Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States

Bizarre categorization

The categories Category:WikiProject United States and Category:United States WikiProjects are categorized under each other. I don't know how the relation should be, but it surely should not inclued a closed loop of categorization. My suggestion would be removing Category:United States WikiProjects from Category:WikiProject United States. Huon (talk) 13:11, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Bebe Zeva

This is an article about an American fashion blogger; there's another contributor quite set on deleting this article which is currently a few days into a PROD; I'm more on the fence -- sorry to be so wishy-washy -- there are references but I don't know how good they are. Plus the article is well trafficked (50 readers/day). So if others want to weigh in on this, please have a look.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:27, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

new wikiprojects

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/United States Law and Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/NAIA for two newly proposed US wikiprojects. 65.95.14.96 (talk) 07:54, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

The newsletter and other things

I am not going to be around much longer so I wanted to suggest that if the project wants to continue to have a newsletter then someone should step forward and keep it going. I'm not going to be around much to support after my ANI concludes. --Kumioko (talk) 16:09, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

NHL Winter Classic → NHL outdoor games

It has been proposed to move NHL Winter Classic (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) to NHL outdoor games to better cover the contents, and both Classics (Heritage and Winter). 65.95.14.96 (talk) 01:00, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Bot to update census data?

So the 2010 Census results have started to be released (see press release), with everything scheduled to be released by April 2011. Is anyone aware of a bot under development to update articles with current statistics? Thanks. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 22:35, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

This is the most recent discussion of which I'm aware, but as far as I know it's only talk at this point. User:Ram-man was the programmer of the original bot that did the 2000 Census; he hasn't edited since June of last year. If he's not around we have a lot of capable programmers able to take on the task, which may be a rather complicated one (possibily requiring manual intervention on most articles). Definitely needs to be addressed though. Antandrus (talk) 22:51, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 16:21, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Supplementing US census data with state census data

I've gathered decennial population counts from 1850 through 2009 for all 351 municipalities in Massachusetts from US census records. Unfortunately municipal population counts for all US municipalities in the three decades between 1900 and 1920 are not available from the US census; municipalities with a population below 1000 do not have their population count recorded. This is odd given that the US censuses between 1850 and 1900 include counts all municipalities (as do censuses after 1920).

In the case of Massachusetts -- and I suspect many other states -- there are state census records that could fill these omissions in federal census records. Would it be reasonable to supplement population counts of municipalities with data from state census records if the US census data for that municipality for that year is missing? One of the destinations of this data would be in tables of historical population count in Wikipedia articles on municipalities. Presumably, one could simply add an asterisk to the rows containing state census-supplemented data, and add a brief explanatory note in the table footer. Emw (talk) 13:11, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Why can't you use the 1920 census data? Get it here and look at the chapter 2 PDF, page 146 of the PDF. This shows the 1900-1920 population total for each city and town. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 16:01, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Great, thank you! Do you know if there are pre-1850 US census documents with population counts for all municipalities, and if so where I could find them? Emw (talk) 03:48, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Chris, you linked to http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/41084506no553.zip. I've looked around in that file's parent directory, http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/, for more census records but all of the .zip files there are cryptically named. Was there a more user-friendly front end page through which you found that link? Emw (talk) 11:50, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Happy to help. This page is a guide to the old census data and indexes into those documents: [1]. I was using the 1870 census for 1850-1870 data. [2] Before that, it doesn't look like everything was scanned. In later census documents they usually have a table of previous census populations for major cities and counties, but not all municipalities. Let me know if you do find a source for this, I would be interested in using any New Jersey data you find. Thanks. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 18:32, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

The Census Bureau has published historical data in three volumes. The most recent, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, was preceded by Historical Statistics of the United States, 1789-1945 and Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957. These are all available through U.S. Government Printing Office and probably through the Census. The GPO recently started making most of their documents available for Google so you might find them in google books. If you look at the bottom of this page there are a pile of references that might help. --Kumioko (talk) 18:50, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, but I wasn't able to find county subdivisions in the "Historical Statistics" series. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 21:20, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Data visualization of municipal population changes in Massachusetts

I've put together an animated SVG showing population flows within Massachusetts for each decade between 1850 and 2009, available at http://toolserver.org/~emw/Massachusetts_municipal_population_flows.svg. I've also uploaded it at File:Massachusetts municipal population flows.svg. If anyone reading this uses Chrome, Opera or Firefox 4 (beta), then I would appreciate feedback on how the animation could be improved. I would like to eventually put the animation (possibly ported to .ogv video format) into the article space including any improvements suggested here. Emw (talk) 17:03, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Kumioko is gone

FYI, Kumioko is gone and so...I guess we just have to go on? --Highspeedrailguy (talk) 15:06, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, we must soldier on alone, in the darkness, perhaps observing a moment of silence for our fallen leader.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 20:25, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

This is terrible. I haven't seen another editor do more for the US WikiProjects than anyone else. However, I can totally understand being "....ed off" and/or unfairly critiqued by other editors, it's happened to all of us. --Funandtrvl (talk) 20:47, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Agree fully. I've been there myself. It's something how WP is structured, possibly, that causes battling and frayed nerves? Like football versus ice hockey -- there's usually no ill feelings after football, but in ice hockey, fights break out all the time. Like, Wikipedia is a rink of sorts.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:04, 28 February 2011 (UTC)