Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. states/Archive 1

message: I've added little maps to all the California counties with an overview of the state, with that county highlighted; this gives a nice sense of general placement. I notice there's a similar map in Frederick County, Maryland (but not for the other Maryland counties). I'm considering doing similar sets for the US as a whole showing the states, and for the counties/parishes of other states. (It will take a while to get them all!) Comments/ideas/feedback? --Brion 07:40 Sep 9, 2002 (UTC)
: Good idea, continue! Maybe a map of the state with all counties shown would be nice (like the California map, but with the names in it as well). Jeronimo
::Nevada counties are done. Well, except the articles for most them. :) But the maps are ready, including a larger version with names in the list page. I'll make one of those for CA as well. --Brion 04:56 Sep 20, 2002 (UTC)
:Before changing the WikiProject U.S. States, I added a (partially incomplete) table summarizing some key elements for a state, like in WikiProject Countries, and put it on display at Pennsylvania.  This has been asked for (above), so what does everyone think about it?  What things should be added/changed/etc.? -- Ram-Man
::Very nice, thanks for your work! Some thoughts... For ex-Confederate states, do you think secession and re-admission dates should be noted as well? Also, for non-states (District of Columbia perhaps; Puerto Rico and Guam, certainly), obviously there's no date of admission to the union; annexation date might be appropriate. --Brion
:::Those dates were mentioned in the WikiProject itself I think.  But it would be good to think about those again.  For the non-states, there will of course have to be flexibility.  I'll see about making it clearer. -- Ram-Man
::I just wanted to say that the table looks good to me. However, it is probably a bit much to have such an extensive breakdown of area. I helped develop the original WikiProject Countries table and we felt that simply have the ranking, total and percent water was the best way to do it (the breakdown can be done easily enough with that info). Otherwise all the numbers begin to run together and the usefulness of the table is diminished (since it then becomes visually confusing - esp for those with a math and reading dyslexia like myself). --mav
:Shouldn't there be a WikiProject U.S. Counties and a WikiProject U.S. Cities?  This WikiProject seems to me to be too cluttered with all three in one project. -- Ram-Man
::There are, now. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont]  ‹(-¿-)› 21:04, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: County maps

message: I'm thinking of adding a row at the bottom of the table to accommodate an image of each state's commemorative quarter; does anyone have any thoughts on this? - Hephaestos 16:53, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Ick. Just for the record. I can't think of anything more trivial. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont]  ‹(-¿-)› 21:04, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Commemorative quarters

message: I've made a map of the USA showing county outlines, in case it may be useful. -- Wapcaplet 22:15, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: County outlines map of the US

message: Most states have a fairly extensive state park system. Some individual parks already have Wikipedia articles. The only mention so far of parks is in the Geography section of the template. I just saw an article (it has been here for a while) on Ohio public lands. There don't seem to be any others like it. My thought is that we might rename it List of Ohio State Parks and make that title a suggested entry in the template. I realize that refernced article lists national parks, as well as state level entries, but that wouldn't seem a problem. What do you think? Lou I 17:24, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: If it is just a list, then it should be named as such. --mav 05:19, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question of Parks 

message: Some users have told me they have disagreeded with some of my recent edits to US states articles.  The casing of some of these headers appears to be incorrect according to the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings), which says Capitalize the first word and any proper nouns in headings, but leave the rest lower case. In order to comply with the MoS, they have been changed accordingly. Thanks Dysprosia 09:05, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Casing issue 

message: There seems to be a relatively standard (but not uniformly named) set of articles and categories for each state.  Anyone have any interest in expanding this project to include such things? -- Rick Block 01:19, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Per-state articles and categories 

message: I've noticed alignment issues (using Netscape 7.1 on a W98 machine with "classic" skin) in the Area, Population, and Population density entries in the table generated by the template.  Looking at the template, these are multiline entries that seem to be assumed to line up.  Is there some particular reason each line isn't its own row in the table (which I suspect would align properly in any browser/skin)?  I'm tempted to just fix this, but thought I'd ask first. -- Rick Block 05:20, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I had been wondering the same coding choice myself.  I say go for it.  Could even change those rows from "  - " to "-" to reduce unnecessary spacing. Cburnett 06:07, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: I suspect this comes from the older table that used a border (so the "cell" containing area/population/etc information wasn't chopped up).  In any event, I'll go ahead and change it. -- Rick Block 15:37, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[template:US state]] 

message: I modified the template to compress the table a bit and I've converted most of the remaining states to use the modified (compressed) template.  A couple of things that were awkward:
* States with split timezones (e.g. Alaska, Nebraska, etc.).  I was able to construct something that looks reasonable when viewed.  However, the table entry uses raw html which is fairly obscure.  We could create alternate versions of the template for split timezone states, to effectively hide the ugliness (I'm thinking the split timezone template would use the regular template).  Anyone think this would be worthwhile?
::With the current shorter labels and wider data fields in the template, I've changed all of the multi-timezone states to use simple  breaks for the timezone entries. -- Rick Block 21:58, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  conversions to [[template:US state]] 

message: Anyone care to convert the infobox to the template? Cburnett 20:39, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I've been thinking about it.  Like Kansas, Missouri lists both English and metric for area, etc.  The existing table also lists the largest metro area in addition to largest city (I suspect since they're different) and has that weirdness with the motto (motto rather than nickname, and with a footnote!).  I don't think these are insurmountable difficulties, but I think including precisely the same information using the template will be somewhat tricky. -- Rick Block 21:23, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Missouri]]