Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wisconsin

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This project page is within the scope of WikiProject Wisconsin, a WikiProject related to the U.S. state of Wisconsin. For more information, or to get involved, visit the project page.
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Archive
Archives
  1. July 2005 – April 2006
  2. April 2006 – November 2006
  3. November 2006 – November 2007


Contents

[edit] Towns

I've gradually been adding county nav templates to communities nationwide. I've noted that only 11 Wisconsin counties are missing them, so I expect to add them eventually. One question in the mean time: how do Wisconsin towns compare to New England towns? I find New England towns somewhat confusing regarding the census data and their relation to villages and cities, and I'd appreciate it if someone could explain to me (on my talk page) the significance of the Wisconsin town relative to other official bodies. Nyttend 16:12, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] USS Wisconsin (BB-64)

Could someone from this project take a look at the article USS Wisconsin (BB-64) and determine whether it falls with the scope of this project, and if it does, add the project template and importance rating to the article? You need not worry about the class, this article has for some time been a Featured Article. Thanks in advance. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:29, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Weak No My opinion is that the only thing that this ship has in common with this WikiProject is its name. Royalbroil 04:32, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
While many Wisconsinites consider her one of their own, I can't say the article should fall under this project. It already belongs to both the Military History and the Ships wikiprojects, and we Wisconsinites probably can't add any notable information to it (unless we're knowledgeable in those fields). -Freekee 05:01, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Actually, there is a precident for this: Currently the other two FA-class battleship pages (USS New Jersey (BB-62) & USS Missouri (BB-63)) have state project tags on thier talk pages, and many other state projects have adopted their state's respective ships even though they fall more under the MILHIST and SHIPS projects. Just something to think about. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:29, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
In that case I be weakly in favor of adding it to the WikiProject. Royalbroil 14:48, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wisconsin counties navboxes

User Nyttend left a note on my user page that there are only 10 Wisconsin counties do not have navboxes. Unfortunately, I do not have the experience or know anything about navboxes. Anyone from WikiProject Wisconsin who is familiar with navboxes, etc, please feel free to check out my discussion page or that of User Nyttend's discussion page for any information. We have just 10 Wisconsin counties to do. Thank you- RFD 14:43, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed merger of articles:Town&City of Madison&Janesville.

Hi! There has been some proposed mergers of the articles about the Town&City of Madison, and the Town&City of Janesville in Dane&Rock Counties. They have separate local governments that are independent of each other. If we go through with the proposed mergers we will have inaccurate articles about Janesville&Madison. In Wisconsin, the basic local governments units are:towns, cities, viilages and the various articles must be kept to reflect this. Thank you-RFD (talk) 15:35, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Where are the proposed merges listed? I want to strongly object and help explain the differences between a city and township in Wisconsin. Royalbroil 17:36, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
Here is the list

There was no note on the Madison, Wisconsin article about the proposed merger. Thank you-RFD (talk) 18:02, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject:Green Bay Packers

Should there be any relationship between WikiProject Wisconsin and Wikipedia:WikiProject Green Bay Packers? It is the subproject of the NFL WikiProject. Does anyone know about any precedents for a case like this? If nothing else, it should be considered a related WikiProject. Royalbroil 15:13, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a child project. -Freekee (talk) 01:19, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Should it matter that it is a subproject of another WikiProject? Royalbroil 01:32, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Other projects have two parents. Like the Wisconsin Highways project. It's a child of both this one and of the US Roads project. Similar setup, I think. -Freekee (talk) 03:53, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of Governors of Wisconsin nearly ready to be nominated for featured status

I've been working on List of Governors of Wisconsin for awhile now, and I think it's finally ready for Featured List status. Before I nominate it, I'd appreciate it if anyone interested looked it over to see if there's anything they think is missing or could do with fixing up. For comparison, here are featured lists about similar topics: List of Governors of Kentucky, List of Governors of Arkansas. Thanks! —Salmar (talk) 03:34, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

In the text, you should note that the Gov. and Lt. Gov. are not elected on a ticket like the U.S. President and V.P. get elected, but they are instead elected independently. Sometimes the Gov. and Lt. Gov. are from different parties. Royalbroil 04:21, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Actually, that was only true up until the 1967 amendment to the constitution, but you are correct: that should, and in a moment will, be mentioned. Thanks! —Salmar (talk) 15:09, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Wow, I didn't know that the law wasn't still true. I'll look for it when I vote in 2010. Royalbroil 20:43, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
The intro states that Jim Doyle's term will end in 2010, but in the chart it says 2011. I believe the election is in 2010, but the term doesn't expire until 2011. Larkworb (talk) 15:39, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
You are correct, and I have fixed it. I don't know how I missed that! —Salmar (talk) 15:45, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I've nominated the list for Featured Status! The nomination page is here, if anyone's interested in looking the article over thoroughly and leaving an opinion. —Salmar (talk) 00:18, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wisconsin Dells website

A contributor with conflict of interest wanted to include their website on the Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin article. Please join the discussion at Talk:Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. I have already warned the contributor about having their company name as a username. They appear to be wanting to positively help the article in other ways, so please do not use strong words if you disagree with the website. Royalbroil 00:43, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Green Bay Packers

Hey I just wanted to let everyone over here at WikiProject Wisconsin that a WikiProject covering Wisconsin's most favorite football team, the Green Bay Packers, has recently reactivated and are looking for participants. We officially consider the NFL WikiProject our parent WikiProject but it would be great to also be related to Wisconsin. So if you love the Packers and want to help improve their articles, feel free to stop by and add your name to our list of participants and go improve Packers-related articles!
Thanks and Go! You Packers! Go!
Gonzo fan2007 talk ♦ contribs 09:52, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Kechewaishke up for GA

A few of us have put a lot of work into the article on Kechewaishke (aka Chief Buffalo) the Ojibwe chief from La Pointe (Madeline Island) who led the Ojibwe in the treaties that formed nearly half of the state. Is there anyone from the project who could offer some comments or a review on this important figure in territorial and early-statehood history of Wisconsin? Leo1410 (talk) 15:20, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not a history buff at all, but I'll look it over. I am somewhat familiar with the layout of the land in that area. I would appreciate review(s) of Wisconsin NASCAR champion Alan Kulwicki's article by WikiProject Wisconsin members because I'm planning to nominate it for GA soon. A non-racing person review is especially helpful to weed out some of the racing biases. Royalbroil 15:47, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm willing to take a look at it, and will leave comments on the article's talk page. Keeping this conversation going, I'd appreciate it if someone would be willing to look through the List of Lieutenant Governors of Wisconsin, which I plan to nominate for Featured List soon. —Salmar (talk) 01:01, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
My comments are on the talk page; thanks for looking at mine! —Salmar (talk) 02:37, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Barnstar

A new WikiProject barnstar has been added to the WikiProject page ({{Wisconsin Barnstar}}) by User:Dual Freq. We should officially agree upon what barnstar should be used. Does anyone else want to propose a barnstar? Should we agree to this barnstar? Royalbroil 01:43, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I guess I was a bit presumptive to put it up there without discussion. Sorry. The image cam be easily swapped out in the template if you decide to pick another image. --Dual Freq (talk) 01:52, 3 March 2008 (UTC)


[edit] WikiProject Wisconsin: Articles of unclear notability

Hello,

there are currently 12 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) 16:36, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Historical markers

I'm seeing articles where a large portion of the text is copied directly from photos of historical markers (that are in those articles). What do you think of that? Is it allowed? Is it a good idea? Is it as annoying to anyone else as it is to me? -Freekee (talk) 05:13, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

If it's a direct cut and paste job without rewording, then it is a copyright violation and it should be removed immediately. Could you show some examples? Royalbroil 05:23, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Cedarburg, Wisconsin (Yes, it is Wisconsin related :-). I couldn't remember if copying those signs was a copyvio or not. Thanks. -Freekee (talk) 16:38, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Definitely a copyvio. You can use it to write some content, or use short quotes from it. Royalbroil 17:56, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Oops. I just realized I asked my question wrong. I meant to ask about text copied from (photos of) historical markers. As you figured out after I linked. :-[ I edited my question, in case anybody else is reading it. Thanks for your help. I'll see if I can fix that article up in the next couple of days. -Freekee (talk) 05:10, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Template:WikiProject Wisconsin

I revised the Template:WikiProject Wisconsin to include an image request option by location. I also revised the non-article parameter options consistent with other WikiProject templates and provided documentation for the template. GregManninLB (talk) 03:37, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Waunakee, Wisconsin

Currently stub class, needs reassessment. Mjroots (talk) 10:46, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I think it's still stub class. It needs a history section before it could be start class. Royalbroil 12:32, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Wisconsin

The category has gotten out of control and it is fairly useless. It is full of requests by people from around the world (not from Wisconsin) randomly requesting a photo from many random towns, villages, and cities just because their name sounds cool (or whatever). There's no reason or rationale for these requests, and it clogs up the real valid requests. I have driven around eastern half Wisconsin on my racing tour and I've taken pictures from very many locations, but I'm not willing to drive everywhere. The category needs to have these requests pruned. Do I have support to prune out these random cities/villages/towns from contributors who are not members of WikiProject Wisconsin? I'm not advocating removing historic places, buildings, people, etc. Royalbroil 01:32, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure how they implemented it, but Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Illinois has subcats for each county so people can focus on the county they are interested in. I think its just a matter of placing changing "in=Wisconsin" to "in=Blah County, Wisconsin" then creating a category with that name as a subcat of the Wisconsin photo request category. --Dual Freq (talk) 01:46, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
My point is that people are randomly picking municipality articles to request photos. There's no rhyme or reason. Is there any chance that these requests will be honored just because someone requested them? Who would do that task? Why list a task when it is most likely unattainable? What about the hundreds of municipalities that are not listed? Are these municipalities more likely to get photographs because they are in this category? Am I the only person who is taking pictures when they travel through cities? Royalbroil 05:03, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
I see your point. I would think a picture request would be for a page that is of high importance that needs an image, but I've seen these reqphoto tags placed in an automated fashion in the past. I wouldn't object to removal of automated requests from the category. I also wouldn't object to recategorizing them by county so that if you were traveling to a county, you could check that category in advance. Personally I don't use the category to determine what to take a picture of. I usually just take pictures of things I'm interested in regardless of a req pict tag. --Dual Freq (talk) 11:42, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
Why do you think there are a lot of random requests? -Freekee (talk) 15:20, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
Just look at the requests for pictures from the municipalities. They are all from the same contributor(s). Look at these contributors most recent edits and you'll see that they add picture requests from all over the world. We don't need a photo request for every city and minor town in the whole state. Ingram, Wisconsin has 76 residents. What's the odds that one of those 76 residents will upload a picture from the town? Does Wikipedia need a picture from every one of the hundreds/thousands of municipalities in the state? I can see the high to mid importance cities, but not municipalities with less than 10,000 people. 76 residents is just plain wrong. Royalbroil 16:00, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
I don't think one has to be from a town to request a picture. I'm not saying these articles should have pictures, I just don't think the requests are particularly random (except in the case of alphabetical listmaking), or if they are, that there's anything wrong with that. I mean, if I live in a town, why would I need to see a picture of it? Shouldn't it be people from other parts of the world requesting them? However, that's my opinion of your terming the requests invalid on basis of who's requesting them and their motives.
My opinion on whether these towns need photos is... probably not. Of the two that I can think what they look like, I don't think there's anything worth showing. Not anything that sets the towns apart from any other towns, except to the people who live there. But on the other hand, someone from a different part of the country or world might want to know what things look like around here. Should they be required to click around other cities to find pictures, and assume the towns are similar?
But the question remains, should we remove them from the list? I would say only if the tag was placed a long time ago (a year?), or the town is particularly unremarkable (maybe under 1000?).
Aside from that, it's too bad more of these articles don't have text besides demographics. -Freekee (talk) 04:25, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Articles in question (population)

Towns (incorporated)
Villages/Cities

I can see Waukesha's 64,000 people and maybe Germantown's 18,000 but I don't see the rest. They must have been mass requesting photos by the alphabet because there are so many starting with "E" through "J". Why are any of these, besides the 2 exceptions, high importance? Royalbroil 04:58, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd definitely keep Iola on the list, because of its big car show. -Freekee (talk) 04:25, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

What is the reference to Kevin Rudd and Germaine Greer doing in the part about the settlement of Maroon Bay? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Russell O'Callaghan (talk • contribs) 22:07, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wisconsin State Patrol

Someone may want to take a closer look at Wisconsin State Patrol. It may have started as a copy / paste of http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov/statepatrol/about/history.htm and http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov/about/structure/dsp.htm I just skimmed it while adding an infobox and it looks close as far as wording and structure. It might be reworded slightly, but it looks awfully close to a copy paste. Sorry. --Dual Freq (talk) 20:28, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I didn't see text at all related to the second source, but I found a lot from the first. I reworded that text so its copyright should be good now. Royalbroil 12:57, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't know what I was thinking on that second one, thanks for taking a look. --Dual Freq (talk) 23:32, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Lake Delton

Lake Delton, Wisconsin is an article about the village, do we need one solely about just Lake Delton? There are plenty of others in Category:Lakes of Wisconsin to use as an example. Also it might be nice to get a picture of the lake if someone has one laying around somewhere. If I have a picture it would be over 15 years old and taken with a fairly low quality camera. --Dual Freq (talk) 23:32, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Its problems today made national news, so it easily should be notable enough if you want to break the section from the city article. I would argue it was notable before today's problems. There has to be history on how the lake was created from the dam. Your potential old picture is the best thing available(?) for now. Royalbroil 03:19, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Even without today's events, I think it was notable enough for its own article. It's a decent sized lake in a populated area, and which many people have heard of. And it's home to Tommy Bartlett's show, which helped start the whole tourism thing. Not that I would have put a high priority on creating the article (before today), but it's valid. -Freekee (talk) 04:06, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
As for the photos, it looks like I don't have anything useful of the lake. It would have been circa 1981 with a cheap 110 camera, so even if I had a picture it would have been too poor to upload. I'll see what I can dig up history wise. Right now all I found was that William Newman and associate Ralph Hines built the lake / dam in the late 1920s. And this copyrighted 1938 map. --Dual Freq (talk) 11:47, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks to everyone for their help on the article. I nominated it for DYK. A lake of that size emptying in 2 hours is a great DYK fact! Too bad those 5 families had to lose their homes. Royalbroil 23:26, 10 June 2008 (UTC)