Talk:Providence, Rhode Island/Archive 1

message: A state capitol photo is available for license; contact the photographer via email.  18.26.0.18 05:52, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: older entries

message: It seems to me that an article on Providence that doesn't at least touch on its history with the Mob is woefully incomplete -- or is my perspective skewed from growing up in an Italian family? :-) —Preceding unsigned comment added by SarekOfVulcan (talk • contribs) 
*In that case, could you be able to add it and note the source so that I could work with it further? Right now, it seems that no one else is working on the article except for me :-( Pentawing 06:07, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Articles that aren't peer-reviewed in general won't be linked to or cited because they constitute original research; however, since you have many sources in these, it would be very useful to write some of these things into the History of Providence page with proper primary citation.--Loodog 02:32, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Peer review 

message: My recollection is that Providence was subjected to several hurricane-induced floods before its hurricane barrier went up.  I also seem to recall someting about the barrier being of engineering significane - first of its kind, or largest of its kind, or something, though I could be wrong on this.  Adding something about the barrier might be worthwhile. Badger151 20:09, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The major difference between Providence and New Orleans is that Providence is above sea level.  Even if the Hurricane Barrier failed, we couldn't be nearly as bad off.66.240.10.170 23:08, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ummm, how bad could it be?  12 feet of water in downtown PVD - Hurricane Carol and 13 feet of water in downtown PVD - New England Hurricane of 1938.  That is definitely nearly as bad.  The barriers have been up since the 1960s; at least, I remember them always being there, driving to Providence, having been born in 1962.  If they weren't there Providence would be flooded again.  The Narragansett Bay acts as a funnel for the storm bore.  --McTrixie/Mr Accountable 16:48, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hurricane barrier 

message: I would like to put up renderings of the what the completed construction in DownCity Providence will look like.  What is the policy on which pictures I can use.
*First, you must have a login account (from what I know, people contributing anonymously through an IP address are forbidden from uploading files). Second, the image you upload must be of your own creation (this places such images under GFDL, which is preferred). Otherwise, you must state that the image is indeed copyrighted and what its source is (images that are untagged and unsourced images are immediately marked for deletion). Hope this helps. PentawingTalk 20:05, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Images 

message: "The racial makeup of the city was 54.53% Caucasian, 14.54% African American, 1.14% Native American, 6.01% Asian, 0.16% Pacific Islander, 17.55% from other races, and 6.08% from two or more races. 30.03% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race."
I don't know what to make of that last statistic. 
*Assumption 1: white, black, native american, asian, pacific islander, other races, and two or more races are mutually exclusive categories, since, if we made a person both black and white, (s)he'd be put into the "multiple races" category.
*Assumption 2: hispanic/latino is a racial classification
Operating on these two assumptions, any person being hispanic/latino must come from "other races" or "two or more races", except this only allows 17.55 + 6.08 = 23.64% of the population to be hispanic/latino.
And we can't get the other 6% from the other categories, since that would put them in the "two or more races" group.
Whatever this statistic is supposed to mean, it needs to be reworded.Loodog 21:34, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The demographics information were placed there by a bot (automated script). Hence, this wording has appeared in every other U.S. municipality article. If you can find a better way of rewording it without completely destroying the section, go ahead. PentawingTalk 03:17, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The issue appears to be your second assumption. The United States Census Bureau does not consider Hispanic/Latino to be a race. See Race (United States Census). — 05:03, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusing racial makeup 

message: I was in Providence and took a number of new pictures, a few appear on this page.  Anyone not liking the layout feel free to play around with the format, as I am a terrible novice in "wikicode".Loodog 23:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done, see economy section.--Loodog 03:57, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New images 

message: After adding the bit of trivia about the "Bank of America" building being known as the Superman building, I released there's a lot about this particular building that is largely superfluous information in an article about Providence.  I'd like to split off the Bank of America building info into its own article.  Does anyone have (or is aware of) an image we can use for this purpose?Loodog 20:17, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Look at the Wikimedia Commons (commons.wikimedia.org) under "Providence, Rhode Island". There are two pictures that are of use. PentawingTalk 23:46, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: DoneLoodog 03:57, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bank of America building 

message: There are currently two different pictures of Waterplace Park in the article:
 
The first is in the "Geography and climate" section and the second is in that section's "Climate" subsection. Why two, and why in that section of the article? DMacks 17:14, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My problem with the first was that it was too small, you really can't see anything.  I uploaded another pic, but couldn't really justify removing the first from the page.  As for the location in the article, damned if I know.  I believe they were both either originally in "Cityscape" or "Culture".Loodog 04:00, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Waterplace Park pictures 

message: I've made a large edit to the cityscape section, one that I think gives a better impression of the Providence cityscape.  Discuss any objections here: --Loodog 17:17, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A rather bold edit to cityscape 

message: As much as I hate to concede it, the history section is obviously too long.  How about taking current projects and splitting them off into a separate page?--Loodog 20:34, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. The usual method is to move the current version into its own sub-article and leave a summarized version within the main city article. PentawingTalk 00:12, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  history section too long 

message: Someone has changed this:
"The city is located in Providence County and is the second-largest city in New England. Providence is nicknamed the "Beehive of Industry" and, since the 1990s, "The Renaissance City," which is a dubious and sometimes tongue-in-cheek claim given that Providence has one of the highest percentages of people living in poverty of any city in the United States. In fact, Providence is one of the "10 poorest cities in the country" - sharing company with Brownsville and Laredo, TX, New Orleans, LA, AClarke, GA, Hartford, CT, Newark, NJ, Syracuse, NY, San Bernardino, CA and Miami, FL . Providence also has a very high crime rate and many run-down neighborhoods."
I've reverted much of it for the following reasons:
*I looked at the other cities mentioned, only one has this piece of information (that it's one of ten poorest cities) in the introduction, and with the exception of Miami the others don't mention poverty at all except in the standard demographics section.  However, I considered it fair game to leave in a quick note to contrast the word "Renaissance", since "Renaissance" is up front in the intro too.
:Yes, I agree the contrast is important and it is an interesting factoid distinguishing Providence from other cities. User 71.235.84.59
: Is the contrast necessary though? "Renaissance" doesn't necessarily mean "High Income" or "Wealthy". Compared to 20 or 30 years ago, isn't the "Renaissance" moniker appropriate? Shaft0rz 22:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, user 71.235.84.59 was the one who put this piece of information in the Syracuse article anyway.--Loodog 18:13, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  poverty-stricken Providence 

message: On hold for 7 days, please fix the following: wikilink only full dates, not partial, refs go after punctuation not before it, make refs consitent format pref using cite fmt, get rid of weasel words. Rlevse 19:57, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ref locations fixed. Not sure what the date issue is. I see some years linked...are they not supposed to be? All but one are in a listing of censuses, and it seems reasonable to me to link them there (cross-ref what else is happening then). All cites are now with  templates, though some could use some additional data. DMacks 20:14, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Deweaseled.--Loodog 20:48, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

text: External jump fixed, but I'm not sure what to do about history.  Everything not footnoted is taken from http://www.providenceri.com/history/centuries1.html.  How do I cite that?--Loodog 23:01, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Make the web site a footnote. Repeat its use if you need to. Climate, weather, demographics, etc have no refs too. Need lots more refs. Rlevse 13:33, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Demographics are automatically filled in for all locations, it has a  reference.  Is this not sufficient?  E.g. Cleveland has been a featured article with only GR2 as a reference for demographics; neither does it have references for most of its climate prose.  Boston, San Jose, San Francisco have also been featured articles and similarly lack references in climate and demographics.--Loodog 02:39, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

text: GR2 merely takes you to a wiki article, that is not a ref. San Francisco became a FA in 2006 had has LOTS of refs in climate and demographics, the others became FAs in 2005 and the standards for GA and FA are higher now. The 2005 FAs could even be delisted for not being kept up. Maybe I'll go do that. Your infrastructure section is devoid of refs too. A good rule of thumb is at least one ref per paragraph, especially if it is more than a couple of sentences.Rlevse 13:41, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Merged. DMacks 19:35, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

text: The "url" field of  templates should just be the URL; the title goes in the "title" field. Leave it to the magic of the templates to handle the formatting...that's why we have them. DMacks 19:39, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I'm now going to pass this for GA. Suggestions for further improvement, esp if you want FA: more cites are needed-there are still strings of paragraphs without them; be consistent in format of refs-I fixed some for you, ex: web refs should have title, url, accessdate, and publisher at a minimum. I added publisher to ref 38 "Lifespan" as a sample for you. I think the prose of the article is fairly good. Rlevse 12:34, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: GA hold

message: Providence used to go directly to the disambig page, but we changed it to go directly to this page.  Reasons:
*google search reveals majority of results to the city.
*All other places have populations of less than 4400 and have only automated default pages, except for Providence County which one would never search for with just the word "Providence".
*Most alternative articles linked to in the disambig page only contain the word "Providence" in their titles and are not identical.  You would never look up Providence College with the word Providence any more than you would look for NYU by searching for New York.  Of those with names that actually match, we have 2 obscure movies, a defunct TV show, an unknown band, song, and the name of a fictitious place in comic books.
In the interests of saving the most people the most additional clicks, we agreed to send Providence here with a disambig at top rather than the opposite.--Loodog 06:17, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It is very common to refer to Divine Providence as simply Providence. I would venture to guess that Divine Providence is at least as likely to be the intended target as Providence, Rhode Island. In fact, that's why I attempted to redirect it to the disambig page—I was seeking the theological entry, not the geographical entry. Also, since there are so many other cities with the same name, it seems reasonable to go directly to the disambig page. Someone might be looking for Providence College but might not remember whether it is a college or a university and simply type providence hoping to get a disambig page from which to see all the options. (I frequently do this when I don't remember an exact name or title.) In addition to the reasons mentioned already, I would suggest that for consistency's sake we redirect to the typical Wikipedia-preferred location. Overall, it's significantly easier and less confusing to start from a disambig page and move to an article page than to go the other direction. --Emote 06:14, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Boston has twice as many things to redirect to, including Boston University, Boston College, and 13 other cities, yet "Boston" takes you straight to the city because it's the overwhelmingly what people are headed toward. A google search reveals that people seeking "Divine Providence" with "Providence" won't find it (not until looking through more than 10 pages of results).--Loodog 12:49, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Emote that Providence should go directly to a disambig page.  Having it link with a small New England city suffers from a very American-centric worldview.  Few people outside of the US, I think, would be searching for the city when entering Providence in the English Wikipedia.  The word is incredibly common as a noun in its own right. Keen Machine 14:21, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: US centric?  There are ten cities with this name, all of which are in the United States, only one of which has a population over 4400.  I will concede that the Divine Providence sense of the word would see more frequency than these small towns, but a google search reveals that the first page is about that small New England city.  In fact, you have to go to halfway down the second page to find an article on "Divine Providence".  search for Divine Providence, it returns it immediately.  You can call google US centered if you want but its results are based on relevance to the user, reinforced by information about its users actions.--Loodog 15:40, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why "Providence" goes here and not to disambig 

message: List of United States urban areas lists providence as the 34th biggest in America, with a population of 1,174,548. The Providence article lists itself as 35, with a population of 1,622,520. I'm sure they're statistics from different years, so it would be nice to know when at list one of them is from. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Phantombantam (talk • contribs) 18:04, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no contradiction.  34th is for urban area; 35th is for metro area.  Urban is more a measure of contiguous urbanization, metro extends distances to effective commuting distances.--Loodog 19:49, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Metro. Population

message: Added a table and a pie chart, play around with the format if you like.--Loodog 02:26, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: In economy

message: Postsecondary is hyphenated in the text, but not in the heading; which is it?  SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:57, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed.--Loodog 00:10, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Postsecondary

message: The official name of the neighborhood is downtown. The name 'downcity' has been promoted by City Hall but its hardly used outside City Hall press releases & Channel 12 news broadcasts. It shouldn't be included in this article except as a brief note at the beginning RIVA02906 14:27, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "Downcity"

message: In response to the criticism that the unofficial neighborhoods are like a "laundry list" and that they should be removed. 
And what is the list of official neighborhoods above? Another laundry list? Most of those terms listed are in common use, some more common than the official neighborhood names. Do you think anybody in Providence says they live in 'South Elmwood' or that they are visiting 'Upper South Providence?'No. But they do say that of West Broadway and the Jewelry District.
Many of the official neighborhood names are undated and arbitrary. To remove all mention of places like the Jewelry District, the Armory District, and West Broadway is a disservice to wikipedia users. Its also extremely reactionary.
Oh btw:
http://www.wbna.org/ http://www.jewelrydistrict.org/
Oh, and another amusing anecdote: A google search of Providence "south elmwood" gets 15,600 responses. West Broadway gets 70,500.
RIVA02906 14:25, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Unofficial Neighborhoods

message: There is now a planning page to arrange a meetup in Providence.  Please sign up if you are interested.  --mikeu (talk) 18:21, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: There are now two dates scheduled for a Meetup in Providence.  --mikeu talk 14:08, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Providence meetup

message: The article says that Providence has a higher percentage of minorities than Boston and Hartford. Hartford's minority popualtion is almost 80% (38.5 black and 40% Hispanic).Could someone correct this?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.124.184.15 (talk) 21:51, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The article does not say that.  It says its minority population has a higher density.--Loodog (talk) 22:29, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Minority Population

message: Providence does have a higher minority percentage then Harftod conn and Boston. Half the school population in providence is Hispanic. Thats not including the African American community or the high Cambodian and Laos population.
:See above.--Loodog (talk) 22:31, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Minority

message: I had cleaned up the estimates in the first paragraph because in it the 2007 estimated population was in the 172,000s when it was really in the 175,000s. I don't know If I screwed up the article so if someone could look it over that would be great. I know this is a controversial debate and I just wanted to keep the first paragraph consistent with the rest of the article. Another problem with the page is that in the fist couple of paragraphs and in the info box there is no mention to the population in the 2000s census. Although the 2007 census is relevant and important, the actual United States census is taken every 10 years so this article should rely on that census much more then it does. Also, in the demographic section (or whatever you call it) it says that the 2000s census was at 173,000 when the New England chart places it at 172,000s (and I am sorry to say I changed it on that too so if its wrong, I apologize) and the National charts place it at 171,000s and Worcester at 175,000s. Toonami (talk) 17:18, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: 2007 population estimates

message: Ok guys, really. This whole 2007 and 2008 estimate thing is causing a lot of problems. The Providence and Worcester "penis contest" is really only based on the estimates. So I am going to remove the estimate population from the main population box and put in the 2000s census box for both cities. I'm also doing that for NE if it needs it. I will still include both 2007 and 2008 estimates in the article, but as for the second biggest city contest, we really should base it on the 2000 census, and just mention the latest "estimate" Toonami (talk) 02:50, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: No penis contest influences.  I've just been putting the most recent Census estimate (2008) in the box for the last couple years.  Most cities do not use the 2000 Census except for in demographics section.--Louiedog (talk) 16:10, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: STOP changing it.  We use latest Census estimates for all US cities.--Louiedog (talk) 22:44, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: "Estimates"

message: Can not come to agreement on how to report crime rate.  Please help. You Can't Clap with One Hand (talk) 14:56, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Crime Rate

message: While editing the article about Yeovil in England I can across a reference to Stuckley Westcott who is not mentioned in this article - described as  Early American (17th century) settler. Co-founder, with Roger Williams and 11 others, of Providence, Rhode Island (1636), early American religious freedom asylum. In trying to find out more & provide a reference I can across the reference  which may be of interest/use to those editing this article?— Rod talk 15:23, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Stuckley Westcott

message: Whats with the new(ish) area figures at the top? 43.5 sq mi? I think not. Before, 20.5 sq mi was listed, and is still teh figure quoted in the Geography section. Cranston, by my estimation looks to eb slightly larger than Providence and is 29.9 sq mi, so I think it's clear 20.5 is the correct number, as are the land and water amountsof 18.5 and 2.1. Who changed these figures? and why teh devil did they do this? I thought they may have been confused and used the metric values instead, but no, so I'm confused. Can someone with the austhority change them back please, because I fear if I do, it'll just be reverted. Though, there are no references so maybe I will change them.. VanillaBear23 (talk) 11:14, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Providence Area

message: Substituted at 15:36, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment