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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5Archive 6

Reorganization of list of historic sites in city of Baltimore

Hello WP Maryland. Pubdog has recently done a splendid job developing list-tables of National Register of Historic Places listings in Maryland, and in creating articles and uploading photos of lots of the individual sites. I've helped in only minor ways. When you get a chance, take a look at List of RHPs in MD.

Right now, we are contemplating reorganizing the city of Baltimore listings into 5 or 9 subdivisions by neighborhood areas. There are 282 NRHP properties and historic districts in the city, too many to fit comfortably in one list-article. Others' views about which partition of the city to use would be most helpful. We expect to need some local expertise to implement the division. Please join discussion here: Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Baltimore (Independent City)#reorganizing into geographical areas of the city. Thanks for your attention! doncram (talk) 19:58, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

All was done, reorganized List of RHPs in Baltimore into 5 areas.
Another request: can anyone help fix up Baltimore Heritage Walk? I listed out the 20 historic sites or museums that it links, but am having some trouble finding articles for all of them. doncram (talk) 01:02, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

John Wilkes Booth

This article is now at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/John Wilkes Booth. Maryland Project members may wish to comment there. As Booth was born and raised in Bel Air and Baltimore (where he's buried), maybe this should also be a Maryland project article?  JGHowes  talk 01:05, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Good idea and agreed. It's now listed among WP Maryland articles. Thanks —ADavidB 05:37, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Running problem with Census Designated Places

There is a running issue of articles about towns (in the normal sense) being renamed as Census Designated Places on the pretext that they aren't incorporated. This is really too legal-geeky, and essentially using the census as a gazetteer, when we should be preferring GNIS. It's also causing problems in articles like Columbia, Maryland, where the new city proper does have a legal definition (namely, the land under covenant). Finally, it is giving us maps that say these places are much larger than they are, or which create phantom communities (e.g. North Laurel). The articles on the towns after which the CDPs are named generally only discuss the core town, not the vague area recognized by the census.

I would strongly prefer to use terms like "unincorporated town" and refer to the CDPs only when discussing the demographics. Mangoe (talk) 14:53, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

You have my agreement on this. Are there specific others with whom the issue needs to be engaged for consensus? —ADavidB 10:38, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
That is a good question. Most of the articles in question seem to have been stepped on by Rambot at some point in 2004 when it was adding CDP data. But there's a lot of drive-by pedantry. Even if we in this project come to a consensus, it is likely to disregarded if we don't make the CDPs the primary geographical division. I think we're going to have to take this Wiki-wide. Mangoe (talk) 15:44, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
You might want to take a look at how Lanham-Seabrook, Maryland is handled. There are two articles hanging off of it, one for Lanham, Maryland and a second for Seabrook, Maryland.--Pubdog (talk) 16:47, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 05:56, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

National Register of Historic Places listings in Maryland about done

I've completed stubs for just about all the National Register of Historic Places listings in Maryland. Just a few left to do; those that postdate the Apr 2008 Elkman NRHP database. Best wishes ... Ted--Pubdog (talk) 00:47, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Williamsburg, Maryland

Wasn't sure who to contact about this so just putting out a general help me. Please note that links to Williamsburg, Maryland (a small town in our fair state that currently has no article) are redirecting to Battle of Williamsburg (which took place during the American Civil War in Virginia). Please see Williamsburg Disambiguation page for example. I don't think the town should redirect to the battle as they are two distinct different topics. I don't know how to correct myself, so was asking for some help. Thanks. --dashiellx (talk) 01:16, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I've un-redirected it (I don't really know anything about Williamsburg other than that Yahoo Maps says it's in Dorchester County, so you might want to add more information to it). Generally if you want to unredirect something, you can go to the link (and get redirected), and at the top of the page there will be "(Redirected from What You Tried To Go To)." Click on the link there, and it will take you to the redirect link. Click edit, and you can remove the redirect. - Algorerhythms (talk) 05:21, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
I expanded the article some and added it to the {{Dorchester County, Maryland}} template. I'm fairly certain Williamsburg is an unincorporated community rather than a 'town'. —ADavidB 05:57, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
Thank you for the help and information. --dashiellx (talk) 10:38, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
I went ahead and added the GNIS link and added the GNIS code to the infobox. I also added a photo request to the talk page. Please note that GNIS shows three Williamsburg, Marylands - Baltimore Co., Dorchester Co., and Talbot Co. When I created a bunch of stubs for places that appear in multimple counties (ref Linwood, Maryland), I would first add them to the county template, then create them from there. This would mean your article would need to be moved to Williamsburg, Dorchester County, Maryland. Just a thought ... --Pubdog (talk) 10:48, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts

This is a notice to let you know about Article alerts, a fully-automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles are entering Articles for deletion, Requests for comment, Peer review and other workflows (full list). The reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what happened, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. A certain degree of customization is available; WikiProjects and Taskforces can choose which workflows to include, have individual reports generated for each workflow, have deletion discussion transcluded on the reports, and so on. An example of a customized report can be found here.

If you are already subscribed to Article Alerts, it is now easier to report bugs and request new features. We are also in the process of implementing a "news system", which would let projects know about ongoing discussions on a wikipedia-wide level, and other things of interest. The developers also note that some subscribing WikiProjects and Taskforces use the display=none parameter, but forget to give a link to their alert page. Your alert page should be located at "Wikipedia:PROJECT-OR-TASKFORCE-HOMEPAGE/Article alerts". Questions and feedback should be left at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts.

Message sent by User:Addbot to all active wiki projects per request, Comments on the message and bot are welcome here.

Thanks. — Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 09:23, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

GA review: Talk:Crab_Bowl#Factually_accurate_and_verifiable

I need further clarification regarding this article title. Everyone from this project is invited to comment. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 00:09, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

How to ensure continued existence of a key web page referred to in a WIkipedia article

Hi, y'all.

I'm new at this. This is the first time I've posted to a discussion page, and I'm not even sure how to go about it.

Back in August, I added a footnote to the article on Frederick Douglass, referring to an article at http://www.bluecrab.org/fdouglas/sources/fd-honor.htm, which was written by a girl for her seventh grade honors English class, about the difficulty of finding Douglass' birthplace, and directions on how to find it. The webpage was created in 1996, and links in it to the girl and her father are all broken. I have not been able to find them in the local phonebook, either (I live 2.5 miles north of Tapper's Corner, mentioned in her article as the closest point on a road).

So, I'm worried that this great source may one day just disappear. Is there a good way to ensure its future?

Bloody Viking (talk) 20:01, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, to capture the information at least, I suggest you save a personal copy of the webpage. What i do to save a webpage is to "print" the webpage to a PDF document. I use the free PDF-writer pdf995 software available at http://www.software995.com . I often use this to save a local newspaper article which I suspect may be available only temporarily. If the newspaper article disappears, a wikipedia article can still use the newspaper article as a source. Sources do not have to be online-available. doncram (talk) 20:12, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
It is a problem which is bigger than just wikipedia, so I'm not sure I can offer a simple solution. I try to cite sources which are archived by libraries and archives (online ones, ideally), such as PubMed Central or google books, but of course that doesn't apply to all situations. Kingdon (talk) 12:06, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps invitation

This message is being sent to WikiProjects with GAs under their scope. Since August 2007, WikiProject Good Articles has been participating in GA sweeps. The process helps to ensure that articles that have passed a nomination before that date meet the GA criteria. After nearly two years, the running total has just passed the 50% mark. In order to expediate the reviewing, several changes have been made to the process. A new worklist has been created, detailing which articles are left to review. Instead of reviewing by topic, editors can consider picking and choosing whichever articles they are interested in.

We are always looking for new members to assist with reviewing the remaining articles, and since this project has GAs under its scope, it would be beneficial if any of its members could review a few articles (perhaps your project's articles). Your project's members are likely to be more knowledgeable about your topic GAs then an outside reviewer. As a result, reviewing your project's articles would improve the quality of the review in ensuring that the article meets your project's concerns on sourcing, content, and guidelines. However, members can also review any other article in the worklist to ensure it meets the GA criteria.

If any members are interested, please visit the GA sweeps page for further details and instructions in initiating a review. If you'd like to join the process, please add your name to the running total page. In addition, for every member that reviews 100 articles from the worklist or has a significant impact on the process, s/he will get an award when they reach that threshold. With ~1,300 articles left to review, we would appreciate any editors that could contribute in helping to uphold the quality of GAs. If you have any questions about the process, reviewing, or need help with a particular article, please contact me or OhanaUnited and we'll be happy to help. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 06:46, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Wiki-help needed

Hi, Y'all. I'm a fairly new WikiPedian. I tried to find a good place to post this for the whole active community, but, no joy. Perhaps some of you wise elders (or young Turks!) can help me out. It might be more appropriate to respond on my Talk page.

Here it is: back in 1967, for the 50th anniversary of the Soviet Union, The New York Times published a series of extensive in-depth background articles on all aspects of Soviet society. Wouldn't it be great to have those articles (which are, basically, lost to the world except for the rare person who might chance upon it in a search of the NYT archives on-line and be willing to pay for it (or somebody who still practices the arcane art of researching history in the stacks of the New York Public Library) accessible to the readers of Wikipedia? I notice that some areas of Wikipedia lack deep background. This whole thing started when I looked up HotForWords, clicked on the university she attended (and noticed it had been founded as a "People's University"). This took me to the article on Soviet education. It needs a lot of work.

Growing up in the US in the '60s, I knew precious little about the "Evil Empire" over there. The New York Times articles helped a lot, humanizing, for the first time in my mind, the people behind the feared institution, similar to how Ken Burns' Civil War series on PBS helped erase the propagandistic sterotypes of southerners that I picked up (largely from textbooks used by the NYC school system!).

How much harder is it for people growing up in the post-Soviet era to learn about this important part of history? Have you noticed that people, institutions and events that occurred before the World Wide Web tend to be under-represented? Wikipedia needs to help fight that trend, if we are to be the true inheritor of the mantle once worn by Britannica!

I'll get off my soapbox now. What do y'all think of this? Would it be worthwhile to get material like that? Would it be possible? (I also couldn't figure out who to write to at NYTimes.com about access to those articles.)

Bloody Viking (talk) 18:55, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Overkill on coordinates?

Is it really necessary to include the coordinates in three places within the same article for the location of a locale in Maryland? I found this to be the case in the Bryans Road, Maryland article, where the coordinates appear in the infobox and twice in the body of the article itself. I believe that this practice spans a number of articles for cities, towns, CDPs and communities located in Maryland.

The coordinates should be included in one place only in an article. Anything else is overkill, especially if the article is rather short on content. →Lwalt ♦ talk 03:53, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Once sounds like enough to me although I don't edit enough geography articles to know what standard practice is. Kingdon (talk) 04:47, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
There's no need for more than one set of coordinates, so if the infobox provides for them, that is where they should appear. Mangoe (talk) 19:34, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I feel like the address is sufficient 173.79.93.77 (talk) 02:44, 25 November 2009 (UTC) Paul

Pageview stats

After a recent request, I added WikiProject Maryland to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Maryland/Popular pages.

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man 20:31, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

There are a few important changes to the popular pages system. A quick summary:

  • The "importance" ranking (for projects that use it) will be included in the lists along with assessment.
  • The default list size has been lowered to 500 entries (from 1000)
  • I've set up a project on the Toolserver for the popular pages - tools:~alexz/pop/.
    • This includes a page to view the results for projects, including the in-progress results from the current month. Currently this can only show the results from a single project in one month. Features to see multiple projects or multiple months may be added later.
    • This includes a new interface for making requests to add a new project to the list.
    • There is also a form to request a change to the configuration for a project. Currently the configurable options are the size of the on-wiki list and the project subpage used for the list.
  • The on-wiki list should be generated and posted in a more timely and consistent manner than before.
  • The data is now retained indefinitely.
  • The script used to generate the pages has changed. The output should be the same. Please report any apparent inconsistencies (see below).
  • Bugs and feature requests should be reported using the Toolserver's bug tracker for "alexz's tools" - [1]

-- Mr.Z-man 00:20, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Washington Metro GAR notification

Washington Metro has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 20:59, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Economy in Maryland

As we all know the economy is at the forefront of our lives in today's world. The State of Maryland and it's environs have lackluster economy sections if at all. Is there any rule to the placement of the economy section after an articles introdction? I have seen history and georgraphy trade places. This area is of significance and should have a list of companies headquartered or of significance in an area.

I have been trying to update the Silver Spring page by adding an economy section but User:98.248.32.178 keeps section blanking for no valid reason at all, I have addressed all valid concerns but he/she keeps removing the economy section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Waveshi (talk • contribs) 01:49, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

There's no firm precedent for placement of an Economy section within an article. You might look for other city articles with such sections and use a similar placement. I checked the Silver Spring article and the "edit war" you described was inappropriate. User 98.248.32.178 was temporarily blocked from editing (by an Admin who also noted the situation), and I've suggested collaboration over undoing. —ADavidB 02:46, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
I (and a few others) have responded at Talk:Silver Spring, Maryland#Silver Spring Economy Section section blanking by User:98.248.32.178. Kingdon (talk) 19:42, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Need help getting Woodsboro, Maryland from a stub to at least a start

Over the years, I have been trying to think of a way to incorporate information into the Woodsboro, Maryland article in regards to Neoterik Health Technologies that, prior to its sale to GlobalSecure Holdings, Ltd. in 2004, had a marked increase in sales after 11 September 2001. The company produced gas masks and made the news around the time of the first reports of the use of anthrax. I am hoping that someone here is better able to do the research, because I can't find anything relevant these days about it. While the company might not get an article, a section about the company might work in the article about Woodsboro. What do you think? LA (T) @ 07:35, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, there's a paragraph at [2] about the economy of Woodsboro. It mentions agriculture, quarries, and small town style businesses. Now, it might be incomplete (don't know what the gas mask production situation in Woodsboro is/was). A broader view of Woodsboro's economy is what we're really after than just one fact about one company, but if you can find some sources and some details, I wouldn't object to adding it to the Woodsboro article (worst case is it would need to be moved somewhere else at some point). Kingdon (talk) 00:17, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Saqib Ali

Saqib Ali is currently a good article nominee. An editor has placed this article on hold to allow improvements to be made in order to satisfy the good article criteria. Recommendations have been left on the review page, and editors have seven days to address these issues. Improvements made in this period will influence the reviewer's decision whether or not to list the article as a good article. Warrior4321 00:07, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Gambling in Maryland

I defer to people engaged in this WikiProject to appropriately edit the Maryland article and/or ancillary articles to reflect the passage of legislation legalizing the first slots parlor in Maryland. I became aware of this via the following news item: Witte, Brian (23 September 2009), "Md. slots panel OKs Ocean Downs license", Delaware News Journal (DelawareOnline), Business, Annapolis, Maryland: Associate Press, archived from the original on 23 September 2009, retrieved 23 September 2009{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link). --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:32, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Move Garrett County, Maryland article history details to History of Garrett County, Maryland article

The Garrett County Historical Society Museum provided a wealth of history details that do not comfortably fit within the history section of the Garrett County, Maryland article. I propose moving this information to an article called History of Garrett County, Maryland.

The history detail reference are:

  • John A. Grant, "Garrett County History", "handout" material prepared by John A. Grant for a Garrett County History course at Garrett College during 2001 and 2002. This public domain content is available on the Garrett County Historical Society Museum site and is available to be reproduced here with their permission.

What do you think? Gohens84 (talk) 06:35, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

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