Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Organized Labour/Archive 3

message: Rock Springs massacre, a GA class article within the scope of this project and tagged by this project on its talk page, is currently at featured article candidates. See its nomination at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Rock Springs massacre. Read the article, compare it with the featured article criteria and voice your opinion. IvoShandor 12:34, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah yes, this article was promoted. I was quite happy. IvoShandor 18:12, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Excellent! Very nice work IvoShandor.--Bookandcoffee 18:36, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Rock Springs massacre

message: This article has been the subject of a low-grade editing battle for the last few weeks. There was a very long, very WP:original research, and very un-sourced collection of charges against the union and its leadership. I have edited it down, however the original poster has become increasingly focused in the attempt to re-introduce the material. Myself and Hamster Sandwich have been keeping an eye on it, but if anyone else would like to have a quick look, and add it to their watchlist it would be appreciated. Cheers, --Bookandcoffee 05:16, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[SEIU Local 1.on]]

message: So this isn't a big issue, but I was going to mention it some time ago and I forgot. Trade unions (more than most) seem to have a fetish for acronyms. I put an "Acronyms" box on the bottom of Trade unions in South Africa because, frankly, it's damn confusing to try and keep track of who's who. Is there any interest in formalizing this as a useful tool? I'm just thinking of another(!) simple infobox to make it easy for data entry and standardization.--Bookandcoffee 21:28, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I wouldn't call it a fetish. When you are talking about, say, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States, Its Territories and Canada, it's a heck of a lot easier to just say "AFSCME" and "IATSE" respectively. --Orange Mike 14:52, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: True, definitely a mouthful! --Bookandcoffee 18:28, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

text: And then there's the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union—or USPFRMEAISWIU for short. Or, as we call it, "Uspfremeeaheyesweeyou". - Tim1965 23:46, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Acronyms

message: A search turned up no matches and no helpful results for 'union bug'. Does this page not exist — and if not, shouldn't it? I'd be willing to start work on it, even though I'm not a member of the project. (yet?) -- Scartol 14:54, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See what I've done with :union label, which was formerly a redirect to the AFL-CIO Union Label Department article. --Orange Mike 15:16, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Very nice. Thanks. If I weren't knee-deep in Balzac, I might expand that stub of yours. Alas. -- Scartol 16:10, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Union bug? 

message: I just finished a significant revision of Cripple Creek miners' strike of 1894. Perhaps it's ready to be re-nominated as a Good Article? -- Scartol 22:03, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *Thank you, thank you. I'd like to thank Jebus and Spongebob. Next up: Lowell girls. – Scartol · Talk 21:18, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cripple Creek miners' strike of 1894 

message: I also couldn't handle the black-background userbox at Template:User OrgLabour, and I wanted something which links to the project (and says so in the 'box). So I made my own at User:Scartol/Userboxes/LaborProject. (I don't have a good grasp of templates yet, so I'm still doing them on my own user page.) Feedback welcome. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Scartol (talk • contribs) 
:Looks very nice. The black userbox is a fairly recent event. The older version looked like this:  Personally I preferred the older version, but then I would... :) However, I like this version even better! --Bookandcoffee 05:08, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Project userbox 

message: Hello, fellow editors:  I just discovered & joined this WikiProject -- right on the heels of spending several hours on improved categorizing of labor history articles & categories. I finally spotted the Project template, and promptly dropped what I was doing to check it out.
Anyway, I thought it would be good to let everybody know that I've just remedied a major gap in the Labor category scheme with the creation of :Category:Labor history. I've already populated it with quite a few articles & subcategories. Please take a look and let me know what you think. Regards, Cgingold 03:43, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Tim, just noticed your reply (I didn't have this page watchlisted). Yeah, I saw that category -- in fact, I adjusted its parent categories so that it's now a subcategory of :Category:Labor history by country (one of the batch of new cats I created in order to construct a full-blown array of nested labor history categories). It should probably be renamed so it's in alignment with it's siblings (that's on my "to-do" list). Cgingold 06:54, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

text: Oh yeah, I meant to ask about adding this info to the Categories section on the Project page. Does anybody know why there are no editable section links visible? Cgingold 03:45, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Cgingold, welcome to the project. Excellent to see your work on the categories. As for the missing [edit] tabs - I always thought they weren't there because of the __NOTOC__ at the top of the page... but then I realized that I actually have no idea! I can't remember when they disappeared. Anyone else know?--Bookandcoffee 08:46, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

text: I went back to February 2007, and there are no edit tabs there, either. But there were, because the History tab shows sub-categories being edited. Perhaps it is in the way Wikipedia treats templates? Some over-arching way Wikipedia does things that we had no part in?  It could be that the *ahem* "borrowed code" we used could be affecting how earlier histories of the page look (but how can that be?).  I'm not enough of an expert to know. :( - Tim1965 12:20, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You never get section edit tabs, when you're looking at older versions of a page. But why there are none on the current page baffles me as well.--Carabinieri 00:00, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Labor history categories 

message: I added an infobox to American Federation of Labor. There's clearly a problem with the box, but I have stared at those few lines of code for hours and can't figure out what the problem is.  Can someone else do so, with a fresh pair of eyes? Thanks! - Tim1965 00:33, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: By comparing the code to that of the infobox in AFL-CIO, I was able to determine that there was nothing in the "dissolved_state=" line, which meant that the following line ("merged_into=") represented itself strangely. I think the template then makes the title of the box askew to indicate something structural needs attention. I fixed it. — Scartol · Talk 01:00, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infobox problem 

message: I reorganized and partially rewrote this several-year-old featured article, and would like comments on whether I did a good job. Please comment at Wikipedia:Peer review/Pulaski Skyway/archive1. --NE2 01:18, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Peer review for [[Pulaski Skyway]]

message: I've been working on an expansion of the Education International article.  I did my best, but I couldn't find jack squat about this group's predecessor organizations.  (For example, the IFFTU supposedly was formed in Europe in 1928 and reorganized by the ICFTU in 1951. But I can't find any mention of the predecessor organization's name, much less its history or the IFFTU's founding and early years.)  There is quite a bit of information about EI's policies and actions on the Web (and little in Western news sources), but most of the information comes from EI itself rather than neutral third parties. I'm so weak on international affairs, any help is appreciated! - Tim1965 19:05, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: just a note on key people in the GUFs, should always record the General Secretary, the President is a titular position in the GUFs.--Goldsztajn 01:16, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  International secretariats 

message: I'd like to propose a new category for images which relate to unions and labo(u)r.  The problem is that images relating to unions are not well-categorized or easily located. I spent an hour trying to find that image for the :Los Angeles Times bombing article. And I've come across unused images which are so poorly captioned that they'll rarely be found, and yet which would do really well on various articles. Wikipedia has a category scheme for images:  :Category:Images by subject.  However, there is no labo(u)r sub-category. What do others think? I want to see what sort of discussion emerges here before prostrating myself before the Category Gods. - Tim1965 23:29, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good to me, but I wonder if the small number of items in that cat list is an indication of specialized focus, or just no one adding anything. Is this something that should be done over at Commons? – Scartol · Talk 13:03, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

text: *Wikipedia Commons has no category either. I don't care where the category ends up (Wiki or WikiCommons), but just that a category gets started. (Maybe I'm blind and just not seeing a category?) - Tim1965 14:20, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This makes good sense to me as well. I don't spend much time over at the Commons, but a lot of the older photos would end up over there wouldn't they. Does it make sense to just organize the photos here inside Wikipedia first, and then worry about moving them to the commons later?--Bookandcoffee 17:13, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

text: Many images on Wikipedia aren't on Commons, for good reason (they are fair use, not free). But whichever place they get organized first, I think we're agreed we need a category. Am I right? (I was hoping I was missing that category, but I guess not, and now it means tagging a boatload of articles...) - Tim1965 20:06, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Images category? 

message: On the CWU page, it mentions 'scab' mail. What does that mean? Maybe it should be clarified in the article. Thanks.  Jack Blueberry (t)  •   13:30, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Royal Mail lingo? 

message: Please see this debate and leave your feedback. User:Nightstallion is convinced that this and all general strikes should be lowercase and has changed all general strike article titles. Just like other significant conflicts, the Winnipeg General Strike should be treated as a proper noun and capitalized accordingly. bobanny 08:06, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Winnipeg General Strike name change

message: I have been adding dates to the Organized Labour Portal's pages for "On This Date in Labour History" pages (here's an example: December history.)  It's easy to add labo(u)r people's dates of birth or death.  And thanks to the WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court Cases and WikiProject Canadian Law, many important court case articles have specific dates in them.  But many of the articles about unions themselves lack important dates; years are often given for foundings, mergers, dissolutions, etc., but it's tough to find an actual day and month.  The same goes for strikes (beginning and ending dates), labo(u)r-related legislation (date of enactment? date it went into effect?).  My plea: That contributors really strive to try to pin down exact dates of events while writing articles.  It helps with the Portal, and it helps editors and others when they want to put labo(u)r-related items on the "On This Day..." section of the Main Page, etc.  (If no one speaks for the articles, who will? Me, that's who!) - Tim1965 17:45, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Thank you for speaking for the wee articles, Tim. Let's keep this in mind, people. – Scartol · Talk 18:14, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd suggest nominating it for a peer review and then GA again. I personally didn't agree with the reasons for failing it, and suspect many other editors would've passed it. bobanny 23:29, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  A plea on behalf of articles 

message: Please see the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Organized Labour/Templates. Thanks.—Twigboy 22:39, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Strike/labor dispute infobox 

message: The Labor spies article provides some vital history about a phenomena that isn't widely documented on the World Wide Web. As such, i believe that it serves an important function. That said, the article can certainly be improved. Some sections could be trimmed, and the intro needs to be reworked.
The article has been tagged to indicate that it needs attention, and some gradual improvements have been made.
However, someone has just hacked 45K out of the article, removing entire sections. This person has repetitively deleted massive sections of the article after these drastic changes have been challenged and reverted. A lot of research and hard work have gone down the drain with these changes.
I do not consider this vandalism; the other individual appears to have made a lot of contributions to a great number of articles in the brief time that he/she has been on Wikipedia. It is, rather, a dispute about the best method to improve the article, with the other person essentially disregarding Wikipedia policy. For example, a Major Edit should follow a recommended procedure:
:Before engaging in a major edit, a user should consider discussing proposed changes on the article discussion/talk page... A major edit should be reviewed to confirm that it is consensual to all concerned editors.
The other editor did not discuss the changes on the TALK page before unilaterally making them, although she/he has since responded to my comments there.
I support improving the article, but not wholesale butchering. Please take a look and see if you believe such massive deletions are the best way to improve the Labor spies article.
thanks, Richard Myers 15:39, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please help, Labor Spies article attacked 

message: I'm trying to ascertain the validity of the first paragraph, here:
Cripple Creek miners' strike of 1894
Question: are there other clear examples of a state militia being called out specifically to protect strikers from an armed force that sided with company interests?
thanks, Richard Myers (talk) 13:33, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Did you post this to the article's talk page?  Questions like this should go there first, and then if you don't get an answer post on various WikiProject pages.  But the Good Article review passed that paragraph.  I did a lot of the legwork on that article's first draft, and will try to find a source. - Tim1965 (talk) 14:03, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  State militia protecting strikers? 

message: This individual User_talk:Ndriley97 has been exhibiting red-baiting tendencies and anti-union bias on a number of articles over the past week or so. Some monitoring may be in order if it continues. thanks, Richard Myers (talk) 02:40, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anti-union editor