Bhamwiki talk:Messageboard

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• Bhamwiki talk:Messageboard/Archive 2006,
• Bhamwiki talk:Messageboard/Archive 2007,
• Bhamwiki talk:Messageboard/Archive 2008, and
• Bhamwiki talk:Messageboard/Archive 2009 for archived topics

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Wiki Wednesday / Wiki Weekend

• Here's something to think about for 2010. Apparently participation for Bloomingpedia petered out quickly, but I could imagine doing a semi-annual or quarterly event, maybe with a theme (especially if we can hold it somewhere with accessible materials on site, such as an archive, local history museum, library, etc.) Just off the top of my head I'm thinking of maybe talking to Melinda about setting up a booth at the downtown library. If we can get 2 - 4 veteran Bhamwikiers (that's everyone reading this, btw) along with a couple of extra chairs and a stack of materials (and maybe a scanner) maybe we could spend an afternoon expanding the wiki and introducing strangers to it. Then we could go out for a drink afterwards. Thoughts? --Dystopos 15:24, 21 December 2009 (PST)
  • It sounds like a great idea, but due to family commitments and distance, I can't guarantee I'll be available to come. :-( --Lkseitz 21:40, 27 December 2009 (PST)
    • I should be able to help pretty much any afternoon after the first of the year. --Wheresdib 12:00, 28 December 2009 (PST)

Athletics

• I've spent some time overhauling a lot of sports categories (specifically collegiate sports and MLB players). Hopefully these categories are starting to make more sense. --Dystopos 17:01, 6 January 2010 (PST)

Google Earth historical photos

Maybe I'm just behind the times, but I just discovered Google Earth now has an option to see past photo data. For example, there's an aerial shot of Brookwood Village from just before the remodeling. Unfortunately, they don't seem to currently go back farther than the late 1990s. You can either use the button on the tool bar or select View > Historical Imagery. Then you'll get a slider at the top showing the dates of available photos of the area you're currently zoomed to. --Lkseitz 10:10, 14 January 2010 (PST)

6400

"The 6,400th article was Lakeshore, added by User:Lkseitz on January 18." D'oh! If I'd known that, I would have held off. --Lkseitz 08:54, 19 January 2010 (PST)

• I set the snare and you walked right in. --Dystopos 11:03, 19 January 2010 (PST)

Street categories

• I had an idea this morning, that I'm trying out starting with Category:Spring Villa Circle. When a street is an obvious feeder to one (or a very few) larger streets, it can be a subcategory of that street. (I'm not sure I'm ready for "1st Avenue North" to a become a subcategory of every significant cross-street, though -- so this pertains to branching streets rather than gridded ones) --Dystopos 08:04, 28 January 2010 (PST)

Newspapers starting with "The"

I know we've discussed this, but I can't find it and it's bugging me. What's our reason for dropping "The" off the title of newspapers that include it? For (the biggest) example, look at the front page of The Birmingham News. It's got "The" in big fancy letters, yet our article is titled Birmingham News. It may be that we didn't have DEFAULTSORT when that article was written, but now we do. (Obviously, we should have redirects that don't include the "The", just in case.) Wikipedia includes the "The" and I think we should too. --Lkseitz 21:07, 4 February 2010 (PST)

• Oops, I didn't see this until I'd already moved The Hoover Gazette to Hoover Gazette. Somewhere in Dystopos' style guides he says to drop "The" from names. It's just a personal preference I guess. It's like not naming the whole business in the name of the article, but in the meat of the article you should use its exact name. I dunno. --Wheresdib 18:22, 5 February 2010 (PST)
  • I need to be flexible. I've found it impossible to leave the "The" off of "The Club" and "The First 48", and difficult to leave it off of "The Nick" and "The Distortions". I don't know that I have a reasonable defense for having left it off "The Birmingham News", especially given that the pedant-party at Wikipedia has arrived at that consensus. On the other hand, my inner voice prefers to say "the 'Birmingham News'," instead of "The Birmingham News", which sounds to it like those smirking jocks at the beginning of NFL games that say "THE Ohio State University". --Dystopos 19:39, 5 February 2010 (PST)
    • PS: I just recall that I've witnessed a dispute at Wikipedia over whether it is proper for the full name of my alma mater to be used as the primary article name: "The Tulane University of Louisiana" (the "The" on my diploma is in big fancy letters, for what it's worth). --Dystopos 19:42, 5 February 2010 (PST)

65.55.209.11

• Microsoft's search spider crawled all over us yesterday (to the tune of 54,000+ hits). Did you feel anything? --Dystopos 15:34, 8 February 2010 (PST)

• They're still crawling us hard. Three of our heaviest days ever and the site feels fine to me. Makes me more assured that the suggestions Dreamhost was giving me a couple of years ago when things were slow and error prone was misdirected advice. --Dystopos 07:47, 10 February 2010 (PST)

Municipalities

It seems redundant to put a city's entry in both its own category and the county municipalities category that is that city's category's parent. (Did you follow that? If not, an example is Birmingham in both Category:Birmingham and Category:Jefferson County municipalities, which is a parent category of Category:Birmingham.) Especially since, when you go to the municipalities category, the sub-categories appear at the top, so users see those first and probably won't bother to scroll down after seeing the city name they're looking for. Just wanted to put my two cents in before Dystopos went and changed them all. --Lkseitz 14:31, 11 February 2010 (PST)

• My thinking was that it's nice to have a direct link from the "Category:Jefferson County municipalities" to the articles about them, rather than having to navigate the extra step. The Category page nicely distinguishes between articles and subcategories. I've pondered this issue before in other contexts, and the right answer seems to flit back and forth. --Dystopos 15:29, 11 February 2010 (PST)
  • And you wouldn't be who you are if you didn't let things flit back and forth. --Wheresdib 04:17, 12 February 2010 (PST)
    • Thanks! Wait. Hey! well. thanks. I think. --Dystopos 06:19, 12 February 2010 (PST)

Largest city wikis

• Just to have a place to put this, I'm reproducing the table from Wikipedia:City wiki#Largest city wikis with all the non-USA wikis brashly tossed out:
  
  

Rank	Founded	Name of Wiki	Location (City, State)	Articles	Images	Edits	Users
1	2004-06-24	DavisWiki	Davis, California	12,561	16,563	248,737	9,368
2	2007-02-06	Omaha Commons	Omaha, Nebraska	7,076	1,404	35,909	510
3	2006-03-15	Bhamwiki	Birmingham, Alabama	6,483	1,653	55,564	270
4	2005-01-18	RocWiki	Rochester, New York	6,040	3,003	75,019	3,101
5	2006-12-05	Mankatopedia	Mankato, Minnesota	3,984	572	15,254	99
6	2006-02-27	Santa CruzWiki	Santa Cruz, California	3,135	1,603	16,497	98
7	2005-09-09	ArborWiki	Ann Arbor, Michigan	2,982	404	20,539	672
8	2005-07-18	Bloomingpedia	Bloomington, Indiana	2,717	1,159	22,762	2,480
9	2006-07-19	Chico Wiki	Chico, California	2,495	2,070	18,245	90

Bhamwiki 4th Anniversary

• I'd like to propose an hour or so of face-to-face strategizing, planning and collaboration accompanied and/or followed by a nice meal and some imbibables. My suggestion is the Cantina at Pepper Place on Saturday March 13 or 20, or one evening that week. I am open to better suggestions. --Dystopos 15:50, 22 February 2010 (PST)