Bhamwiki talk:Messageboard

See Bhamwiki talk:Messageboard/Archive 1 for archived topics

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Jefferson County Maps

Look what I found via Wikipedia today! --Lkseitz 14:14, 9 June 2007 (PDT)

• That's sweet stuff. I was able to download an editable .svg file and prettify it up in inkscape and photshop as an experiment. More work than I would undertake all at once, but it gives you an idea of what can be done. --Dystopos 21:54, 9 June 2007 (PDT)
  • Impressive! And far beyond my skills. --Lkseitz 10:49, 11 June 2007 (PDT)

Defunct landmarks and institutions

I was wondering if we should have an encompassing upper-level category for Category:Demolished buildings, Category:Former parks, Category:Defunct periodicals, and so on. In other words, a category for buildings, sites, institutions, and things that no longer exist. (We have one for people. It's called Category:People by year of death.) Something that would make it easy to navigate through "things that aren't there any more." I can't think of an all-encompassing name for it. It would probably break down into "Former landmarks" and "Defunct institutions", though. --Lkseitz 10:49, 11 June 2007 (PDT)

• I wonder if you wouldn't just pop them into Category:History until something more specific becomes evident. --Dystopos 12:08, 11 June 2007 (PDT)

High school bands

With my creation of an entry for Pat Morrow, I got to thinking about the various appearances of local high school marching bands in nationally televised parades. This seems like prime material for a list, but how to phrase it? "List of Birmingham District high school marching bands nationally televised appearances" just seems too wordy. Breaking the list up into separate lists either for individual high schools (e.g. Homewood High School) or events (e.g. Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade), while making the list name simpler seems like too much specialization. The former can be included in the high school's entry (or the band's, if it merits one). I like the idea of a three column list with the date, school, and event that can be sorted on any of those. So any suggestions for a better list name? --Lkseitz 15:36, 25 July 2007 (PDT)

• The main thing is finding the references that would allow us to generate such a list. We can move it around until the name feels right (vis-a-vis Interstate hole) --Dystopos 16:00, 25 July 2007 (PDT)
  • Well as Homewood's was the first Alabama high school band in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, we don't have to go back past the '70s. And I suspect the most recent stories on the Homewood, Hoover, and any other bands going to such parades might mention the previous appearances. I guess I'll get started, come up with a name, and we can go from there. --Lkseitz 11:48, 28 July 2007 (PDT)
    • I suppose I should have mentioned, for those not closely watching the Recent changes page, that this list was indeed created, with far too long a name, not long after my last message above. --Lkseitz 11:31, 15 October 2007 (PDT)

Infobox City

• I've created another Infobox template, this time for cities and towns. You can see an example of it in use on the Homewood page. I thought I'd solicit feedback before sticking it on more pages. --Lkseitz 21:01, 25 July 2007 (PDT)
  • Let's try it out on Vestavia Hills with the seal centered top and the map filling space at the bottom. --Dystopos 06:38, 26 July 2007 (PDT)
    • Done. (What do you think?) And I learned something, so now the image attribute is optional on the school infobox template. So if any articles weren't using it because it lacked an image, that's no longer an issue. Speaking of the school infobox, should we add to it the background colors used in the city one? --Lkseitz 09:15, 26 July 2007 (PDT)
      • Looks pretty cool to me. Good work. Generally I prefer only the subtlest coloration. Let's stick with less is more for now. --Dystopos 11:24, 26 July 2007 (PDT)

Faculty categories

We have an inconsistency in the various faculty categories. It currently is on a per high school basis . . . sort of. Some Birmingham high schools have their own faculty categories. The suburbs with their own school systems tend to only have one high school that's named after the city. So where do we put Birmingham superintendents? Because the suburbs only have one high school, their superintendents are in the "city's" faculty category. Do we need to create Category:Birmingham faculty and then put the schools as subcategories? We have to keep in mind all schools, not just high schools, as I know there are some Homewood Middle School principals in Category:Homewood faculty. --Lkseitz 11:45, 28 July 2007 (PDT)

• It probably does make sense to group grade school faculty by system. --Dystopos 14:42, 28 July 2007 (PDT)

Birmingham Barons

Another day, another template, for which I welcome feedback. Working on this template led me to do clean up of the Birmingham Barons article. It seems to be largely copied from Wikipedia. As such, it has some disambiguation on certain names. I'm wondering if any of this disambiguation is necessary on BhamWiki or if the links can be changed to just the names. The list follows:

• Jeff Abbott (baseball player)
• Bill Foster (baseball player)
• John Garland (baseball)
• Howard Johnson (baseball player)
• Roberto Hernandez (baseball player)
• John McNamara (baseball)
• Frank Thomas (AL baseball player)

• Good observation. I'd nix the disambiguation until we find it necessary. --Dystopos 08:20, 23 August 2007 (PDT)
  • Thanks for updating the template. I've updated the Barons entry. --Lkseitz 11:58, 23 August 2007 (PDT)

Fallout shelters

Fallout shelter sign

Should we have a category for buildings that were fallout shelters during the Cold War? Unfortunately, I only know of two: the Birmingham News building (1917) and the Alabama Theatre. I can offer an anecdote for the latter. There were still barrels of food and water stored around the Alabama until the late 1980s when the management asked the appropriate authorities to come remove them. --Lkseitz 05:57, 12 September 2007 (PDT)

• The only one I know about first hand is Napier Hall on the campus of the University of Montevallo. Still, I think a category would be appropriate. --Wheresdib 06:18, 12 September 2007 (PDT)

• If we can find a listing, sure. My recollection is that I've seen the sign on several schools, and on the Vestavia Mall. --Dystopos 06:57, 12 September 2007 (PDT)

Photo sources

Relocated to Bhamwiki:References#Images.

Main Page

Is it just me or is the Main Page a little drab? On every computer I get on, when I access the site, you have to scroll down to see the Featured Images. Is there a way to move them up, or section off the page so they are visible without scrolling? --Wheresdib

• I've moved the featured images up a bit and refined the introduction some. I also added a banner image at the top and modified the formatting for the "featured articles" grid. I think it looks a little fresher now. Thanks for the suggestion. --Dystopos 15:32, 22 October 2007 (PDT)

Civil Rights movement link

• I was linking "civil rights" in the Temple Emanu-El article and discovered something; we've linked "Civil rights movement," "Civil Rights movement," and "Civil Rights Movement" in almost equal numbers. (See the Special:Wantedpages page and turn it up to the top 500.) Maybe we should create a stub with the "correct" capitalization so our links in the future will be consistent? --Lkseitz 06:59, 14 October 2007 (PDT)

• Sounds good. Which one is correct? I think we got here because I keep thinking different things at different times. Wikipedia uses "civil rights movement" to discuss various movements, and "African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)", to discuss a particular one. "Civil Rights Act of 1964" would be capitalized as a title, but generally in texts, "civil rights movement" seems most common. I tend to go with "civil rights movement" in text, and "Civil rights movement" as the title. What do you think? --Dystopos 08:15, 14 October 2007 (PDT)

• I was hoping you'd make an executive decision, because I'm on the fence as to which is correct. I searched the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute web site for "civil rights movement" and discovered they're not consistent either. I listen to the Grammar Girl podcast, and her episode on "Capitalizing Proper Nouns" makes me think that, since we're discussing a specific time period, all three words should be capitalized. In other words, we're typically using "Civil Rights Movement" as shorthand for Wikipedia's "African-American Civil Rights Movement." --Lkseitz 07:00, 15 October 2007 (PDT)

• I am going to agree with Lee. "Civil Rights Movement" seems to be the best usage, not only to show it was significant but also an actual movement. You would capitalize "Civil War" when referring to the war that took place from 1861 to 1865 in America, even though there are lots of "civil wars" and "civil rights movements". --Wheresdib 07:30, 15 October 2007 (PDT)
• As opposed to the "War of Northern Aggression." I agree, captitalize each word. Someone pick one for all of us. --MacroAlan 08:28, 15 October 2007 (PDT)

• Looks like we have two fence-sitters and two actual votes. Therefore we'll go with Civil Rights Movement. Now... who's going to start writing the article? --Dystopos 10:03, 15 October 2007 (PDT)

• Well since I started this mess, I've created a stub for it. I don't know that I'll have time to do more than that any time soon. --Lkseitz 11:07, 15 October 2007 (PDT)

I've expanded the stub. As our coverage of the movement increases, we can expand the article to put things into context. --Dystopos 15:20, 23 October 2007 (PDT)

Ghosts

• I am trying to find more ghosts in Birmingham, but the only ones I can find that aren't already on BW are at the University of Montevallo. Shelby County falls well within the Birmingham district but for some reason I have doubts about including them. As an alum of UM, we were told these stories over and over, so they are definitely part of the folklore. Reassure me that I should add them, please. LOL. --Wheresdib 05:22, 26 October 2007 (PDT)
  • I'm all for it, but I tend to focus on Shelby County more than other counties outside of Jefferson. --Lkseitz 05:55, 26 October 2007 (PDT)
    • Let the spirits guide you. (Go for it!) --Dystopos 06:33, 26 October 2007 (PDT)

Linking

I've noticed a lot of in-line external links to national artists showing up in the Taste of 4th Avenue Jazz Festival article and others. Links in articles which point to topics BhamWiki should cover are best created as internal links (in double brackets). In my thinking, external links are best reserved for the "External links" section which links to more information on the article topic as a whole. I understand that there are exceptions, and I can see that having a direct link to an artist who will never be profiled here does some service to the reader. I guess I'm not sure that BhamWiki needs to be responsible for selecting the most appropriate sites to link to. Any other thoughts? --Dystopos 06:58, 29 October 2007 (PDT)

Homicide maps

I know Dystopos was looking into this. Actually, I was thinking he'd already created one such map, but I can't find it at the moment. Anyway, The Huntsville Times has started a new crime blog that uses Google Maps. This includes a map of 2007 homicides in Huntsville. I thought it might serve as a good example. Maybe The Birmingham News will start one, too, and save us the trouble. --Lkseitz 06:59, 19 November 2007 (PST)

• Not much trouble. [1] --Dystopos 14:25, 19 November 2007 (PST)

For discussion

• "Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary." - George Orwell, 1984

366 Date articles

Format

• I really like the format that Dystopos did on December 1 and will use it in the future if several instances of the same recurring event (Iron Bowl, Governor succession) occur on the same day. I thought I would open it up for comments from the BW community (all 4 of us) here. What are your thoughts? --Wheresdib 11:29, 26 November 2007 (PST)

Help needed

• As of right now, I count 101 of these articles which still need to be written. Over half of December, and almost all of January, February and March need to be at least stubbed in. I am doing my best to get them done, especially the ones that are looming on the horizon, but I will probably be out of pocket for the next month or so. --Wheresdib 11:35, 26 November 2007 (PST)

• Down to only 21 left in March! Should be done soon. --Wheresdib 13:17, 10 January 2008 (PST)

"Random page" time!

• I think we should spend some time looking at the pages that are on BhamWiki and making sure there are no typos, glaring errors, tense issues and other problems. If you click on "Random page" to the left, in the "navigation" box [2] it will pop up a page for you to look at. I've come across some pages, especially ones that were added early on, that refer to things that will happen in the future, when in fact that date has come to pass. --Wheresdib 07:43, 4 January 2008 (PST)

• A capital idea. One might also search for the terms "will" or "scheduled" to ferret out such anachronisms. --Dystopos 08:17, 4 January 2008 (PST)

Duplicate articles

• Grants Mill Lake Purdy Bridge and Grant's Mill Road bridge need to be combined into one. Thanks. Patriarca12 15:33, 9 January 2008 (PST)

New Category for articles with outdated statements?

• Over the last few days, I've come across several articles that have outdated information (i.e., "the complex is scheduled to open in Fall 2007" etc) that I can't verify if it came to fruition or not. I would like to mark those in some way so I (or someone) can follow up on those statements. Would it be ok for me to create a "Articles with outdated information" category or something to that effect? --Wheresdib 20:51, 18 January 2008 (PST)

• I'm not sure. I guess my preference would be to assemble a list without cluttering the categories section of the article. --Dystopos 21:28, 18 January 2008 (PST)

• OK, that's fine with me. I wasn't sure how to proceed. I love working from lists but hate having to manually maintain them, LOL. --Wheresdib 06:33, 19 January 2008 (PST)
• While I agree maintenance categories can clutter an article's categories to unusefulness, I doubt we'd reach ever reach that point here. I think a single "outdated" category could be useful, much in the way of the stubs category is. It's also a lot easier to apply a template to an article that would insert a notice and the "outdated" category than it is to maintain a list. That's my two cents. --Lkseitz 12:53, 21 January 2008 (PST)

• That was sorta my thought to begin with. I started a list somewhere. --Wheresdib 13:00, 21 January 2008 (PST)

• Has the "stubs" category proven to be very useful? --Dystopos 13:11, 21 January 2008 (PST)

• That's a tough call. Maybe it is useful for generating interest in those who aren't signed up to create an account and edit that article. But for me, a regular editor, I don't think I've ever looked at the category "stubs". I still don't see why a single category called "Outdated", or whatever, is a big deal, but hey this is your baby, and my list is fine with me. Get another 10 or 15 regular contributors/editors, then we'll see. But between the three core contributors we have now, it's manageable since I am pretty sure you nor Lee haven't any burning desire to check on those type articles. I am not complaining at all, just making a statement. --Wheresdib 14:37, 21 January 2008 (PST)

• It's your baby too. No one is obligated to abide by my stated preferences as long as they continue to abide by the User Agreement. --Dystopos 14:57, 21 January 2008 (PST)
• The problem with the stubs category is, at least for me, most of the things I put in it are there because I'm unable to find any further information on the Internet. Not from lack of research. --Lkseitz 06:47, 23 January 2008 (PST)

Blizzard of 2008

• What, no Blizzard of 2008 article? What did we get, like maybe 2 inches of snow, on a Saturday? (Completely joking, of course) --Wheresdib 08:12, 22 January 2008 (PST)

2nd Anniversary Party

BhamWiki turns 2 on March 15. I'm hoping some of you will join me for a celebratory dinner and casual brainstorming session. The tentative plan is to meet at Cosmo's Pizza in 5 Points at around 7:00 on Saturday the 15th. Let me know if you expect to come and if there are a lot, I'll make sure we have a reserved table. --Dystopos 08:13, 26 February 2008 (PST)

• I'm asking the wife right now! If so, I'd probably have my 7 yr old with us, unless I talked my mom in to keeping him. --Wheresdib 08:41, 26 February 2008 (PST)

• I think we can accommodate a 7 year old. As long as he likes pizza. --Dystopos 08:42, 26 February 2008 (PST)

• I'll try to be there, if I don't book a gig. --Rreach 12:22, 26 February 2008