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Merry vandalism/POV/???

I'm leaving town, so I can't do it, but if anyone is celebrating by keeping an eye on the wiki, Cottage Grove, Oregon has the been the target of some strange edits. Good faith stuff mixed with POV. Maybe someone could talk to the anon. Happy holidays! Katr67 (talk) 19:52, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

 Done Watching, left a personal message for the IP, etc. tedder (talk) 22:34, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Chris Dudley

I guess he's running for governor. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 23:54, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Question about wind farm notability/thresholds

I was trying to create more articles about wind farms in the Pacific Northwest and add them to [Category:Wind farms in Washington], [Category:Wind farms in Oregon], and [Category:Wind farms in British Columbia]. I can find plenty of third-party references and everything, but at what point is the wind farm considered not notable enough for an article? I've generally only made a (short) article on one if it's 100MW or more and has been published in the news. Are there any guidelines for this? TimeClock871 (talk) 03:16, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

It's determined by news stories mostly. Wattage doesn't matter. It's up to the general notability guideline. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 03:48, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
Got it. Thanks! TimeClock871 (talk) 04:22, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
A complete list of wind farms would be useful even if some of the entries are not. List of wind farms in Oregon might be a good place for a detailed list, similar to Lost Lake (Oregon) and List of shoals of Oregon. There's also List of wind farms in the United States. —EncMstr (talk) 04:45, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
Good idea. I made List of wind farms in Oregon. I'll expand it later when I get the chance. TimeClock871 (talk) 05:49, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Are these public-domain images?

These images at the Library of Congress. Are they copyright-free because they are from the US Gov? They have a photographer listed, but no copyright tag. I'm confused and entirely unclear about public-domain laws. tedder (talk) 01:16, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

FWIW, I've seen them used in articles (though I haven't) and I'm pretty sure they're free. I think AM used some in his NRHP articles and he should know. I don't know how you tag them though. Katr67 (talk) 02:00, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Here ya go. Katr67 (talk) 02:02, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I accidentally stumbled across this, which says "Material in these collections is generally considered to be in the public domain." So I feel slightly more confident. tedder (talk) 02:22, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Yes, those are public domain. As the copyright notice says, only a few are not PD, and those will say on the catalog record for the item that the source is not the HABS folks. This is a more complete upload with the correct copyright tag. Aboutmovies (talk) 05:40, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
As a followup, I cranked through a TON of these. For instance, I uploaded 46 images about the Chemawa Indian School, mostly buildings that were destroyed 30 years ago. tedder (talk) 05:40, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeehaw, photos of Democratic pols!

Just noticed that the Democratic Party of Oregon has published its Flickr stream of photos under a copyleft license! (Attribution/Share-alike, or CC-BY-SA).

I've uploaded a few to Commons -- photos of Mary Nolan (politician), Richard Devlin, and Greg Macpherson. Feel free to join me :) -Pete (talk) 19:55, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Wall of Recognized Content

I think the featured content page should use the automated bot to create a "Wall of Recognized Content" similar to this one. The template could simply be copied over to the current page, and that way the page would automatically update featured content, including current and former FAs/FLs, GAs, DYKs, pictures, etc. Thoughts? --Another Believer (Talk) 20:26, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

That's very cool -- I'd love to do something along those lines. Thanks for pointing it out. -Pete (talk) 22:58, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
I went ahead and added the template so that the bot can update the page automatically. If project members end up not liking the "wall of recognized content" as created by the bot, we can simply revert the edit I made to return to the previous version. --Another Believer (Talk) 18:58, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
I take it that's this edit, right? Will the page remain empty until the bot comes along? Looks like the bot is set to update once a day, which isn't long to wait.
Looking more closely, I have a couple thoughts: (1) while it's nice to have all the DYK's on there, I fear they will overwhelm our portal. Can/should we suppress DYKs? We already have them featured, in a rotating fashion, on the portal page. (2) Will this include featured pictures? -Pete (talk) 19:16, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
p.s. I'm a little confused, as Oregon portal#Featured content still shows the old content. -Pete (talk) 19:20, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
I will take a short time for the bot to do the work. I set up the templates for WikiProjects Cannabis and Rufus Wainwright yesterday, and they are working now. The DYKs can be suppressed, if desired--all you have to do is remove the "content-did-you-know-articles" line from the template. Featured pictures WILL be included, because I included the "content-featured-pictures" line in the template. Give it a day or two to update, and things should make more sense. Again, if project members do not like the changes, the edits can be reverted. You can click here to see how the bot operates, as well as which content and optional parameters can be set. --Another Believer (Talk) 21:50, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

The bot updated the wall. If desired, the 3 column set-up can be changed to 2, and the DYK articles can be removed if you feel the list is too long. No need to keep the wall if project members do not like it, but it is nice that it updates automatically, and you can choose which parameters you wish to display. --Another Believer (Talk) 00:25, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I see part of my confusion: I thought you were referring to the featured content section of our portal: Oregon portal#Featured content But, now I see this is a separate page.
So, I really like what you set up, and for its present purpose, I think having allllll those DYKs is perfectly fine.
However, I also think it would be nice to have this feed in to the portal; and if we do that, I think the DYKs would be extraneous for that purpose.
Also, it's interesting that the bot only caught one of our Featured Images. I wonder why that is? -Pete (talk) 07:13, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
Pete, that's the only image that is tagged with the WPORE template, the others are not. Aboutmovies (talk) 07:38, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
</me smacks forehead> Ah ok, thanks. Here I was thinking it had something to do with categories. -Pete (talk) 07:52, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
It could be the cats the template adds, but I'm not sure where the bot is looking. Anyway, I tagged the image talk pages so they should appear next update one way or the other. Aboutmovies (talk) 08:04, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Template:Cite OGN

I just created this template for citing Oregon Geographic Names, and I'm fairly certain it will work, but I'd appreciate it if someone would take a look to see if there are any inaccuracies... for one, who published the first edition? All I could find was "Or." (Oregon?) at Google Books. Sincerely, LittleMountain5 23:41, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Good work! I think I found the answer to your question… -Pete (talk) 23:47, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Great, thanks! I'll update the template accordingly. LittleMountain5 23:51, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Nifty! How does it compare to the version I use ('cos it's my favoritest citation evah)?...
  • McArthur, Lewis A. (2003) [1928]. Oregon Geographic Names (7th ed.). Portland, Oregon: Oregon Historical Society Press. ISBN 0-87595-277-1. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • McArthur, Lewis A.; McArthur, Lewis L. (2003) [1928]. Oregon Geographic Names (7th ed.). Portland, Oregon: Oregon Historical Society Press. ISBN 978-0875952772.
Katr67 (talk) 00:00, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Works for me! (though I found the longer isbns didn't work for a while, so I used shorter--should there be dashes in the longer one?) Why didn't we think of that before? Katr67 (talk) 00:02, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

(←) One more suggestion--for the older editions (pre-ISBN) you can put the OCLC number. Katr67 (talk) 00:06, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)It's about exactly the same, because I based it mainly off yours. :P As for the ISBNs, I used the ISBN-13s because of WP:ISBN, which seems to prefer them. If they don't work, I (or anyone) can always change it back to ISBN-10s. I didn't add dashes because Google Books doesn't use dashes, but those could be added in also.
After ec: Okay, will do. LittleMountain5 00:11, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
I checked and both versions of the isbn took me to the right page on Worldcat. I didn't check Amazon. Katr67 (talk) 00:23, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Amazon and Google Books work both ways too. I think there was some glitch early on with the 13-digit version that has been worked out now. It has been three years since the switch... Katr67 (talk) 00:27, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Okay, I tried finding the OCLCs, but when I searched for the first edition I got four different results, each with a different OCLC! Which one is the right one? LittleMountain5 00:34, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Weird. I picked the 2nd one: 6764971 as it had the most hits (66). The third one only had a copy at Yale, and the fourth one looks like it is the original manuscript. Katr67 (talk) 00:57, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Added OCLCs; everything is working now... I think. :) LittleMountain5 02:32, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

University of Portland edits

There has been an IP and now new editor inserting some text to the above article that I continue to undo, as it appears to be POV and inappropriately sourced, not to mention UNDUE issues. Some additional opinions would be nice. Aboutmovies (talk) 21:58, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

 Done Left welcome message and personal note on user page- surprised you hadn't done that, honestly. tedder (talk) 22:06, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, I figured it was a disgruntled former student/employee and thought they would lose interest after a few months. Aboutmovies (talk) 22:32, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
Time for my obligatory school-related xkcd comic. The colleges especially seem to get enthusiasm on one side or the other. tedder (talk) 22:41, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia model, Portland, Museum of the City

Chet Orloff is proposing a "Museum of the City". Based on Wikipedia, but not on wikipedia. Hmm. Why does Aunt Betty come to mind? tedder (talk) 03:21, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

It sounds fun as a college project. But a permanent collaborative project that anyone can edit and which describes all aspects of cities of the world does seem the sort of wheel-reinventingish thing Betty would do. --Esprqii (talk) 17:53, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Oregon images

I notice many Oregon-related images are not tagged with the 'WikiProject Oregon' template, using 'Image' as the designated class on the quality scale. Is this not really an important task? If not, no worries, but if it is useful to tag Oregon images so that they are associated with the project, that would certainly make a great collaboration of the week. When tagged, they can be grouped together, we can monitor edits made to them, and we will be able to brag about those images that reach valued or featured status. --Another Believer (Talk) 05:05, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I expect that the vast majority of media files are on commons, as they should be. It makes little sense to tag them WP:ORE. Fair use and other non-free content cannot (or, at least, should not) be on commons. The straggling free content on wiki.riteme.site should be moved to commons. Somewhere there's a tag which causes a bot to do that. —EncMstr (talk) 06:13, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
About a year ago I tagged a something like 400 images for the project, and I think that was about all of the non-commons ones at that time. In general I don't tag commons pics, as only categories can be added to the Wikipedia version, and as far as I know any edits on Commons to a Wikipedia tagged WPORE image will not show up on Wikipedia. The only exception to not tagging commons images was last week when I tagged the FP class ones so they would show up in the new bot run "special" content page (see several threads above). Other than that, I usually tag them with {{to commons}} if they are "free" content. Aboutmovies (talk) 08:09, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Question about image use

Hello, I have a question. The image (http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/File:I%26rmap.JPG) in Direct democracy in Oregon and http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Initiatives_and_referenda_in_the_United_States#Types_of_initiatives_and_referendums is a good one, but there is a more detailed one at http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/File:IR_map1.png. The Ballotpedia image mentions which states allow constitutional amendments through their initiative systems.

For example, WA/ID/WY/UT don't allow constitutional amendments through their initiative systems, but the image that is currently used in these articles doesn't reflect that. I would like to use the image from Ballotpedia here at the English Wikipedia, but I'm confused about the licensing info. I sent an email to the address on the page (info@citizensincharge.org) and they said to feel free to use the image as long as it's attributed to the Citizens in Charge Foundation. What does this mean? TimeClock871 (talk) 02:51, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

That means that you can use their image, and modify it. But when you upload it to commons (preferred, but maybe en.Wikipedia), fill in the fields to give credit to them. Also provide a URL to the original. If the website doesn't give explicitly give permission for reuse (such as free, GFDL, etc.) then eventually someone will check for permission. I'm not sure how that's done, but this is the key to it. —EncMstr (talk) 07:44, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

new, but apparently not original, template

Resolved
 – At least I think it's resolved. —EncMstr (talk) 07:36, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

So I started a new template for Senate elections (:Template:United States Senate elections in Oregon); and of course, immediately discovered one had already been created but never used (:Template:Oregon U.S. Senate elections). Should one of these be deleted, or redirected, or what? Sorry for an obvious question, but I wasn't sure if it make sense to redirect a template? Can one of our handy WPORministrators help out? We can delete mine if preferred and I can tweak the other one.

Mine is of course better, mostly since I made it of course, but also since it breaks it down by Senate class. Also the other one has elections going back to 1860 and Senators weren't elected until the early 1900s. I still need to add a couple elections to my template, but it got tricky with lots of deaths and figuring out when actual popular elections started so I'll come back to that. --Esprqii (talk) 20:34, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

I like yours better. It doesn't make my ADD go haywire. In other words it's easier to read and better organized. Katr67 (talk) 21:03, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
Whichever one you prefer, may as well delete the other. I mean, we !own the templates, and it isn't like a redirect is needed to save things (imho). Katr, does your ADD go nuts to know you misspelled "organized"? tedder (talk) 03:22, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
No, but apparently your OCD does. ;) Katr67 (talk) 03:29, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
Great, thanks. I think I managed to sort out all the legislatively vs. popularly elected elections in my template and along the way added a couple links in related articles for future expansion of the whole Oregon System/direct primary/Direct Legislation League as it relates to that. --Esprqii (talk) 03:44, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
I looked to see if the non-preferred template could be deleted, but strangely there are two templates which reference it—Template:Oregon U.S. Presidential elections and Template:Oregon U.S. House elections. Both were created November 2008, and both those have links to it: Template:Oregon U.S. Senate elections, Template:Oregon U.S. House elections, Template:Oregon U.S. Presidential elections, and Template:Oregon U.S. Senate elections (again). For a moment there, my head almost exploded with the convolutions. (Have I been working with Katr too long?) But they seem to be a small self-referencing loop of unused templates with no outside references. Unless someone objects, I'll delete them all in a day or so. Maybe I'll find a tag to that effect as well. —EncMstr (talk) 06:00, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
It looks like User:Lestatdelc created them based on similar New York templates back in November 2008, but never hooked them up to anything (the NY ones are similarly unconnected); that and the fact that the naming is a little different from other elections stuff kept me from finding them, until I reinvented them. Anyway, Lestatdelc last edited back in April, so he probably won't object if you snuffed them. We could also just get rid of the "See Also" line and solve the problem for now. I would prefer a different naming structure, but I'm not delving into those templates yet anyway. Thanks for looking into it. --Esprqii (talk) 06:37, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

School/outreach opportunity?

This is for Tedder, and all of you who have been doing great work on Oregon schools: I was contacted by a junior high school teacher in China, who's "learning with his 7th grade students" to edit Wikipedia. He's working on an article about their school in user-space, hoping to publish it later. He's interested in feedback. Please take a look if you have a moment -- it's a very modest entry -- and make an edit, or send a word of encouragement! User:Charles Jeffrey Danoff -Pete (talk) 06:14, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the note Pete, we're happy to help. Steven Walling 06:53, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Wow, thanks to you all -- Finetooth, Esprqii, Tesscass -- for the quick action there! I think that's exactly the sort of welcome the guy was hoping for. -Pete (talk) 20:02, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Kudos from the Signpost!

We were mentioned again in the most recent edition of the Wikipedia Signpost: They said we "tends to be the most active" of the projects they've recently highlighted, and noted our continued double collaboration of the week series. (Big kudos to Aboutmovies (talk · contribs) for that!) For those who missed the initial interview, this item is a followup on the Signpost's interview with several of us last July: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-07-27/WikiProject report -Pete (talk) 23:00, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Mount Bailey GA

Mount Bailey quietly made GA on the 17th without any WP:ORE input! At least not lately. Congrats to Ceranthor--we should give him a barnstar! Katr67 (talk) 02:35, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Which I just did. Katr67 (talk) 03:10, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

time for auto-archiving?

I know the COTW is over (sorry, AM), but has the auto-archival discussion ever been held here? I vote we archive anything over 120 days. The page is currently the length of 5.2 DYK nominations. tedder (talk) 07:40, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I was just about to manually archive. Auto works for me. When I've manually archived, I've found that 30 usually is about right, though 60 or 90 might make sense until we see how it feels. —EncMstr (talk) 08:15, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:44, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

This is incredibly fantastic news! For the first time, we'll be able to directly explore which articles are of a certain class. I've been hoping for this change for some time. Many thanks! -Pete (talk) 17:53, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
It looks cool though it will take a while to figure out what to do with it (for me, anyway). First thing I see in the new table is that all many of our lists have no importance. That seems odd. Did we make a decision at some point not to assess our lists? --Esprqii (talk) 18:01, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
I think the greatest use for this is in planning out group activities, like the Collaboration of the Week (or more spontaneous collaborations). Looking at the table, I always find it tempting to set goals like, say, "Let's see if we can get more than one of our "high importance" articles to Featured status." Or "Let's see if we can turn half of those "mid-importance" stubs into start class articles in the next 6 months."
Without the ability to click into a list of articles in a certain square in the grid, it's been difficult up till now to carry those thoughts to their conclusion. This tool will help a lot!
As for lists, I think that's more of a historical artifact, than a reflection of a mindful decision. Up until recently, if I recall correctly, we didn't even tag lists for WP:ORE. Or maybe it's that the assessment system didn't allow for quality ratings for lists until recently. Or maybe my memory's just all crufty. -Pete (talk) 18:20, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
The pop pages list also gives a way to slide and dice things. In other words, it's interesting to see what poor-quality articles are (currently) popular. tedder (talk) 18:23, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
Re: Lists: When we as a project revamped {{WikiProject Oregon}}, originally List-Class didn't have an importance rating--I think that was a Wikipedia-wide thing. When folks came by to standardize our template with the others (how dare they make us conform!), I believe they added the code for an importance rating parameter in list-class articles. I don't think it was a conscious decision by the project, we just were going with the prevailing standard. I think EncMstr would know the history best, he did the most work on the template. I used to think a list is a list is a list and agreed that they shouldn't have importance ratings, but I can now see how they would be useful. Sounds like a COTW to get all those rated. Katr67 (talk) 18:46, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

What are we doing for the 14th?

I realized we should probably do something fun, though maybe the day before or after since it's Valentine's as well. Wiki work party? Field day? Insane house party? (Just kidding. But a nice CotW would be good.) Steven Walling 22:26, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm moto-supporting the Worst Day of the Year Ride. But sure- maybe a dual COTW, one "good" and one "evil"? tedder (talk) 22:28, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Current Oregon location map

The current map used by Template:Location map USA Oregon is File:Oregon Locator Map with US.PNG. I've thought for a long time that this map is just too tall to use in infoboxes and that that File:Oregon Locator Map.PNG would be more appropriate. I'm wondering if there is any support of the change.

P.S. There would be minor technical matters that would have to be addressed (namely making sure that the boarder coordinates correct) but this is not a serious obstacle and I could take care of that detail. –droll [chat] 02:21, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I've used File:Oregon Locator Map.PNG in every case for the many Oregon stream articles I've worked on. I don't recall seeing the bigger one. Where is it being used? Finetooth (talk) 03:53, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
And the survey says.. tedder (talk) 03:59, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Ah, thanks Tedder. I never seem to remember the "What links here" button. I'm inclined to agree with Droll that the tall ones are too big. Finetooth (talk) 04:58, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Is/was that why the bottom (?) edge of image is cut off in our county templates? I couldn't find one that is doing it now, but I did notice it before. Katr67 (talk) 06:55, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
I agree that the taller one is too tall... it makes some of the well filled out infoboxes very long. If a reader doesn't know where Oregon is, they can just click the Oregon link on basically any Oregon article to see Oregon highlighted within the US. Is there a record for the most uses of 'Oregon' in one sentence? ;) LittleMountain5 15:19, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
I've been meaning to make a vector locator map for Oregon, similar to ones for New Jersey and Pennsylvania that place the US map in a less awkward position. It is pretty much finished, so I can upload it if you'd like. ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 16:19, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
That's the best suggestion yet. The yuckiest part of the PA and NJ maps is that a fair amount of wasted space is introduced to make way for the US image. I think the US image can be made much smaller than in those examples since Oregon is big enough that it will show up fairly well at a reduced size. —EncMstr (talk) 17:47, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
I would suggest making two maps with the inset within the state boundaries (saves space). You would need two so you could have the inset in say the upper right corner in one, with the other one in the lower right. But everything else would be the same. Aboutmovies (talk) 21:45, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Okay, I uploaded the map and updated the locator template. Wasted space seems to be somewhat of a necessary evil, especially for square states and vertical states (like NJ) to get it to fit well in an infobox. ​​​​​​​​Niagara ​​Don't give up the ship 22:54, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Nice work with the map an I noticed you didn't forget to change the coords. I have't say though that I really like Aboutmovies idea of having the U.S. map in the lower right side as us Oregonians know there is not just a whole lot down there. Well, there's Burns, Frenchglen, Malheur NWR and the Steens but the map you just developed could be used for those places. It could be called Locator map Oregon SE or something. Droll (talk) 01:23, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I like Aboutmovies'/Droll's suggestion; while the current svg map is nice, I'm not too keen about large amount of wasted space at the top (aka Washington :P ). We could use this map for the few southeastern Oregon articles, and for the rest have the inset in the lower right hand corner. LittleMountain5 01:31, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Work to do on Commons for Portland task force

For those working on Portland stuff, I have done some pruning and categorization on Commons of food-related media. I created Restaurants in Portland, Oregon and the subcat Street food in Portland, Oregon (for food carts and food trucks). Currently the parent cat is empty (!) so some work filling in with CC photos of famous Portland restaurants would be awesome. Perhaps we could even do a collaboration with Portland foodies like Wikipedia Loves Art, but for food, since categories like Cafés in Portland, Oregon are also bereft of good photos. Steven Walling 22:16, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay, there are now 15 decent photos in the main restaurants category, and seven each in the street food and cafes subcats. Steven Walling 05:48, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Dead Oregon people help needed

Not from dead Oregonians, but for dead Oregonians. William Christmas Knighton showed up today, and appears to be notable. I know several of you are good at old biographies and Oregon history- I'm not. Can you flesh it out, or at least back up the existing information with refs? tedder (talk) 05:25, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Yep, very notable. I've got a three-day weekend, but I've already made too many other promises so if someone beats me to it, I won't mind. Katr67 (talk) 05:52, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Could you move the article to William C. Knighton? He's far better known that way. Here's a Google search for anyone who wants to take a stab at it. I've got interior pics of Deepwood that I've been too lazy to upload, BTW. Hopefully this weekend. Katr67 (talk) 06:09, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Moved. It was created in both places, I generally bias towards the full name unless someone knows better. (see also Hugh Harrison Hurt, Junior). tedder (talk) 06:39, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Oregonian, OregonLive, and RS

OK, with Just Out as the current COTW (I plan on the next batch tonight), one of the sources is an OregonLive item. For those not familiar with OregonLive/The Oregonian/Advance, here is the lowdown. Advance owns The Oregonian and many other papers, including the Hillsboro Argus, but I believe only those two in Oregon. Advance also owns Advance Internet, which owns OregonLive (and similar sites around the country). OregonLive is then also the online home to The Oregonian and The Argus, as well as some of its own content. As in they have separate management, different offices, and most importantly not everything on OregonLive is Oregonian content.

So, with Just Out, one source used was an OregonLive piece, which was not an Oregonian item. I can't tell exactly what type of blogger that author is/was, but I think it might be more akin to OregonLive's community bloggers. Thus, the question becomes, what do we think about the reliability of OregonLive content? WP:SELFPUBLISH is the policy on point, but blogs on media sites can be acceptable (especially since they are not really self published in the regular sense) if they are subject to the editorial control.

Now, on that point, first, do we think many stories at The Oregonian are actually fact checked? Personally I'm willing to bet stories on Sam Adams and his friend (who is all over the media but Wikipedia refuses to name) are scrutinized, but I doubt the editors checked on this article to make sure the reporter had everything right. Which shows up in this Oregonian blog where if you see the comments you will see there was an error.

Which leads us back to OregonLive content. The "writers" with OregonLive next to their name are generally staff of OregonLive, so I would count them as RS. if it says The Oregonian or The Argus next to the name I would count them as RS (same with any wire reports). On the other side of the coin all the comments and anything in the forums are out. Which leaves us with why I came here, the other content. For instance the bloggers that they bring in to produce content. These are generally designated by "Community Blogger" next to the name. Using inside information (slight COI notice) I know that there is no disclaimer such as mentioned by footnote #4 at WP:V (which anyone can see by reading these posts), and other procedures to ensure accuracy (which I can't divulge). And as to professional, mentioned at V, the question becomes what does that mean on Wikipedia? As in the term often refers to remuneration, but FA articles are required to be of a professional standard which is carried out to be perfect grammar, spelling, etc. which may not correspond to the actual quality of paid writers, such as those at the Statesman Journal.

So, I'm posting here first to see what Oregonians think of an Oregon source before worrying about the RS noticeboard. Aboutmovies (talk) 18:50, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Your crack about the quality of the S-J made me about spew coffee on my keyboard. I think I agree with you on all your other points as well. I've seen folks say that because an Oregonian blog is a blog, it is not a RS, but since the blog is just a new way to present information, as long as it is connected to a RS (with the community blogger caveat above) then it should also be considered a RS. As an analogy, I can be a reporter for the Daily-O and write an article for the paper, or I can write a blog post on the paper's blog, and I've got the credibility of the O behind me. Or I can be an unknown writer who can write and put up an article on my webpage, or I could self-publish my material in a blog, and either way I don't have anything backing me up. (Though I will note, as I've discussed similarly before, that perhaps the bias toward being able to use Joe Blow's website as reliable-ish source but not Joe Schmoe, PhD's blog should be reexamined by the community at some point. But I digress.) Katr67 (talk) 19:29, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
This is, at heart, a murky subject with little more than a few shades of gray separating reliable and unreliable. I've been around many reporters, including "seasoned professionals" at the Oregonian, and lived a few houses away from and interacted often—including dating—some local TV and radio station managers, news directors, reporters, anchors, etc. In several situations where I was the most informed resource on the topic, especially when my efforts were the story, they seem to go out of their way to get it wrong. The best question about any news article isn't whether it is "accurate" or not. It is How wrong is it? Organizations which perform fact checking help improve reliability, but not to the degree one might think. The impression an article leaves is mostly due to the slant when connecting the facts. Reporters have a tendency to err in the direction of sensationalization—whether (subconsciously or consciously) it is for career advancement, fame and fortune, Pulitzers, self-gratification, or simply keeping their job. The more important the story seems, the higher their chances of reproducing—to use a Dilbert metaphor.
That said, I think OregonLive tends to be about as reliable, on average, as the Oregonian and local television news. Obviously that varies from one article to the next by a single reporter, let alone from reporter/journalist to reporter/journalist. I suspect AM is implicitly suspecting COI amongst them, but I think that has a small effect compared to the inherent wrongness of each article, largely due to the career mobility of reporters. —EncMstr (talk) 20:12, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
OregonLive should be on a case-by-case basis, like any blog. It's okay for some things and not for others. Example: neighborhood community news that is fairly uncontroversial, definitely good. Local knowledge is unlikely to be covered by national media. For heated politics or particle physics? Not so much.
As for The Oregonian or any other newspaper, we consider them to be generally reliable sources only because they are acknowledged to have an editorial structure that makes room for fact-checking. From my professional experience and personal discussions with journalists, no piece goes in print without passing by the eyes of at least one section editor and one copyeditor. Whether they truly verify the facts, we can never know. But it's the best we can get, and functionally speaking we should assume facts are being checked unless we have evidence to the contrary (like conflicting stories or unattributed data). Steven Walling 20:51, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
EnMster, The COI is my own, check the bylines to the stories in the COI link I provided. Not that I have anything to really gain by using these sources on Wikipedia, but sometimes its nice to fill in some content holes. And though I do think there can by COI amongst reporters and in general with newspapers due to their advertisers, but its not really a Wikipedia thing until they start editing here to further that agenda or adding links to OregonLive content indiscriminately in the ELs section to increase traffic ALA Boundless Oregon (this guy's autobiography aside).
Steven, with fact checking, I think the fact that they have a regular corrections area should speak for itself as to their actual fact checking before print, not to mention inconsistencies (One Main Place is listed as built in 1980 or 1982 by the Portland Business Journal - also an Advance company). And like I said above, I think the "volatility" of the info determines how much fact checking goes into something, mainly for legal liability reasons. But when exactly something was built is less pertinent, thus who's gonna check especially in these times of staff cuts, even though a search of their in-house archives (which I would hope are indexed) should quickly provide the answer. But, that aside, I agree The Oregonian should be considered a RS, but your exception to blogs actually applies as well to all sources, as I wouldn't want to cite the O for an article on particle physics either (or even much of their coverage of legal issues) or say the Willamette Week for British politics despite their reputation for covering Oregon politics. Aboutmovies (talk) 21:17, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
(ec) Yes, we should assume the facts are checked, even if we all have personal experience to the contrary. Otherwise the whole RS thing just kind of falls apart. I know any story on which I have known "the inside scoop", including things written in Time and Newsweek, gets many details wrong, but that doesn't mean I won't still use them as sources. Knowing how much of the copy desk has been laid off at the O, and apparently at the S-J, it's likely that the oversight and fact-checking isn't quite up to the standard it used to be, and of course there has always been deadline pressure. So something might get looked at--briefly--by a couple other sets of eyes, including a rookie/outsourced (i.e. doesn't know the local area) copyeditor, and we can say it's had oversight. But multiple reliable sources are of course always the way to go. P.S. I forgot to say, AM, congrats on your journalism career. Katr67 (talk) 21:31, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Katr is right- we pretty much have to AGF that they are written correctly. We know some things are questionable or incorrect, but there's no reason to treat the Oregonian blog differently than we'd treat the O as far as being a RS. So- yes, the footnote of WP:V is key. tedder (talk) 21:38, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

AM, I didn't realize that was you. Now your somewhat mystical words make a whole lot more sense. —EncMstr (talk) 21:43, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes, that's me, I know many here know my real identity (which some people assume is protected due to my alleged involvement in alleged activities that lead to people being allegedly killed if they allegedly know too much, so watch out![allegedly]), but I can't remember who all knows. And Katr, thanks, but I don't know if I'd call it career so much as I have a lot of free time on my hands late at night and I thought I'd try my hand at WP:OR. And career tends to imply payment, which is to say I earn as much there as I do here.
Now back on topic. I never meant this to be a broader discussion on The Oregonian and RS in general, but it seems we have consensus that it does pass RS. My query is more about the non-Oregonian blogs. And it seems the general consensus is it depends on the blog, but in general they are OK for local (or regional) stuff. Which is fine by me, cause I don't think I'd cite the Forest Grove person, as she comes across as a little too opinionated/has an agenda. But's that's me. Aboutmovies (talk) 22:41, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
I'm personally fine with their use, but blogs that are not part of an established newspaper are not any more reliable if they're local people talking about non-controversial local concerns. There needs to be something positive we can say about the author. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 03:00, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Despite our reasonable consensus here, I do think that when WP:ORE articles and editors run into the larger community on important RS issues, we should keep in mind that the knee jerk reaction of nearly all Wikipedians is to say blogs are a no-no. Just a reminder, not that y'all needed it. :) Steven Walling 05:46, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

References v. Notes

A WP:ZOO editor adding zoo navigation templates caught my eye when he changed the References section name to Notes on several articles. When I pointed out WP:MOS he pointed out that MOS leads to WP:CITE which says that References is for general references—that is, not inline citations—and a Notes section is where the {{reflist}} marker should be. I skipped back up to two years in the history of WP:CITE and don't see any guideline changes with respect to this. Thinking back, I may not have read in the guidelines the way we do it, but simply replicated the pattern I saw: no Notes, but a References which contains the inline citation list plus possibly, a few general references.

Somewhat related is that the {{inline}} tag calls for eliminating general references and using inlines, and CITE suggests that general refs are common in less developed articles. (Recent discussion at WT:CITE questions whether general references should be allowed; list articles are the major counterargument.)

So, how did the de facto style come about? Should either WP:CITE conform to what we're doing—especially if it is widespread (which is my experience)—or should we be revising the section names in non-conforming articles? —EncMstr (talk) 17:56, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

The whole encyclopedia is by its nature unstable, and this includes the guidelines. One of the problems arising from this inherent instability (the Siamese twin of amazing flexibility) is that sometimes guidelines posted in different places either contradict or seem to contradict one another. To keep from going mad trying to follow all the debates that go on on the talk pages of various guideline pages and project pages, I rely on WP:WIAFA and the debates and examples at WP:FAC as well as on WP:MOS and on this (the Oregon project) talk page for guidance. My sense of things related to the reference and notes sections is that a fairly wide variety of systems is fine as long as in each particular article the citation system is internally consistent and meets the part of the 1(c) requirement for a Featured Article that says that claims "are verifiable against high-quality reliable sources and are supported by citations; this requires a "References" section that lists these sources, complemented by inline citations where appropriate". Sometimes editors at FAC and elsewhere will attempt to impose their favorite citation system on other editors, but absolute standardization has so far been successfully resisted. My opinion is that a system that consists solely of a "Reference" section that includes notes and citations all in one heap is fine, and that a system that breaks the citations into subgroups such as "References" and "Notes" is fine, as are even more complex systems such as the one used in the recent FA Upper and Lower Table Rock. Since the choice of reference systems depends on the nature of the article and the complexity and nature of the references, I think the choice of systems should be left to the main contributor and should not be arbitrarily changed. All this said, I'm aware that the guidelines might be altered at any moment; if they are, I think the regulars at WP:FAC will quickly be aware of it and make alterations to the FA requirements. Meanwhile, I see no reason to change References to Notes generally or to favor one reference system (including the naming of sections and subsections) over all others. Finetooth (talk) 19:53, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Finetooth covered this very well and I was going to bring up his articles that properly use both a "Notes" and "References" section, which I don't have a problem with at all. I've found that some types of articles overseen by other projects require the section, if there's only one, to be named "Notes", for example military history biographies. My loose interpretation of the guidelines is that you should not change the prevailing style in an article to your preferred one, and I've certainly been reverted before. At times I disagree, but because the guidelines are so nebulous, I don't fight about it. And recently when my change of "Notes" back to "References" was reverted, the guideline I was pointed to seemed to support "Notes", and like EncMstr, I don't recall that it used to say that. However, I also agree there's no reason to change "Notes" to "References" if all you have is a pile of inline citations. I think it's too formal a designation for what usually are in fact references and not footnotes like you might find in a print source, which will also have a general bibliography. The prevailing style on the wiki in general also seems to prefer "References". I think of a Notes section as only being necessary for Harvard-style referencing such as Finetooth uses, or if you want to call attention to an explanatory footnote to differentiate it from a reference. But I'm also fine with explanatory footnotes mixed in with references. Especially on shorter articles. Katr67 (talk) 20:52, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
P.S. I support the move away from general references except for list articles. It becomes messy and also many older articles I've run across are difficult to expand using inline cites when other specific items aren't cited inline. For example, if you add a sentence with an inline cite to the end of an otherwise unreferenced paragraph, it may appear that that cite covers the entire paragraph when it does no such thing but you can't go back and source the rest of paragraph without going to a lot of trouble (trip to the library, read the entire book, etc.). Which touches on a whole other debate about sentence-level vs. paragraph-level citations such as Tedder is engaged in right now. I'm pretty sure we've discussed that as a project before but perhaps we should start a separate section on that topic. Katr67 (talk) 21:02, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
For me, you always need a references section. Otherwise notes are just notes, as in more of commentary, not references as indicated by the section titles. Now, if you want to break things down and have what is in essence an old school bibliography at the end and call it the references sections, great, then you can have your separate notes section for Harvard style referencing (e.g. Johnson, p. 213.).
As to how many cites does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop properly reference a paragraph, I say cite every f'ing sentence (or close to it and not so much the WP:LEAD). I had this exact problem on an article involving a famous American and his voyage into a certain local river, in which an author removed the same cite that had existed on every sentence in one paragraph because it was "over-cited", and then later that same editor added a fact tag to one of the sentences where he had removed the citation earlier. Thus the dynamic and ever-changing aspects of how Wikipedia works bear out what is not a problem in printed media, which is one of the big arguments of the main proponent of only citing at the end of a paragraph if a single cite covers the entire paragraph. That is, a certain editor at FA likes to compare Wikipedia and our style to printed media, which just doesn't pan out. As in it's a little difficult for me to insert new passages into my Almanac of American History. Though if I did, it would be pretty obvious. The other problem is, that yes the original editor knows the citation covers the entire paragraph, but unless they leave notes somewhere, nobody else knows this. Which again, isn't a problem with printed media. But enough of pointing out the problems, here is what I will sometimes do: insert a different ref into the paragraph so that a single ref will not cover the entire thing. Then they can't really complain. As in, find another source that also covers the info and use it for one of the sentences. Then there are different refs, and thus people are less likely to be able to complain. Aboutmovies (talk) 08:35, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
AM- can you join the discussion on references at User talk:Materialscientist#overreferencing? tedder (talk) 15:17, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

(Outdent) Katr above said (21:02 on 13 Feb):

For example, if you add a sentence with an inline cite to the end of an otherwise unreferenced paragraph, it may appear that that cite covers the entire paragraph when it does no such thing but you can't go back and source the rest of paragraph without going to a lot of trouble (trip to the library, read the entire book, etc.).

At the risk of stating the obvious, one possible solution would be the following:

[previous paragraph]
{{cn}}<ref>When the following referenced sentence was added, the {{cn}} was added to make it clear that the preceeding material is not covered by that reference. It is assumed that this material is covered in some of the general references, but it is not known which one(s).</ref>
[added sentence]
<ref>[reference for added sentence]</ref>

This should make it clear what the new reference covers, calling attention to the need for a specific citation for the original paragraph without impugning any previous editors. YBG (talk) 04:23, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Change to Oregon company article

Just want to point out my recent comment here regarding changes to the founding members of a Portland-based startup, several of whom WP:ORE folks know for hosting WikiWednesday. Steven Walling 00:56, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

An an unregistered user, 68.116.43.139, added Portal links today to two streams, Abiqua Creek and Alsea River, and two cities, Salem, Oregon, and Burns, Oregon, that I have on my watchlist. I undid these four but then thought I might have been over-hasty. In three cases, the links were to Portal:Oregon; in the case of Abiqua Creek, the link was to Portal:Environment. Eeek! The logic of this suggests that every Oregon article needs at least one portal link and that every stream needs at least two portal links in its "See also" section. (You see where this is going.) In fact, the same user added four portal links today to Flood basalt. Does anybody think these links are a good idea? Are they a good idea in some cases but not others? Should I stop deleting them if more appear? Finetooth (talk) 02:50, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh, the IP has been portalizing Oregon articles like crazy today, actually. Here are four examples in a random seven-minute period: [1] [2] [3] [4]. I'm not a fan of the Portal:Oregon in most cases. In fact, I'm not much a fan of portals anyhow. It would be nice to have consensus about when they should and shouldn't be used. I'm leery of an article having a Seealso section with nothing but a portal, as I view Seealso sections as a sign an article isn't complete. Others? tedder (talk) 03:06, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Also note these weird interchanges between Katr67, Aboutmovies, myself, and the IP, with only copy-pastes in reply from the IP. This IP is likely the same individual in a previous incarnation. Not all the edits are bad, but it's disappointing that attempts to reach out have been met with little more than /dev/null. tedder (talk) 03:21, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
I've been watching this too (my watchlist is going crazy!). I'd say the IP has added portal links to at least 25 or 30 articles. Personally, I think it's just unnecessary clutter, especially when it's the only thing included in the See also section. The talk page of each article is already tagged with WPORE, so it's also kind of redundant. Sincerely, LittleMountain5 03:38, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
I did check as I recalled a previous general Wikipedia discussion about whether portal links were "self-referential". According to the current guideline, they are encouraged to be added to talk pages, but may be added to see also sections. So it's well within the rules. I'm rather ambivalent about portals myself, despite folks like Aboutmovies excellent work keeping ours up to date. What I object to was the anon putting, more or less, "add portal links to all WP:ORE articles" in our to-do list without discussion. 68.116 irritates me, but if someone else in the project suggested it, I would probably just shrug. If we think we need them, I think it would be better to either add them as we go when doing other substantive edits, like we do other maintenance things, or have someone whip out all 5,000 (!) some WP:ORE articles using AWB or a bot. I like option one better. Katr67 (talk) 03:57, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Oh yeah, and Portal:Environment is waaaay overbroad for a creek article. I would have reverted but I chose to unwatchlist a bunch of stuff instead as I was getting too aggravated. Katr67 (talk) 03:59, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
You're off about the number of articles we have- our little helper says 9141 articles as of four hours ago. tedder (talk) 04:14, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
I've never liked the portal links in the articles, period. I'm all for the portals, but links within the article really fail WP:LINKS, as these are Wikilinks and there is likely nothing more from the portal that will help a reader of that article. It's a lot like linking United States in an article, but even worse. If you are reading say Salem, Oregon (one of those tagged with the portal) clicking on the portal link is not going to give you a greater understanding of Salem, but if you do click on the USA link at least you will find out where the US is in the instances where we have a foreign reader (not sure how many people with internet access don't know what and where the US is, but there's probably one person somewhere). As in, following the portal link from Alsea River to the portal is not going to cover anything about the river and unlikely to have much even remotely related to that topic, other than it's in Oregon, which a link to Oregon already exists. It would be the same for a link to Portal:Nautical, in that sure boats have likely been on that river, but there's nothing at that portal that will expand the knowledge of the reader about the river. Aboutmovies (talk) 08:47, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Thank you one and all. I'll continue to apply my Swiffer mop to these links as I encounter them, and I'll use WP:OVERLINK as my edit summary. That's more friendly than just reverting and gives 68.116.53.246 something to discuss if he or she wants to enter the conversation. Finetooth (talk) 17:59, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

(←) I agree with Tedder--I will definitely kill with fire any portal links in an otherwise empty See also section. I'll be open-minded about other situations, but it sounds like the rough consensus is that WP:ORE does not endorse the use of Portal links in mainspace. Katr67 (talk) 18:26, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd suggest using an editsummary mentioning both overlink and WPORE consensus when removing them. tedder (talk) 18:32, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
BTW, here's the list of articles with Portal:Oregon. Only about 60 articles right now, so it shouldn't be hard to clean up. tedder (talk) 18:56, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Nice link and good suggestion about WT:ORE. I used your list just now to remove about 10 of the 60 and adjusted my edit summary to say WP:OVERLINK and WT:ORE. Finetooth (talk) 19:19, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
One caveat with my argument, is the portal links on a rare occasion I think would pass LINKS, for instance on Oregon. Or any really broad Oregon topic, such as History of Oregon, Economy of Oregon, where you might get a little better understanding of those topics from what the portal has. But individual people, cities, forests, creeks, museums, etc. just shouldn't have them. Aboutmovies (talk) 20:24, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Removed it from 10 too. Here are the ones I think should stay, out of the links currently near the top: Flag of Oregon, Oregon Territory (maybe?), Oregon Coast (maybe?). OTOH, the subregions may not it- thoughts? tedder (talk) 20:33, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Went through and deportalized things (yeah, new word). I left the portal on the following pages: Oregon, Portland, Oregon, Flag of Oregon, Oregon Territory, Oregon State Seal, History of Oregon, Index of Oregon-related articles, Outline of Oregon history, Outline of Oregon. Any disagreements on these? I'm fine with that, just marking where I intentionally didn't remove the portal. tedder (talk) 01:41, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Super. I parked my mop after doing 10 and veered off in some other direction. Thanks for doing the rest. The ones you spared sound like good exceptions. Finetooth (talk) 02:45, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Official Wikipedia Portal Policy

Please read official Portal guidelines: Wikipedia Portal Guidelines

The substantiations (above) for deleting portal links are highly subjective, and not in accordance with Wikipedia policy. For example, someone above states that they don't like the Oregon portal and are deleting portal links to the Oregon portal at least in part because they don't personally "like" the portal, a subjective assessment. What would happen if mass censorship were to occur because of the opinions of few, rather than many. A few editors reaching an agreement does not qualify to eradicate and change Wikipedia policies and article formats that tens of thousands of users read. Please do not delete portal links in otherwise empty See Also sections, instead expand the see also section with relevant links. Portal links are to be placed in See also sections of articles, and serve to improve the quality of articles.

Portals also help editors find related projects and things they can do to help improve Wikipedia.

At present, there are {{Featured portals number}} featured portals, of a total of 545 portals on Wikipedia.

A few editors reaching an agreement does not qualify to eradicate and/or change Wikipedia policies and article formats that tens of thousands of users read. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia to enhance knowledge, not limit knowledge.

What if all portal links in See also sections were eliminated in this manner? -- Answer: The quality of Wikipedia would significantly decrease. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.116.43.139 (talk • contribs) 03:43, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually, it isn't policy, it's a guideline. The given policy doesn't indicate where portal links should be added, as far as I can tell. Finally, using censorship and "empty See Also sections" as an argument is entirely bogus. See also sections (note caps) are the hallmark of an incomplete article: "A reasonable number of relevant links that would be in the body of a hypothetical perfect article are suitable to add to the 'See also' appendix of a less developed one." Further, Wikipedia:Self-references to avoid seems entirely appropriate here.
Anything else? Oh- Aboutmovies is the someone who said they don't like portals, but gave arguments to back it up; they were not removed due to the subjective reason you gave. tedder (talk) 04:03, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
First of all, the guideline you linked gives no advice about linking to a portal.
Second, an article should not link to inward Wikipedia content per WP:SELF.
Third, linking to a general portal about a whole state makes little sense for the vast majority of articles. For example, river articles are more relevant to a rivers portal, or water sports, or even hydroelectric, if portals were to be linked at all.
Fourth, categories, lists, and wikilinks help readers navigate to similar topics. Adding portal links verges on breaking the spirit of no advertising. —EncMstr (talk) 04:24, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
IP person. As tedder said, I stated I don't like them. Then I stated why, within Wikipedia rules (including quoting parts of those rules versus pointing people at a guideline that does not cover anything you assert it covers) why these portal links should not be included, in most articles. As I later wrote, there are some instances where these links are proper in an article. I, and I think everyone else here, believes these links are fine on article talk pages. BTW, the Oregon Portal link is incorporated into the WPORE banner, so every WPORE article does have a link to the portal (as in please don't add a second one). Next, not only are so many portals featured portals, but specifically the Oregon Portal is one of them. And I played a pretty big part in that, and I'm about the only person who keeps it updated. So, I'm fine with portals. It's the SPAMing of the links to them that we have a problem with, and OVERLINK covers this. Aboutmovies (talk) 08:10, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

GA reassessmnet of Willamette University College of Law

I have conducted a reassessment of the above article as part of the GA Sweeps process. I have found some concerns which you can see at Talk:Willamette University College of Law/GA1. I have placed the article on hold whilst these are fixed. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 15:21, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Taken care of and kept. Aboutmovies (talk) 07:19, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

unreferenced BLPs in Oregon

Extended content
  • Albert_Starr cardiovascular surgeon and pioneer, inventor of the Starr heart valve, who resides and practices in the Portland, Oregon area
  • Tami_Farrell is a beauty queen from Phoenix, Oregon who was Miss Teen USA 2003 and became Miss California USA, succeeding the dethroned Carrie Prejean, in 2009.
  • Debra_M._Ginsberg She is the author of three memoirs as well as two novels. Her first memoir Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress was published by HarperCollins Publishers in 2000, followed by Raising Blaze: A Mother and Son's Long, Strange Journey Into Autism, which chronicled her longtime struggle to get her son the education he was entitled to.
  • Lisa_Molinaro part of the band talkdemonic. She toured with The Decemberists for their Crane Wife tour. (stub)
  • Edward_John_Ray American economist who became the 13th president of Oregon State University on July 31, 2003. Prior to joining Oregon State, Ray was executive vice president and provost of Ohio State University for the previous six years.
  • James_Whalen_(American_football) former American football tight end who played in the National Football League.
  • Mark_Johnson_(philosopher) is Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. He is well-known for contributions to embodied philosophy, cognitive science and cognitive linguistics, some of which he has coauthored with George Lakoff such as Metaphors We Live By. However, he has also written extensively on philosophical topics such as John Dewey, Kant and ethics.
  • Ben_Petrick former Major League Baseball player.
  • Jim_Weidner American politician from the U.S. state of Oregon. A Republican, he is a member of the Oregon House of Representatives representing Yamhill County in District 24.
  • Eric_Kimmel an American Jewish author of more than 50 children's books. His works include Caldecott Honor Book Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins (illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman), and Sydney Taylor Book Award winners The Chanukkah Guest and Gershon's Monster.
  • William_McCormick an American businessman and diplomat. He served as the United States ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa from November 2005 until December 2008.
  • Jerome_Kersey retired American professional basketball player in the National Basketball Association for a number of teams, but most notably for the Portland Trail Blazers. He also has served in various coaching roles in the NBA.
  • Joe_Avezzano former special teams coach in the National Football League and a former college football coach. He also was an American college and professional football player.

There's been a big todo about unreferenced BLPs lately. We have more than a few here at WP:WPOR; does anyone want to help out by tackling this list? tedder (talk) 21:24, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

COTW, anyone? --Esprqii (talk) 21:29, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
I can commit to taking on Zusman, Jaquiss, and Parsons. Steven Walling 22:16, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
I'm indenting those for you. That way we don't have to duplicate our work. tedder (talk) 22:29, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
I'll do Laura Viers and Mark Johnson (COI disclosure, I took a class from him once). I'm willing to do any other musician ones too. Katr67 (talk) 23:43, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Should I put Lisa Molinaro up for deletion? She's a musician, but she doesn't seem to be too notable for that.[5][6] The mentions are only in passing or about her band, like this. If it's the same person, she's kind of notable for her HS basektball career,[7] but I don't know if that's the kind of thing we want to build an article around. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 04:16, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Redirect to talkdemonic. And high school athletes, unless they become notable as pros, aren't usually notable even if it was her. Katr67 (talk) 13:52, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Possible AfD/redirect/merge candidates

PRODded

The following articles have been proposed for deletion:

  • S._D._Perry - I think that there might be some stuff about her out there, but I didn't find it easily. She's written a bunch of books based Star Trek and other media franchises, so she probably mentioned in magazines that aren't web searchable. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 01:56, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
  • Josiah_Phillips: Probably an AFD candidate. Actor best known for work with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. A cursory Google search doesn't turn up anything. --Esprqii (talk) 22:14, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
  • George_Webb_Sweigert: Notable enough? played basketball for Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) from 1978 to 1982. He was named an Academic All-American and an NCAA Postgraduate Scholar in 1982. In his four year collegiate career, he scored over 1,000 points (28th alltime) with 682 rebounds (8th alltime), and 317 free throws made (9th alltime).
Seems doubtful, and maybe not WP:OREworthy at all. He's not in the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame as claimed, and I can't link him to Tualatin. --Esprqii (talk) 19:53, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Removed from WP:ORE

  • Tad_Boyle Only spent 3 years as an assistant basketball coach at Oregon. No other connection. No offense Tad.

semi-inspiring quote

So I don't know how many people know the history of the Park Blocks in Portland. Steven Walling put up some tidbits on South Park Blocks- basically, they were origianlly connected, but the city didn't buy them back when they got developed in the 1870s. So Park Block 5, aka Director Park is the new one right behind Fox Tower. It's pretty inspirational to see, and a far cry from the parking garage proposed around 1995.

Anyhow, Bill Naito, talking about how the garage is a bad idea: "A 12-story garage won't go away. This is a chance to do something special. We should try to do something special every decade."

This is why I edit on Wikipedia- to preserve these gems. tedder (talk) 05:45, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

I hate trying to park downtown, and I'm not fond of the one way streets. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 06:03, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
I don't own a car. I know Katr doesn't either. tedder (talk) 06:22, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
I got caught by the max guy once for not paying. Anyways, is Bill Naito the guy I'm thinking of, and he doesn't have an article!? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 06:30, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Hey, if George H. Flanders (yes, that Flanders) doesn't have an article, Bill Naito shouldn't have one either! ;) Steven Walling 06:54, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for sharing, tedder, and thanks for your wonderful contributions to the newly-created park articles. I've been checking in from home, and your expansions are fantastic. Thanks to others working on the articles as well! --Another Believer (Talk) 15:41, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

NRHP ref?

Hi all- how do I properly format a NRHP reference? Is there a {{cite nrhp}} type template? tedder (talk) 00:00, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I would just use {{cite web}} myself. Steven Walling 00:01, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
I thought there might be a specific one, like GNIS has. tedder (talk) 00:24, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
I use {{cite web}} as in Hayden Bridge. Katr67 pointed me to the Oregon historic site database, which is really handy. Finetooth (talk) 03:11, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
What OR site database would that be? tedder (talk) 04:06, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Here is the general url. After I find what I want, I use the specific url like this one for Hayden Bridge. I'm not sure if every NRHP for Oregon is listed, but there's a complete list as an ASCII text file somewhere. If the one you're looking for isn't listed via the web site, holler and I'll see if I can find the ASCII version. Finetooth (talk) 04:24, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Just an FYI for the OR Historic sites db, as far as I know it has every single Oregon NRHP in it, plus many others. I believe anytime an entity in the state has done an historic survey, or someone has submitted an application for NRHP status, all that info has gone into the database. So you might find info for buildings (or my old house, some A&W statues, and even trees) not on the NRHP, but notable nonetheless. Even destroyed buildings are in it. Aboutmovies (talk) 07:27, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Steven Walling Ignite Portland 8 placeholder

So Oregon's own User:Steven Walling presented at Ignite Portland 8 tonight. Bagdad Theater was filled to capacity, with some of Portland's heavy nerdhitters in the audience- Merlyn, for one.

Hopefully a video will come from the Ignite folks, but they *do* have 60 Ignites this week so it might take a while. tedder (talk) 05:01, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Here's the IP8 playlist, including mine. I had a great time at Ignite with tedder there, and since it's free it would be cool if more Oregon Wikipedians got out for the next one in September (there are ones in Salem, Bend, and Corvallis too). Steven Walling 01:02, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
Direct link to Steven's talk. And if you want to watch just one more, see this talk from caseorganic. tedder (talk) 01:10, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Our blog

Would anyone mind if I gave our blog (WikiProjectOregon.Wordpress.com) a design refresh? I love the current header image, but I'm thinking we could tinker with the rest a bit. Also, I have in my possession the actual .com and .org domains of wikiprojectoregon, if we ever want to move to a self-hosted solution. Steven Walling 07:01, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I support either or both changes! I also think you should post your Ignite Portland presentation there :) -Pete (talk) 01:16, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Ben Westlund

Our beloved (sorry, I can be non-neutral here, right?) state treasurer just died. Ben was a unique public servant and someone I liked very much. And he was very interested in WikiProject Oregon, an interest I'm sad we won't have the opportunity to explore. Anyway, seems it might be a good moment to launch his article out of "start" class. I'll be doing a little work on it later this evening, and welcome any assistance. -Pete (talk) 01:16, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

MemberBot status

Hi- a while ago, we had a long discussion on a memberbot that would figure out who is active in our project and who is currently inactive. I've compiled the requirements and project status here: User:TedderBot/OreBot.

It certainly isn't ready to go, but I do have a preliminary report available: User:TedderBot/OreBot/MemberActivity. Sort it by most recent Oregon edit and you'll see what users are active and which ones aren't. Scroll down to the inactive users and you'll see some that could be put back in the "active" status too.

There's also a small number of users (eight right now) that TedderBot can't calculate Oregon edit dates properly. They show up with the Unix epoch time of 1970.

So, what's next? Well, review the project requirements, look over the list, and see how it meshes with your feelings on who is active on the Oregon wikiproject. Certainly it highlights some "behind the scenes" contributors very well, and it shows that Pete hasn't abandoned us like we feared. tedder (talk) 22:49, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I suppose it's not surprising that General Eisenhower hasn't edited since 1970 since he died in 1969. Otherwise, weird that the TedderBot can't calculate dates on those other folks. Maybe it needs a new flux capacitor?
I think it's totally cool. I think we discussed just ditching our arbitrary active/inactive and let the bot do the dirty work. I think the general consensus (except for Aunt Betty) was 6 months of Wikipedia inactivity or 12 months or WP:ORE inactivity. Just browsing the data, I'm sort of wondering if we need the overall Wikipedia inactivity clause, since there seems to be a pretty strong correlation that if you've edited at all, you've probably done something on WP:ORE at some point. But I don't want to kill a good consensus.
Could the links to the usernames go to their contributions? Not to be all nosy, but...I'm nosy and it would save a click. It's fun to see what people are working on from this table. --Esprqii (talk) 00:11, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
I re-ran it to show the contributions instead of the userlink. Makes sense. I don't think the flux capacitor is broken- I think it's that some people have signed up for WikiProject Oregon but haven't made an edit in Oregon space ever. And yeah, the consensus was that someone needs to have made an edit in Oregon space in the past 12 months or an edit on Wikipedia in the past 6 months. That is an overall inactivity- right?
This log is an intermediate step, headed towards the goal of overall world domination notifying users and managing the active/inactive list automagically. It's a good step to illustrate what the bot sees and to figure out if we are all happy with it. Yeah, there will always be someone who doesn't like it, but what can we do about that? tedder (talk) 00:23, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Hmmm, I see Cirt on the never-edited-since-Eisenhower-died list, and I know he's made lots of edits on Osho and other such Rajneeshy things. I seem to recall he signed up with a different name originally; could that be something?? --Esprqii (talk) 00:43, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
I see Cirt there too. I'm glad you know he has made edits to salad poisoning- I'm using him as a test case right now to distract me from what I really need to do. Anyhow, looks like my code isn't looking past a user's most recent 500 edits. tedder (talk) 00:54, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

(moving left) Okay, found the bug, fixed it, reran. It takes longer to run now that the code actually does what it claims. Anyhow, I also added a column showing the number of Oregon edits in the past 90 days. It certainly shows who the usual suspects are. tedder (talk) 03:55, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Looks great. So the folks who joined but have yet to make a WPORE edit are the only ones with the 1970 date. I'm in for implementation.
Just so I understand, does it look at WPORE articles and see all of who is editing them, or only people who are already listed as active/inactive? I can't remember if the long discussion covered this, but I was wondering if this would be a useful tool to extend invites on a regular basis to folks who are active in articles but are not yet members of the project; perhaps it should just suggest possible invitees (compare active editors with the list of existing project members) to prevent annoying invites from popping up all the time. Just giving you stuff to do to prevent actual work from occurring. --Esprqii (talk) 17:42, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
The lists are only from people who have opted in (signed up). It would be interesting to have potential invitees. Thanks for the distractions tedder (talk) 18:00, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Katr67 wins, with 7596 Oregon edits, and 50.6% of all her edits in Oregon. Pete has 48.8% of his edits in Oregon, and Movies has 34.4% of his edits in Oregon (and the most total). - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 07:24, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Template question

There are two templates, {{Current Oregon State Senators}} and {{Oregon State Senators}}, that seem to be the same thing with a few minor differences. Is there a reason to have both, and if so why? --Brian Halvorsen (talk) 00:50, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

That does seem pretty dumb. I think I prefer the second one (seems to have more info in it, is slightly more compact, and not a big fan of the colors), but we should look around to see if a "standard" exists. Good catch. --Esprqii (talk) 01:14, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Wow, that first one is ugly. Yeah, time to be bold and just remove any uses of the first, then redirect it. tedder (talk) 01:35, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Resolved
 – --Brian Halvorsen (talk) 01:52, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Are you going to redirect the template and remove it from Oregon State Senate? tedder (talk) 01:57, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Has been done. --Brian Halvorsen (talk) 06:32, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Parks in Portland revisited: think bigger, like visitor attractions

Rather than just a parks navbox, it would be consistent with other metro areas to make a "Portland attractions" navbox. Though WP:NPOV would suggest it's better to name it "Portland, Oregon attractions" because of the same-named city in Maine which has a smaller but still real metro area of its own. According to the advice of WP:CLN, I created a category/list/navbox trio for San Jose and Silicon Valley at Category:Visitor attractions in Silicon Valley, List of attractions in Silicon Valley and {{San Jose and Silicon Valley attractions}}. You're welcome to use them as examples. That approach will work for any metro area which has enough content for it. I suggest starting with a category and list in order to help organize your thoughts before making a navbox. But that doesn't have to take long. Ikluft (talk) 01:36, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

And with a quick look I see Category:Visitor attractions in Portland, Oregon and Tourism in Portland, Oregon actually already fit that model. So make sure the parks get categorized under the attractions too. Then an attractions navbox can work well as a WP:CLN trio with these. I can help a little with that. But I'm sure the people who live there will want to be in the lead of the effort. Ikluft (talk) 01:45, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
I've made some updates to Tourism in Portland, Oregon so it's now using section headings which could be maintained as equivalents to navbox sections. Ikluft (talk) 04:23, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Lkluft, thanks for taking an interest in this and for your helpful info about how other places have handled this subject. I especially appreciate the WP:CLN link; I had somehow overlooked that the guideline for these things were all expressed in a single document, which explores the synergies.

Personally, I've always been a little hesitant about the term "attraction" as it seems to brush up against WP:NPOV. (Just who is asserting that X is an attraction, but Y is not?) But having a navbox that is a bit broader than just parks does makes sense. But…is every park on that list truly an "attraction?" I'm not sure. Perhaps there's a role for each of these navboxes?

Regardless, thanks for bringing this up -- I'll look forward to further commentary on this. -Pete (talk) 02:37, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, the parks on that list are pretty much what were already there - I didn't mess with them. (Except that I added Waterfront Park which was the site of the DARPA Network Challenge balloon in Portland.) For any changes there, the list will need help from Portland residents. So dive in with improvements. Similarly, when people added "shopping" to Silicon Valley's list page, it didn't strike me as an attraction at all. But for some people it is. Wikipedia can simply take a wider view since there are many valid points of view for visitors. So I forwarded that change someone made on our list to our navbox as well. Consensus/precedent has already shown "attractions" is the term in use elsewhere. It's hard to get an international audience to think the same when there are so many cultures and subcultures even among English-speaking countries. Hence, those lessons carried over to the list so far for Portland. As the list stabilizes, it will be an easy outline to make a navbox. Then they can be maintained together. (And a quick note... my user name starts with an "I", not an "L". It's my first initial.) Ikluft (talk) 06:19, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Oops -- sorry Ikluft! -Pete (talk) 04:08, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Vasquez de Gama

Wow, how'd we miss this one? http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Oregon&diff=prev&oldid=342339265 and http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Oregon&action=historysubmit&diff=349494056&oldid=349152804. Oh well. --Esprqii (talk) 21:44, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

What, Vasquez didn't exist?! Dammit! I could have sworn that was an ancestor of my aunt Betty, I'd been planning on writing a Featured Article about the dude. -Pete (talk) 04:04, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Oregons Vernonia School district

Vernonia is still in devestation tha twiped out our homes in the flood of of 2007 Even worse now the school district is still in meyham, putting elementry kids in a MOLDY school and kicking the middle schoolers outr of their new school to make way for hi schoolers, Please raise awearness of our perdicament and tell every one to please hepl even a little awarness is good. Student of Vernonia middle school ********** March 11, 2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by RedneckEN (talk • contribs) 17:29, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

While sad, that is not What Wikipedia is for, as we are not a soapbox for all the causes in the world. There are thousands of worthy causes across the globe, and while on the personal level we may want to assist some of these causes (such as thousands dying in Hati or the daily death tolls from Iraq), that just is not what Wikipedia does. In essence we reflect the way the world is, not how we want it to be. That said, you could take the time to improve the articles on Wikipedia related to Vernonia (city, high school, school district) in which you could cover this topic. Though you would need to abide by various guidelines about sourcing and abiding by a neutral point of view. Aboutmovies (talk) 18:02, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Aboutmovies, with all due respect, I disagree -- I think the request above is perfectly consistent with policy. The 2007 flooding was devastating to Vernonia, as covered in any number of news outlets. However, our article on Vernonia, Oregon contains only 1.5 sentences on it, and they are rather outdated. The article clearly could benefit from a bit of attention, just in terms of providing factual information about this event and tying it in with the city's history. I'll try to do a little work there this weekend. -Pete (talk) 17:18, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Pete, how could we "tell every one to please hepl" within our guidelines? Should we also put a nice fund raising banner across the top of every page like we did a few months back for the big "Wikipedia Forever" campaign? If we can, please let me know, otherwise that type of "help" is not consistent with policy. Now, what you suggest is, but that is exactly what I suggested with my last two sentences. Aboutmovies (talk) 23:20, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Aboutmovies, you're right, of course. I was a little hasty in my comment. I think my point -- though poorly expressed -- is an important one, though: what we had here was a middle school student who found the article on his home town to be severely lacking in an important area. He or she then managed, in what I'd consider a pretty impressive display of 'net sleuthing, to identify the group most likely to respond to those concerns, and left us a note.
We generally encourage newbies to be bold in editing; in my view, this includes on-wiki communication as much as direct article editing. I think very few middle schoolers would have a sophisticated understanding of Wikipedia's policies, and may not even be all that interested in learning about it.
In short, I think that notifying us of such a significant omission is very helpful behavior. All I would have liked is to see an initial sentence more along the lines of "thanks for letting us know." The rest of your reply is fine; I was just a little surprised to see you lead off with "sorry, we don't do that." -Pete (talk) 04:02, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Nice updates to the articles Pete! --Esprqii (talk) 05:15, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Pete, I think it has to do with how we each read and interpreted the thread. You saw it as notifying us of an omission in coverage. I took the header and the cry for help regarding the middle school students being placed in a "MOLDY" (the only all caps entry) school as a peeve from this middle school student for being moved to a different school (he/she said this part is even worse than the flooding). And since that's how I read it, I didn't think we should get too involved in local school district politics, since I doubt the state would allow the district to actually move children into a contaminated building. And that's why I explained that we don't do causes first. This is somewhat similar to the recent issue with the Academy of Arts and Academics where we have the local school folks in essence trying to whitewash their academic record and use their Wikipedia entry as a marketing tool. We could be all patient and not bite, but I guess I've just grown tired of all the SPA POV pushers, and as such I'm a little more inclined to spell-out the rules. I'm more than willing to work with newbies that are willing to work with us (see the recent flair up at Mary Ramsey Wood), but in general I guess I'm just getting grumpy in my Wiki-old age. Aboutmovies (talk) 09:03, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Olney Grade School

I lived in Olney from 1946 to 1963. Wonder if there are any pictures from the old Olney grade school, specifically of students between 1952 through 1959. Carlene (Snyder) McKillop familyenigma@yahoo.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.58.179.132 (talk) 06:30, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

plea for help

Can someone clean up Al Kennedy Alternative High School? I'm overwhelmed trying to sort through it. tedder (talk) 17:38, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Sure thing. Steven Walling 18:50, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

OregonLive archive?

Hey, I just cited an OregonLive article that had a little subhead saying "The following article is part of our archive." Whaaaa?? They have an archive?? Check out the article I was looking at to make sure I'm not dreaming.

It actually shows a pretty meaty (8 paragraph) preview, and then offered me a link me to view the full article in their archives. The link to the archive is pretty lame--it just links to the archive search, and didn't remember what article I was just reading; you have to enter all new search criteria. Eventually it asked me to log in to pay, which I politely declined.

But hey--progress? Maybe? The preview was meaty at least and was all I needed. Anybody else seen this yet? --Esprqii (talk) 00:11, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

I see that too. Anymore, I've quit using oregonlive except for things I see in the previous week. I just use the databases I can pull things from (like LexisNexis), since the search and archiving are both poor. tedder (talk) 00:16, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Uploading images to The Commons under the PD-Art tag

Hello everyone. I have some broad questions about Wikipedia, The Commons, the Wikimedia Foundation, copyright, and such--big enough I wasn't sure where to post about it. This seemed like the right place not only because it involves a couple of Oregon history related paintings, but also because I know some of you are well versed in the sometimes convoluted ways of Wikipedia and the larger scope Wikimedia Foundation. So, here goes.

Ha, I was going to say that some of the images on pages like Robert Gray (sea captain) are of less than wonderful quality, and I thought it would be nice to be able to find higher quality images. But looking just now I found that the image I uploaded to The Commons not 20 minutes ago has already been added to that page! Well, ok--so pages on Gray, the Columbia Rediviva, and a number of others could benefit from these images. But they come from the Oregon Historical Society, which claims copyright over them. However! I was surprised tonight by discovering the Commons page about the {{PD-art}} tag and when to use it: Commons: When to use the PD-Art tag. To be more sure I read all the related pages and talk pages, as well as browsing through images on the Commons already using the tag, which number over 120,000.

My understanding is that the tag is used to "assert that the photograph can have no independent copyright as it is simply a faithful reproduction of an old, public domain, two-dimensional work of art." And that if a public domain artwork is photographed as a "faithful reproduction" (that is, not an "artistic" photograph, but something more akin to scanning), then it "acquires no copyright protection of its own", whether or not claims of copyright are made (and they often are).

The Common's page linked above cited a court case that supposedly upholds all this, but I'm not sure whether the case applies very well (but am not a lawyer by any means! ..but a friend who is more knowledge on such things looked into it and thought the court case did not support WMF's position as strongly as claimed). Nevertheless, the page goes on to say: "To put it plainly, WMF's position has always been that faithful reproductions of two-dimensional public domain works of art are public domain, and that claims to the contrary represent an assault on the very concept of a public domain." And, "WMF has made it clear that in the absence of even a strong legal complaint, we don't think it's a good idea to dignify such claims of copyright on public domain works. And, if we ever were seriously legally challenged, we would have a good internal debate about whether we'd fight such a case, and build publicity around it." When I looked into how many images on the Commons have been uploaded under the PD-Art tag, linked to sources that claim copyright over said images, I was surprised to find over 120,000! That turned my cautiousness around. I figured I might as well try it out and see how it goes.

I uploaded two "faithful reproductions" of paintings from circa 1793, by George Davidson, who sailed with Captain Gray on the Columbia: Columbia in a Squall and Columbia's Winter Quarters. These clearly fulfill the qualifications for using the PD-Art tag. The originals have long been public domain and the digitized photos (or perhaps scans) look "faithful" to me (although here one has to use common sense some guesses, since the source does not say anything about how they digitized the paintings).

And the source? Why, it's part of why I'm posting here--the Oregon Historical Society (which has been a topic of discussion, if not here then on the project's blog). Not surprisingly--and much like a great many similar organizations--the OHS claims to own the copyright to these images. Their page, Permission to Use simply says, "The Oregon Historical Society (OHS) owns the content on the Oregon History Project. All materials, including essays and images, may not be reproduced in print or electronically without written permission from the Oregon Historical Society." And, "The reproduction of content of any length without express permission from OHS is a violation of copyright even if the content is attributed to the Oregon Historical Society."

So the OHS make it clear that they claim to own the copyright to their digitized images of public domain artwork. The Wikimedia Foundation seems to be equally clear in rejecting the very notion that such claims hold any weight (and are even an "assault on the very concept of public domain"! On some related Commons pages I read about the WMP's position--apparently they are aware that the issue is not fully resolved, legally speaking. But they are willing to risk being sued and defend their position in court, if it comes to that. After 120,000+ images have been uploaded to the Commons and sourced to websites that claim copyright, and no lawsuits yet as far as I know, it seemed reasonably safe to upload those two digitized painting files from the OHS. One could argue (as my friend did) that making faithful digital reproductions of artwork may involve a lot of work and expense, so it may be.. unfair? to simply take their results and upload to The Commons, without even asking (I know I could ask, but after reading about the OHS on Oregon project's blog I got the sense that they would be less than helpful, if they even replied at all--plus I am curious about testing this surprising WMF position about copyright). And anyway, while it may take work and money to digitize old artwork and make it available on the web, does that mean you can make blanket claims of copyright ownership? ..I mean, you can, but I don't think copyright is meant to reward mere hard work and money. So I put aside whatever qualms I had with regard to "taking" the work of the OHS against their apparent wishes.

My one lingering qualm is whether or not I, as the person who actually uploaded the files, might be drawn into a legal battle, were the OHS to decide to sue the Wikimedia Foundation, for example. I figured that it was not a major risk. Images that violate copyright are constantly uploaded to the Commons, and then quickly (usually) deleted. If the two images I uploaded are copyright violations, would they not also just be deleted, with no trouble for me personally? In short, should I be concerned? Thanks for your thoughts. Pfly (talk) 10:09, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

For bar reasons, I can't give you legal advice (you are in a different state for one reason). But do note, in regards to your friends mention that "digital reproductions of artwork may involve a lot of work and expense," that although that may be true, copyright is about originality. To quote Justice O'Connor: "making clear that copyright rewards originality, not effort" (at the very end is a great set of quotes and explanation about this topic). Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service, 499 U.S. 340 (1991). Otherwise, personally, I'm not to concerned about the OHS, as they in all likelihood do not own most of the copyrights they claim to own (we actually covered this topic recently somewhere, but I can't find it right now, but it also was in part about Commons related {{PD-scan}}). And on a side note, I'd personally rest my case more on Feist since that's a SCOTUS case, versus some district court case from New York that has precedential value only in that district. Aboutmovies (talk) 11:42, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Those images are public domain. In other countries there are different rules. An American wikipedian did it with images taken from a British Museum and there was a bit of a legal brouhaha. Not sure whatever happened there, but with you in the US, and the OHS in the US, you're fine. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 23:28, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
In addition to Public Domain images, there’s Fair Use doctrine that may apply to some copyrighted images in specific cases where no Free Use image is available (e.g. using existing photo of someone who is dead). Fair Use images can only be used in articles directly related to subject (e.g. can be used in bio article about dead person, but not in article about dead person’s profession—even if individual was leader in that profession). Because Fair Use image can only be use in specific article for which Fair Use claim is made, image cannot be uploaded into Wiki-Common—it can only be loaded in English Wikipedia. Image will be removed speed-of-heat if it doesn’t meet Fair Use criterion or is used in another article. Here’s example of personal Fair Use image: File:E.R. Jackman, 1948.jpg. Fair Use doctrine covers artwork as well. It is same basic rule that allows you to quote another written work if it’s footnoted properly (i.e. you can use art image to explain specific piece of art or art style if words alone can’t adequately describe work). When you use Fair Use rule with art-type images, it is important to ensure your image is “less” than original image in some way, so cropping and/or using lower resolution is good practice to ensure you are not duplicating original work. Here’s example of Fair Use applied to art image: File:Mount Rainer by Clevelan S. Rockwell, 1891.jpg. Bottomline—you must be very careful when using Fair Use images; rules are very strict and wiki-picture police actively monitor new Fair Use claims, but it’s worth knowing about.--Orygun (talk) 01:56, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the replies. I think I have the hang of it now. Looks like the the "brouhaha" was about a scale of Commons-uploading way being my activities. I'm on a roll if I upload a couple images in a row! Also, thanks for the thoughts about Fair Use. Being a legal-issue dummy, I shy away from what looks to me like legally complex things like that--although I understand the basic idea. Still, I can't recall every having had a need for a Fair Use image before. But then I tend to concentrate on esoteric bits of history and geography, which rarely if ever requires Fair Use images. Anyway, I wrote this overly long question because I'm trying to draft up a good article on an article about the maritime fur trade (really, that redlink will be blue in.. um, a month? Three?) that profoundly influenced the early history of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. The urge to make quality articles makes me search for images. I think I have plenty now, but in searching I inevitably found all kinds of images that would be useful on Wikipedia. Anyway, thanks for the replies. Pfly (talk) 09:20, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
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