Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Oregon/Government

message: So one of the goals of this subproject should be to get the articles Government of Oregon and Politics of Oregon up to a decent standard. If we ever want to try to get the Oregon article up to GA or FA status, these will need to be filled out, as they will then become "see main article" redirects under those headings in the Oregon article. You can see Government of California and Politics of California for examples of what this should look like. Can't let our neighbors to the south get the better of us, can we? ;) BTW, only Minnesota and West Virginia have reached GA status and no U.S. states are FA yet. Katr67 20:37, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. I still think de-redlinking Government of Oregon is step one toward that end.  I've searched in vain for a comprehensive org chart of the various agencies, bureaus, divisions and departments.  The Oregon Blue Book list is redacted, and the list on [Oregon.gov] doesn't clearly indicate hierarchy.  I'll see what materials I can find at the local library Monday.  I'll start creating missing articles on statewide offices and governmental agencies in the meantime. --J-M Jgilhousen 06:03, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I may have an alphabetical list laying around here somewhere. I tried to find it on the website of the agency I used to work for, but I think it was an in-house thing. I'm rather familiar with ORS too, so if you need help sorting this stuff out let me know. Katr67 07:00, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Government of Oregon]], etc.

message: Today, I posted articles on Charles Crookham and Oregon Attorney General.  With them, we now have articles on four of our five statewide elective offices, and at least the last few individuals to have served in those posts.
The recent mass deletions of fair use images has wreaked havoc on "mug shots" in our politician infoboxes. Several which have been spared remain only because they have been inaccurately tagged as free use images. Although I'm having a conscience struggle over the issue, I've decided not to correct those tags until we can obtain replacements.  -- J-M Jgilhousen 07:27, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New articles 

message: It seems to me that having articles for both state agencies and their leaders is unnecessary. For instance, Oregon Commissioner of Labor and Industries and Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. There are several cases like this. I think one should direct to the other, and a single article should cover both the agency and the position of its director. Seems best if the article lives under the agency's name, not the title of its director. Thoughts?
Also, a special case of this. Do we need separate articles for the Oregon Dept. of Justice, Supreme Court, and Attorney General? This department seems sufficiently complex to justify more than one article, but do we need three? Or is there a good way to combine into two?
I should note, in both of these cases, one of the articles has yet to be created, so now seems like a good time to decide the future direction the articles will take…
-Pete 22:46, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think for the most part one article is good under the title of the department, like BOLI. As to the Dept. of Justice, maybe combine with AG, but not the supreme court since it is part of the Judicial Department.  As far as I know they are seperate departments (Chief Justice is the head of the OJD, AG of the DOJ) in seperate buildings, though they share a parking lot. But I don't think the judicial department should be combined with the OSC since the OJD also has the court of appeals, tax court, and the state circuit courts too. Each of those courts could be greatly expanded as the supreme court article was. I think overtime these little stubs will be adopted and expanded into real life articles. But minor agencies like BOLI don't need seperate articles for their directors, even if they are elected otherwise it would be like having Governor of Oregon and Office of the Oregon Governor, and that would just be weird. Aboutmovies 23:49, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks, I'm embarassed to say I didn't know that DOJ and OJD were separate departments. I had always thought that the separation of prosecution and adjudication was an essential part of our form of government, but the similarity of the names must have thrown me off. So, thanks the bit of education, and for reaffirming my faith in the viability of democracy. -Pete 00:48, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New question 

message: Unless there is objection, or some other reason of which I am unaware that I shouldn't, I would like to put the following banner in our collection, and use it on the talk pages of the subproject articles (until such time as we have a more comprehensive project banner that does it more "automagically").  It would really help with tracking, sorting, and prioritizing the work.  Here it is:
This article is supported by the Oregon Government & Politics Workgroup.
And it would go directly under the project banner (it is the same width and conforms to the style and wording of the correlary workgroup banner of the Biography project).  It would add the talk page to :Category:WikiProject Oregon Government & Politics.-- "J-M" (Jgilhousen) 13:35, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hearing no objection -- Done.  Inventory tracking can now be done at Category:WikiProject Oregon Government & Politics.  --"J-M" (Jgilhousen) 12:40, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Belated approval For your handy template. Katr67 21:56, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Work group banner 

message: Article with this title "beta" version done.  More information on its talk page.  It gives us an overview of the bureaucracy, and I am getting an idea of which stubs to develop and which to merge (Department level and major Divisions obviously belong in the former category, as do those which frequently end up as political footballs.  Professional licensing and regulatory boards in the latter.  Advisory and governing boards I think should probably be dealt with case by case, as some are more active and/or politically "hot" than others.)  Input invited, either here, or on the respective talkpages.  Assistance in de-redlinking would also be appreciated, although I don't want to pull anyone from other projects... it's nice to see cities and towns doing so nicely, for instance.  --"J-M" (Jgilhousen) 12:45, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I'm quite happy with my cities and towns but I can probably lend a hand with the agencies. You are right about merging the various licensing boards, etc. Body piercing can go with health licensing, for example. They are never particularly interesting unless there is some incident or legislation affecting them, at which time they can be expanded. Quickly browsing through the list, I'd say the most interesting and/or useful ones to deredlink first would be the Oregon Cultural Trust, the Land Use Board of Appeals, and the Public Utility Commission... Katr67 18:54, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

text: That sounds like an excellent solution. Katr67 21:56, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[List of Oregon State Government Agencies]] 

message: Proposal for  has been filed at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Proposals in case anyone wishes to support or object. (This is not a political solicitation, just an informational notice.) --"J-M" (Jgilhousen) 12:49, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I put in a "support" vote over there, complete with a link to "Byzantine". Katr67 21:56, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanky, thanky.  (No, that's not in the OED, and I don't throw it, 'cuz I can barely lift it.) --"J-M" (Jgilhousen) 22:12, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stub request 

message: I came accross this infobox for legislation, for those working in that realm:

Aboutmovies 17:22, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infobox 

message: Does anyone know what the Oregon Shield Law was/is? There's a redlink to it on University of Oregon, saying that the Oregon Daily Emerald was instrumental in its creation. Anyhow, if someone's interested and wants to write an article on it, that would be cool. akendall 21:13, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  See also: Oregon Daily Emerald#The Emerald and Oregon Shield Law: State v. Buchanan. akendall 21:14, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Oregon Shield Law]] 

message: With regards to state legislators, feel free to stop by WP:IOWA/Government - we've laid out a bunch of relevant templates there.  Also, I've recently (around December) created articles for all of our state legislators - please check out Steve Warnstadt, which is the "model" article.  
Keep up the good work - it's always nice to find someone else interested in keeping Wikipedia up-to-date on state government.  :) --Tim4christ17 talk 05:47, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: A note from [[Wikipedia:Wikiproject Iowa|WikiProject Iowa]]

message: I imagine this will fall under the heading of Pete's worthy crusade to break this old(?) state habit of claiming that the State holds the copyright to the people's governmental and state foundational documents.  I note that on the front page of our project is a wikisource link to the Oregon Constitution, which is great....but Wikisource has no such document, at that link or via searching.  Please advise, and let's go on ahead and heat up the discussion of how to procure access to and free-use to all of OUR OWN state documents, at the very least of all the State Constitution, I mean...for Pete's Sake! -Duff 22:38, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You can access the constitution here: http://www.leg.state.or.us/orcons/home.html I'm not aware that it is copyrighted--perhaps the link to wikisource was just wishful thinking? I don't see why it can't be copied and pasted there, but with the handy link at the legislative webpage, I don't know if we should bother. Katr67 22:50, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: P.S. Not to brag or anything, but I'm intimately familiar, via a previous state position, with various state documents and their retrieval--let me know if you need help finding anything. For more info also check out the slightly off-topic conversation at User talk:Peteforsyth/leg. Katr67 22:58, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Free the People's Documents

message: I'm working for the Oregon Council on Court Procedures, a division of the OJD.  We noticed that there is a reference to the Council on the OJD page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Judicial_Department) but no separate page for the Council.  I'm happy to provide the information for this page (including membership) but never having worked with Wikipedia before I have no clue how to go about this.  Can anyone give me a hand?  Thanks! Sharicn 17:42, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello and welcome to Wikipedia. Though we encourage people to edit and contribute, we do have a few rules/guidlines/polices. One of which is our conflict of interest policy, which strongly discourages editing (though does not prohibit) such as you writing an article about the entity you work for. Its not that you would be biased or would edit from a non-nuetral point of view, but we try to avoid the whole appearance of biased editing for the sake of the encyclopedia. However, you can certainly help out in other ways, either edit other articles where you can use your knowlegde or using this talk page provide links to WikiPedia determined reliable sources that are independent of the Council (i.e. OSB, The Oregonian, law journals, etc.) or citations so others can find those materials to then use for making an article about the Council. Then once an article is in place you can leave comments and suggestions on the talk page for others to integrate. I hope that helps, and just ask here if you have any other questions. Also, I left some links on your talk page, it is a good idea as a newbie to skim through those so you have a better idea of how things work, it definatly is not the real world. Aboutmovies 18:47, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Total newbie who might be able to contribute something :-) 

message: Hi folks, I created this article to resolve a redlink at the Wordos article, but felt it deserved some care from devoted Oregon government editors, so I thought I'd give you a heads up. --GoodDamon 17:22, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: New article: [[Oregon Arts Commission]]

message: Okay, well, to me it's "the big question." Tonight. And some other nights.
As I understand it, people register with a state party, never a national party. And the state parties are the ones that nominate candidates. The only national nominating convention I'm aware of are for presidential candidates.
So, since we have perfectly good (okay, I'll admit, they are actually far from "perfectly good") articles for the Oregon Republican Party and the Democratic Party of Oregon, shouldn't biographies of Oregon politicians link to these, rather than the national articles they presently do?
The only reason I can think of why not is that the nationally-oriented articles are presently much more thorough and informative than the state-oriented articles. But that can be fixed, and the state ones do link to the national ones.
Thoughts? -Pete (talk) 08:25, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I can see that was an exciting topic. I've started using the state parties in some articles, we'll see how it goes. -Pete (talk) 14:14, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  The big question. 

message: This is a recap of a discussion that started on Talk:Charles Starr, but applies to all recent state legislators. "The Good, the Bad, and the Awful" is a series in the Willamette Week that comes out at the end of every legislative session. In my opinion, it fails miserably as a reliable source, and I think we should agree not to use it as a source. I hope others will weigh in on this so we can develop some consensus, as this will affect biographies on all recent state legislators.
In the intro sections, the WW basically brags about their departure, in this series, from accepted journalistic ethics: they interview lobbyists, and then publish the results anonymously. As a rule, journalistic ethics require reporters to name sources. Sources go unnamed when there are compelling reasons to do so, and where the story does not suffer as a result; the journalist is typically understood to put his/her reputation on the line by doing so. But in this case, the WW makes a regular practice of leaving sources unnamed in order to produce a more salacious story -- decidedly not a compelling reason.
I have concerns about libel, and also don't think there is much encyclopedic info to be gained from these articles that can't be found elsewhere. (In the Charles Starr article, all these articles add are the observations that he's "unintelligent", "honest", and "nice".)
Aboutmovies rightly pointed out that WP:RS generally applies to publishers, not individual article series; but in this case, where WW makes a specific claim about their approach for this one series, I think an exception is warrented. 
One year, the article's intro begins: "Reader Beware: What follows is largely gossip and opinion…" and another year, it says: "(1) This survey does not claim to be anything more than a number-crunch based on unscientific scores given by people who closely follow legislative antics."
A group of journalism professors addressed anonymity here: "Medill professors emphasize that unnamed sources should be used sparingly. Students routinely are required to submit names and contact information for every person quoted in their articles as a guard against fabrication."
That famous unsourced online encyclopedia has this to say: "The downside is that the condition of anonymity may make it difficult or impossible for the reporter to verify the source's statements. Sometimes sources hide their identities from the public because their statements would otherwise quickly be discredited."
A team of online journalists for the Poynter journalism school asserted this as part of their guidelines: "For the most part, though, it's difficult to make the case that the credibility of anonymous content can ever match that of material whose author is known. As journalists, our default position is to publish material only with full names attached. We make exceptions only in rare cases, only for compelling reasons, and only with explanations attached explaining the reason for the anonymity."
In short, WW makes a flippant case for rewriting journalistic standards in the case of this one annual(ish) feature. They state they're granting anonymity to ensure they're "…not getting mealy-mouthed answers." It's not me, but WW that first said this feature should be considered differently from the rest of their content.
I think it's a mistake to include anything acknowledged to be gathered from anonymous sources, with such tepid justification, in a serious encyclopedia article. -Pete (talk) 14:14, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Interestingly, WW founder seems to agree with me, and describes the premise of the article series as being "nuts." -Pete (talk) 18:53, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Good, The Bad, The Awful 

message: We have lots of similar articles (and redlinks) for state commissions and state departments. I'd like to suggest that we generally make the state department the article, and have the commission redirect to the department. The article can then explain the distinction between the two. Any objection? For an example: Oregon Department of Transportation and Oregon Transportation Commission. (Note, we discussed something similar above, regarding departments and the Commissioner thereof.) -Pete (talk) 18:38, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that is a good solution for most of the commission/department pairings. Some them also have boards in addition. If any of the boards or commissions have household-name status on their own we can split them out as needed. I'm thinking of, say, the closely-related Land Use Board of Appeals (which gets mentioned in the news) vs. the Land Conservation and Development Commission and/or the Department of Land Conservation and Development... Katr67 (talk) 19:09, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yeah, that makes sense. Then again, mightn't it make more sense to start off in one place -- even Land use in Oregon -- and split off articles as we have enough content to build a decent start-class article? -Pete (talk) 19:37, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  State Depts vs. Commissions