Wikipedia talk:WikiProject North Dakota

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This article is within the scope of WikiProject North Dakota, a WikiProject related to the U.S. state of North Dakota.

Archives /Archive1 2006 (January-June)

Contents 1 Invite 2 Hawktree Golf Club 3 Grand Cities Mall 4 Results of AfDs 5 Time to merge some golf course articles 6 Dakota Square Mall 7 Dwight Grotberg 8 Invitation to new WikiProject 9 Clarence Iverson No. 1 and oil industry 10 Project directory 11 New WPND tag? 12 Political vandalism 13 Bold text? 14 U.S. senate elections 15 Roland Riemers 16 Regional Portal? 17 Issues 18 A New Year's resolution for WPND members 19 Archive for 2006? 20 RfA for MatthewUND 21 Wikipedia Day Awards 22 "Quicklink box" 23 "People from..." question 24 Bismarck State College

[edit] Invite

Wanted to let you know that WP:BIOGRAPHY has added a "work group" called Politics and government, and so wanted to invite you to participate on any biography-type articles. The section for ND is here and if there's interest, we can beef it up to look like the newly-created Virginia one plange 05:32, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hawktree Golf Club

Hawktree Golf Club has been nominated for deletion. Please cast your vote now and let's make sure this doesn't turn into an all-out assault on the ND golf course articles. --MatthewUND^(talk) 05:34, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Grand Cities Mall

Grand Cities Mall is up on AfD. Please vote to keep the article; if deletion passes, every mall in the state is threatened. --AlexWCovington (talk) 21:43, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Results of AfDs

Both Hawktree and the Grand Cities Mall made it through their recent AfDs. I'm glad that several WPND members turned out to help save these two articles. Since we represent ND on Wikipedia, we should always try to make our voice heard when there is dicussion of an ND article. Also, it's good when we can speak with one voice (as we basically did in these two AfDs). There aren't that many ND editors on here, but when we stick togther, we can make ourselves heard! --MatthewUND^(talk) 02:18, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Time to merge some golf course articles

Since we have been accused in the past of having too many ND golf course articles, it would probably be prudent to merge a few articles about small and basically non-notable golf courses with their relevant city articles. Please take a moment to check out a list of golf course articles that I'm proposing we merge with their city articles. --MatthewUND^(talk) 02:20, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dakota Square Mall

An editor is propsing that the Dakota Square Mall article should be deleted. Not again... --MatthewUND^(talk) 23:13, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dwight Grotberg

Hello, I have nominated Dwight Grotberg for deletion per proposed policy. Please leave your comments on the deletion discussion page. Cheers, Vectro 17:39, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Invitation to new WikiProject

A new WikiProject has been started, and may be of interest to members here. It is WikiProject National Register of Historic Places. It covers all listings on the Register, in all states and territories. Should you be so inclined, please feel free to join. And spread the word to any other interested parties. -Ebyabe 19:52, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clarence Iverson No. 1 and oil industry

It would be nice to have an article about Clarence Iverson No. 1, the first successful oil well in North Dakota, near Tioga, North Dakota April 4, 1951. Also a little more than a bare mention of "petroleum extraction" in the middle of a sentence listing of six items in North Dakota#Economy. Gene Nygaard 12:52, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 18:38, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New WPND tag?

I'm thinking of creating an additional template to add to articles the project has been tagging that aren't 100% related to North Dakota; things like the Red River of the North, for example. Given the large number of geographic WikiProjects proliferating, a lot of talk pages are becoming cluttered with these notices (take a look at Talk:U.S. Route 83), so my idea is to keep it short;

This article is observed by WikiProject North Dakota.

This would mean for the article list, we'd have to monitor both the original tag and the oberver tag for updates, though we could create two separate sections of the list for the two tags to make updates a bit easier.

What are your thoughts? I may be thinking a bit far ahead in project coordination, given our level of cooperation at the moment... Would it be useful or just an unneeded hassle? --AlexWCovington (talk) 21:58, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, it doesn't sound like a bad idea to me, but I'm kind of thinking it might end up being rather confusing and a bit of a hassle. It also sounds like it would require plenty of work. Also, are there any other similar "secondary tags" like this being used by other WikiProjects or would this be a WPND idiosyncrasy?

In the case of the Red River, WP Minnesota already has their big tag on the talk page. If we put up a much smaller tag than what we currently have, it would perhaps give the impression that WPND somehow has less interest/influence over the article than WP Minnesota...at least that's kind of the impression that I would get.

Perhaps one thing we could change about our current tag is, instead of saying that "This article is part of WPND", perhaps it would be better to say "This article is within the scope of WPND". That seems to be the wording on several other state WikiProject tags I just looked at.

In the end, I would personally feel that a second WPND tag isn't really all that necessary. What do some of the other participants think? MatthewUND^(talk) 06:53, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I just changed "part of" to "within the scope of". --MatthewUND^(talk) 07:32, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Looks good! -AlexWCovington (talk) 01:22, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Political vandalism

WPND members are advised to watch out for political vandalism, there's been a string of it around election night. This may also be an opportunity to expand some politician articles. --AlexWCovington (talk) 15:25, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bold text?

Hi WPNDers. Just wanted to get your opinions on a formatting issue pertaining to lists in articles. I can't decide if it's good or not good to bold items in some lists. To see what I'm talking about, take a look at "Sites of interest" and "Notable natives" in the Williston, North Dakota article. Currently, I have bolded the items in each list to set them apart from the descriptions that follow. Do you think this is good or bad? --MatthewUND^(talk) 22:43, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

It seems to work a bit better. --AlexWCovington (talk) 15:35, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] U.S. senate elections

I am currently constructing articles for all the North Dakota United States Senate elections. We (so far) are the only state to have articles made for senate elections before 2006 - and I am back to 1976 at this point. I have made a template:

North Dakota's United States Senate elections
1950 • 1952 • 1956 • 1958 • 1960 (Special) • 1962 • 1964 • 1968 • 1970 • 1974 • 1976 • 1980 • 1982 • 1986 • 1988 • 1992 • 1992 (Special) • 1994 • 1998 • 2000 • 2004 • 2006 • 2010 • 2012

that is being posted on all the articles dealing directly with the elections, but perhaps it should be put on the senators' and/or candidates' articles themselves? Weatherman90 15:58, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Roland Riemers

Somone has merged the Roland Riemers article into the 2006 Senate Election page. I personally believe Riemers has had an effect on events far beyond that campaign, and the page should be reinstated. What are the project's thoughts? --AlexWCovington (talk) 15:35, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I personally wouldn't be too worried about trying to reinstate the article. To be POV (that's what talk pages are for!), Riemers is a bit of a crackpot and I don't really care if he has an article. Just my two cents. --MatthewUND^(talk) 06:58, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Regional Portal?

I'm not sure if any of you knew this, but there is now a South Dakota Project as well. Maybe it would be possible for these two projects and perhaps others to get together on a Northern Plains portal. Right now, the only other two projects dealing with the area are Minnesota and Iowa, although its possible Nebraska and maybe Missouri might be included as well. I might personally like to include parts of Wyoming and Montana, but as only parts of those states would qualify, I acknowledge it's probably a bad idea. Anyway, I would welcome any responses, positive or negative. Badbilltucker 18:52, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Issues

It doesn't bother me that someone keeps wanting to get rid of the golf course articles. A lot of the 18 hole articles do need to stay especially Bully Pulpit and Red Mike. We may be a small state, but we do have a lot of cool stuff. I'm still trying to finish the North Dakota first ladies, but the state library is dragging it's heels as weel as the other sports for UND and NDSU. TRMF needs an article, and the Scheels article needs a store front picture like the other sporting good store articles. I'd do it but I'm not smart enough to figure it out. I'm sorry I've just gotten a little mad. Long live North Dakota. Nap Time. -Leopold Samsonite 22:57, November 18, 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A New Year's resolution for WPND members

I would like to propose a New Year's resolution for members of WikiProject North Dakota: start using the edit summary feature. The summary field is a valuable means for other editors to quickly understand how you have edited the page and, perhaps, for what reason(s) you have made the changes. It's really a very simple thing to do and a good habit to get used to. I should also mention that other editors don't look favorably on an admin nomination for a user who routinely neglects to use the summary feature. Just a thought. Happy New Year!--MatthewUND^(talk) 07:40, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Archive for 2006?

This talk page is getting to be very long. Perhaps we should think about making an archived version for 2006 and starting with a fresh page for 2007. --MatthewUND^(talk) 07:43, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I just archived the first half of 2006. I decided to leave the second half here at the main talk page because it would look kind of silly to have a totally blank talk page here and because it may be important for editors to easily scan through some of the recent comments. --MatthewUND^(talk) 08:18, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RfA for MatthewUND

I just self-nominated myself for administrator's status on Wikipedia. As an active member of WikiProject North Dakota, I feel that having admin status would allow me the ability to be more useful to the project and to curtail vandalism and other problems. An admin is able to protect pages that are being bombarded with vandalism and to more quickly revert pages that have been vandalized. I've always hoped that we could get an admin to join the WikiProject so we would have someone to turn to in times of need. Since we still don't have an active admin within the project's membership, I decided to nominate myself. I really hope you will visit my request for adminship and support me. Thanks! --MatthewUND^(talk) 10:41, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

After having seen how this RfA has been going, I have withdrawn my self-nomination. Please read this statement which I have posted on the RfA's talk page. I'm sorry for letting down WPND by ruining this RfA due to an honest mistake on my part. Like I said in my statement on the RfA talk page, the failure of the RfA falls entirely on my lap. I still hope that we can get an admin into WPND in the near future. Perhaps we can do another RfA on me at a later date or perhaps we can do an RfA on another willing WPND member. Once again, thank you for taking the time to vote in this RfA. Like they say, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? --MatthewUND^(talk) 07:23, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 22:01, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Quicklink box"

In the "Quicklink box" (for lack of a better term) at the top of the WPND page, I'm no longer referring to the list as the "Article list". This is because the list also includes categories and templates as well as articles. I really don't know what to call the list, so I have it currently labeled as "List of all things ND". If anyone can think of a better name, go ahead and change it.

I think having these "quicklinks" in a clearly defined box makes them easier to find and cleans up the WPND page a bit. There are also now links to go directly to the article, category, or template sections to add an item. Should save some time, in the long run. --MatthewUND^(talk) 09:25, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "People from..." question

I have a question pertaining to how we list ND people in categories. When we list someone in one of the city-specific categories like Category:People from Grand Forks, North Dakota, should we leave it at that or should we also list them in the main Category:People from North Dakota category also? I've never really known how I should handle that. --MatthewUND^(talk) 08:52, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I should mention that I personally like having a person in both the main and the subcategory. --MatthewUND^(talk) 08:59, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd have to say both for now. If the main category gets too large we can start pulling out some of the less significant people. --AlexWCovington (talk) 20:38, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

If Category:People from Grand Forks, North Dakota is a sub-category of Category:People from North Dakota, standard convention dictates that the person should just be listed in the city-specific category, since by the category tree, they are automatically included (even though they are under another category directory) in the main category.

Simplifying (I think I confused myself there!), just in the city-specific category.... NDCompuGeek 22:32, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I basically agree with what you're saying, NDCompuGeek. However, I've seen it done both ways for other states. The thing is, I'm thinking if we take all of those people away from the main category, we are going to end up with a very skimpy main category and very big subcategories. I'm just not sure. Another thing...for categories like Category:North Dakota musicians, I think the people listed in their should almost certainly also be listed in the main category as well. I see these occupation-type-categories almost more as a type of "overlay" than a subcategory. I guess this is like how we are doing Category:North Dakota politicians...we have them (for the most part) in both the occupation category/overlay and the main ND category. --MatthewUND^(talk) 23:13, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bismarck State College

I'm asking people to keep a watch on the Bismarck State College article. Recently, someone calling themselves the webmaster for the college [Bjork53 (talk • contribs)] has been making edits to the article which are little more than copy-and-pastes from this page at the college's website. Anytime I try to revert the additions, the "webmaster" gets really ticked off and reverts it back to his version. He seems to think that, since he is the school's webmaster, he thus own's the school's Wikipedia article. Take a look at the messages he has left for me and those I have left for him. Perhaps some WPND editors would be interested in trying to rewrite the article and expand it in legitimate ways (not relying on copy-and-pastes from the school's website!). He doesn't seem to think I have any right to touch it... --MatthewUND^(talk) 08:48, 19 February 2007 (UTC)