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Electoral Votes

I think we should add "Electoral Votes" to the template. Anyone agree? Sasha Slutsker 02:35, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

I suggest adding a "Natural Resources" section to each state's entry.

-- Pat

The "introduction" header is unnecessary; we expect an introduction to the topic at the top of its article. Also, "Demography" is incorrect usage. See talk:WikiProject Countries. --KQ 13:55 Aug 20, 2002 (PDT)

Couldn't a table be included, summarizing the key facts about the state + flag + motto, as it is done in WikiProject Countries and in WikiProject French departements? - Olivier

Yeah, that would probably be a good idea. Since all or most of the states also have a flag and a seal, it could look very much like the tables in WikiProject Countries. But we already have so much work with the remaining countries ;-) Jeronimo

Aye, and most of those countries have subdivisions that will need to be covered sooner or later! Agggh! :) --Brion

Maybe we will end up listing all the streets in each city of the world!!! -Olivier

I hate to think what disambiguation problems that would generate... But yes, we should actually have similar projects for at least all administrative subdivisions. Jeronimo

I've added little maps to all the California counties with an overview of the state, with that county highlighted; this gives a nice sense of general placement. I notice there's a similar map in Frederick County, Maryland (but not for the other Maryland counties). I'm considering doing similar sets for the US as a whole showing the states, and for the counties/parishes of other states. (It will take a while to get them all!) Comments/ideas/feedback? --Brion 07:40 Sep 9, 2002 (UTC)

Good idea, continue! Maybe a map of the state with all counties shown would be nice (like the California map, but with the names in it as well). Jeronimo

Nevada counties are done. Well, except the articles for most them. :) But the maps are ready, including a larger version with names in the list page. I'll make one of those for CA as well. --Brion 04:56 Sep 20, 2002 (UTC)

Before changing the WikiProject U.S. States, I added a (partially incomplete) table summarizing some key elements for a state, like in WikiProject Countries, and put it on display at Pennsylvania. This has been asked for (above), so what does everyone think about it? What things should be added/changed/etc.? -- Ram-Man

Very nice, thanks for your work! Some thoughts... For ex-Confederate states, do you think secession and re-admission dates should be noted as well? Also, for non-states (District of Columbia perhaps; Puerto Rico and Guam, certainly), obviously there's no date of admission to the union; annexation date might be appropriate. --Brion

Those dates were mentioned in the WikiProject itself I think. But it would be good to think about those again. For the non-states, there will of course have to be flexibility. I'll see about making it clearer. -- Ram-Man

I just wanted to say that the table looks good to me. However, it is probably a bit much to have such an extensive breakdown of area. I helped develop the original WikiProject Countries table and we felt that simply have the ranking, total and percent water was the best way to do it (the breakdown can be done easily enough with that info). Otherwise all the numbers begin to run together and the usefulness of the table is diminished (since it then becomes visually confusing - esp for those with a math and reading dyslexia like myself). --mav

Shouldn't there be a WikiProject U.S. Counties and a WikiProject U.S. Cities? This WikiProject seems to me to be too cluttered with all three in one project. -- Ram-Man

"* Law/Government of state [Note that all the U.S. states have similar legal and political systems, so maybe we only need to mention anything that makes the state distinct]" I thought Lousiana law was based on the Code Napolean not English law? --rmhermen

Such a thing should be mentioned of course. Pennsylvania is similar in that it originated with a unique form of government. Granted that may be considered history, but there are a number of things that make a government unique. Whatever they are, they go in the article. Some duplication can't be all that bad anyway. State government *is* different from national government. In that sense, the state government can be discribed if it is not already. -- Ram-Man

The reason for the use of kilometers only in the table is twofold. The first reason is to mirror the WikiProject Countries. The second is because adding miles clutters the table. It is perfectly fine to use kilometers and miles in the articles themselves. Just leave them out of the table. In addition, the english equivalents are given at List of U.S. states by area. -- Ram-Man

Not fine. Necessary. If not we make the articles on the USA incomprehensible to most people in the USA. Please see also the debates at metrification and Wikipedia Manual of Style. A cluttered table is less problem the a useless one. --rmhermen

I looked at the debates, and it is far from decided what the appropriate action should be. On the other hand, since WikiProject U.S. States is intended to be as close to WikiProject Countries, we use what they use. When that was first setup, I understand they used both, but it caused problems. This was mentioned in the discussion and I took the liberty to copy it here:

"I simply use SI or metric and link to the appropriate unit article -- many of which already have conversion factors and links to a great online converter. See square kilometre. This is one of the way we were able to reduce the hideously wide countries tables to their current much leaner state. If and only if there is room, it seems appropriate in context and if it doesn't confuse things, should we use the American system (So long as links to the right unit article are included of course). See the boiling/melting point part of the barium table for an example of this. --mav." As you can see, having both created problems with the tables. Having the link provides a conversion tool. This has already been decided and we should stick with it. As this is peer reviewed, anyone can put whatever data they want however. I suggest bringing the topic up in the parent WikiProject if you want to change anything. Again the article itself will contain the english measurement, so it should not be unreadable. -- Ram-Man

In some states, there is a separate page with the list of counties. In others, it's in the state listing itself. Shouldn't we follow the same plan for all? And if we put a separate list of counties, might we not list those lists under County as

...

(or perhaps show it as Alabama) to facilitate linking to them? :---BRG

The current WikiProject U.S. States specifies that the counties be put in a list. The states that do not have them in a separate list are not yet updated. As for adding to County, it is probably a good idea. The list should probably look like the list of states does in United States. -- Ram-Man

Guess I haven't looked at the WikiProject U.S. States article in a while. In any case, the rest of my comment is still valid; should we produce a list of links to these lists in the County article? -- BRG

Add a table like follows (a template like that used at United States):

Putting in in a column format will keep it from being overwhelming on the page. If someone doesn't like it, they can change it. It should be fine. Actually it may make sense to have an article entitled U.S. Counties (similar to U.S. States) which we can link to from the County article. I'm working on an idea for this. -- Ram-Man

Why having the WikiProject tags in articles is bad and why they should be at the top of talk pages (if at all);

When potential readers see it, they may feel obligated to visit and agree to the WikiProject in order to contribute.
Talk is a page for comments about how to improve the article. The article namespace is not a good place for this.
Whenever we make articles we should try to make it as useful to readers as possible. Ugly tags detract from the article and are not intended for mere readers anyway; WikiProject tags are for contributors who want to majorly add to a set of articles. These people will visit talk anyway.
These tags are self-conscience and considerations on how Wikipedia articles will look in print form are important (these tags will have to be removed before a print version is made, so it is best to limit their use).
WikiProjects are for a set of users to agree on a set of guidelines. Nobody else is bound by those guidelines. However the tag implies that those guidelines should be followed in order to contribute. This is very unwiki.
The major WikiProjects (Countries, Elements and Sports) do not have these type of tags in articles (the talk pages od converted element articles mention who did the conversion and that the conversion was based on WikiProject Elements).
Probably more reasons.

PS I simply watch each of the articles I convert. I then reformat contributions made to the converted articles in order to make sure they don't stray too far from the WikiProject guidelines. That way I don't intimidate potential contributors, and can keep some consistency. --mav

I have uploaded the map that I have used to create a locator map for each of the states. I highlighted the states in blue and then scaled it down to 30% to create the maps. (Unfortuanately blue and green are a bad color combination, I should have used a more constrasting color like orange or bright red for the state.) Anyway, here is the link to the full size US map that I used to create them:

File:US map.jpg

sfmontyo

I will be going through all of the states and modifying them to match this template. I've three questions:

1)Can we get rid of the two links to counties? The template section outline shows a list of counties as a link under geography and also having their own section. I'd like to place the link under just one place, say geography and removing the "Counties" section with just the link.

2) Any objections to formatting the counties and colleges (perhaps also cities) like those in Missouri, that is using small font and lists in two columns.

3) How about using the heading "Cities and Important Towns" rather than "Major Cities". Some of the states had used the heading Cities and Important Towns which is a better description of these *cities* especially when its not uncommon to have *cities* that are about 10,000 people.

Please let me know what you think before I do this as I plan on starting Feb 19, 2003. sfmontyo

I agree with all three suggestions, except in cases where a limited number of counties wouldn't warrant two columns. Danny 12:45 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

I personally find the lists of counties quite useful, but maybe I'm the only one. Who knows. How about "Important Cities and Towns"? -- Ram-Man

Not very sure this is a right place to tell. On Kansas, the link to the full size flag wrongly points to Missouri's. Didup 19:02 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

In the right hand sidebar, shouldn't we add the current Governor (or in the case of DC, the current Mayor) between Captial and Area?

-- hoshie

I agree. If no one opposes, I'll add it to the template. --Jiang

In tandem with the images I've helped to create for the U.S. Counties project, I've been working on a bunch of maps for the U.S. state articles. The first is the more brightly-colored (and easily readable) map of the U.S. on the U.S. state article; I've proceeded to use this map, in simpler outline form, to create highlighted maps for each state. I'm also in the process of making closer views of the individual states. Mock-ups of how this might look in the actual state articles will be posted to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. States/mockups. -- Wapcaplet 12:40 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I'm thinking of adding a row at the bottom of the table to accommodate an image of each state's commemorative quarter; does anyone have any thoughts on this? - Hephaestos 16:53, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I've made a map of the USA showing county outlines, in case it may be useful. -- Wapcaplet 22:15, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Question of Parks

Most states have a fairly extensive state park system. Some individual parks already have Wikipedia articles. The only mention so far of parks is in the Geography section of the template. I just saw an article (it has been here for a while) on Ohio public lands. There don't seem to be any others like it. My thought is that we might rename it List of Ohio State Parks and make that title a suggested entry in the template. I realize that refernced article lists national parks, as well as state level entries, but that wouldn't seem a problem. What do you think? Lou I 17:24, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

If it is just a list, then it should be named as such. --mav 05:19, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

There is also a list at List of Arizona state parks. And a related question, which I hope to discuss on the Counties Project talk page, regarding a list like List of Ohio townships. Lou I 00:21, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Casing issue

Some users have told me they have disagreeded with some of my recent edits to US states articles. The casing of some of these headers appears to be incorrect according to the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings), which says Capitalize the first word and any proper nouns in headings, but leave the rest lower case. In order to comply with the MoS, they have been changed accordingly. Thanks Dysprosia 09:05, 7 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Congressional Representation?

I think along with the Governor, it would be a good idea to add the # of Reps in the House plus the two senators each state has. Each of the provinces and territories of Canada has this as well. - iHoshie 00:03, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Politics section?

I notice that the Oklahoma article has a section (at heading level 2) that reports on Politics. This seems to me to be a good idea, even if the OK article's section right now is a mess. This would also seem to be the right place to summarize the congressional and state legislature composition by party. In a print Encyclopedia this wouldn't make sense, since two years at most would make it obsolete. In Wikipedia, we could keep this updated.

The Politics section, if we add one, should be a level three heading (below Law and Government). This is just my thought, what about others? Lou I 23:30, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How about a "US state political" template containing the basic, common political data for a state?

Number of US representatives
Number of state representatives
Number of state senators
Governor
Number of counties
Capitol
Official language
US region

A couple of these could either be duplicated or removed from the Template:US state leaving it as more of a geographical/people template. Or some of this items added to Template:US state. Just throwing out some ideas here. Cburnett 02:46, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

There's a (could-be-)related project, Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Congress. --Markles 15:35, 2 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

per-state articles and categories

There seems to be a relatively standard (but not uniformly named) set of articles and categories for each state. Anyone have any interest in expanding this project to include such things? -- Rick Block 01:19, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

State symbols template

I created Template:US state symbols to consolidate them into a template. I came up with the list of symbols by looking at California, Oklahoma, and Iowa. See the linked states for how I used the symbol template. Cburnett 02:37, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This seems like good data, although perhaps it should be included in the table created by the template:US state template and not repeat the flag, symbol, nickname, and capital. One way to do this, and allow for a variable list of state symbols (which I think would be better than listing all conceivable state symbols with N/A for many of them), is to use a WP:TOL taxobox-style set of templates. If Template:US state didn't close the table, Template:US state symbol could be used to add a single symbol and then something like Template:US state end would be used to close the table. The prototypical state article (is there one?) could have all conceivable symbols listed in html comments. This has potential to run into the "5 expansions per article" template limit (which I don't think has been fixed yet), so would require a set of templates for the symbols (sigh). I understand there's some notion that it's bad form for a single table to be generated by multiple templates, but lacking any kind of conditional ability I think the only other way to produce a variable list of table entries is to have a single parameter's value be the list of table entries (which is fairly ugly). -- Rick Block 15:28, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, considering that state governments are free to designate just about anything that catches their fancy as a state symbol (or not), I don't see too much hope for using a single catch-all template unless there is some easy way to use optional paramaters. I think I'd rather see a table with a standard format and placement that can be expanded/contracted as appropriate from state to state. older≠wiser 15:59, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

I've created a few templates (enough to show the general idea) for an alternative to the single template with all state symbols. I've changed Colorado to use them. Templates involved are template:US state insignia, template:US state animal, template:US state dinosaur. If we go this route we'll need to create a template for each type of state symbol (annoying, but really not too much work). Since each template creates an independent row in the table we can add and subtract for each state as appropriate. Given the current inability to use variable numbers of parameters AND the inability to use templates as parameters, I think this is about the best we can do. Comments? -- Rick Block 00:19, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well, I'm not sure what the advantage of doing it this way would be versus just adding rows in a table. Seems like its making things unnecessarily more complex. Maybe I'm missing something, but it doesn't seem to make much sense to use separate templates for single-line entries simply because it is possible to do so. older≠wiser 01:16, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

The point would be to standardize the text and link associated with the table label, and to simplify the text that actually appears in each state article. I think nearly anyone could add a new entry of the form

without screwing it up (even without understanding what it might actually mean). Compared to

<tr><td valign=top>'''[[List of U.S. state <something>|<something>]]'''</td><td>value</td></tr>

I don't think there's much contest. -- Rick Block 01:30, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well, that's assuming people are familiar with using templates, which even many regular wiki-editors are not, and that they know the name of the correct template to use. HTML table syntax, on the other hand is pretty standard (if not particularly well-liked) for anyone who's done much work with web pages and they don't have to guess what the template name is (and there wouldn't have to be separate templates for one-of state symbols). I don't really see the advantage. older≠wiser 12:40, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

I assume this would be done mostly "by example". I suspect most wiki editors actually don't know HTML (given the prevalance of Dreamweaver, FrontPage, etc. I think there's an argument many web page editors don't know HTML), and that this is the rationale behind wiki-table syntax. Regardless, I think the simpler the example the better the chance someone copying it can copy it correctly. If we left a comment in each article with a pointer to the complete list of insignia templates (kept someplace like on the Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. states page) I think knowing the name of the correct template shouldn't be an issue. Note that even if these were "optional" arguments to template:US state (or any other template) you need to know the exact name, so it sounds like you're effectively arguing the only reasonable method is direct table entry. I strongly suspect if we do these via direct table entry the tables will not end up looking very similar. -- Rick Block 15:32, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Whatever. I continue to think it is not a good idea to have a dozen or more templates existing for sole purpose of adding single lines to a table. But so far it is only us talking here. If you can get a bandwagon together, I really don't care all that much one way or the other. I'll still think it's a bad idea, but in the grand scheme of things at Wikipedia it would be a pretty minor bad idea and not something I'd get worked up over. older≠wiser 16:50, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

What's wrong with just puting "N/A" (don't know) or "None" (negative) in the likes of the template I have now? I think there's some value in a negative answer ("No, state X does not have symbol Y") which isn't necessarily true if an entry is excluded. There seems to be only a few states with unusual symbols (only 11 have fossils; 10 with butterflies; 4 with dinosaurs) so don't just on the "states are gonna make all kinds of crazy symbols" bandwagon just yet. As far as I am aware of, these things are pretty static. Cburnett 18:34, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The issue is how many "N/A" entries there might be. If each state's listing has only (say) half of the total number of these symbols, then the table will be roughly twice as large as it needs to be. I haven't really done the analysis, but I suspect there's an intersection of 10-15 used by all states with an additional 2-3 per state. If we make each state's entry show the union, all states must show the entire union (since currently there's no good way to create an expandable template). Weirdo examples: Alaska's state sport (dog mushing), Colorado's state grass (blue gramma), Wisconsin's state grain (corn). I suspect if we're intending to be complete, the union will grow to 50-100 items that some legislature has designated as a state symbol. The other approach is to forgo completeness and show only the "standard" set, but given current limitations this would effectively preclude adding any additional state-specific symbols to the table. Perhaps Template:US state symbols should not generate the entire table but simply the rows for the common ones, allowing folks to manually create additional rows (perhaps using a template like template:weirdo US state symbol if they so choose :) )? -- Rick Block 19:20, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ok, how about moving the very common ones (tree, flower, rock/mineral, bird) into the US state template and just making a table for the remainder? Since there's only 50 states and symbols don't change often then the table can easily be created once by someone who can do it and call it good. No need to create a plethora of templates for essentially static data for just layout's sake. Cburnett 19:39, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've redone Colorado with a template that creates rows for the common ones and explicit table entries for the rest. The advantages/disadvantages I see of this approach are: all the symbols are in one table (advantage), there's no control of the ordering between the entries created by the template and the additional ones (so the list can't be globally alphabetized, for example), the ones not added by the template may show up in other states with different labels and/or different links. -- Rick Block 06:24, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

template:US state

I've noticed alignment issues (using Netscape 7.1 on a W98 machine with "classic" skin) in the Area, Population, and Population density entries in the table generated by the template. Looking at the template, these are multiline entries that seem to be assumed to line up. Is there some particular reason each line isn't its own row in the table (which I suspect would align properly in any browser/skin)? I'm tempted to just fix this, but thought I'd ask first. -- Rick Block 05:20, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I had been wondering the same coding choice myself. I say go for it. Could even change those rows from " - " to "-" to reduce unnecessary spacing. Cburnett 06:07, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I suspect this comes from the older table that used a border (so the "cell" containing area/population/etc information wasn't chopped up). In any event, I'll go ahead and change it. -- Rick Block 15:37, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

conversions to template:US state

I modified the template to compress the table a bit and I've converted most of the remaining states to use the modified (compressed) template. A couple of things that were awkward:

States with split timezones (e.g. Alaska, Nebraska, etc.). I was able to construct something that looks reasonable when viewed. However, the table entry uses raw html which is fairly obscure. We could create alternate versions of the template for split timezone states, to effectively hide the ugliness (I'm thinking the split timezone template would use the regular template). Anyone think this would be worthwhile?

With the current shorter labels and wider data fields in the template, I've changed all of the multi-timezone states to use simple <br/> breaks for the timezone entries. -- Rick Block 21:58, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A couple of states had "extra" information not included in the current template. Notably, Alaska and Arizona list the FIPS state code, and a few (e.g. Wisconsin) list the state motto in addition to the nickname. I used the timezone html trick to add the motto after Wisconsin's nickname and included Alaska's FIPS code in the ISO 3166-2 entry. Every state has a FIPS code and I think most have a motto - should we change the template to add these?
Kansas (which somebody else converted) and Missouri (not converted yet) list all the measurements in miles and km. Is this something we want to tolerate?

The html trick could be used to add a variable number of state insignia, but since templates can't be included as arguments to templates the entries would have to consist of raw html (if templates could include templates, we could define a template for each insignia type and include the relevant ones at the end of the table - I tried this and it indeed does not work). Perhaps including insignia in the table simply needs to wait for a later version of the software.

-- Rick Block 20:01, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Missouri

Anyone care to convert the infobox to the template? Cburnett 20:39, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've been thinking about it. Like Kansas, Missouri lists both English and metric for area, etc. The existing table also lists the largest metro area in addition to largest city (I suspect since they're different) and has that weirdness with the motto (motto rather than nickname, and with a footnote!). I don't think these are insurmountable difficulties, but I think including precisely the same information using the template will be somewhat tricky. -- Rick Block 21:23, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Topographic map

Is there any consideration to including a topographic map of each of the states such as the one produced by the National Geophysical Data Center (Government agency)? There is an example map for Virginia at the bottom of the page

Section Header Culture?

Because most states have a somewhat unique culture, I'm considering adding a "Culture" heading to the U.S. States that will enable the incorporation of information about everyday life in the various states. Such information might include notes about distinctive music, foods, festivals, and traditions tied to geography and climate. For example, the Louisiana culture section might include a discussion of the Cajun and Creole lifestyle. Utah's would emphasize the role of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Hawai'i's would focus on the cultural traditions of the ethnic Hawai'ian people. Kentucky's might discuss the role of bluegrass music. I might make "professional sports teams," where applicable, a subset of the broader "Culture" section.

Generally I would discourage the idea. Louisiana can link to Cajun in a see also. Ditto for Utah, although LDS gets discusssed in History. Hawaii is a unique case, and probably gets a link to the article about the Kingdom of Hawaii, which needs a culture section. If needed, you could also discuss its culture (with a heading) where the template shows Miscellaneous Topics. Thanks for the thoughjts! Lou I 16:38, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

25 Richest Places in Blank

I'm not sure what to do with the "25 richest places." Most of these rich places are rather small communities. I wonder why they didn't include the "25 poorest places" too for a sense of balance. User:Dufekin

I agree, anonymous. How are the 25 richest places in a state important? And if we are all going for the trend of wealth, why not balance it out with the 25 Poorest Places in Blank? And I personally do not think that it should be a link anywhere either. I guess if it had to be in there, it should still reside in Important Cities and Towns; it definitely does not fit the state Economy or statistical Demographics. --Iamunknown (Talk)08:55, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Another vote for dropping the Richest places. My sense of balance is not offended, since we don't list smallest towns to make up for important cities but going strictlty by census zone demographics tends to pick out small suburbs. Beter to just drop the idea. Lou I 16:25, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

units in the infoboxes

A couple of people have suggested at template talk:Infobox U.S. state that the use of metric rather than English measurements in the articles about U.S. states is unexpected and that the infobox should be extended to include both. The articles for a few states already include both, although perhaps somewhat surreptitiously (see Kansas and Missouri). Anyone know the history behind the choice to use metric, and should we explicitly include both? -- Rick Block 03:43, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Do it!

Then fix the damn wrong numbers you have.

If you see smoke rising from your monitor, it's because I'm seething. Need blood pressure pills before I proceed. Gene Nygaard 13:00, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

To do this, we'll need the English measurements for all states. Can we compile the list here? I believe we need to fill out the following table for each state (total, land, and water area are in List_of_U.S._states_by_area, so no need to repeat here). Is http://www.netstate.com/states/index.html a good enough source for width/length/height (USGS has max/min elevation at http://www.usgs.gov/)? Definitive population density is available at http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/. -- Rick Block 04:28, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That's a lot of nonsense. Whoever did these figures in the first place started out with the figures in miles and feet, and converted them--incorrectly in most cases. Just have whoever did that dig out the old files.

What really made me angry was that the at least one of the two files that you have been grousing most about (Missouri or Kansas), has figures in miles and kilometers which do not agree with each other, and if I remember right, in the other one they do agree but both are wrong.

The area, land area, water area, and population density are available in one file from the U.S. Census.

What do you mean by "width" and "length"? That conceptual problem is a bigger hurdle than anything else. It's not too bad for Colorado, but even then there are difficulties, and several possible choices. But what does it mean for Florida? For Alaska? For Hawaii? How do you reconcile the current figures for Massachusetts with those for Connecticut?

Highest and lowest elevations are easy to get. Do we need some imprecise estimate of "mean" elevation?

You'd also need more columns in your tables, to get the metric measurements right this time around. Gene Nygaard 04:48, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I traced the Colorado article back to it's beginning and found the edit that added the measurements (this one). The original measurements were added in km not miles. I have no idea where User:Sfmontyo got the numbers or if they were converted. His talk page has had no activity since last December. I would expect that the tables were populated by a variety of contributors using data from perhaps a variety of sources. I'm suggesting fixing this, using authoritative data, and my guess is that this would be a whole lot less work than chasing down whoever added the original data. Width and length are in the table and I assume they mean maximum extent in the east-west and north-south directions (and looking at the values width apparently means north-south and length east-west, which seems odd, but whatever). If you know of an authoritative source other than USGS for highest/lowest elevations please let me know. I don't much care about mean elevation, but somebody at some time thought it was useful (and managed to find numbers from somewhere - I looked a bit and didn't find this at USGS - if we preserve this we should cite the source). I'm not sure I understand your comment about more columns to get the metric measurements "right". Are you suggesting we update the existing measurements in all the articles by converting from English measurements (and presumably including the new conversions in the table below)? -- Rick Block 14:25, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

State	Pop density (/sq mi)	Width (mi)	Length (mi)	Highest elev. (ft)	Mean elev. (ft)	Lowest elev.
AL	87.6	190	330	2,407	mean elev	0
AK	1.1	810	1,480	20,320	mean	0
AZ	45.2	310	400	12,633	mean	70
AR	51.3	240	260	2,753	650	55
CA	217.2	250	770	14,494	2,900	-282
CO	41.5	280	380	14,433	6,800	3315
CT	702.9	70	110	2,380	500	0
DE	401.1	30	100	448	60	0
FL	296.4	160	500	345	100	0
GA	141.4	230	300	4,784	600	0
HI	188.6	width	1,600*	13,796	3,030	0
ID	15.6	305	479	12,662	5,000	710
IL	223.4	210	390	1,235	600	279
IN	169.5	140	270	1,257	700	320
IA	52.4	200	310	1,670	1,100	480
KS	32.9	211	400	4,039	2,000	679
KY	101.7	140	380	4,145	750	257
LA	102.6	130	380	535	100	-8
ME	41.3	190	320	5,268	600	0
MD	541.9	90	250	3,360	350	0
MA	809.8	50	190	3,491	500	0
MI	175.0	240	490	1,979	900	571
MN	61.8	250	400	2,301	1,200	601
MS	60.6	170	340	806	300	0
MO	81.2	240	300	1,772	800	230
MT	6.2	280	630	12,799	3,400	1,800
NE	22.3	210	430	5,424	2,600	840
NV	18.2	320	490	13,140	5,500	479
NH	137.8	70	190	6,288	1,000	0
NJ	1,134.4	70	150	1,803	250	0
NM	15.0	343	370	13,161	5,700	2,842
NY	401.9	283	330	5,344	1,000	0
NC	165.2	150	500	6,684	700	0
ND	9.3	211	340	3,506	1,900	750
OH	277.3	220	220	1,550	850	455
OK	50.3	220	400	4,973	1,300	289
OR	35.6	261	360	11,239	3,300	0
PA	274.0	160	283	3,213	1,100	0
RI	1,003.2	30	40	812	200	0
SC	133.2	200	260	3,560	350	0
SD	9.9	210	380	7,242	2,200	966
TN	138.0	120	440	6,643	900	178
TX	79.6	660	790	8,749	1,700	0
UT	27.2	270	350	13,528	6,300	2,000
VT	65.8	80	160	4,393	1,000	95
VA	178.8	200	430	5,729	950	0
WA	88.6	240	360	14,411	1,700	0
WV	75.1	130	240	4,863	1,500	240
WI	98.8	260	310	1,951	1,050	579
WY	5.1	280	360	13,804	6,700	3,099

HI is a group of islands

Filled in width, length, and mean elevation in Rick Block's table. I used [1] as a source (for lack of a better one). --MJCdetroit 19:29, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can we add the square acreage of the state to the main state stat box? For instance, Rhode Island is 1214 mi sq and that is 776,900 sq acres according to google http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=1214+miles+squared+in+acres --216.7.248.254 16:31, 27 June 2006 (UTC) - drach(cole) 6/27/2006 Jun. 27, 16:30:54 UTC[reply]

What's a sq acre? You mean acre. Anyway, the answer is no. Can you imagine how large the number (of acres) would be for Alaska? For RI, just put the acreage in the footnotes section. --MJCdetroit 17:05, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. I guess you couldn't because there was not a footnotes field in the template. So, I added a footnotes section and edited the RI article for you.--MJCdetroit 18:11, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

template for U.S. federal representatives

I'm attempting to obviate the need for a template under discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Template:Current U.S. Senators by creating a standard template, perhaps one for each state, similar to Template:CO-FedRep. I started an initial discussion about this at Wikipedia_talk:Avoid_using_meta-templates#Templates for federal representatives by state, since one way to do this would be by using a meta-template. This is not exactly about the state articles, but seems sufficiently related that folks who watch this page might be interested.

Is this the right forum to discuss this idea (anyone have any better ideas)?
Assuming yes, can we reach a consensus that a template such as Template:CO-FedRep has sufficient value that it's worth generalizing this to all states?

-- Rick Block 04:02, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If you people who were discussing it on the other page have a rough consensus that it should be moved here, then move that talk here and leave only a link there, so people aren't jumping back and forth and commenting both places. Gene Nygaard 13:19, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I am a new comer to this discussion. I was in the middle of creating the state federal representative template for the different states when ‘Rick Block’ drew my attention to this discussion. The solution I am working on is similar to one that was discussed here before. There would be 51 templates for the 50 states. One central template Template:U.S.A. State Congressional Delegation would be used for formatting purposes. And templates like Template:AL-FedRep , Template:AK-FedRep , #Template:AZ-FedRep , Template:AR-FedRep would be used for individual states. This would require 50 edits every two years + edits for each senator / representative who is voted out /in . I believe this is the most elegant and easy to manage solution. --DuKot 00:54, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This is my preference as well. The issue with this approach is that any change to the central template requires the software to trundle through all 50 templates and all articles including any of these templates (presumably 535 of them) marking them as uncached. If the total number of references (direct or indirect) is in the multiple tens of thousands range I'm absolutely sure this would be a problem. In this case, I'm not so sure. -- Rick Block 01:44, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

How many times are we going to change the central template? My prediction is 10-20 edits the first two weeks. Then may be one edit every other week. It is not likely to be a great performance issue. --DuKot 05:41, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Flag of Georgia

The template on Georgia (U.S. state) links to Flag of Georgia, but the real place it should go to is Flag of Georgia (U.S. state). Can this be fixed? Felix the Cassowary 13:34, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, although it's moderately painful because the template implementation provides no mechanism for supplying default values for parameters. Perhaps the most straightforward solution is to add a new parameter to the template to be used as the link and edit all 50 state articles to supply this parameter. I'll do this. -- Rick Block 14:16, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Fixed. -- Rick Block 15:04, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Apparently this was unfixed as I just subst:ed the template to make it work after someone complained to the help desk. Please figure out what went wrong and make the code look pretty again. WAvegetarian ^(talk) (email) ^(contribs) 23:53, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

State flag icons

As a side effect of fulfilling requests for country flag manipulation, state flag icons are now available. For example, Alaska with an "AK" label is generated by {{flag|USA-AK}}. Alternatives such as {{flag|USA-Alaska}} can be created; one has to tell the template the name of the flag file ("Alaska_flag_large.png"), the name of the Wikipedia article ("Alaska"), and the text label ("AK"). The alias tables used by {(tl|country_flag}} may be of interest for other templates. (SEWilco 21:04, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC))

width, length, mean elevation

Does anyone watching this page know where the numbers in the state articles for width, length, and mean elevation came from (originally)? I'm attempting to collect enough data to list all the measurements in each state's infobox in both SI (metric) and standard (miles, feet) units. Alternatively, if anyone knows an authoritative (e.g. USGS) source for these measurements, please let me know. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:46, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

Improvement Drive

The related articles American Empire, History of Minnesota, National Football League and Space program of the United States have been listed to be improved on Wikipedia:This week's improvement drive. To support one of these articles you can add your vote there. Also, Rodgers and Hammerstein is nominated at the Biography Collaboration. --Fenice 07:15, 9 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template standardization?

Hi all. I am pretty sure that it's standard practice to allow a wikiproject to establish standards for things related to their topics. Is there a standardized state template for, say, counties/cities/MSAs? The reason I ask is because we've gotten into a discussion about which template to use for Texas. I'd appreciate knowing whether this has been standardized or not. And if not, as interested parties you may want to weigh in yourself on the debate at Template talk:Texas. Thanks. · Katefan0^(scribble) 20:31, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

User talk:Alexwcovington/ND Wikiproject proposal

I'm requesting comment on a WikiProject on North Dakota. Any help would be greatly appreciated. --AlexWCovington (talk) 06:50, 12 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Demographics data

I am currently working on a mini-project to improve and expand the demographics data on the state articles because they are inconsistent in appearance (and limited in detail) across articles. Refer to my project page User:Moverton/Projects/U.S. state demographic tables for details. I have assembled the initial templates for the Race tables, but will add more notes once I have assembled the data. —Mike 21:48, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

Puerto Rico

I propose that Puerto Rico and other US posessions (like Guam, American Samoa, US Virgin Islands and etc.) should have the State infobox template instead of using the country infobox template since they are not independent countries. You can see that Puerto Rico has an USPS abbreviation as PR, and an ISO 3166-2 code as US-PR. See http://www.mindspring.com/~mjfriedman/countrysubentity.txt for more information or ISO 3166-2

There is a current dispute happening in the Puerto Rico article. We need your advice and consensus to solve this issue, I remember seeing a user mention that US Territories should use the State infobox with some exemptions like "date of annexation" and etc. Have a happy holidays! --68.235.131.36 02:57, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

State footer templates

I think it would be pertinent if this project could have a look at harmonizing the various state footer templates, all of which seems to follow different displaying conventions. I havejust started a discussion at the Canadian discussion boad forour provincial templates and think it would be interesting if all of these could me made roughly similar. Circeus 18:48, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This does sound like a good idea, as it's annoying to look at articles that related to multiple states when the bottoms of the articles have state templates that look very different from one another. A great example is New York metropolitan area, which has NY/NYS/NJ/CT/PA all on it--FIVE Templates (only four of which are states, but still)--all of which look very different. Not only the different template (and flag) sizes and colors, but the content on each is different, and it's somewhat annoying. //MrD9 20:47, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Shortcut WP:USS?

I thought it might be useful to create a shortcut for this article. My suggestion would be WP:USS. Comments? //MrD9 20:47, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

State Templates

I created the subpage Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. states/state templates to list all of the U.S. state (and other related U.S.) templates. This way they can be compared and hopefully standardized? //MrD9 04:59, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Moved here from project page, 10:13, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
I created the subpage /state templates to list and display all state (and territory, related...) templates. I'm not sure what your current decision on standardizing these state templates is (I think you (we, if I join) should standardize them...), but regardless, it should be a helpful resource. //MrD9 06:27, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please use talk pages for discussions. Thanks! CQ

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team cooperation

Hello. I'm a member of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing articles using these criteria, and we are are asking for your help. As you are most aware of the issues surrounding your focus area, we are wondering if you could provide us with a list of the articles that fall within the scope of your WikiProject, and that are either featured, A-class, B-class, or Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Do you have any recommendations? If you do, please post your suggestions at the listing of all active Places WikiProjects, and if you have any questions, ask me in the Work Via WikiProjects talk page or directly in my talk page. Thanks a lot! Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 18:44, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Opening Soon

Joe I 02:29, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Extreme points

I stumbled across the article Extreme points of Massachusetts and I think it might be interesting to have that for all the states. I looked for a New York one, but no luck, so I made one. Шизомби 01:44, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, actually there's a Extreme points of U.S. states article. I wonder if state ones should redirect there. Шизомби 02:19, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

History of New Mexico

I rcently spun off History of New Mexico since it was taking up too much space in the parent article. However, not being an expert in the subject, it was pretty much a cut-and-paste job. If anyone want to take a look and improve it or New Mexico#History it would be much appreciated. Eluchil404 23:43, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Projects, Portals and People

I made a little table for coordinating WikiProjects, Portals and People for 50 U.S. states. It is here:

 Wikipedia:WikiProject_U.S._states/PPP.

WP:CBTF -- CQ 10:20, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinating U.S. state portals

Greetings from WikiProject Kentucky! We are tentatively planning to launch Portal:Kentucky on July 4th if we can get it ready by then. Even so, I think it would be cool to refactor Portal:United States/Related portals on that date to reflect the concerted effort between and among U.S. state WikiProjects and Portals that looks something like:

U.S. states:

Oklahoma • Texas • Utah • Vermont • Wisconsin

Coming soon:

Michigan (under construction) • Florida (vote to keep, please) • Portal:Kentucky (proposed - please support).

Note: If you are part of a U.S. state WikiProject, and are considering adding a U.S. state or other related Portal to this list, please see Wikipedia:Portal/Guidelines for more information and announce your plans at WikiProject U.S. states .

Or something like that, anyway. WikiProject U.S. states is the only logical place that I know of to coordinate the effort to form a complete set of Subportals for Portal:United States. This could be one small but significant push toward Wikipedia:Version 1.0. Please see Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/WPPlaces and get involved if you get the chance. We should be hearing from them soon. Thanks. -- CQ 07:25, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In theory, I support the idea. However, Wikipedia is having problems with proliferation of many poorly (or unmaintained) portals. Portal:Florida, for example. I suggest first a concerted effort made to improve Portal:United States before creating more subportals. I've been working on the portal myself, but think the portal would be more successful with many people chipping in.

For example,
- Help maintain the news box.
- The topics box needs more work - I can work more on that, but would welcome help.
- The subportals box needs formatting - I might help with.
- Help select the "featured" picture and article.

I have also proposed a subportal devoted to U.S. government & politics, which has been approved but not yet created. But first, want to see Portal:United States improved more. It should be brought up to featured portal status. -Aude (talk contribs) 20:38, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And please don't create Portal:Kentucky yet. Please draft up a list of featured and good articles (and any other articles worth "featuring"). I see you have started that: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Kentucky/Portal. Please add to the list. -Aude (talk contribs) 20:51, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed Aude. "Portal:Kentucky" will remain at WikiProject Kentucky as long as it needs to. Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/WPPlaces#Wikipedia:WikiProject_U.S._states so far just lists the U.S. states article. I'm not sure if they are even looking at Portals yet. I'll be shifting more effort toward Portal:United States. Thanks for your input at WikiProject Kentucky. • CQ 17:01, 24 July 2006 (UTC) • WP:CBTF[reply]

History buff needed

Please check out List of current and former capital cities in the United States and make sure that everything appears accurate and well-referenced. A word of warning: the page does contain quite a bit of complicated wiki formatting, so if you're not comfortable editing it, just post your changes on the talk page and someone more experienced will apply them to the article. JEK 19:58, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nominate articles for Portal:United States

I've worked for the past month to update Portal:United States and keep it better maintained. Though, I think the portal would be even better with broader participation. One way to do that is instead of choosing the "selected article" myself each week, if others would nominate articles and help make decisions. (same goes for pictures, though these are stocked up through July 29) If you would like to nominate or weigh in on what should be featured, please visit the portal. Thanks. -Aude (talk contribs) 21:31, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Georgia

There is a poll going down at Talk:Georgia (country), you guys might be interested. - FrancisTyers · 17:58, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Insular_area (US Dependencies)

The message: "Can anybody fix the US Dependencies infoboxes? It's displaying incorrect information. By WikiProject U.S. guidelines they should be corrected too." was moved from the top of the project page to here. [2] [3] I will look into the problem with the infobox but I'm new here. • CQ 16:16, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What is the problem that needs to be fixed? older ≠ wiser 16:48, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure, either. I just moved the question to here from the project page. Unless they're talking about Template:USPoliticalDivisions, I have no idea what "infobox" they are referring to. CQ 17:49, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject United States

WikiProject United States has been proposed. Please see the note there about this project and show support. CQ 16:33, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Law and government"

Shouldn't this be "Politics and government" as per the "Politics of..." pages about countries? Personally, I've always found it rather silly that the politics pages there are called politics and government when there's always a separate accompanying government page... Anyway, Politics of California and Government of California are a good example of how to go about this in terms of naming IMO. A "Law of..." page is appropriate as well, and would be covered by the government part of the "Politics and government" header. As for the note about having similar systems, yes and no; the systems are similar to an extent but are different enough that separate articles about each state would be appropriate for all three cases. Any thoughts? Moulder 09:51, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox template

Is it possible to change the template to reflect the new 2005 U.S. census? The articles now all have 2000 as the most recent shown census I believe. Current figues for each states population can be found at [4], although in some circumstances, the 2005 figures are estimated.--MONGO 21:31, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 594: / Line 594: @@
 Shouldn't this be "Politics and government" as per the "Politics of..." pages about countries? Personally, I've always found it rather silly that the politics pages there are called politics and government when there's always a separate accompanying government page... Anyway, [[Politics of California]] and [[Government of California]] are a good example of how to go about this in terms of naming IMO. A "Law of..." page is appropriate as well, and would be covered by the government part of the "Politics and government" header. As for the note about having similar systems, yes and no; the systems are similar to an extent but are different enough that separate articles about each state would be appropriate for all three cases. Any thoughts? [[User:Moulder|Moulder]] 09:51, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
+== Infobox template ==
+Is it possible to change the template to reflect the new 2005 U.S. census? The articles now all have 2000 as the most recent shown census I believe. Current figues for each states population can be found at [http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/], although in some circumstances, the 2005 figures are estimated.--[[User:MONGO|MONGO]] 21:31, 22 August 2006 (UTC)