Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Alabama

Source for Needed Articles

List of Registered Historic Places in Alabama has links to every county in the state it seems. Within those county pages their are many red links. It's a great place to find needed articles. JBEvans 22:32, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Templates Added

I created two templates -- first ones I've ever done -- which I hope are helpful. I need your critical assessment of them. No pride here! JBEvans 03:24, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Looks good so far. I noticed a red-link for {{User WikiProject Alabama}}; should {{AlProUB}} be moved here or are these supposed to be separate templates? - auburnpilot talk 06:40, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I tested automatically including a signature withing {{AlProInv}}. It works only when substituted, so I went ahead and reverted. It's a possibility though. - auburnpilot talk 06:55, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Supposedly, the two are separate and stand alone. I'm not sure about including the signature nor the link. I'll take a look. I have an idea but it will be a little later before I can do anything. JBEvans 12:33, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Added myself

I added myself to the members list and am happy to help out where needed. Originally from the Birmingham area and now attending Auburn University, I can assist in related topis as well as provide images of the Birmingham area. Same goes for images in the Lee County area, but I can also provide an aerial shots that might be needed. Just let me know. - auburnpilot talk 06:40, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Glad to have you! I'm originally from Tuscaloosa and am also a pilot. I spent some time many years ago flying out of Auburn-Opelika. JBEvans 12:29, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi auburnpilot! I could sure use your help for some Auburn pics. I created the Auburn Tigers basketball article and would really like to get some images of Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum (inside or out) and anything else you might be able to get concerning Auburn Basketball. Thanks, Вasil | talk 01:15, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I went by there today and took a few from the outside. The place was locked (maybe due to Easter Sunday) but I will try to get inside sometime in the next few weeks. I'll have the images uploaded to my commons account sometime tonight and post a link here. - auburnpilot talk 21:18, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Introduction

Most of my contributions are now going to my BhamWiki.com site, but any useful material from there is available to Wikipedia under the CC-by-sa 3.0 license. A lot of it is rather below the threshold of notability for a general encyclopedia, which is why I decided to start up an alternative. I hang around here mostly to keep an eye on vandalism and to get into pointless arguments. --Dystopos 19:22, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Glad to have you. Any expertise is certainly welcomed. JBEvans 16:06, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Article Assessment

From what I see most of the other state-level projects are active in assessing their articles for both quality and importance. It seems this is an important task of any project. I'm not sure how to get it started. The California project is pretty involved and intense. If someone is able to look at it and get us started that would be great! JBEvans 16:17, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I see a few have been tagged and assessed. I've tagged a few, but I'm considering loading the categories into WP:AWB and going on a mass talk page-template-tagging-spree. Once they're tagged, we'll be able to ID the articles needing our attention by simply going through Category:Unassessed Alabama articles. Seems it will make things easier, but figured I get a few comments first. - auburnpilot talk 05:05, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've added the the unassessed category and quite a few ancillary categories to support our article assessments. When I set it up, I did not add support for 'importance' as I observed several notable projects which omitted that parameter due to ambiguity and conflicting assessments (e.g. Military History. I'm not dead-set against it, but it does seem to increase the level of subjectivity. I'm not sure what exactly the AWB project does, but if it will automatically tag Alabama related articles, I'm all for it. As it stands right now, we've already got 186 unassessed articles (see unassessed). Вasil | talk 06:01, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not too worried about the importance indicator. It always seemed trivial to me, but I'm not really set either way. As far as AWB, it's great for making extremely repetitive edits, like tagging talk pages with project templates. I took the categories listed on the main project page, loaded them into AWB, and it gave me a list of ~700 articles. I'm then able to convert them to talk pages and automatically add {{WikiProject Alabama}} to the top of each page. Saves time and makes tagging hundreds of articles as simple as clicking "save". I'm free all day Monday, so I'll try to hit the list then. - auburnpilot talk 20:01, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I went ahead and made a test run, as you can see by my contributions. I was able to tag just over 180 articles in about half an hour, and I see JBEvans is doing the same. - auburnpilot talk 22:01, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I hit the mother lode when I went to the category People in Alabama. There were almost 500 articles that were untagged. They have tags now. AWB is great for such. BTW, JodyB used to be JBEvans. JodyB is my preferred moniker now. JBEvans 22:44, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Now JodyB used to be JBEVANS! How stupid can I be?JodyB 22:46, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, at least I'm not crazy. I knew there was a JBEvans, but suddenly JodyB was talking... - auburnpilot talk 23:45, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed a couple pages were tagged {{WikiProject Alabama|class=}}. For some reason, having "|class=" in the template is placing the talk pages in Category:Non-article Alabama pages instead of Category:Unassessed Alabama articles. I'm not sure if this can be fixed (as a template issue), but for the time being I'm removed "|class=" from the talk pages with this problem. - auburnpilot talk 23:45, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. I added a case statement to check for an empty class string. Pages which contain "class=" now are categorized as "unassessed". Вasil | talk 14:56, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:William H. Hardy

I noticed a user removed the project tag from this article, stating that it shouldn't be covered because Hardy's notability doesn't stem from Alabama. I'm tempted to re-add the tag, as I see this as a similar situation as Condoleezza Rice. Rice is not notable for being from Alabama, but she is a notable person who would be covered by this project as a notable person from Birmingham. Any thoughts? - auburnpilot talk 22:25, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would have left the tag for the same reason you mentioned. Otherwise we loose a lot of people who were raised here but didn't make their mark until they moved. I see our goal as being particularly interested in the Alabama portion of the biography. It should stay. JodyB 22:50, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've re-added the tag. Turns out the "user" I was referring to is somebody with whom I've had extensive contact, and will likely be a beneficial person to this project. Hopefully Blaxthos will chip in. - auburnpilot talk 02:50, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I concur. If we exclude people who've left Alabama that would put a pretty serious dent in this project. Вasil | talk 05:39, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]