Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. counties/Archive 3

message: Where is information on political boundary data collected and entered into the Wikipedia? I'm interested by the fact that gerrymandering seems to be an accepted part of the US political process   Are district boundaries the same as county boundaries? Is there an article that explains this? Mr. Jones 17:14, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: County boundaries, in the U.S., are far, far more stable than boundaries for congressional districts.  (Of course, the boundaries for U.S. Senators are the states themselves, with two senators per state.)  But since many elective offices are required to represent districts of roughly equal population, districts for these elective offices generally change their boundaries with each new census. --Onyourside 22:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Political boundary data 

message: About 95% of people don't come from the US. Although a far smaller fraction of WP users aren't, I think it's useful to include a small map of the US as a whole to illustrate the location of the state in question. See Denver, Colorado for an example.  Bot-builders, please note. Mr. Jones 17:22, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Each article already has (or should already have) a wiki-link to the respective article about the state in which the county is located, and those state articles show the state's location relative to the U.S. as a whole. Onyourside 11:36, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tiny maps of the US with counties, cities, etc 

message: Btw, are y'all serious about "History of county X" seperate articles? Sounds ambitious - I wonder whether the structure will be supported by the content. - Martin 12:27, 16 Sep 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: I think links to such "Main articles" like  "History of county X" are not needed until the article exists. - Patrick 12:55, 16 Sep 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: And of course the link is only needed if the history is extensive (more that just a few paragraphs). Mike 23:45, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Main articles

message: I'd like help adding "Adjacent Counties" sections.  This is probably automatable...I've done most of the work already -- the data is here -- RobLa
:Beware: The automated list is not 100% correct!  There was at least one mistake in the Fulton County, Georgia adjacent counties list.  I'm using Microsoft Streets & Trips to verify as I work on adding these lists to more counties.  For the most part though, the lists are correct.  Thanks RobLa.  --Onyourside 22:15, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  What was the mistake in Fulton County?  It looks fine to me. -- RobLa 02:42, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Strikethrough on this statement added by me. It causes me to do a double-take each time.  While there may be errors, I think the big bolded "beware" statement isn't appropriate. -- RobLa 03:10, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Should Hawaii counties be listed as bordering each other over ocean boundaries?  That seems (to me) the best choice, but not sure of others' opinions.  Nyttend 15:21, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That seems logical to me - borders across Lake Erie for Ohio and Pennsylvania Counties do something similar, mentioning Ontario. See Erie County, Pennsylvania for example. Ruhrfisch 15:54, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Status 

message: I don't know where this should go but I assembled a list of all states with the number of counties in each state (I omitted non-functioning cities and counties)
Data compiled (but not copied) from http://www.infoplease.com/states.html
I individually went through each one and put it in an excel spreadsheet. 
State	Number of Counties
Alabama	67
Alaska	27
Arizona	15
Arkansas	75
California	58
Colorado	63
Connecticut	8
Delaware	3
Florida	67
Georgia	159
Hawaii	4
Idaho	44
Illinois	102
Indiana	92
Iowa	99
Kansas	105
Kentucky	120
Louisiana	64
Maine	16
Maryland	23
Massachusets	14
Michigan	83
Minnesota	87
Mississippi	82
Missouri	114
Montana	56
Nebraska	93
Nevada	16
New Hampshire	10
New Jersey	21
New Mexico	33
New York	62
North Carolina	100
North Dakota	53
Ohio	88
Oklahoma	77
Oregon	36
Pennsylvania	67
Rhode Island	5
South Carolina	46
South Dakota	64
Tennessee	95
Texas	254
Utah	29
Vermont	14
Virginia	95
Washington	39
West Virginia	55
Wisconsin	72
Wyoming	23
Total Counties	3094
-- TMLutas
----
Just a quick note - I've been cleaning up a U.S. Census Bureau PDF map showing the U.S., all states and county outlines; it's been converted to SVG. The file is about 3MB, but it's fairly detailed, and could be used for any purpose that calls for showing the whole U.S. with county-level detail. The Census Bureau uses maps like this for showing population density, race or ethnicity, etc. There's already a PNG version of a map like this (:Image:Map of USA with county outlines.png), but a SVG version has the advantage of much greater resolution and detail. If anyone needs such a map, let me know and I'll provide a copy of it. -- Wapcaplet 04:01, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: To Be Filed

message: Wouldn't it be a good idea to have county maps showing the location of townships?  For some counties, like Washtenaw County, Michigan, which is rectangular, it wouldn't be too hard to get a map showing the twenty square townships, if one ignored the city boundaries.  Maybe someone with better graphic abilities could even get the city boundaries in?--Bhuck 09:08, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Except that it would be misleading to ignore city boundaries as cities are independent of townships. What you'd have would show survey township boundaries, but even these do not always correspond to civil township boundaries (which sometimes follow natural features rather than the survey lines). older ≠ wiser 15:46, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maps 

message: A page devoted to computer-assisted categorization of articles has been created at Wikipedia:Auto-categorization.  The first target is counties and municipalities in the United States. -- Beland 10:16, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Related auto-categorization work 

message: Should articles that currently use the gold and grey California and Nevada maps be converted to the standard red and black ones?  The requisite images apparently already exist (see Wikipedia:WikiProject_U.S._Counties/checklist) and it might be nice to be consistent.  Also, the red and black color scheme is higher-contrast. -- Beland 02:37, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conversion of maps to unified color scheme? 

message: I am looking for versions of state maps used on counties pages that DO NOT have any counties highlit.  Where can I find them?  Right now I am looking for Maryland and Virginia.  The proposed use is to locate state parks in a protected areas infobox.  — Eoghanacht talk 13:46, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you download one with the highlighted area and erase it?  I did this to create maps for unincorporated communities in Missouri.  It might be easier for what you're wanting to do with a state map with a city. Erase the dot.  I did it with Microsoft Paint.Rt66lt 19:05, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Location of blank state images? 

message: A lot of the counties in the US have the opening line of "in the state of Ohio" for example. You have on this project that U.S. counties should contain "_ is a county in the U.S. state of _." I would like to propose that this is changed to " _ is a county in the state of _, United States." This puts forward, in the same pattern as in most other locations on Wikipedia, the location in order from smallest locale to country. I don't think having U.S. state of _ is sufficient for non US wikipedians who may not always know what U.S. means. I know there are a lot of them in here and we cannot easily change every one, but they can be changed as things continue. Having an acronym for the country in the opening sentence I don't feel is enough and the country should really be spelled by its accepted name, which for the USA on Wikipedia is United States. Comments? Ben W Bell 09:34, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: non US wikipedians who may not always know what U.S. means huh? Who in the English-speaking world would not recognize U.S. as United States? This is a non-issue as far as I'm concerned and support the current phrasing. older ≠ wiser 13:25, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you'll find that for many U.S. can be confusing and also not every person who reads Wikipedia is necessarily a native English speaker. Also, there should be for every location a proper country name so people can click directly to the country, this gives the reader (who you cannot presume to be American) full access to all the levels of information they may wish to access while perusing the article. Ben W Bell 14:21, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: for many U.S. can be confusing  Sorry, but that is precisely what I very much doubt. I find it very very very difficult to believe that there is any significant number of English-language readers (native or otherwise) who would not recognize "U.S.". The suggested formulation has a link to U.S. state, which IMO is more than adequate to meet the needs of any readers who might not know or who are curious to learn more. While this is my preferred formulation for places, some editors will add ", USA" after the state name instead of preceding it with "U.S. state of" or preceding it with a piped version as in "state of X, USA". That is OK, though when it gets to three or more levels of comma-separated place names (as sometimes happens), it is a little too much. But I think many editors would not want to see a link to the fully expanded name United States appended to the state name.  older ≠ wiser 17:30, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  OKay that's for the editors, but what about the readers? The term U.S. doesn't find much use outside of the United States, it is referred to as USA, United States or America, but rarely if ever as U.S. It may not be that way inside the United States, but this is supposed to be an internationally neutral encyclopaedia not an American centric one. Ben W Bell 18:33, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sorry, but I do not accept the proposition that the term U.S. doesn't find much use outside of the United States Rather, I'd argue it is easily recognizable by the vast majority of English speakers, especically in the context of a combination form such as U.S. state. A quick check of a several English-language international media show liberal usage of U.S. (or US). I simply do not see this as a problem. older ≠ wiser 23:19, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Opening line alteration proposal. 

message: Note:  I have consolidated these proposals into one discussion section.  Please add any corresponding comments to the discussion subsection (below).  JonathanFreed | Talk | 20:52, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that #3 looks best, and in the future will probably switch the Kansas counties to that template.  But I will probably think about adding one or more optional parameters. —Mike 19:47, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Eventually, every county article should have at least two maps: a locator map for the county within the state, and a detailed map of the county.  Of course, most county articles don't have detailed maps yet, because maps are hard to make.  My concern is simply that for the articles that do have maps, the infobox shouldn't push the map too far down.  I like the fact that the Utah example shows the map at the top.  Eagle County, Colorado would benefit from that style of infobox.  dbenbenn | talk 23:36, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Eagle County, Colorado suffers from poor map placement.  The second map should appear in the Geography section of the article.  I would expect that a normal detail map would appear within the Cities and towns section well below the infobox (for example, see Doniphan County, Kansas). —Mike 07:00, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

text: This would be quite beneficial for counties in Kentucky, where county judge-executives are of significant importance. Allow me to suggest fields for "leader_name" (Judge-Executive, etc.) and "leader" (the name of the office holder). Acdixon 15:28, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

text: That definitely would be useful in many US states, but there are some states without that type of county government. It should be structured as an optional element. --orlady 15:45, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  County Infobox Proposals 

message: Since it didn't exist, I created a new Template:Infobox Counties that you might find useful.  It might need a few changes, but it has most of what you would see in the similar State Infobox.  (See the example at right.)  Moverton 02:44, 17 July 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  County Infobox Proposal #1 (17 July 2004) 

message: Template:Infobox U.S. County
A while ago, i took up creating an infobox for counties in the united states and started adding it to numerous county articles, over 500 i believe have the infobox. The box is pretty simple to implement and use and changes based on a couple of variables. I would think it would be nice to be consider for the guidelines, but if not i do not plan to "step on" any present box on that is on a page already, as long as i am given the same consideration as well. A test of the box is at the right, as well information can be found at Template:US County infobox where the box coding is at. I would as that any changes are put on the tale page before being added to the template, as changes are universal, and any questions be directed to the same talk page. --Boothy443 | comhrá 04:11, 18 September 2005 (UTC
Note: The template for this infobox was moved from Template:US County infobox to Template:Infobox U.S. County at 12:23, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  County Infobox Proposal #3 (18 September 2005) 

message: *(3) Template:Infobox U.S. County  (see pages that link to it)
I favor elements found in each one.  Overall, the #3 looks the cleanest to me, and also includes "US" in its name.  Can we get some consensus on one of the infoboxes?  JonathanFreed | Talk | 21:34, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that #3 looks best, and in the future will probably switch the Kansas counties to that template.  But I will probably think about adding one or more optional parameters. —Mike 19:47, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Eventually, every county article should have at least two maps: a locator map for the county within the state, and a detailed map of the county.  Of course, most county articles don't have detailed maps yet, because maps are hard to make.  My concern is simply that for the articles that do have maps, the infobox shouldn't push the map too far down.  I like the fact that the Utah example shows the map at the top.  Eagle County, Colorado would benefit from that style of infobox.  dbenbenn | talk 23:36, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Eagle County, Colorado suffers from poor map placement.  The second map should appear in the Geography section of the article.  I would expect that a normal detail map would appear within the Cities and towns section well below the infobox (for example, see Doniphan County, Kansas). —Mike 07:00, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

text: This would be quite beneficial for counties in Kentucky, where county judge-executives are of significant importance. Allow me to suggest fields for "leader_name" (Judge-Executive, etc.) and "leader" (the name of the office holder). Acdixon 15:28, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

text: That definitely would be useful in many US states, but there are some states without that type of county government. It should be structured as an optional element. --orlady 15:45, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion regarding the County Infobox Proposals 

message: I have uploaded new county locator maps to Commons:Category:United States county locator maps, in SVG format.  They are named "Image:Map of STATE highlighting FOO COUNTY.svg".  I think these maps should replace the old PNG maps.  If you agree, please help by updating links in articles!
Also, if you find a map that has errors or needs to be improved, please let me know at User talk:Dbenbenn.
Thanks, dbenbenn | talk 13:02, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you actually mean Commons:Category:United States county locator maps. —Mike 19:53, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Er, yes.  Thanks. dbenbenn | talk 23:30, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New SVG county locator maps 

message: Hello. I'm a member of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing articles using these criteria, and we are are asking for your help. As you are most aware of the issues surrounding your focus area, we are wondering if you could provide us with a list of the articles that fall within the scope of your WikiProject, and that are either featured, A-class, B-class, or Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Do you have any recommendations? If you do, please post your suggestions at the listing of all active Places WikiProjects, and if you have any questions, ask me in the Work Via WikiProjects talk page or directly in my talk page. Thanks a lot! Titoxd(?!? - help us) 18:49, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team|Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team]] cooperation 

message: I would like to change the section "Cities and towns" to "Populated places" as Missouri does not (legally) recognize towns, and many now include unincorporated communities.  I realize this may seem like nitpicking, but I've run into problems over legal definitions of "cities" before a time or two. I will leave the decision up to the project.  Rt66lt 01:24, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Except this would exclude ghost towns. I don't think there is anything wrong with keeping the existing "Cities and towns" with the understanding that this is a topical heading and not a legal definition. —Mike 01:56, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I always thought these headings were suggestions, not rules. I don't see any reason not to use heading text that is appropriate for the state. older ≠ wiser 02:02, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for Missouri counties 

message: I have been reformatting the pages for each "List of 'state name' counties" to make the listings uniform, and to add FIPS county codes.  I think this change makes the state information more readable.  When there is a map present I have broken the table to flow around the map.  I've done all the states that have only flat listings (which were formattable automatically via a program), and I have gone back to manually processed the states where the standard table would not work.  I am also including a link to the following template box on each state's page: 
I believe this makes each state's list more readable, and by adding additional information, more useful.  In the case where there is additional information I've manually processed the table.  For an example of the ordinary table, see Wyoming; for an example of adding the information to an existing county information table, see Delaware; Kansas has a special case where the state (for license tags) has assigned each state a two-letter code. These do provide some interesting features.  Paul Robinson 21:02, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Table format for list of counties 

message: Isn't the use of a giant bulleted list section of all of Municipalities, Cities, Boroughs, Townships, Census-designated places &c. redundant when a County Template is used?  I repeats all of the same information twice. Dddstone 02:57, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This query came about as a result of an edit to Northumberland County, Pennsylvania deleting the bulleted list and information in the article duplicated in the Infobox U.S. County (the edit has been reverted for now). I have added county maps to all 67 PA county articles to help locate the cities, boroughs, townships, and CDPs. These maps are beside the bulleted lists, which seems better to me for reference purposes (so I do not want to delete the lists). User:VerruckteDan has made "county templates" (nav boxes) for all 67 PA counties and put them on every applicable page. They do duplicate all the information in the bulleted list for the county articles, but for consistency it seems to me that they should be there when they are also on every other city, borough, township, and CDP article for that county. If the articles have more content, this redundancy is not so glaringly apparent. One example of more content is Lycoming County, Pennsylvania where I have added the unincorporated villages and the one CDP to each township in the bulleted list. My $0.02 worth Ruhrfisch 11:57, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of County Templates AND Municipality Headings? 

message: It's occurred to me that it might be useful to show by categorization which borough/census area (since I mainly work on Alaska articles) various geographic features (rivers, lakes, mountains, etc.) are in. I have no idea what the accepted way of doing this is, though, if there is one, so I figured if anyone would know, it would be you guys.
*Is this kind of thing considered evil and I shouldn't do it at all? (most county articles seem to go this way, at least by default)
*Should I just put the articles straight into the existing categories? (:Category:San Bernardino County, California does this, as well as a couple other random counties I checked)
*Should I make separate "Geography of Wherever" subcategories? (:Category:King County, Washington does this)
*Does nobody actually care and I should just do whatever feels right as long as it's consistent?
Figured it would be a good idea to check here first before accidentally ruining any plans... —Zero Gravitas 01:56, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My own feeling is that it just depends.  In a state like Kansas with 105 counties and at most a dozen articles in most of them, it doesn't make sense to subcategorize below the county level.  But that might not be true for other areas of the country.  And just because they do it doesn't mean you have to. —Mike 03:45, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Geographic features? 

message: I've worked for the past month to update Portal:United States and keep it better maintained.  Though, I think the portal would be even better with broader participation.  One way to do that is instead of choosing the "selected article" myself each week, if others would nominate articles and help make decisions.  (same goes for pictures, though these are stocked up through July 29)  If you would like to nominate or weigh in on what should be featured, please visit the portal. Thanks. -Aude (talk contribs) 21:32, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Nominate articles for [[Portal:United States]]

message: There seem to be two styles for county navigation boxes. On the one hand, for example:
And on the other hand:
Personally, I rather prefer the former. But the latter is done using NavigationBox, which probably makes it easier to construct and standardize versus the former, which is mildly complicated customized table. Any thoughts on whether the project should recommend standardization? older ≠ wiser 22:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I also prefer the former style. A new trend in some Ohio counties is to have Navigation boxes that list only Townships. I would suggest  / argue strongly in favor of Nav Boxes for the whole county (i.e. all cities, villages, townships, and census-designated places) and not just townships, especially when so few Ohio townships already have their own article. As an example, Wayne County, Ohio has such a Twp nav box, however all of the townships are red links and they are not listed separately in the article itself (beneath cities and villages). Ruhrfisch 14:34, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  County Navigation boxes 

message: The NY templates and locator maps above look nice - thanks. 
If you are interested in PD maps with labels, these New York maps  are from the US Census (so they are PD) and can be edited to make single county maps fairly easily. 
The URL http://www2.census.gov/geo/maps/general_ref/cousub_outline/cen2k_pgsz/ny_cosub.pdf can be edited to get maps of any state as far as I know. Just replace XX in the last section ".../cen2k_pgsz/XX_cosub.pdf" with the lower case postal abbreviation. 
If you want to see examples, I made maps for all 67 PA counties and colored the cities and boroughs red and CDPs blue: :Image:Map of York County Pennsylvania With Municipal and Township Labels.png. I also made maps of all 88 Ohio counties and just left the maps uncolored (much faster): :Image:Map of Franklin County Ohio With Municipal and Township Labels.PNG. I put the maps on Commons so they can be used in other language WP articles. Ask here or on my talk page if you have questions about this.Ruhrfisch 02:00, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. I have seen the census maps, and was actually using them to confirm CDPs, since the Wikipedia pages on New York counties don't always distinguish between CDPs and 'plain' hamlets, but I kind of find them a little too busy.  I was trying to make the maps like those found on some Ontario municipality pages (see Halton Hills, Ontario and Richmond Hill, Ontario).  I may end up just ripping those maps out of the census documents anyway, though, since it is a bit of work creating the maps, and I'm kinda lazy. OzLawyer 12:53, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed they are busy. What I did is made busy maps just for the county page from the above source, but for the few counties where I also made locator maps I used the http://factfinder.census.gov maps and turned off all the labels. An example of the locator maps would be Lycoming Township, Pennsylvania. Ruhrfisch 15:59, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Source of PD State Maps

message: Would it make sense to semi-protect just the demographics sections on all of the US state, county and municipality articles (if it is even possible to protect just a section of an article)? I just fixed the Pennsylvania page demographics "Race and ancestry" section (and if Ram Man or someone else would like to check it, please do so). It had been vandalized several times, but the changed figures were not very different so it was not obvious (and since it is a page that is edited a lot, I had not seen the changes on my watchlist until today). If someone puts in obvious nonsense, that is easy to see, but more subtle vandlaism is hard to detect unless it is a little edited page (which I also catch a fair amount of as I watch all the OH and PA county pages). My thought is that the Census data has not changed since 2000, so there is not much reason to edit it. If it is semi-protected it can still be edited if needed. Would this work? My guess is no, but it can't hurt to suggest it. Frustratedly yours, Ruhrfisch 02:08, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Protectionism rears its ugly head 

message: Is there a standard style and standard source for the data on demographics? Most pages' demographics seem to be based on the 2000 Census results (thanks to Ram-Man), which seems reasonable to me (since it was an actual count). In the Pennsylvania and Ohio county articles (these are what I work on and watch) some of these have been 'updated' to more recent Census population estimates. These usually get reverted back to the 2000 figures, but sometimes both are given (2000 data and the 2004 (or whatever) estimates, which also seems OK to me). Also, as noted above in my more stressed out posting, when checked against actual Census figures these figures have often been changed slightly. Thanks in advance for any help / guidance on this, Ruhrfisch 16:40, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Demographics Question / Guideline sought 

message: Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory.  This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you.  B2T2 18:39, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Project directory 

message: Okay, I've run into a conundrum. Would everyone please, when you get a chance, take a look at Contra Costa County, California, and scroll down to the subsection on Mount Diablo. Wouldn't this float under Geography? Now don't get me wrong, Mount Diablo IS a great place to visit, and a nice location for Amateur Radio repeaters. However, trying to adhere to the template for this project, more or less, what do y'all think? Edit Centric 04:54, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contra Costa County, California - Mount Diablo subsection 

message: I have just sent a "Nasty-Gram" to Google, regarding their Google Earth program. Seems that lately, there are highway markers showing up for highways that DO NOT EXIST! As I have been using them as a reference point for highways in California Counties, I will now have to go through and check every single frapping entry that I have already made, for EACH county, to verify that these roads actually exist. I would recommend to everyone using GE as a resource that you double-check with other official state and local resources to ensure the accuracy of the info before commiting it here... Edit Centric 16:57, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Google Earth as Highway and Info Resource 

message: I liked seeing this list, it gives a lot of concrete suggestions in a nice 2 level hierarchy.  But it seemed odd to find "Notable Festivals and Parades, with dates" listed under "Geography".  What's the logic behind that?  Thanks! Pfly 06:26, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another question about the content suggestions list 

message: I am starting a comversation about what are valid external links for US County articles at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pennsylvania. Official web sites are fine, but what about newspapers? Chambers of commerce? Other kinds of sites? Official state maps of each county? What do you revert on sight? What do you add? If you are interested, please respond here. Thanks in advance for your input, Ruhrfisch 03:19, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What are valid external links for US county articles? 

message: Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention.  Badbilltucker 22:03, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia Day Awards 

message: You may remember that I helped somewhat with adding lists of adjacent counties (look above) back in August.  Over the last couple of days, I've been doing somewhat the same with provinces, regions, etc. of certain countries (all analogous to states here), so far just a few in sub-Saharan Africa.  My question is this: do any of you know of a wikiproject under which such an effort would fit?  Nyttend 03:47, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Parallels to adjacent counties? 

message: I was having a hard time finding this wikiproject, so I was bold and created the wp:county redirect.  Anyone have any qualms about this?  Brien Clark 04:40, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[wp:county]] 

message: I'm now sure how or why, but the SVG map used to indicate the location of Indiana counties now displays at an enormous size, regardless of the dimension defined in the Infobox.  (Warren County, Indiana is an example.)  Does anyone know a fix for this?  Thanks! Huwmanbeing 19:59, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Enormous map 

message: There have been recent changes in the merging of WP:V, WP:NOR and WP:RS into WP:ATT, along with related changes at WP:N. One thing that may affect geographic projects is the tightening of the requirement for multiple secondary sources for all articles. Many geographic articles are created from a single primary source like census data or topo maps. Technically, this would subject these articles to deletion. If you have not checked these policies lately, you should. And be sure to check the supporting discussions. Remember WP policies and guidelines are supposed to incorporate a broad consensus. Dhaluza 20:16, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see anything at Wikipedia:Attribution that prevents an article from referencing only primary sources. Anyway, it is trivial to find a commercial map that shows the place (most location articles already have several such maps linked in the external links), so the "threat" has no teeth. --NE2 21:35, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Also look at WT:ATT and WT:N and check the edit histories to see what people are trying to include, particularly the recent WP:N edit war prior to protection.. Dhaluza 21:51, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not looking at notability, since that's not a policy, but attribution explicitly allows "descriptive claims that can be checked by anyone without specialist knowledge" from primary sources. --NE2 22:07, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent policy changes limiting primary sources 

message: It seems as if every county article in New York has the same basic history of the New York counties being split up, tailored slightly for the specific county. Perhaps each article should contain a short bit about how that county was created, with a "See also" link to an article specifically about the formation of New York counties.
What do you think? Jesuschex 05:11, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New York County history 

message: As various "list of counties in XX" (state) have become Featured Lists, and a couple more are heading that way, I've created a sub-page at Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. counties/county lists to keep track. (Potentially, this could end up a Featured Topic). Tompw (talk) (review) 15:13, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  County lists