Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Oregon
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Oregon".

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School's in for the Summer, School's in forever...

Or it will be soon. At least the homeschool and Internet school kids may be getting a head start. How do I know this? After a nice summer lull, I noticed that Sacagawea and Chief Joseph were vandalized a few times the other day. It seems that every school in the region studies the American Old West soon after school starts in the fall. So if you can spare a few minutes a day to refresh our handy watchlist here, you too can help keep the Lewis and Clark Expedition from being filled with naughty words and other assorted garbage. If you want a handy link, check out the silly userboxes I made here: User:Katr67/Gold Dude. Feel free to pirate, plagiarize, penguinize or platypize however you see fit... The ORGon TRail RUlZ DOOD! SchOOl SUX. LOLZ. etc. Katr67 (talk) 20:25, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Admin watch page discussion

P.S. EncMstr--do you have time for an update of Wikipedia:WikiProject Oregon/Admin, peut-être? Katr67 (talk) 21:06, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Oui.  I tried a month or two ago, but there were so many articles the updated page was rejected (for being too big I think).  I was thinking of splitting the Admin page (into articles and non-articles maybe) to solve the problem. —EncMstr (talk) 00:59, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Oregon articles by quality accomplish a similar purpose? Cirt (talk) 01:01, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Cirt, the main thing that the "Admin" page accomplishes is that it enables the "recent changes to Oregon articles" feature. (see the Oregon infobox at the top of my user page, or the RSS feed in the upper right of http://wikiprojectoregon.wordpress.com if you don't know what I mean.) There might be other advantages too, but that's the big one. -Pete (talk) 01:39, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Ah, no worries, I was not aware that that was how recent changes was monitored using that page/feature. Cirt (talk) 01:40, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Both pages have a multitude of uses.  Like Pete, the use I know most demanded for the /Admin subpage is seeing recent changes pertaining only to WikiProject Oregon pages.  Have you seen Recent discussions or Recent changes?  (They're on the project page too.)  —EncMstr (talk) 01:41, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Added recent changes as a new feature to the bottom of {{User WikiProject Oregon}}. Should prove useful. Cirt (talk) 01:45, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Cirt--thanks for adding the links to the user template--I know Pete has had that feature on his for a long time, and I've had it off and on, but it makes sense for everyone to have it. (And if anybody doesn't like it, s/he can "subst" the template and take out the bits not needed.) If you look at Pete's page, you will see he's added the COTW and a link to our blog as well. Pretty cool what you can do on the Intranets these days... Katr67 (talk) 17:49, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

EncMstr--I think splitting the pages would be the best way to go, though it's too bad we apparently can't have a "one-stop" watchlist page. Shall we go back to making the watchlist/admin just Category:WikiProject Oregon articles and put Category:WikiProject Oregon disambiguation pages, Category:WikiProject Oregon category pages, Category:WikiProject Oregon templates, Category:WikiProject Oregon image pages, Category:Redirect-Class Oregon articles, and Category:Portal-Class Oregon articles on a separate page on which we can then use Recent Changes? Katr67 (talk) 17:49, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I saw Katr67 making some changes to the project template and some of the categories; I haven't looked at the changes, but I expected it was solving this problem.  I think that having two categories (articles and non-articles) would get us by for awhile—maybe a year or two—then they can be split more finely when there's cause.  I think I'd prefer there be a minimum number of categories so that it's easier to monitor all pages with as few links as possible.  —EncMstr (talk) 18:09, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Katr67 - Thanks, I was just about to come back and ask if those userbox changes were okay. Cirt (talk) 21:34, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Oregon NRHP database now online!

Good news for all you old dead building enthusiasts! Oregon Parks and Rec now has the beta version of its database of Oregon NRHP properties online. The deets are here: http://www.oregon.gov/OPRD/HCD/NATREG/, and here's the disclaimer that leads to the search engine: http://heritagedata.prd.state.or.us/historic/ Enjoy! Katr67 (talk) 16:25, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

FYI, it also includes non-NRHP buildings too. I think any place that has had a survey has an entry. Aboutmovies (talk) 16:56, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

This is really, really cool. The database is pretty nice, I found some stuff about my house that was unavailable online from other NRHP sources. Old buildings FTW! Steven Walling (talk) 19:08, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

The citation needed in Palmer House (Dayton, Oregon) bothered me for a long time; the link above provided a reference which quenched that pain.  Alas, the site has a long "beta" disclaimer which, on second reading, isn't as gloomy as I thought the first time.  There's every reason to think links into it will persist for awhile. —EncMstr (talk) 18:14, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Geocoordinate pause

I've been following, and sometimes encouraging, the progress at Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates to deprecate the coor* series of templates in favor of a single template {{coord}} which offers several new features.  Participation has been a bit light, but is slowly tottering in the direction of progress.  If any willing member of WP:ORE would provide some encouragement and/or insight, it would be most useful.  Review the main discussion beginning at WT:GEO#coord template one year on, and provide feedback at the last subsection WT:GEO#An end in sight.3F.

Summarizing, {{coord}} was created more than a year ago to replace the ninesome template set {{coor title d}}, {{coor title dm}}, {{coor title dms}}, {{coor at d}}, {{coor at dm}}, {{coor at dms}}, {{coor d}}, {{coor dm}}, and {{coor dms}}.  A new hcard microformat is created by coord so coordinates are automatically extractable—and is the only source recognized by Google Earth and Google Maps.  Bots are ready and able to convert the existing template uses into the new form so backward support isn't an issue.  One WP:GEO member advocates {{coordinate}} instead of {{coord}}, which has gummed up the works of moving beyond the coor ninesome.  Several tables compare the pros and cons of the three choices.

A little encouragement would be very helpful at this point.  —EncMstr (talk) 19:50, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Amazing, it was less than four minutes after my post (above) when Andy began implementing the change.  There are likely to be disagreements even with action taken, so comments would still be helpful.  —EncMstr (talk) 20:05, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. It's a Geo microformat, btw, which can be included within an hCard, but isn't necessarily. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 20:59, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up, EncMstr. I've been faithfully using the {{coord}} template instead of the Geolinks and Mapit links since the whole frustrating (to me) controversy over changing those to make them so they didn't show up as external links. I'm not sure I'll be able to make heads or tails of the discussion but I'll take a look. Thanks for adding the parameters to my coords too--I have only managed to memorize "display=title" but I'll try to put in the more precise landmark parameters now that I understand it a little better. I have a question about {{GeoGroupTemplate}} too, but I'm busy now, more later... Katr67 (talk) 22:03, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

See how GeoGroupTemplate presents itself at Mount Hood#Glaciers as Map of all coordinates.

Andy liked a description I wrote of coord—perhaps I should title it Coord for Novices?  It's on my talk page.  —EncMstr (talk) 20:06, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Consensus was reached, and the old coor * templates deprecated in favour of {{coor}}. {{coordinate}} has been nominated for deletion. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits

I'm 99.9% sure that Andy meant {{coord}}, not {{coor}}.

I wrote an explanation of {{coord}} based on explanations I've written previously here (WT:ORE) and on my talk page. It is intended to be readable and accessible to any Wikieditor dealing with coordinates, yet it contains enough depth for most situations involving the template. See User:EncMstr/Coord. I'd appreciate any feedback. —EncMstr (talk) 21:48, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Make that 100%. Thank you. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:01, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Psathyrella aquatica

I ran across this and thought it might make a nifty DYK. It's the first aquatic mushroom, discovered in the Rogue River by a Southern Oregon University professor. I'm still not entirely convinced it's not an elaborate hoax, and there's not much info out there yet--this may have to wait until the piece in Mycology is published, but maybe someone wants to take a stab at expanding it, if it's not too old. Happy 'shrooming, Katr67 (talk) 17:16, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I did a bit of searching but was only able to come up with one other source which itself is sort of meh. Perhaps you are right, hopefully when the piece in Mycology comes out it will itself generate some buzz and we'll have other potential sources to look through. Cirt (talk) 05:45, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

New article - Portland Monthly

Just wrote an article on the city magazine, Portland Monthly, also put it up at T:TDYK. Any help with perhaps finding other sources, adding material, copyediting, etc. would be most appreciated. Cheers, Cirt (talk) 04:45, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

New article - Portland Center Stage

New article, Portland Center Stage, just started and submitted to T:TDYK. Any additional info from other sources, copyediting, or feedback would be appreciated. It might be nice to get one or two other free-use images to use for this article - perhaps a shot of the interior of the main theater, Gerding Theater at the Portland Armory ? Cirt (talk) 09:47, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

GA review

The article is currently on GA Hold in the midst of a GA review. The GA Reviewer commented that it might be nice to get some interior shots for free-use images to add to the article, could anyone take some pictures and upload them to Wikimedia Commons? It'd be much appreciated. Cheers, Cirt (talk) 04:06, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Oregon

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations. 

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible. 

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:31, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Le Grannde

Are you Le Grannde is the correct French spelling? This part is unclear.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.81.157.45 (talk) 05:17, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

This comment apparently refers to the second section of the La Grande, Oregon article; I agree that the two N's in "Grannde" seems weird (and I studied French for 6 years). But there's no citation for that sentence, so I'm a little reluctant to just change it. Anybody know? Anybody, for instance, with a copy of Oregon Geographic Names lying around? -Pete (talk) 00:54, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

You rang? Katr67 (talk) 16:28, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I took French for 10 years and it looked weird to me too. Since the above note was so cryptic, I didn't really know to what s/he was referring, so thanks Pete for checking into it. I Googled for a bit of La Grande history and have concluded that it was either subtle vandalism or misguidedness. From May of '07... I fixed it. I'm sure when I check OGN it will back up the fact. Katr67 (talk) 16:46, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

George Flavel

I just noticed this got deleted. Can one of you admin types take a look and if there is anything salvageable, could you put it in User:Katr67/George Flavel/Temp? If it's the ship captain from Astoria (see: Captain George Flavel House Museum), he's certainly notable. I'm not sure if the article made that clear... Otherwise I'll just make it a redir for now. Thanks! Katr67 (talk) 16:26, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

The entire content is:

Captain George Flavel was born on November 17, 1823 in Virginia. In 1854 at age 31, he married pioneer Mary Boelling. He died on July 3, 1893 in Astoria.

It was deleted for notability. —EncMstr (talk) 16:30, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Obviously no one could tell he was notable from that. And it looks like Pete is on the case! Go Pete! Katr67 (talk) 16:48, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

New party

Who doesn't love a party? We have a newish one here: the Oregon Peace Party. Here's a memo from the Sec. of State. Let's stub it up! -Pete (talk) 01:08, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

...and there's my stub in the dark. Please feel free to make it much much better. --Tesscass (talk) 17:52, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for making that happen, Tess! I made a couple of tweaks..hopefully more will be attracted to round out the content! I'll keep an eye on it, and maybe do a little research myself to expand further. -Pete (talk) 02:19, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Search for Portland photo

Hi,

right now I'm improving the article about Barbel class submarines in German Wikipedia and I search for a specific picture. To my information, right outside the OMSI, there is the propeller of USS Blueback (SS-581), which is also located at OMSI. Does anybody possess a free picture of the propeller or is able to take one an put it under a free license at Commons? Thanks in advance, --schlendrian •λ• 17:29, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I ride my bike by the sub and propeller pretty frequently, if nobody else takes care of this I will try to get a few snapshots for you. I never knew the propeller was from the sub, actually! -Pete (talk) 17:41, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

That'd nice of you. Would you mind to notice me on my talkpage after uploading the picture? --schlendrian •λ• 14:11, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, it's taking me a little while to get down there. But in the meantime, there are a few free use/copyleft ones already out there, in case you didn't find them: [1], Official OMSI photo (does not specify license, but is designated for "media use"), a picture from a U.S. Federal agency (which means it's public domain, at least in the U.S.A. -- which I think is all that matters for Wikimedia projects, since the servers are hosted in the U.S.). Also, there are a number of these shots available on Flickr under free licenses; I suspect this link will only work if you are logged into Flickr, let me know if you have trouble. -Pete (talk) 02:37, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

(By the way I am a Flickr reviewer on Commons, so I can help out if you want to use one of those.) -Pete (talk)

i checked flickr before posting here. All pics of the propeller are non-commercial use only with exception of [2], which is critical due to personality rights. Maybe i will blur his face and use it. If you come along the OMSI, i would still be thankful if you could take a picture, but take your time, the article is ready and I will survive without the picture some time ;) --schlendrian •λ• 10:12, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I just found [3] which is really beautiful and should be useable for commons. Thanks for pointing me to flickr again, I searched the tags, and this one is not tagged very specifically. Thanks also for your willingness to take the picture, but this is pretty much what I had hoped for --schlendrian •λ• 10:29, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

WikiWednesday

Hi, here is your rather late (as per usual) notice that this is the week for WikiWednesday! Come meet your fellow WikiHolics face to face, plan out projects, give and get kudos, etc. We've had some really fun and productive meetings lately. This month, we will likely be putting some work into our own brand new wiki, to make it more pretty and informative...also, I'd like to discuss ways to get the word out about our work, specifically in the political sphere, as the election approaches. Come one, come all -- and don't let the agenda stop you, if there's something else you want to discuss -- bring it! Click the link above for the details (it's at 5:30pm Wednesday), and don't forget, if you arrive late (after 6, I think), you need to dial the office to get let in. -Pete (talk) 02:44, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Zumeo.com

Zumeo.com is a Medford company. Some of the employees have been trying to create a wikipedia article on their company. They're serious newbies who don't know about WP:COI and whatnot, so I've been trying to explain to them how to write a neutral article that won't get deleted. Any help would be appreciated, although I'm not asking for the article to be put up for AfD or anything. Relevant pages are zumeo.com and it's talk page, User talk:Jbooye, and User talk:MatRudi. You can tell who is who because I moved some advert like info to the talk page, and the users are using variations of their real names. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 03:20, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I forgot. Also relevant are replies on my talk page: User talk:Peregrine Fisher#Thanks for any help. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 03:23, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Oregon State Park Logo

Heads-up...on 30 Sep a picture-police bot went through and deleted Oregon State Parks logo from all the state park articles that use it. On image discription page there is a wiki-link to complete list of Oregon parks, but apparently bot was looking to match individual park names on image page with article titles that use image. Since bot couldn't read list, it assumed any park article that used image was in violation of Fair Use rule. Here's text I put on article's discussion page when I reversed image deletion in case anybody want to use it.--Orygun (talk) 02:26, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

• The image discription page for Image:ODPR logo.png provide a rationale for using this image for "all" Oregon State Parks including Collier Memorial State Park. The image discription page specifically includes a wiki-link to a complete list of Oregon parks that qualify to use this image under Fair Use rules: List of Oregon state parks.

Shared login to OregonLive.com available to us?

I'm annoyed when an online Oregonian article outlives the 14-day period when anyone can read it, and it gets stowed away in the archives for paying subscribers only. I ran into that problem today when editing the article Washington Initiative 1000. This initiative was supposedly endorsed by the Oregonian in January, but in September they changed their mind. I wanted to add this to the article and be able to cite the Oregonian articles in question. Through Google, I think I was able to find the online version of the January article, but gee, I apparently have to be subscribed to the Oregonian in order to actually see it.

It would be awfully nice if members of WikiProject Oregon, at the very least, were sharing a login to the Oregonian's website for the purpose of adding a citation of an Oregonian article to a Wikipedia article where needed, or to verify these citations. Is one being shared by anyone? If not, would anyone like to do so? Assuming it's allowed by the terms of subscription, of course. Äþelwulf Talk to me. 07:17, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I do doubt the terms of subscription would allow for that. But many county library systems allow you to access the archives from your own home using your library card # (Chemekata, Washington County, Multnomah County, Clackamas County). So you may be able to avoid needing to pay. Aboutmovies (talk) 07:52, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

If you know about an article having appeared there, use the original URL in the form at http://archive.org a.k.a. The Wayback Machine. So far, none of the citations I've given in that form have stopped working. —EncMstr (talk) 17:46, 4 October 2008 (UTC)