff rewrite, input requested

I drafted a rewrite of the Tom Vandergriff stub. Discussion here. I need some input before I copy it over the stub. davidwr (talk) 23:33, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

The new articke Tom Vandergriff is in place. I need some help finishing off a few things. The article also needs assessment on the quality scales. I'm biased but I'm thinking START or B. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:03, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Include Harvest (band) in WikiProject Texas?

Instead of placing the {{WikiProject Texas}} template on the Harvest talk page myself, I thought I'd ask here whether or not to place it there. The band originated in and operated out of Texas. Jamie L.talk 23:02, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Chris Young FAC

You may want to come by and comment at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Chris Young (pitcher).--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 23:38, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Ron Paul A-class review

After approving Ron Paul for GA-status, I listed it for A-class review at Wikiproject Biography. Any participants of this project are free to take place in the discussion to promote the article further. Thanks. Mrprada911 19:27, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject_Biography/A-class_review/Ron_Paul

List of lakes in Texas

I've been slowly going through the List of lakes in the United States since I pulled it into its own article and I've just extracted the Texas lakes into List of lakes in Texas and tagged with the Lake and Texas wikiproject tags. My knowledge of Texan geography however is nil, so I'll leave it up to someone more qualified to populate it. If you can identify the most notable lakes in Texas, deepest, longest, largest etc, then I'd like to include them back in the main US list so that it becomes a summary of the most notable lakes in the US and in each state; with links to all the State lake pages. Malathos 05:19, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Deletion discussion

Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2005 Texas vs. Texas A&M football game - Johntex\talk 16:43, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

FA Nom

I have nominated 2005 Texas Longhorn football team as a featured article candidate. All feedback is very welcome. Johntex\talk 23:25, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

  • This article was promoted to FA, so we now have a new FA for the WikiProject. Johntex\talk 05:21, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

FAR

Marshall, Texas will be put up for a FAR soon. If any objections, please discuss on its talk page. Okiefromokla•talk 20:54, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

  • Let's work on addressing the issues with this article so that it remains FA caliber. - Johntex\talk 16:56, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
The current Texan Collaboration of the Month is Marshall, Texas.
Every month, a different Texas-related topic, stub or non-existent article is picked.
Please read the nomination text and improve the article any way you can.

Area code maps

I had seen the Area code map for Texas, and noticed that it didn't quite match up. Paducah, Texas, (in Cottle County) for example, has an 806 area code, but according to the map, it is 940. Brian Pearson 01:55, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Deletion discussion

Of potential interest, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Richard King (Texas). (The article has been expanded significantly since the original proposal). Studerby 10:33, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Most_wanted_articles#Texas

Wikipedia:Most_wanted_articles#Texas has been updated using the 2007-09-08 data dump. --Sapphic 17:26, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Is there anyway to see the full list of wanted articles somewhere else (or at least of Most wanted besides the various legislatures? :) ) Collectonian 18:38, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Marshall, Texas FAR underway

Marshall, Texas has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Okiefromokla•talk 01:56, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Page review?

Would some of you mind reviewing the new page Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs? It's been tagged as a COI, and I'm told I should have some editors from this project review it to ensure it's not biased so that the notice can be removed. Thanks in advance and for any advice or comments! 168.39.89.242 13:43, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Archive Talk

Might I suggest adding an auto archiver to this talk page and letting it do some clean up. There are discussions going back two years and this page is getting a might big :) I'd be happy to add it if others are in agreeance. Collectonian 13:47, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I concur. The weeds are getting mighty thick in here. - Ageekgal 07:15, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Potential walled garden

I was surfing Special:Newpages recently, and came across Joe Levin (Businessman), an article of dubious notability created by User:Bhaktivinode. I took a moment to explore the pages that it linked to, and discovered what was essentially a walled garden created by Bhaktivinode. The set of pages centers around the Jewish community in Brenham, Texas, especially focusing on marginally notable historical figures and families. I've flipped through the pages, and generally, they link only to one another; there are no incoming links to them that have not been added by Bhaktivinode. Now, my natural inclination is to write up a mass AFD and get the whole lot nuked as non-notable. However, before doing so, I wanted to see what WikiProject Texas thought about it.

Are the subjects notable? (My opinion is that the synagogue may be notable, as the oldest still-used synagogue in Texas, but the others are far more marginal). Can the articles be conglomerated in any way, perhaps into the Brenham, Texas article? Should they be nuked outright? Thank you for your time. ♠PMC♠ 05:19, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I tried AfDing one of that contributers many new dubiously notable articles, and was quickly slammed and accused of trying to suppress the Jewish history. You may have better luck with the people, but I wouldn't even try on the synagogues as they are both on the National Historic registry and that makes them instantly notable, or so I was loudly told. This despite some dubious references and a total lie on one article, claiming Temple Freda is still in use...uh no, its disrepair and practically condemned. I suspect its historical status is the only thing keeping it up. Maybe suggest a merge on the B'nai Abraham Cemetery and Synagogue, try for a deletion on the people...and hopefully someone will go clean up the rest. I suspect, however, he will be flooding the project with many more similar articles. Collectonian 18:27, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
Please feel free to check out History of the Brenham Jewish Community as well as History of the Galveston Jewish Community. On the question of my intent, which was raised above, it is this - to write about Texas history, Jewish Texan history, and Hank Hill. If you have any question about these, please feel free to talk with me on my talk page. Thanks. Take care. Bhaktivinode 18:43, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree that it is important to write about Jewish Texan history, but not everyone involved in that history meets wikipedia notability requirements. The article on Joe Levin (Businessman), listed above, does not meet the notability guidelines, in my opinion. Karanacs 20:36, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Image of Spanish Texas

I've been working to improve the article Spanish Texas. I think the article needs an image of the territory that comprised Spanish Texas, preferably with the major settlements noted (San Antonio, Refugio, La Bahia, Nacogdoches, Los Adaes). I haven't found a usable image online yet. Does anyone know where one is, or, is someone with artistic skill willing to create an image for the article? I would give lots of freshly-baked wikicookies for the effort! Thanks Karanacs 20:26, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject University of Houston

WikiProject Texas has a new child project that is WikiProject University of Houston. We're looking for Wikipedians interested in improving articles related to Texas' third-largest university, the University of Houston. Thanks!
—Brianreading 19:56, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

FAR for Galveston Hurricane of 1900

Galveston Hurricane of 1900 has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.--Nilfanion (talk) 23:33, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Counties on state template

I'm aware that there have been past discussions of having counties listed on {{Texas}}, which were ultimately decided against because of the size. I'm wondering if another way could work to have them listed: in Ohio and Iowa, counties are numbered, and in Kansas, counties have two-letter abbreviations similar to the way that the USPS abbreviates state names. Does Texas have such an official system for its counties in some way? If so, I propose restoring the counties to the state template, linked by their abbreviations or other type of short reference. Nyttend (talk) 17:11, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe that Texas counties have any other naming (or numbering) system. Karanacs (talk) 18:38, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
There is no such official system of numbering or abbreviations for counties in Texas. Though, with 254 counties, I think even an abbreviation would be rather lengthy, unfortunately. Collectonian (talk) 18:47, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Wow, no official system at all; it seems that there are enough counties that it would help the state government keep track of them! However, each county has its own FIPS code, which you can find at List of counties in Texas; for example, Hardeman County is #197. Could we put them on the template with the last three digits of the FIPS codes as the link? Surely such a system, which would use 1269 characters, would be much shorter than the counties section of Template:Georgia, which lists the counties by their names. Nyttend (talk) 19:37, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
But how would anyone know which county was which just by looking at the template? Joe I 19:57, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Doh. Total brain cramp on my end. I forgot about FIPS (or try to LOL). Every county does indeed have a unique federal identification code (AKA FIPS), however the only people who would know those codes are people intimately knowledgeable about the state (i.e. we state and county employees) and they are not known by 99% of the public. As such, I can't see how using the numbers would be helpful for a template at all, since people would have to first go to that list to look up a counties code. Collectonian (talk) 20:10, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm aware that this would be a weakness. However, this would be a problem for any abbreviation; Iowa would have a similar problem if its template listed counties by numbers. I don't know the codes myself; the idea is that, since the numbers go alphabetically, people could realise that they're listed alphabetically. Anyway, someone could just hold the mouse over the link to get it to display the code. In short: it's not a good solution, but I think it's better than not linking to counties at all. Nyttend (talk) 20:24, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
I disagree. I think rather than confusing 99% of people, we should just leave the counties off the template. Karanacs (talk) 20:50, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Surely we need a significant consensus to overturn past consensus...I don't think I myself can be that consensus. If you're a public servant, perhaps you could write a petition to whatever state office is responsible for this to get them to make some sort of official abbreviation :-) Nyttend (talk) 01:59, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
Even if there was a non-numeric abbreviation system, I don't see how a block of 254 abbreviations is prefereable to a straightforward link to List of counties in Texas. — Laura Scudder ☎ 00:12, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

A Canticle for Leibowitz

Earlier this year A Canticle for Leibowitz was tagged as part of WikiProject Texas. Other than a few scenes from the story taking place in a fictional future Texas (Texarkana, actually), I'm uncertain of the justification for including the article under your project. In the intervening months no one from the project has seen fit to work on it and there have been no assessments placed on the article. Also, projects for at least four or five other states and the Roman Catholic religion could lay claim to it as well. I'm not complaining or criticizing, just suggesting that the relationship is tenuous at best.
Jim Dunning | talk 02:40, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Copy Map request

I've found a map that would be a good basis for Spanish Texas, but my map-making skills are horrendous. I'd appreciate any help. Here is the map I would like to base it on[2]. I'd like to bring the article to FA status, but I think it will need a good map before it will pass. Thanks for anyone who can help! Karanacs (talk) 17:01, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Article Status Tracker

Hello, I'm not a member of this project, but I am one with WP:Houston. I thought you might like to have this link if you don't already. It is very self-explanatory:
Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Texas articles by quality statistics, and produces this which can be transcluded where deemed fit:

Texas
articles		 Importance
Top High Mid Low None Total
Quality
Featured article FA 1 4 10 14 29
Featured list FL 2 2 4
A 1 2 2 1 6
Good article GA 2 4 20 30 3 59
B 20 73 205 411 29 738
Start 23 160 1182 5739 125 7229
Stub 34 482 5531 198 6245
List 10 18 113 141
Assessed 47 289 1919 11841 355 14451
Unassessed 1 3 4
Total 47 289 1919 11842 358 14455

This is updated every three days by a bot and requires no human intervention. -MBK004 19:45, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, we did have this link before, but it was so well hidden on the Project's front page it might as well not have existed. I have put the dashboard on the front page and a couple of links to related pages. Thanks for the shove to make it a bit more accessible. Jacksinterweb (talk) 23:08, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Institute for Creation Research

Formerly of the California project, just moved to Texas, so you might want to include it in your project.--Filll (talk) 21:11, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Housekeeping

I've been doing some housekeeping duties to the Project's work pages, adding navigation bars and links to the article category pages. This will help you find articles using class, importance or alphabetically. I also, as mentioned above, moved the Assessment Dashboard to the Project's front page, along with a couple of links to work pages and the log of work done. In the coming days I am goung to try and add a couple of other cosmetic changes to the front page to aid in finding what you want a bit easier.

Also, I have started to tackle some of the unassessed articles, so you might see a bit more activity popping up on your watch list from Texas articles.

This is what happens when Wikipedia's "Be Bold" mantra meets a slightly OCD type. Jacksinterweb (talk) 23:26, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

WP:DFW

I would like to "revive" the Dallas-Fort Worth WikiProject. It is inactive, but DFW articles could do with help. Could someone help with the articles and the WikiProject? Basketball110 02:37, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Deletion nomination

Glossary of Texas Aggie terms has been nominated for deletion. Johntex\talk 02:48, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

First Ladies of Texas

Aside from Laura Bush and Anita Thigpen Perry there are not that many articles about the First Ladies of Texas (the wives of the governors). Here are some that can be written about with links to sites with some info on them.

You can also talk to the people over at WikiProject Biographies for help with this. I can also help you whenever I have spare time. --Merond e 06:22, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Texas Department of Criminal Justice

This article is rated as of high importance to the Texas project. Hopefully someone will take a look at it and do something. It's an embarrassment to Wikipedia, and by extension, Texas and the project, as it now exists. I'm appalled!! Wildhartlivie (talk) 04:45, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

McCarthyism 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 WikiProject'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 McCarthyism 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 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) 01:53, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Texas State Highway 165

I recently visited the Texas State Cemetery and traveled SH 165. I believe your article is inaccurate. Your article map indicates the highway runs north on Comal from 7th west into the park at the east entrance. Your article indicates the highway is the second longest highway in Texas.

The road actually resides within the cemetery, not along Comal. There are two entrances, the Rose Entrance and the East entrance. There is a sign post at either entrance identifying it as SH165 and states it is the shortest highway at .5 miles in Texas. The supporting Cemetery handout states this too.

Nick Saraceni npsarac@gmail.com75.11.253.132 (talk) 16:29, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Jay Presson Allen

This article seems to be part of your project as well as a WP:BIO article. It has recently be reassessed as a B-class for WP:BIO; would someone please assess it for this project as well. It is well beyond 'Start-class' now. Thank you.EraserGirl (talk) 02:58, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

FA Nom

French Texas has been nominated for Featured Article status. For those of you who had Texas history a long time ago, this was the first European settlement in Texas. Founded by La Salle, it only lasted 3 years, and they recently "found" the site and started an archealogical dig in 1996. Please feel free to leave comments. Karanacs (talk) 16:17, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Sports Page

I thought this page from Minnesota project was quite interesting: Sports in Minnesota. Our main page's Sports section seems to be getting too crowded.Oldag07 (talk) 03:37, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Timothy Shepherd

An editor has nominated Timothy Shepherd, an article which relates to this WikiProject, for deletion. Your opinions on whether the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with the article are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Timothy Shepherd Thanks, Johntex\talk 22:27, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Shamrock, TX

My apologies if my post is in the wrong spot (still new to wikipedia), but I made a few edits to shamrock, tx to remove what I believe did not belong on the page. Would someone check if the content I deleted was inappropriate? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.113.99.153 (talk) 21:33, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Most of your removals were fine, however you should not have removed the references section and I've put it back. Collectonian (talk) 22:14, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Ima Hogg

A few of us are working on the Ima Hogg article to try to get it up to featured article status, and we could use some help. In particular, would anybody be able to take photos of her home at Bayou Bend, or any other locations that are related to her life? Corvus cornixtalk 17:05, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Can someone please help clear this up at Ima Hogg?
  • the daughter of Sarah Ann "Sallie" Stinson and James Stephen "Big Jim" Hogg, a well-known lawyer and state's attorney< !--Many readers won't know what this means—they'll think it's Attorney General; should it be district attorney?-- >, who later became Attorney General and Governor of the state.
Thanks, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:54, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Jay Presson Allen

My request for an reassessment of Jay Presson Allen by the Texas Project was archived and never addressed; it wasn't even replied to. If the Texas Project no longer is interested in Ms. Allen, I will be removing your banner. EraserGirl (talk) 14:14, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Please don't remove valid banners. This is a big project, and we do have someone going through and trying to assess every article, but that takes time. If you don't get a response at the request for assessment, post here and someone will be sure to see it and likely respond. I've rated this B class. Karanacs (talk) 14:35, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
No one is going to see anything, if valid requests for assessment get archived instead of addressed. Thank you for the assessment that's all I wanted. EraserGirl (talk) 14:39, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Texas: Articles of unclear notability

Hello,

there are currently 39 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) 15:49, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

West Dallas

Anybody cares to clean up West Dallas? -- Alexf42 22:56, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

History templates

This week a new template, Template:Six flags of Texas, was created. It has many of the same links as Template:Texas History. I think the new template is unnecessary and has the potential to confuse people who don't know Texas history; they would likely expect the links to go to articles on the flags' that flew over Texas, not to periods in Texas history. I think we ought to look for consenus on whether both templates are needed, or if one or both should be changed. Karanacs (talk) 18:37, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

As I'm the one that made the template in question, I'm commenting. We have many templates that cover the same information, but are either in a vertical infobox (Template:Texas History) or horizontal (Template:Six flags of Texas). But this one covers all the time periods, while the Texas History template covers 2 areas that aren't covered by this template.
The Six flags of Texas covers the Republic of Texas, not the State of Texas, and the Slavery wikilink goes to History of slavery in Texas, which is far more broad than Texas in the Civil War. Finally, the template I created was solely for the purpose of six articles, Six flags over Texas (not to be confused by the theme park), Spanish Texas, French Texas, Mexican Texas, Republic of Texas, Texas in the Civil War, and Texas.
These are the only articles that I can see this pertaining to, and as I didn't see anything to link them together I decided to Be Bold and create one. And other questions, please feel free to ask, either here or on my talk page. Leobold1 (talk) 23:55, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
The only one missing from the History of Texas template is Texas in the Civil War. That can easily be added. (It already includes Spanish Texas, French Texas, Mexican Texas, Republic of Texas, and Texas.) I think the two templates are overly duplicative, and that having one labelled "Six Flags over Texas" which discusses history and not flags will unnecessarily confuse non-Texans who aren't familiar with the term. Karanacs (talk) 01:21, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Actually, the wikilink for Republic of Texas actually points to the State of Texas.
I still don't see the problem with it. Its meant to be a limited template, that would make navigaion easier. In the Six flags over Texas (notice the lowercase f since the uppercase F points to the theme park) article the wikilinks go directly to the article on the nation (i.e. Spain, not Spanish Texas, etc).
And the two templates aren't interchangable, or exclusive of one another. They compliment each other. There are tons of both vertical templates and horizontal templates, such as Template:Politics of the United States (open Legislative) and Template:USCongress. Both these contain much of the same information, but they compliment each other, not detract from each other.
If it shouldn't contain the basics the history behind it, why even have the article. But you already want to get rid of that article. I'm not looking to incorporate the entire history of Texas into the article, nor into the template. The basics is all it will have.
The Template also gives the look of the flag, which none of the other articles has, and this gives a time reference as to when that part was active.
Perhaps I'm taking this too hard, but I just don't see the point of getting rid of it. Its not outside the realm that there are more than one template that gives the same information, just in different parts of the article. It actually gives more history of Texas than the original template does, and the original template is of a much more broader scope than the one I made does. This just gives more detail. Please enlighten me where my thinking is incorrect.
Leobold1 (talk) 03:40, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
When I look at the History template itself, it does link to Republic of Texas. It may be cached wrong on another article.
I may be missing something, but I do not see the need to have two different templates on an article when they contain almost the exact same links. It would make more sense to modify one of the templates to have the link that is missing. Perhaps the new Six flags template should wikilink to articles about the individual flags (Flag of Spain, Flag of France, Flag of Mexico, Lone Star Flag, Flags of the Confederate States of America, Flag of the United States) instead of periods of Texas history? I really think that non-Texans will expect a template with "flags" in its title to link to flag articles and not history articles. Karanacs (talk) 13:43, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
I can go for that, as long as the flag is acutally placed in the target article (which a quick check shows that it does). And fix the verticle template to go to the direct articles. Leobold1 (talk) 20:19, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Fixed the horizontal template to link to the flags. Template:Six flags of Texas Leobold1 (talk) 20:30, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


Bowie knife needs cites.

Bowie knife needs cites. I don't know if that article technically comes under the scope of WikiProject Texas, but I figure that some of you folks might be interested. -- 201.37.229.117 (talk) 13:21, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Texas

To make it easier for Wikipedian photographers to locate photo request near them in Texas, I recently created county subcategories for Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Texas. GregManninLB (talk) 05:04, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

A Canticle for Leibowitz

The article A Canticle for Leibowitz has been flagged as part of this Project for quite awhile. I'm not sure that it should be and may have originally been mistakenly adopted. The novel is a post-apocalyptic story which takes place in the American Southwest. Most of the novel's events occur in the area of Colorado, Arizona, and Utah. A major player in story development, though, is a city-state whose capital is Texarkana (the Texarkana Mayorate). I think someone mistakenly assumed this fictional, future entity included Texas (which it doesn't — see Image:Fiat_Lux_Canticle_map.png) and thus included it as part of the Project.

Would it be okay to delist the article from the Texas project?
Jim Dunning | talk 23:38, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Maybe I need to read the book, but the section on "Fiat Lux" (Let There Be Light) talks about the Texarkana Mayorate that is listed on the map. If this is the reason for the listing under WP:Texas, I can see why you think this, and I agree. If there's more, then we need to know why it was listed as a WP:Texas article. Leobold1 (talk) 23:54, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
By the way, looks like an interesting book. I think I'm going to the bookstore tomorrow. :D Leobold1 (talk) 23:54, 7 April 2008 (UTC)