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Just thought the members of the project should be informed. ''']''' <small>]</small> 00:25, 11 January 2008 (UTC) Just thought the members of the project should be informed. ''']''' <small>]</small> 00:25, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
:well, that sucks..... --''']'''<sup>]</sup> 02:32, 11 January 2008 (UTC) :well, that sucks..... --''']'''<sup>]</sup> 02:32, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

==Featured List of the Day==
Hear ye, hear ye! ] has been selected to be a February ], to be featured some time during February 2008. See ] for the record of voting for February featured lists. Congratulations to all who have contributed to this list. --] (]) 03:55, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

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Archives of past discussions, with brief summaries—see archive for more information.

Some reassessment is in order.

I went ahead and created a table showing the current status of all articles under the aegis of the WikiProject, and in doing so I uncovered a few rather irksome issues with importance.

Right now, there are only two articles that have top priority for the project. One of them is Florida, which is certainly appropriate. The other, however, is Hooters. I won't speak for anyone else, but I think that second one might be a candidate for a downgraded priority.

The 13 High-priority articles are 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane(a featured article), Mary McLeod Bethune (Good article), Burger King (Good article), Burger King advertising, Burger King products, Forgotten Coast, List of National Historic Landmarks in Florida, Miami Science Museum, Miami Vice, Miami Vice (Season 5), University of Central Florida, Walt Disney World Resort, and Rosewood Massacre. The UCF article and the Okeechobee Hurricane are the only two of these that are really of high importance, although one might be able to justify Burger King and Mary McLeod Bethune as well. The rest are of lower importance to the project, particularly the Miami Vice and BK subarticles, which should be kicked down to low-importance.

Another thing that is rather disquieting is the status of the Featured Articles; we have eight FA's, six of which have not been rated on the importance scale. (Three of those six are featured lists, plus the articles on William Cooley, Florida Atlantic University, and History of Miami, Florida). Similar situations exist for all of the other quality levels (8/13 Good Articles, 50/63 B-class articles, 448/480 Start-class, and 2784/2852 stubs). I am not going to be bold and unilaterally adjust importance levels without at least bringing it up for discussion, but I'll change them this weekend if nobody contributes to the discussion here. Horologium t-c 02:53, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

(added later) A couple of suggestions: For Top priority, I would suggest the articles on Jacksonville, Florida, Miami, Florida, and Tampa, Florida, as well as the Everglades. The other major cities (>200,000) should be moved to High, along with three major hurricanes (1926 Miami Hurricane, Hurricane Andrew, and Hurricane Charley, joining 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane), and the large universities (University of Florida, Florida State University, University of South Florida, Florida Atlantic University, Florida International University, and University of Miami), joining University of Central Florida, which is already there. We should also include Lake Okeechobee and St. Johns River in the high-importance category. The cities with 100,000-200,000 people, and the remaining public universities (and the other large private universities, such as Nova Southeastern University), should be mid-level, and the smaller cities/towns/villages should be low-priority. The rest of the articles should be assessed individually, as some are rather important, while most of them are not. Horologium t-c 03:58, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Since nobody had anything to say, I took that as an endorsement of my proposals, and I have begun to implement them. Thanks for your participation. Horologium t-c 04:21, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree with your assessments especially that regarding the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane, I expanded the two-line article on Port Mayaca, Florida to correct the misinformation in it and to add a section on the Port Mayaca Cemetery which has a mass grave in which 1,600 victims of the 1928 hurricane were buried. I've also put this info into the main article which seems only to mention the West Palm Beach mass graves, which contain a lot fewer victims. clariosophic (talk) 05:18, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
Any particular reason why Miami Vice was dropped from high to low? (Forget the Miami Vice season 5 article.) I would assume that a show that had such impact in the South Florida region would atleast be ranked mid to high. El Greco 15:00, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
I dropped Miami Vice to low because it is my belief that it is not something of great importance to the Florida project; it is of greater importance to the Miami and Television projects (both of which list it as High importance). I had hoped that bringing up the changes here would have stimulated some of this discussion before I started making changes, but there were no protests until that time.
Of note, both of the inquiries presented since I started making changes were by people who are not members of WP Florida who went ahead and made importance assessments for us. Adding a template for a WikiProject to which one does not belong is fine, but assigning an importance rating is not. Importance is something that should be assessed by the appropriate group, and may differ from the importance given by other projects. Horologium t-c 15:30, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
So a show that was influential in the revitalization of the Miami area and defined Miami is of low importance to Florida? How many tv shows filmed on location in Florida? Took into consideration the entire local (they filmed in the Glades and Okeechobee and other locations)? It should at least get a mid importance (the main article). Really if you think about it in the hierarchy of things, Miami Vice in WPMiami:high, WPFL:mid, and if there is a WPUSA:low. Also, I liked to apologize for assessing the article beforehand, I just don't like seeing project templates go to waste. They are made for a purpose and just posting them on a talk page with out giving them a class and importance is kind of redundant to an extent. El Greco 01:16, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
It's a TV show. While it definitely was of importance to Miami (as you have noted), its impact on Florida as a whole was minimal. The fashions the show inspired didn't affect Florida any more than the rest of the country. As for filming, while there was a good deal of location filming in Florida, most of the film work was in California, where the entertainment industry is a bigger deal. If there is a consensus here (at WP:Florida) to raise it, I'm not going to oppose it, but I think it is unlikely to occur. It's simply not a higher priority than most of the Florida-centric articles. Horologium t-c 01:56, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Agreed! High importance ratings should go to articles about major aspects of Florida, and a TV show just doesn't make it. -- Donald Albury 03:11, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Horologium, Miami Vice filmed on location in Florida. Never in California. No scenes or episodes were filmed in California. (Unless you have a source that says other wise). The only thing that was done in California was the writing and scripting, but no filming. Everything else was done in Florida and Miami. El Greco 23:14, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
I stand corrected. IMDB says that the studio (where most of the filming would be done) was in Miami, but it also lists Hollywood and Los Angeles as shooting locations. And the Museum of Broadcast Communications, whose link is at the bottom of the page, says Executive producer Michael Mann insisted that significant portions of the program be shot in Miami, which helped to give Miami Vice its distinctive look, which at least implies that not all of the filming was done in Miami. It is neither here nor there, however; the show is not all that important to the Florida WP, which is why I dropped it to low. Horologium t-c 01:02, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Interesting information, contrary to what I've know and read, but oh well. I tried. El Greco 02:38, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I rewrote both Mary McLeod Bethune, bringing it to GA status, and Rosewood Massacre. For what it's worth, I think Mary McLeod Bethune should stay high importance. If you demote Rosewood Massacre, I don't think it shouldn't be any lower than mid. Others may disagree. --Moni3 (talk) 13:19, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I went through yesterday and demoted/promoted/classed a bunch of articles, but excluded the two items you worked on. As I originally stated, I think the Mary McLeod Bethune article could be justified as a High-importance article, so I will leave it there. The Rosewood Massacre will be switched to Mid-importance. Horologium t-c 13:53, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

In working on Marjory Stoneman Douglas' article, it occurs to me that Mid is too low for her. I suggest High for WP:Florida and Top for WP:Miami. I will continue to work on it, but strongly suggest it be reassessed.--Moni3 (talk) 02:16, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Agree. Her 1947 book on the Everglades changed Florida's (and the nation's) perception of the Everglades as a swamp that needed to be drained and developed to a state and national environmental treasure that desperately needed ( and still needs) to be preserved, protected and restored in order to save the environment of South Florida. clariosophic (talk) 03:40, 20 December 2007 (UTC) clariosophic (talk) 03:42, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Meetup/Miami 2.

The meetup in Miami was originally planned for August/September, but we'll probably be having it around January. Feel free to participate in the planning (exact date/place not decided upon) if you're interested. · AndonicO 23:11, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Burger King advertising and products

Recently these two articles were demoted to low importance in regards to the Florida and Miami Wikiprojects by a member of these projects; The question is why? These articles, spun off the Burger King article, have a major relation to the state of Florida. Here are a couple of reasons I think you should reconsider this:

  1. General - Both BK and Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, its advertising agency of record, are based in the Miami area. Both have have national and global standings, employ thousands of people in the South Florida region and contribute significantly to its economy with their output.
  2. Products - BK is is one of the largest fast food companies with a major impact on global market. How it adjusts its products to that market is part of the focus of the Burger King products article.
  3. Products - BK, like the rest of the fast food industry, has been part of the focus of national and global debate over health, nutrition and obesity. Its products have been the object of political and private scorn in relation to this.
  4. Advertising - BK and Crispin, Porter + Bogusky have gained signifigant notoriety in the public and professional press in regards to its advertising.
  5. Advertising - The ad programs have garnered significant cultural impact in the United States. Honestly think about the ads, they tend to stick in the mind, weather you want them to or not. The creepy King character is every where it seems- internet memes, viral advertising like the video games BK puts out and showing up in popular shows like the Tonight Show. BK's slogans have also done that- Who hasn't heard Have it Your Way at some point in their life. Ask people who grew up in the 1970s if they have heard the BK jingle, many can think of it fairly easily.

Just a quick request for members of the project to take a look and see if the demotion was warranted.

- Jeremy (Jerem43 (talk) 07:21, 18 November 2007 (UTC))

I was the editor in question, as per my note the above section. While I agree that Burger King's products and advertising are of importance in their field, their importance as it relates to Florida is far less significant. Note that the both articles are Top priority in WikiProject Companies, and High in WikiProject Miami and WikiProject Food and Drink. (For the record, User:Jerem43 was the one who chose those importance categories, in one case changing it from its original categorization to a higher one.) Prioritization is useful as an aid to improving articles under the purview of the project, but I would think that an article on, for example, Gainesville, Florida is more important to WikiProject Florida than advertising campaigns and product offerings of a single company. (Note that I did not lower the priority of the main Burger King article, only the two sub-articles.) Horologium t-c 13:19, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
  • While Burger King itself might qualify for a High importance rating, I doubt that the spin off articles do. I doubt that the average reader even associates Burger King itself with Florida. Disneyworld, for instance, certainly is associated with Florida and I don't see that it even has an importance rating. clariosophic (talk) 13:28, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Assessment-the sequel

I went through today and added importance assessments to many articles that were missing them, and changed a few (mostly down, a few upward slightly). I added two articles to "High" importance: Seminole and Labor Day hurricane of 1935. I am fairly confident that most people will agree that those two articles are at least High importance for Florida.

My feeling is that anything that appears in the template ({{Florida}}) should be at least Mid importance. (If they are not at least Mid-importance, they shouldn't be on the template.) With that in mind, I went through and added all 67 counties and all of the state regions to "Mid" importance. Note that 64 of the 67 counties have articles that have not been assessed for quality; the three SE Florida counties were assessed by the people at WP:Miami. A quick look at a couple of the articles tells me that most of them are going to be no better than "Start" class. Take a look at the article for the county you live in and give it some love; only the Miami-Dade article is a "B" class; the other two are start class. If you don't work on the article, at least give it an honest assessment.

We have over almost 1,400 articles with the WP banner that are not assessed for either quality or importance, and over 4,100 that have not been assessed for importance (out of a total of 4,330 articles). Horologium t-c 22:25, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, you've inspired me. I've started working through articles I've touched. I was reluctant at first to judge my own work, but so far everything I've rated has low importance and is stub or start class. Is there someplace that sets some standards for start class vs. stubs? The assessments I see overlap a great deal. -- Donald Albury 03:34, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I know what you mean about assessing one's own work; only with articles that were obviously stub or start class did I fill in the assessment. AFAIK, there are no one set of standards, although some of the other projects have standards for articles under their purview (I think WP:Biographies has a set of standards, which would be pretty useless on non-biographical articles), but I think it's basically a judgment call. I tend to concentrate on city articles, and I think that any article that has more information than was put in by RamBot in 2004 is start-class. Any settlement without an infobox is likely to be a stub. Anything that is unreferenced is either a stub or start-class at best. As for importance, I think bios of persons who are not known for their Florida connections are low-importance, regardless of how noteworthy they may be otherwise. I knocked Zora Neale Hurston down to low, despite her literary significance, because much of her work was done elsewhere. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, on the other hand, stayed at "Mid" because she was a Floridian her whole life, and her books took place in Florida settings.
If you are feeling up to it, can you take a look at List of Florida state symbols? I spent a good deal of time piecing that together, and I'd like to get it assessed and sanity-checked, because I think it might be another Featured List candidate. (We seem to have a knack for featured lists in this project.) Thanks. Horologium t-c 03:51, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
You know, Rawlings was already an author before she moved to Florida (she originally wrote Gothic novels, although not very successfully, if I remember correctly) at age 32. It is true that she is famous for her Florida novels, but much of Thurston's work was also set in Florida, including what is probably her best known work today, Their Eyes Were Watching God. I'll try to look at the list tomorrow. -- Donald Albury 04:17, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Although Rawlings was born in Washington DC and lived in the North until 1928, I don't believe Rawlings wrote gothic novels. I think that was in the movie Cross Creek. I rewrote Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' article, and she wrote for newspapers before she moved to Florida. When she arrived, her instant connection to the land inspired the stories and novels. However, I don't believe Hurston's or Rawlings' importance level should depend on how long they lived in the state, or the fact that they weren't natives, but the impact their works had on how Floridians and outsiders viewed Florida, and their books' reflection of Florida culture. In this line of thinking, I think both authors should be rated high in the Florida project. Both authors captured a cultural essence of rural Floridians, and both authors' book are being studied today. --Moni3 (talk) 04:26, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm not averse to moving Hurston back up to Mid (which is what you originally set), but I would be opposed to "High". At least with those two, the priorities were set by a member of the group with valid justification. unlike most of the ones that I have demoted so far, Hooters being listed as a top priority being the quintessential example. Horologium t-c 14:19, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm right there with you on demoting Hooters if it doesn't impact the economy or culture of Florida in a dramatic way, say the way that Disney has done. In reading a book about Everglades National Park for that article, I read in it a portion of Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. The author of the Everglades book made the point that Hurston's description of the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane was the best one written from that time period - there was a deliberate attempt to downplay the disastrous effects of the storm to avoid dissuading visitors and investors to the state, going so far as to reject aid and assistance from other parts of the country. The book I was reading was published in 2006, so clearly Hurston's work has had some far-reaching impact. I'm considering Rawlings and Hurston's impact on literary Florida as well. When one considers books about and authors from Florida, these names are in the top 5. --Moni3 (talk) 14:33, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
I learn something new every day. I had always heard that the State motto was "In God we trust", but I hadn't realized that it was not officially adopted until last year. Anyway, the looks looks very nice and thorough. -- Donald Albury 14:22, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
After you mentioned that, I submitted the list for DYK, and it was selected. I added it to the list for the project. Horologium t-c 20:28, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to see if we can come up with a few agreed-upon standards for importance. I have been tagging all general-aviation airports (small planes) as Low importance, as well as all schools, malls/shopping centers, and pop-culture and sports figures (such as an obscure band from Orlando, or a little-known golfer). I'm not sure how to handle cities—should we have a cut-off between Mid and Low? Right now, the only incorporated cities/towns that are prioritized are the 25 largest (the ones on the template), they are all top/high/mid. Should we make all of the other cities low, or should we have a population threshold of some sort? For example, Largo, Florida—Mid or Low? Obviously, certain cities will fall outside that envelope (Pensacola, Florida and St. Augustine, Florida), but how shall we handle the bulk of the (unremarkable) cities? As for unincorporated communities, they should all be low. Horologium t-c 18:19, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

We are now down below 1,000 articles without quality assessments (968 right now), all of which are also unprioritized. However, we still have over 2,500 articles with assessments that have not been prioritized; the vast majority of these are cities, towns, villages, neighborhoods, CDP's, and various other types of settlements. I would like to suggest that any settlement with fewer than 25,000 people should automatically be prioritized as "Low"; coming up with a blanket determination like that will expedite the prioritization process immensely. We can hash out the 25,000-~80,000 population places later. I will wait a day or two, and will take a lack of comments as assent to my suggestion. Horologium t-c 02:21, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I've arbitrarily used 50,000 as a cutoff between 'mid' and 'low' (just a few cases so far), except that I did rate Key West as 'mid' for historical reasons (it was once the largest city in the state). One issue is how many places fall between 25,000 and 80,000 population. It does deserve more discussion. -- Donald Albury 02:35, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I did the same for St. Augustine, for obvious reasons. I figured that the medium-sized cities (25,000+ up to about 85,000, where the cutoff is for inclusion on the template) would be the most contentious, so I thought I'd try to clear out the non-controversial ones first. A quick look (and sort) of the Census Bureau's 2006 data (for incorporated places only) shows that there are 83 cities, towns, and villages in the state with more than 25,000 people. I'm not sure about CDP's, but there were 8 with more than 50,000, so we might guess a total of 100 cities/towns/villages/CDP's with more than 25K, plus a few special cases (Key West has 23K, St. Augustine 12K). Is that too many to include in the Mid-priority section? I'm open on that, and it's possible that it might be decided to bump the templated cities from Mid to High priority. Horologium t-c 03:29, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
One thing we might consider is the proportion of the number of articles in the importance categories to each other. As of now, there are about 5 'high' articles for every 'top' article, roughly 5 'mid' articles for every 'high' article, and about 5 'low' articles for every 'mid' article. Of course, more than 3/4ths of the articles have not been rated yet, and almost all of the unrated ones will be 'low'. I don't think we should set quotas, but I think a system that exhibits similar proportions between levels of importance will capture something about what the levels mean. So maybe we should look at whether we want to promote the importance ratings of some articles. On the other hand, maybe we have a lot of articles that really don't reach even 'low' importance. -- Donald Albury 04:05, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Assessment--Florida Roads

While doing assessment patrolling, I discovered that there are 59 (yes, I counted them) Florida state roads that are part of WP Florida and WP Florida State Roads. Unlike the other subprojects of WP Florida (for Jacksonville, Miami, and Tampa), the Florida State Roads WP template has a link directly to WP Florida, and notes that it is a child of this project. I'd like to see if we can come up with a consensus to remove these articles (and any others that I may have missed) from WP Florida's tracking, since they are already marked with a template with a link to this project. FWIW, almost all of them are stubs (the rest are Start-class), so it is not like we are losing much in the way of useful content by jettisoning them from the project. Horologium t-c 02:13, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Articles with no WPFL template

While working my watchlist, I've been stumbling across articles that should be in this project, but had not been templated, so I decided to make a little survey. Out of 32 articles in Category:Ghost towns in Florida, five did not have {{WPFlorida}} on their talk pages. That suggests that there are 1,000 or more articles out there that could be added to the project. -- Donald Albury 12:06, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

And out of 12 articles in Category:Geography of Florida, 8 did not have the project template. -- Donald Albury 12:42, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Gahhh. I was going to wait until the assessments were done before addressing the scope of the project, which seems (to me) to be a little bit too large, given the small base of (active) contributors. I went through some of the other states, and found only three states with truly enormous scopes—California, Illinois, and Texas, each with over 10,000 articles. There are a few states that have numbers similar to ours, such as Pennsylvania and Minnesota; most states appear to have fewer than 2,000 articles. A lot of the low-importance articles might be candidates for removal from the project (not cities/towns, but things like neighborhoods, individuals (How many WP Florida members are going to work on Ron Zook now?), and non-historic buildings (many WP Miami buildings are also included in the scope of WP Florida). We might also set up task forces for clusters of articles that don't have their own project (Orlando, University of Florida, FSU, for example) or Florida based sub-projects for stub-heavy topics (Florida parks, Florida cities, Florida schools, Florida malls, Florida bridges). Horologium t-c 13:07, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree, the scope is large but, I still think it's mostly valid. I do wonder if it really makes sense to have so many "sub-projects" such as WPMiami, etc. Perhaps we can merge all the projects into this one and make those task-forces. (If this is how it was in the past, then please excuse my historical ignorance). --Kimon 14:20, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of the opposite—farming out some of the articles in the main project to the descendant projects. For example, there are 133 articles identified as "Low" priority in WP Miami. While some of these articles are not tagged for WP Florida, many of them are. If something is tagged as low-priority in a localized project, it probably is not at all important in the parent. An example of an article I just prioritized: Opa-locka (Tri-Rail station). Does this really merit being tracked by WP Florida? How about Lavilla School of the Arts (Jacksonville, Florida)? (WP:Tampa seems to be a bit more focused: few of their less-important projects are listed under WP:Florida as well.) Schools, malls, and local roads are all things that may merit mention in Misplaced Pages and tracking by a localized project (or a specialized one such as WikiProject Schools), but not a statewide project.
In reference to whether the descendent projects were ever task forces, I cannot find any discussion that indicates that was the case, but all three of them are relatively new: WP Tampa, the oldest of the three, just had its first birthday last week, and Miami dates to December of 2006. The Jax project started at the end of September, 2007.
Part of the problem with establishing task forces is identifying editors who are still active in the WikiProject and actually willing to collaborate. Over the past couple of months, I have posted several discussions here on collaborative efforts; most have been met with either deafening silence or one or two people willing to help. For a project which lists 98 members (I deleted several banned editors, and two who had zero contributions anywhere in Misplaced Pages) there is very little collaborative activity here, which saddens me. Maybe we need to see how many people are still active here. Horologium t-c 18:16, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I wonder how the other state and local projects handle things...
The way I see it though is that we're splitting hairs. If we continue to have a WPFlorida as the parent project acting as a catchall for all things Florida, while having the sub-projects of WPMiami, WPTampa, WPFlorida roads, etc. then in effect we have task-forces with a different name. I'm ok either way, I just don't want to end with a bunch of specialized projects which would then make WPFlorida irrelevant. --Kimon 18:57, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I took a brief look at two projects that are roughly the same size as ours, WikiProject Minnesota and WikiProject Pennsylvania. WP:MINN has only two daughter projects, one of which doesn't seem to have much in the way of structure (the one for the Twins). The Vikings project, though, is well-organized. It appears that some of the articles about the team itself are categorized under both WP:Vikings and WP:MINN, but only two of the player/coach articles are (one of those is about a former player who is now a justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, the other is on Bud Grant). For WP:PA, I looked at the Philadelphia project articles, and it appears that things such as SEPTA/PATCO stations, schools, musicians, city neighborhoods, historic buildings and sports venues are not covered by the state project. Horologium t-c 19:41, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Thinking on this, I decided to see what might be entailed. Working from List of high schools in Florida (which may or may not be complete), I count 117 articles about high schools in South Florida, 61 articles in the Tampa Bay Area, and 32 in Greater Jacksonville. Of the 117 articles in South Florida, 32 are currently claimed by this project and 56 are claimed by the Miami project, with almost no overlap. (Not relevant here, but St. Andrews in Boca has an Alabama project template, and Archbishop Curley-Notre Dame in Miami has a Texas project template, go figure.) Anyway, it looks like it would be worthwhile handing off schools to the city projects. -- Donald Albury 02:52, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Should we simply remove our template, or should we add the appropriate subproject's template when we remove ours (assuming that it isn't already assigned)? And I talked to the editor who added the inappropriate state templates, and he removed them with an "oops"; apparently he was doing a cut-and-past run and got a little sloppy. Horologium t-c 17:29, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm tempted to add their template as I hit the articles. I have also been adding the schools template when I edit the talk page of a school article. The schools project was quite insistent a while back that every school was notable enough to have an article, so I think they should have every school article tagged for their project. -- Donald Albury 21:25, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
While assessing the stubs for priority (almost all are low, as expected), I noticed a *lot* of National Register of Historic Places stubs. Did you realize that there are over 900 articles just in Florida? No wonder we have so many stubby articles...between those, equally stubby state parks, schools, and malls, it's a wonder we have room in the project for any important stuff. Horologium t-c 22:46, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
I think state parks ought to be kept, but most of that other stuff could be left to the city projects for the areas they cover. I've started on the high school articles (Broward is done). Let's see, K-12 schools, malls, neighborhoods, city/county parks, buildings, local streets, historic places and persons notable only for activity/events with a local area could be left to the city projects. that may pare it down a little. -- Donald Albury 00:05, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
A couple of the articles I found are for CDPs (although how a place that was designated a CDP in 2000 can be a ghost town, I don't know). Some of the articles are as short as one sentence, with no sources. It may well be that many of the stub articles could be consolidated into more comprehensive articles (Geography of Florida or Geology of Florida, for example), and some, such as Dalhousie Meadows, could be nominated for deletion (I'll look at doing that later today). -- Donald Albury 20:18, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Arbitrary Break

I'm been around, but mainly stick to Tampa-related articles since I don't feel comfortable mucking up entries on subjects in which I'm not at least somewhat knowledgeable. I'd be happy to do a little importance rating, tho. Zeng8r (talk) 18:23, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Two more categories that I'd like for discussion: How should we prioritize newspapers and commercial airports? Florida has nine newspapers in the top 100 (St. Pete, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Tampa, Orlando, West Palm Beach, Jacksonville, Sarasota, and Daytona Beach). We also have 21 airports with scheduled service (Skybus Airlines started service to Punta Gorda and St. Augustine earlier this year); should they be listed as Mid importance? Horologium t-c 21:16, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

  • Replies to various things:
    • List of Registered Historic Places in Florida. I work on NRHP in many other states and Florida is unique in having an article created for every single place listed in the state. Most are stubs and I 've spent a lot of time expanding ones that I'm familiar with or which are in my one or more of fields of interest: churches, especially Episcopal ones, Carpenter Gothic buildings, etc. A double treat for me is a Carpenter Gothic Episcopal church, which are fairly rare in most other states but are fairly common in Florida.
    • Ghost towns, demoted CDP's, etc. A word of caution: some of these may appear to be worthless. A case in point is Port Mayaca, Florida in my home county. I found a one line article saying it was a CDP (it's not and has never been to my knowledge). Someone had had a second line stating that there was nothing there. After I had redone the article, I found that the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane is being groomed for GA status or whatever, and since Port Mayaca was involved in that Hurricane I was able to tie the two together. This brings up another point. A lot of Florida history is written with tunnel vision. The Hurricane of 1928 seems to have been treated from a West Palm Beach perspective, because that's were the newpapers were and are today. There was and is much attention on two segregated mass graves dug in West Palm for victims from the Glades, while ignoring the largest mass grave in Port Mayaca, which I think was not segregated, but I need to do more diggings on that point.
    • Sub projects such as the Miami one. I have learned to avoid editing articles in that one even though I may have some expertise. University Park, Florida, for example, started out as a CDP article, but because Florida International University's main campus, (called the Tamiami Campus when I took a course there), is located in it and is now called the University Park Campus. The article now starts out: University Park is the main campus of Florida International University and goes on to duplicate information in FIU's main article, but some of the editors seem to think it's their article and resent outside contributions.
      • You mentioned Philadelphia's project. I've experienced the same thing there with some of their editors resenting outside editing. They forget that an article on an historic Gothic Revival Episcopal church that's on the NRHP, for example, is going to be of interest to multiple projects and the fact that it's located in their city may not be that important. Anyway there needs to be more co-operation among projects.

Okay, so it's pretty clear we should remove the FL template when there is a sup-project that can take care of it, but I'm not clear on what to do for articles where there's not. Remove it anyway unless they are pretty important to the state?--Cúchullain /c 21:57, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm uncomfortable with orphaning articles from projects. I realize that slapping a project template on an article probably won't make any difference in the quality and fate of the article, but we ought to at least try to keep track of what's out there. I think we are faced with the maintainability problem (will Misplaced Pages hold up under the weight of all those poorly written and unmaintained articles?) Maybe we need to talk about what we will do with articles, and even whole categories of articles, that we cannot maintain and that will likely never reach any level of acceptable quality. -- Donald Albury 22:24, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't want to remove tags from articles that aren't covered by a subproject either. I have a suggestion that might reduce the absurd number of stubs we have for state parks and historical sites—how about if we consolidate them by county (Florida State Parks in Alachua County, for example, or NRHP sites in Alachua County)? By doing that, we can always add {{seealso}} links to full articles if any of them grow enough to warrant a separate entry. As I noted earlier, there are over 900 NHRP articles in Florida, and 161 articles in Category:Florida state parks. Reducing them to 67 articles would reduce the load considerably. Only about half a dozen of the articles are above start class, and most of the start class entries are on the borderline; I have found only a handful that had anything more than a couple of lines of text, and most of them are unreferenced and have the same boilerplate data about opening and closing times. The best state park entry is Wekiwa Springs State Park, which (despite the grade given by an involved editor, is a start-class article, because it is totally unreferenced). There are a few NHRP articles that are quality pieces, like Castillo de San Marcos, which can be maintained as a separate article. Any support/oppose on this? Horologium t-c 22:43, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Sounds feasible. School articles are another problem. There are a lot of them, there is the potential for a great many more, and they are almost totally useless. Getting a school article deleted has proved to be virtually impossible, however. I suspect consolidating school articles would be just as difficult. Another problem I see is a tendency to create a stub for every named crossroads in the state. I'm guilty of that, myself (see Peters, Florida). -- Donald Albury 22:58, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I have somewhat mixed thoughts about this suggestion. The number you mention for National Historic Sites and Parks, 900, is so large, and most are of such modest or local significance, that it makes good sense in my opinion to combine them is some way. Doing it by county might work well. In the case of State Parks, though, I'm not sure combining them would be that helpful. True, using parks-by-county would reduce the number of needed articles down to some 40% of what we have now, but that's not really a huge saving. And, there are drawbacks. Some counties (i.e., Alachua) have many parks and others have one or none, so we would still have some very large and some very small articles. Also, I suspect many more users are looking for information about some specific park than are looking for the parks in a given county (although, admittedly, the later arrangement would be handy at times). Anyway, I'd vote to keep State Parks the way they are, but would strongly consider combining National Historic Sites and their kin into county units. Tim Ross· 13:39, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
With the state parks, my plan was to turn the articles into redirects to the specific section of the new article. (My demo article is Florida State Parks in Alachua County.) Since I have not removed any text (other than the boilerplate about park hours, which I noted is the same for all of the parks in the introduction), there is little reason to keep the separate articles. If someone does decide to create a real article on a park, we can always break it out with a {{seealso}} link. (When I get around to creating the NHRP article for St. Johns County, I will do that with Castillo de San Marcos, which is a B class article. Dry Tortugas National Park in Monroe County would also get its own article; it's a national park and on the NHRP). I'm not going to redirect anything yet, nor am I going to create any more county-level state park articles, unless there is a consensus to go forward. I don't want to do the work of creating articles if they aren't going to serve any purpose. Horologium t-c 14:43, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Some responses:
  • Minor places: The Peters, Florida article could well be merged in the Perrine article, since it's part of that city now. On other places, this needs to be done thoughtfully, though, and not arbitrarily. I do a lot of work on Nantucket, Massachusetts, which covers the consolidated town and county as well as the island. Many minor articles concerning the area have been merged into the article without any trouble. There's also a Nantucket CDP which is still a separate article, maybe that should be merged.
  • National register Places: Remove the Florida Project template. People in the National Register project will take care of them and will object if you start combining them. I have combined some NHRP articles, but only in special circumstances. One involved a church in Middletown, Connecticut that was listed. Its rectory behind it on the next street had a separate listing. Someone had done articles on both. I combined them. Remember, though, National register listings are notable by definition. clariosophic 03:41, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
I went through and removed the WP Florida template from over 200 historic place articles in Duval, Miami-Dade, and Hillsborough counties and made sure that all of those articles were tagged with both the WP:NRHP and the appropriate subproject tages (WP:MIA, WP:JAX, or WP:TAMPA, as appropriate.) I left the WP:FL template in place on a handful of really significant articles (Fort Caroline, Miami Circle, Villa Vizcaya, Ybor City), because they have relevance beyond the local area. I also removed tags from the talk pages of a bunch of articles that had been previously merged (notable or otherwise, there are several groups of NRHP articles that have been merged into simple lists.) See my proposal below for how to deal with most of the unincorporated communities. Horologium t-c 03:54, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Another issue

I discovered, while doing more assessments, that a template that was formerly used to identify photos from the Florida Photographic Collection (aka the Florida Memory Project) has been deleted because of potential copyright issues, and there are now 83 photos which are linked to it, many of which are without a usage/attribution template. Those without another template are all likely to be deleted once BetaCommandBot finds them, unless we can come up with Fair Use rationales for them. Some of them may be from before 1 January 1923, which makes them Public Domain under U.S. law, which means that they can be freely used. Others are photographs of dead people, which means that there is not a free alternative available (which is a common FU justification). Most of them, however, are not easily justified, and may have to be removed. (I have found a few that have additional rationales in addition to the deleted template; they should be safe.) A list of the images affected can be found here; these are all the images that are linked to the (deleted) {{Flphoto}} template. Horologium t-c 17:22, 27 November 2007 (UTC)


Somebody needs to email/call the Florida Memory Project and ask their opinion on the use of photos in their collection on wikipedia, then create a new fair use template (using the deleted templates's name) reflecting that opinion, imo. It's very difficult to tell copyright and other ownership information from their website. Zeng8r (talk) 17:31, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately, it's not a matter of opinion (FMP or otherwise); it's a legal issue, and that is why WP is so cautious about the use of copyrighted images. One successful lawsuit would bankrupt the foundation and kill the project. The Florida Memory Project may be all for usage of their images on Misplaced Pages, but the holders of the copyrights on non-free photos may feel otherwise. It's not likely, given the nature of that project, but law is seldom about the rational. Horologium t-c 17:38, 27 November 2007 (UTC)


I know; I mean we whould ask if they have the ability to grant permission for use, and if not, if they could direct us to the actual owner of an image. I've searched in vain for copyright info on more than one of the photos from that collection. It's a shame that this in an issue, because they have some great and irreplaceable photos. Zeng8r (talk) 18:32, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Revised scope

Since the discussion above on articles without a WPFL template has become a discussion on scope I figured we could have a dedicated section for this. It appears that we're saying that this project should focus on Florida articles that are too generic for county/city (sub)projects. I guess that does indeed leave articles like state parks, state politics, state history, etc. What other areas are left? --Kimon 02:26, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Cities, counties and regions; universities; significant biographical figures; national forests and wildlife reserves; geographical features; and everything that would be covered by a regional WikiProject if it existed (IOW, everything outside of Jax/Tampa/Miami), in addition to all of the things you have mentioned. There are plenty of article classes under the scope of this project that shouldn't be (and aren't going to be) pawned off on the descendant projects. There are still 2902 articles (!) that have not been assessed for importance in WP Florida; 859 have no assessment at all, quality or priority. (We had over 4100 last week, but a couple of us went on an assessment spree.) We have a total of 4,281 articles, and only 23 have made it to GA or FA status. Only a handful of states have more than 2000 articles in their projects; the ones with smaller article loads seem to have more FA and GA articles. Horologium t-c 04:50, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Unincorporated Communities

Donald Albury noted (above) that we have an inordinate number of small communities with stubs that are unlikely to ever grow into full articles. I thought about the idea of combining them into articles by county (like I have proposed with state parks and NRHP sites), because there are few counties that have a huge number of unicorporated areas; some of the most populous counties, such as Broward County, have been busily annexing all of the unincorporated zones into cities, so there are few left, and the less-populous counties have never had more than a handful of unincorporated places. If we could modify the maps made by arkybot to highlight all of the unincorporated communities on a single map for each county (with different colors for each community/CDP), that would be even better. Any thoughts, and do we have anyone who can work on the maps? Horologium t-c 02:40, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Newspapers

I just realized that many articles about Category:Newspapers published in Florida do not have a project template, including all of the biggest six other than The Miami Herald. It doesn't look like many of the ones with templates have been rated for importance. So, do any newspapers rate above 'low'? Do we want to even include weeklies and advertisers? -- Donald Albury 04:25, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I've made sure that all of the daily city newspapers in the category are tagged for the project. I did not add project tags for weeklies, free papers or student papers. I did classify all of the tagged articles as 'low' in importance, except for The Miami Herald, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Orlando Sentinel, Tampa Tribune, St. Petersburg Times and Florida Times-Union, which I left unclassified. I lean toward marking those as of 'mid' importance, but am not insisting on it. Again, do we want the weeklies (and monthlies) in the project? -- Donald Albury 12:22, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
I am of the same opinion on the larger papers, but note that The Palm Beach Post, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, and Daytona Beach News-Journal are also among the 100 largest newspapers in the country, and suggest that all nine should be included as 'Mid'-importance. Advertisers are non-notable, and (IMO) should be tagged for deletion, not tagged as part of the project. I'm neutral on the other weeklies, but definitely agree that if they are included, they should be of low importance. Horologium (talk) 14:17, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
I was just coming to add The Palm Beach Post to my list. I would say that being in the top 100 in the country is a good criteria. If no one objects in the next day, let's do it. -- Donald Albury 14:46, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
I was bold and made the change for the last three. Horologium (talk) 19:59, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
And I just did the top 6. With The Miami Herald rated, all 'B' articles now have an importance rating. -- Donald Albury 22:26, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Airports and sports

One of the frequent classes of uncategorized articles I have been encountering is airports. While I have been tagging all of the general aviation (small plane) airports as low-importance, what about the larger ones? We have 21 airports in Florida with scheduled airline service, from St. Augustine Airport and Charlotte County Airport, both served by a single startup airline, to three behemoths in the top 25 (Orlando International Airport, Miami International Airport, and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport), which each serve over 20 million passengers. Should they all be Mid-importance, Low-importance, or should there be a clear-cut demarcation between the two priority levels? If so, what will it be?

We also have the issue of sports teams and arenas. I have been marking all of the arenas/stadia as low-class (even biggies like Dolphin Stadium, Ben Hill Griffin Stadium and BankAtlantic Center). And IRT professional sports, we have only one article tagged, for the Jacksonville Jaguars. I'm torn between removing it from the project (it's part of WP Jacksonville too) or adding all of the other pro teams. If we farm them out to the various subprojects, what do we do with the Orlando Magic, who don't fall under the cognizance of a daughter project? (Maybe we need a WP:Orlando!) If we add them, what priority should they be? My guess is low-pri, but YMMV. Horologium (talk) 00:00, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Politicians

I just added Mel Martinez and Bill Nelson to the project, and since they are our sitting US Senators, rated them of 'mid'-importance. I left Bob Graham unrated for importance. I would tend to also rate him as of 'mid'-importance, as he has served as both governor and US senator, but I think we need to set some criteria for the importance of state politicians (always allowing for individual contributions to and effects on the state). -- Donald Albury 13:54, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I noticed last night that only three of all 20-something Florida senators were part of the project (you added two more), and realized that there are a frightening number of biographical articles that are not tagged. Take a look at the list of governors, and you will understand what I mean; Graham is the only one of the last ten governors with a WP Florida tag. I shudder to think of what we'll find if we start going through the list of congressional reps. Additionally, I have (personally) encountered several articles that are about state-level representatives and senators that are in the project; I still have no idea how many of those we'll encounter, but I'm sure that there are dozens more in the (shrinking, but still huge) list of unassessed articles. Horologium (talk) 14:05, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
Bob Graham should qualify as Mid-importance, because of his time as a governor, senator, and his run for the presidency (from what I understand, he was considered as a serious contender for the role of VP as well). I don't think that either Martinez (a first-term senator) or Nelson (barely into his second term) qualify as Mid-priority, which smacks a bit of recentism. I'm not going to change them, though, unless we can come up with standardized criteria by which to categorize biographical figures. Horologium (talk) 14:11, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
It will be complex. I just added Napoleon B. Broward to the project, and rated the article of 'mid'-importance, as he had so much to do with the large drainage projects that opened so much of south Florida to development. As always, that rating is open to discussion, but we will have a lot of historical figures to rate, and we have to start somewhere. -- Donald Albury 14:31, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
Heh. I had looked him up, too. I grew up in Coral Springs, which was underwater before Broward's drainage project. There is a reason they named the county after him... (grin) For the governors, I think we'll need to go on a case-by-case basis, since some of them are more important than others. (Bob Martinez is certainly less notable than, say, Jeb Bush or Lawton Chiles). Few of the senators are really important to Florida; I think Claude Pepper should be mid-priority, and Connie Mack III; most of the others (except Graham, who has already been discussed) have had much of an impact on Florida as a whole. Horologium (talk) 14:39, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
OK, I just added Spessard Holland to the project. He served a term as governor and more than 24 years as US senator. I also just added David Levy Yulee, twice US senator and principal of the Florida Railroad, which ran between between Fernandina Beach and Cedar Key. And Claude Pepper. I left their importance unrated pending more discussion. this won't be easy. -- Donald Albury 19:37, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Census-designated places (?)

I've found an article (Bryceville, Florida) that describe the place as a census-designated place, but which does not have any population figure, let alone the other stuff usually found in articles that were auto-generated from Census data. I'm not having luck finding a Census Bureau list of CDPs in Florida, so I haven't been able to verify the status. Does anyone know where to look? -- Donald Albury 00:42, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, This link lists all cities, towns, villages, and CDP's, and their population and land area in 2000. CDP population figures do not get updated yearly like incorporated places do, so it's not possible to get an estimated 2006 population.
FWIW, Bryceville is not a CDP, but simply an unincorporated community, as it is not on the list. The {{Nassau County, Florida}} template at the bottom of the page for Bryceville is correct, as it notes Bryceville as a community, not a CDP. There is no population data available at all for Bryceville. Horologium (talk) 00:50, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the lookup. Article fixed. -- Donald Albury 01:31, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Peer review process?

Not sure if there has been a peer review process for WP:Florida, but I've been working on Everglades National Park, and I'm interested in nominating it for GA or FA. After using the FA's Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, and Yosemite National Park as guides, I built up the references and information in the article. If anyone would care to give it some suggestions before I nominate it, I'd appreciate it. Thanks. --Moni3 (talk) 03:46, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I took a cursory look at it, and you've done some impressive work. It's almost certainly ready for GAC. However, the handful of redlinks in the article might be a stumbling block, and they definitely will be an issue for FAC. I am frankly shocked that The Everglades: River of Grass is a redlink; that really needs an article. The redlink for no-wake zone can be fixed with a stub explaining the term, with a nod towards its effects on manatees in particular. The others could probably be delinked as not terribly notable.
The article is comprehensive enough that we might consider redirecting Everglades to this one. Yours is far better referenced, with a broader scope of coverage. Just a thought.
It has been my experience that peer review through a WikiProject (any of them, except Biography) tends to be a scattershot, hit-or-miss affair. You might want to try the centralized peer review process at Peer review, which usually provides a more accurate and comprehensive assessment for large-scale projects like this article. I don't feel qualified to provide you with a reliable assessment, but the WP:PR people will be able to review it dispassionately. Horologium (talk) 04:36, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
I was also surprised that River of Grass is not an article. I bought the book for this article, so maybe I'll work on it in the future. Thanks for the nod to Peer Review. I'll give that a shot.
As for redirecting Everglades to this article, I don't know. There is a lot more information and controversy about restoration of the Everglades that goes beyond the National Park. Perhaps Everglades should be a WP:Florida concentration. Thanks again. --Moni3 (talk) 04:44, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree. As the park covers perhaps one-quarter of the original Everglades, the park article has too narrow a focus for the Everglades as a whole. I'll try to review the article later today, although I'm glad to see you use Tebeau as a source. -- Donald Albury 11:58, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Everglades National Park is nominated for a featured article. Your comments are appreciated. Find it here --Moni3 (talk) 20:35, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Ybor City article

There's a lot of heated discussion concerning the Ybor City article, with debates about content, style, mergers, etc. doing on at the same time. There has been some input from editors knowledgeable about Tampa, but not enough (imo), and I've been the only wikiproject Florida member involved at all.

Your 2 cents (or maybe even a whole quarter) is requested, please... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zeng8r (talk • contribs) 17:42, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

A partially-updated new Ybor City#history section has been posted. Local input would be much appreciated!... Zeng8r (talk) 21:26, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

WP Meetup in Miami next next Saturday

  In the area? You're invited to
   Miami Meetup 2
  Date: Saturday, January 12, 2008
  Place: Bayside Marketplace, 3:00PM EST
  Miami Meetup 2

Hope you can come! - Jameson L. Tai 04:55, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

SFWMD

I just created the stub article on South Florida Water Management District. It's huge, and I'm intimidated. Your assistance is invited. --Moni3 (talk) 15:21, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Today's featured article

William Cooley is the featured article for 4 January 2008 on Misplaced Pages's main page. It is one of WP Florida's most recent featured articles, and one of only five non-list featured articles. Horologium (talk) 04:48, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Florida indef semi-protection

After another spate of IP vandalism to Florida (after semi-protection expired), I requested long-term semi-protection for the article, and it was indefinitely semi-protected. After 10 previous semi-protection episodes in the last year, it was finally recognized as a long-term vandal magnet.

Just thought the members of the project should be informed. Horologium (talk) 00:25, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

well, that sucks..... --Kimon 02:32, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Featured List of the Day

Hear ye, hear ye! List of sister cities in Florida has been selected to be a February List of the Day, to be featured some time during February 2008. See User:TonyTheTiger/List of the Day/voting/200802 for the record of voting for February featured lists. Congratulations to all who have contributed to this list. --Orlady (talk) 03:55, 23 January 2008 (UTC)