Talk:List of governors of Alaska

message: Since the order of governors used in this article appears to be determined by what Sean Parnell is currently proclaiming himself to be on the state of Alaska website, I felt it would be appropriate to copy and paste this discussion over here, just in case anyone reading this and not the other page can be of help.  Originally posted to Talk:Sean Parnell:
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governor number
His website states that he is the tenth governor of Alaska, but the Wikipedia page says that he is the twelth. Does anyone have information about this discrepancy?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.69.112.208 (talk) 22:07, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Egan & Hickel, are only counted once each (even though they served non-consectuive terms), going by the gov website. GoodDay (talk) 19:52, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

text: Thank goodness you noticed the mistake. Alaska is one of those states that number their governors via individual. GoodDay (talk) 20:04, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

text: I would have to say that we go with what the current, or most recent, governor states, unless it's demonstrably wrong (so help me, Virginia, I may never finish your list because of that). The website says he's 10th, but, as you point out, the very same page contains other slight errors, errors enough to throw its specifics into doubt. What could help is, can you find or cite a version of the blue book more recent than 1991? Personally, since you've shown the webpage to be error-prone and we have an official book saying repeats are numbered, I'm inclined to agree with you, but I'd first like to see what a more recent version of the blue book says. (Though I disagree that it's "the exact equivalent to today's website", as it's twenty years older.) --Golbez (talk) 13:58, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Order of governors 

message: I'll get back to the other issue when I have enough time to offer a response which does the matter justice, which I don't have today.
Political Graveyard and Who's Who in Alaskan Politics both refer to Mottrone, rather than Mottrom, Ball.  I would guess that someone misread an old document they found at the National Archives.  I have also come across a few contemporary sources, but they refer to him strictly by his initials, as M. D. Ball.RadioKAOS (talk) 01:14, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Evidently, the attitude here is one of "We'll just sit back and go by what THIS ONE PARTICULAR SOURCE says" and ignore common sense.  Don't worry, I took care of it for you: Talk:Mottrom D. Ball#Requested move.  I'm making this notice as a courtesy, as this may be of interest to someone over here. RadioKAOS  –  Talk to me, Billy  22:42, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Along the same lines: Talk:William Allen Egan#Requested move. RadioKAOS  –  Talk to me, Billy  22:17, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Really, there's a gang of these.  No explanation of why some entries in the list reflect the person's common name while other entries run totally afoul of WP:COMMONNAME and appear to reflect said particular (peculiar?) source(s).  There's a very simple reason why Wikipedia content was intended to be based on multiple sources: individual sources are sometimes known to be factually incorrect or have built-in POV.  While many of these names have been discussed elsewhere on the encyclopedia, there are still others which haven't been discussed yet should be (such as J. F. A. Strong). RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions  02:15, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Correct name of Mottrom Ball

message: As the category tree continues to grow exponentially (really more like willy-nilly, but people keep pretending to ignore me when I don't "act nice"), a conflict exists with , the category closely corresponding to this list.  The problem lies specifically in Alaska's lengthy pre-statehood history and how that conflicts with the prevailing categorization scheme for governors of U.S. states, the majority of which appear to have very limited pre-statehood histories.  There is also a problem with our use of "Alaska Territory" in categories, particularly the lack of consistency in its application.  In article space, "Alaska Territory" refers to the legal status of Alaska from 1912 to 1959.  In categories, it can mean either that or a lengthier period going back prior to 1912;  the latter includes  and .  I'm just seeking an understanding about consistency, so please avoid any hair-splitting exercises regarding what sort of territory Alaska was or wasn't prior to or after 1912, thank you.  Specific problems are as follows:
* The broad variation of content related to both statehood and pre-statehood governors within  means that the trees of both parent categories (as well as the tree of , see below) contain numerous articles which are out of scope.  Pre-statehood governors are neither state constitutional officers of the state nor state governors of the United States, period, and shouldn't be categorized within such trees.  Looks like this same practice has been repeated with other states, creating the same issue for every state with a lengthy enough pre-statehood history.
*  is inferior and redundant to the more recently created .  Additionally, "pre-statehood Alaska" is a more flexible identifier than "Alaska Territory" inasfar as the organization of the tree.  Thus far, they've been used interchangably;  it's unclear whether they can be separated without further obfuscating the tree.  While statehood prompted both in-migration and out-migration in Alaska, the change of Alaska's status from district to territory most certainly did not.  Considering that, the inferior former category possibly fails WP:DEFINING when compared to the latter category.  
* There is no direct path from  to the pre-statehood governors like there is from  to .  You eventually get there after several mouse clicks, but wind up at the parent category , which is primarily focused on statehood governors and not pre-statehood governors (see above rather than ask me to rehash the argument).
Any advice would be helpful.  This may take a few minutes to unravel before it can be taken to CFD, so I suppose you can take your time. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions  02:15, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Categorization conflict

message: Once again, it becomes necessary to ask: what exactly are the so-called maintainers of this list here for if I end up doing the real work for them?  That non-free photo of Egan was in this list for eight months without a FUR specific to the list, which I'm quite certain is required.  That further begs the question: why should I have to read a robo-message anywhere on this encyclopedia stating "Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously" in big bold letters, when nonsense like this makes it all too obvious that it's nothing but a series of empty words?  From what I faintly remember, the Egan article itself is a copyvio, but the page it was lifted from is behind a paywall, so I can't confirm that.  The Commons upload interface is burdensome, so you'd better hope I have the patience to finish the rest of those scans/uploads so that you have a free image of Hammond which isn't so hideous.  Watching people take shortcuts like that isn't providing me with the proper incentive to want to complete that task, however. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions  04:19, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: There being two, maybe three people that handle the governor lists, I dunno, we're probably doing something else at any given moment. I didn't write the Egan article so if it's a copyvio that has nothing to do with this list. The image being unfree is news to me. And the commons interface isn't that bad (don't get me wrong, it ain't great), but at least there are handy tools like Commonist that I would recommend. And I genuinely thank you for your work, but this seems like a rant directed at things in general rather than this article in specific. --Golbez (talk) 05:05, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Egan image 

message: Further evidence that there are Wikipedians who appear more interested in influencing readers when informing them would suffice:
* This from KTVA: "Bill Walker is the thirteenth governor of the State of Alaska, not the eleventh – contrary to what is being reported widely across the state and what is posted on Wikipedia’s list of governors for Alaska."
* Then there's an AP piece published by the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner (here), the Juneau Empire (here) and the Valdez Star (here.  This piece from the KSRM news department was likely derived directly from the AP story.  These links are but one particular snapshot, not taking into account any number of media reports during November 2014 which outright stated that Walker was soon to take office as the 13th governor.  As radio and television journalism tends to have a much shorter shelf life on the web, I'm not surprised that Google didn't easily feed me any of that.
When I originally brought up this issue years ago, I mentioned book sources.  There were two separate books published during the 1990s which refer to Hickel as the second and eighth governor in two separate editions apiece.  The response I received to that at the time basically amounted to "no URL = no assuming good faith".  Okay, it's pretty obvious that someone is really desperate to hang on to their precious little star, fuck credibility and the like.  The bottom line is this is an all-too-blatant attempt to forcefully turn shades of gray into black and white, in this case by continuing to cherry-pick a years-old, now-unverifiable primary source, in essence one in which Parnell declares himself to be the 10th governor.  Wonderful.  I declare myself to be the love child of Carmen Miranda and Charles Nelson Reilly.  Now prove otherwise.  That's how low the bar has been set here, and evidently all over a piece of WikiBling.
As I point out above, I presented reliable sources years ago and was met with a total lack of good faith, so I'm not terribly interested in continuing this discussion here if it's going to be met with the same stonewalling as before.  Maybe WP:FLRC would be a good place to discuss this.  I've assumed good faith for too many years by virtue of lack of action, and have only seen this list descend further in the direction of a puffery magnet than anything necessarily credible or reliable. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions  19:50, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Order of governors again 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:List of Governors of New York which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you.  —RMCD bot 14:29, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move discussion in progress 

message: :The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The result of the move request was: no consensus. No real consensus found after almost a month of the discussion being open. Splits are outside of the scope of the RM process and should be discussed in a different section. (closed by non-admin page mover) — MaterialWorks 13:40, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: List of governors of Alaska →  – Current article describes the position of the Governor of Alaska and includes lists of governors as subsections. A move to the requested title better fits the contents of the entire article, and corresponds with other U.S. states. ZephyrTurtle14 (talk) 16:07, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

text: Comment Maybe a split would be better?  Killuminator (talk) 00:50, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

text: Looking at Template:US_Chief_Executives, it's almost evenly split between states that have separate "Governor of X" article and "List of governors of X" article and states that just have a list article. In my opinion, states that just have a single article should be titled with the list topic rather than "list of". List articles are allowed to have non-list content, sure, but all articles are allowed to have tables, and if we're only going to have a single page, it should be titled after the topic. Or maybe the solution is for all to have separate list articles. Pending the outcome, what may be needed is a larger RM to achieve title consistency. Mdewman6 (talk) 00:58, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

text: Though Colorado and Massachusetts have a single article at "Governor of X", with Colorado being there per Talk:Governor_of_Colorado#Requested_move in 2010. Mdewman6 (talk) 01:02, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

text: My standard response: If you can build enough content to justify this being about the office, then go for it. But make the content before the move. I can guarantee the content here isn't sufficient; I've explicitly kept it to things relating to the list (i.e. how people became governor, who they were, and why they left) and nothing that a full article might have on the relative powers of the governor to the legislature over time, party control shifts, how powerful the governor is, etc. etc., that can be handled in a main article. I'm somewhat not sober at the moment so I hope this makes sense :) --Golbez (talk) 02:08, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: PS it's nice to see several people watch this article because I'm going to make a suggestion soon that we nuke the district officials :o I have reasons! I'll explain them! But unlike everything else I've been doing obviously that would be a dumb thing to do unilaterally, so I have to convince you fine people first. --Golbez (talk) 02:08, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

text: This sounds fine to me. The previous RM was only for capitalization issues (List of Governors of Alaska → List of governors of Alaska). It doesn't seem that contested to me. Upon noticing that there is a section of comments here, I will say differently: this seems basically fine for an article called "Governor of Alaska". Is there really a lot to say about it besides this? I mean, sure, it's not FA level, but it does explain what the governor of Alaska does. jp×g 00:19, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text:  Looks like you accidentally created a new section. There is already an identical request open from earlier. BegbertBiggs (talk) 22:57, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Oops, sorry. jp×g 00:17, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move 29 September 2023 

message: I've been working on all these articles, and it's helped me formulate a basic set of rules for who should be included. Like, for territorial governors, it seemed to make sense to keep the main list to those specifically commissioned, i.e. they were confirmed by the Senate or appointed during a recess. That let me prune some acting secretaries that had been elevated to full governors in other articles. Rambling a bit, but I'll reach a point.
So we have the department commanders here. The military officers in charge. Unfortunately, this table has a few issues. First being, it's not well sourced. The only source in this article is a facts almanac, which offers no sourcing of its own. The articles themselves seem to reference only that book, or similar almanac-type publications, or other wikis. I'm not saying this is all made up - I'm saying we need a lot better sourcing than what has been provided so far.
Secondly, it kind of reeks of synthesis. Being the highest ranking official in a territory doesn't make you inherently in charge of it. Maybe if you've been formally commissioned to be in charge, but just existing in the territory, doesn't seem like enough to say conclusively.
Which leads me to the core question: Did anyone consider these as equivalent to a commander back in their own time? If so, then we can find sourcing of that; if not, then we have to seriously decide if this table should even be here, or if it counts as synthesis by giving them greater importance than they actually had. --Golbez (talk) 05:31, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: It's been a few weeks and I know some people watch this article, so, @RadioKAOS? I know you're around here. --Golbez (talk) 18:35, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Well it's been five months so I guess I'll just start deleting things. That usually gets peoples' attention. --Golbez (talk) 02:43, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Department Commanders