Talk:Seattle/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 5

The Statue of Vladimir Lenin

How is the statue not a political statement? Seriously, if I "saved" a statue of Adolf Hitler during World War II and put it in Seattle, how would you take it? What would you say if I told you that you had misinterpreted it as a political statement?

Living in Seattle, and more importantly going to the UW, has allowed me to get a pretty good feel for the type of people that live here. Anyone who lives here knows, that if a statue of a Hitler was erected it would be ripped down in a second (by Liberals and Conservatives alike). In addition, any statues depicting the Bible or any conservative movement would be interpreted as a political statement.

Just because we live in one of the most liberal cities in America doesn’t mean that we get to bend the rules when we don’t like how they apply to leftist statues and artwork. Come on people, let’s be honest about this...

  • Personally, I never thought of the statue in Fremont as a political statement, but as post-Soviet kitsch. However, I do think saying "it's often interpreted as..." is weasel-wordy. Veronique 20:54, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Cf. Lenin Statue and Seattle Politics, below. Combine these Lenin Statue threads into one? Make one a subset the other?

  • "Anyone who lives here knows," yet there has remained a revisionist statue of the inaccurately-represented European discoverer of the Americas, extant for goodly years now, erected to contest the honor given the earliest documented European discoverer, though the latter with a taller statue. (Never mind the spirit of Fremont view by Márquez of a European discoverer in the harbor at Hispaniola.)
--GoDot 06:53, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Phinney (Ridge)

Is the neighborhood's name Phinney or Phinney Ridge? --Lukobe 06:17, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Either, equally. -- Jmabel 06:46, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)
I've never heard anything but Phinney Ridge. But I don't live there, just near there.Atinoda 05:01, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Consolidation

I thought it made sense to combine the Events and History sections with the Founding section. It would be good at some point to figure out a natural flow to this page and make sure the sections follow it; now, each section is good but the overall structure seems a little haphazard. -- Scarequotes 16:38, May 6, 2004 (UTC)

I agree--there's lots of good content here but as an overall article it leaves a lot to be desired. --Lukobe 17:28, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

List of companies

It was probably wise of Lukobe to decide to limit businesses to those that do interstate commerce.

That said, what should the format be for using actual business names vs. familiar abbreviations? We've got Cranium, Inc. and Vulcan Inc., but the Co. after Jones Soda was eliminated. I'd vote for using the full business title in this context, but if we don't want to do that we should be consistent and get rid of the visible Inc.'s. -- Scarequotes 21:50, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

I'm in favor of using the more familiar forms of business names, personally, but I am definitely open to going the other way. Anyone else have an opinion?
Lukobe 22:29, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

History of Seattle paper

I wrote a paper on the history of Seattle. I'd like to contribute it, but I'm not sure the best way to do this.

-- Emmett Shear sarbandia@hotmail.com

The best thing you could do is to integrate in the important facts into the current article. Is the paper a history of Seattle? If it is, I would imagine you could probably include the paper wholesale in a new section titled "History of Seattle" immediately after the table of contents. If the paper is very long, you may want to look at the article on London for an example. That article has a one paragraph "History of London" section, with a link to history of London and the full version there. A history of Seattle page would be appropriate if you have enough material. -- RobLa 05:24, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I just noticed this here on Talk. I've recently added a ton of 19th century history to this page, but haven't really brought it past 1900. Emmett, you should certainly have a shot at filling in anything you consider salient that I've missed on the 19th century, but it would be great if you would start carrying the framework forward into the 20th century. Let me know what you want to do. I'll probably just get out of your way for a while. I think we are getting enough material that later we may want to cut the history material in this article back to a summary and introduce one or more History of Seattle articles (see, for example, what we've done with Romania, History of Romania, and other related articles). But first, let's get the content in, then worry about structure. Jmabel 02:03, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I see that this History of Seattle page now exists. At a quick read, some of it is valuable, some of it is redundant to material under Seattle, and I believe some of it is just wrong. I'm inclined to try to move material around more appropriately between the two articles, and try to identify factual discrepancies, unless someone else would rather take this on. I'm also posting this on Talk:History of Seattle. If no one else claims out this task by Dec 10, I'll plunge in. -- Jmabel 07:49, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Naming issues

This article really should be at Seattle since this is world known as Seattle, Washington and therefore doesn't need a disambiguating title. I'll change this later. --maveric149

Seattle now redirects here. So this is OK. --maveric149

More talk on naming issue is at Talk:Seattle

Note: that page is now at Talk:Seattle/Archive 0. Graham87 14:36, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

List of companies, part II

An anon recently added Adobe Systems to the list of companies HQ'd in Seattle. I don't believe Seattle is their HQ, although they have a large presence there. Anyway, someone might want to check this. -- Jmabel 03:36, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Adobe is not headquartered in Seattle. It's headquartered in San Jose. I'll fix it. --Lukobe 04:45, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Table of contents

Is there anything we can do about the alignment? Having the TOC come so early with those two pictures makes for a lot of white space. The TOC would come lower if the first heading began lower, I suppose...? Lukobe 05:11, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

One good solution: add more to the intro section, which is pretty skimpy at the moment. Ideally, someone should be able to read that and skip the rest of the article unless they wanted in-depth info. Much of the information from the cultural section and some select sentences from other sections might work better in a general introduction to the city. As a side benefit, more text up top would mean that the TOC would move down the page. -- Scarequotes 16:00, Jun 16, 2004 (UTC)
Good idea Scarequotes. --Lukobe 16:51, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Well, I gave it a shot. Hope it's a little bit of an improvement. The article still needs work, especially (I think) turning some of those lists into paragraphs. It currently reads a bit too almanacky. There's a wealth of information here and I think this article could be a "featured article" at some point. --Lukobe 06:08, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Shooting for Featured Article status

I think Lukobe's idea about trying to work this into a Featured Article is a great goal. Checking the featured article list shows that there are two cities with that status already: Marshall, Texas and Newark, New Jersey. They're both much more textual than Seattle is, so that's a good thing to strive for. I think we're going to have to move a lot of the content that's on the main Seattle article now to related pages -- maybe Business in Seattle, Seattle Culture, Seattle Metropolitan Area, Seattle Neighborhoods, etc. Keep the essentials, expand them into prose, and move the lists. This is off the top of my head, though, and I don't want to institute radical changes without some Seattle page writer consensus. -- Scarequotes 18:42, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)

(Copied from User talk:Lukobe and User talk:Jmabel)

Hey there, regarding WikiProject Seattle, how much further do you think we have to go until Seattle is worthy of (self-)nomination as a featured article? Thanks--Lukobe 06:50, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In re: your question about Featured Article status: I really haven't looked at the main Seattle article in a while, just assumed it is in good hands. From your question, I suppose it's time for me to take a look at it soon. (Good timing, because I just finished my paid project and may have some time on my hands the next few weeks. Unless someone hires me quick...) -- Jmabel 06:59, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)
OK, so I looked, made an edit, reverted it, and made another that I hope is seen as "friendly". It's a good article. I myself would be neutral on making it a Featured Article. Plus side: it's dense as all get-out. This must be one of the most link-dense long articles we've got. It obviously is the tip of a well-researched iceberg. Minus side: Consequently, a lot of it reads like lists instead of prose. That may simply be inevitable. Maybe some of the more list-y sections could use an introductory sentence or two of prose? Or maybe not.
Anyway, the quality is high, but Featured Article tends to go to more interesting pieces of writing, and we simply have too much material to make our top-level article all that prose-y. -- Jmabel 07:44, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)
So, the listy sections used to be actual lists, and what we currently have was an attempt to turn them into prose (though a pretty basic one). What I hear is that you think that is the weakest part of the article, and that the listy prose needs to become even more prosey! Makes sense to me. I'll add that to the WikiProject page. --Lukobe 18:52, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I think most of the offending content (the listy stuff) is in the Seattle institutions section. Perhaps we should move that section to its own page and keep a shorter, more interesting version here. IMO, we should also cut down the lead section to ~3 paragraphs as per the guidelines at Wikipedia:Lead section and bring in some more content from History of Seattle. ShadowDragon 23:01, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
So I'm wondering: should we create a separate 'arts, culture, and entertainment' page, or do we want separate pages for, say, visual art, dramatic art, music, etc.? The benefit of the latter is that that leaves MUCH more room for later expansion. I'm thinking that might be the way to go...any thoughts? --Lukobe 04:35, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
No strong objection to either approach, but the single "arts, culture, and entertainment" page lets us do something more chronological, and get something of a history of the development of the arts in Seattle over more than a century, relating the various arts to on another in their uneven progress. -- Jmabel 05:32, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)
Good point. I'm not strongly behind the more granular approach, so let's see what others have to say. (And, of course, smaller articles can still be split off the separate article if people end up wanting to write pages and pages on Seattle music. --Lukobe 17:36, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Hmm, nobody else has chimed in. I think I like your idea and may implement it in the next few days. --Lukobe 19:28, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)
OK, a good portion of the Institutions section has now been copied over to Arts, culture, and entertainment in Seattle. Time to start whittling down what's there! --Lukobe 05:12, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)

Info source

I just added a link to the Seattle Datasheet. The datasheet has a wealth of information that could be incorporated into this article. ShadowDragon 05:53, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thanks ShadowDragon, for this and for starting the WikiProject. --Lukobe 17:31, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Possible spinoff pages

I suggest moving Annexed towns, The city's neighborhoods and Sister cities to separate pages -- List of Seattle neighborhoods, for example. They could be replaced with shorter paragraph-based overviews, or just referenced in the links at the end. Any objections or better suggestions? -- Scarequotes 19:18, Jun 24, 2004 (UTC)

No objections from me. Also, the Annexed towns section really could be incorporated into neighborhood articles. --Lukobe 19:24, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Lukobe. Jwrosenzweig 19:26, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Okay, then. Done. Someone who knows more about the subjects can make them prettier. -- Scarequotes 19:58, Jun 24, 2004 (UTC)

Cultural events

Bite of Seattle a cultural event? Cover bands and food? I'd say Hempfest has a better claim. Maybe add Hempfest, maybe drop the Bite, maybe both, I don't care. -- Jmabel 20:26, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)

Well, the question is, if not under "cultural events," then where? "Fairs" maybe?

--Lukobe 21:41, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Maybe we could change the heading to "Annual cultural events and fairs"? And then expand it a little: brief mention of things ranging from street fairs to the vast number of smaller annual film festivals. (No need to itemize them, just the categories and maybe one or two representative examples in each). -- Jmabel 21:45, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)
Go for it! --Lukobe 04:13, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Staged contribution: Seattle in popular culture

This is no longer "live" 23:27, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC), moving it into the article

Television

Movies

Non-fiction

  • I Sing the Body Electronic by Fred Moody (ISBN 0788157930)
  • The Stranger Beside Me, Ann Rule's book about Ted Bundy (ISBN 0451203267)
  • Selling Seattle: Representing Contemporary Urban America by James Lyons (ISBN 1903364965)

Detective Fiction

Songs

  • "In Seattle" (theme from Here Come the Brides)
    • The bluest sky you've ever seen, in Seattle / And the hills the greenest green, in Seattle
  • "Mudshark" by Frank Zappa
    • There's a motel in Seattle, Washington, called the Edgewater Inn
  • "My Posse's on Broadway" by Sir Mix-a-lot
    • At 23rd and Union the driver broke left / Kevin shouted "Broadway! It's time to get def"
  • "Viva Sea-Tac" by Robyn Hitchcock

Is this enough to add to the article yet? -- Jmabel 19:35, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

Sure! --Lukobe 19:39, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

high points

(for reference and future inclusion)

1. High Point at 35th and Myrtle (520.7 feet).

2. Near the Bitter Lake Reservoir at Linden Avenue North and North 141st Street (508.2 feet).

3. Maple Leaf at Roosevelt and 91st (473.3 feet).

4. On Queen Anne at Lee and Warren Avenue North (470.3 feet)

5. Volunteer Park at East Aloha Street and 14th Avenue East (457.1 feet).

museums

The list is momentarily very hard to read and only contains a small selection of museums. Is there a way to replace the reference to generic museums in the first sentence with a link that displays the Category:Museums in Seattle?

Which link are you referring to? Anyway, this may not be the most kosher way, but you can always use an "external" link: museum

--Lukobe 05:43, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! I meant the sentence: "There are a number of other museums in Seattle." Yes, grumble, grumble, maybe it needs to be an external link. But that's weird! I tried to enter something like "Category:Museums in Seattle", but the whole thing only gets displayed as an empty space. Sebastian 06:00, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly what you are talking about, but maybe what you want is "[[:Category:Museums in Seattle|]]" (note the initial colon, so that it's not just saying "put this page in the category")? In general, not something we use within articles, though. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:11, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)

Meetup

O/T, but is anyone else here interested/involved in the Seattle Wikipedia Meetup? [1] Wouldn't mind having face time with other 'Pedians. - [[User:KeithTyler|Keith D. Tyler [flame]]] 19:19, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

  • We've just had one a few weeks ago, and have tentative plans to do another early in 2005. Check out Wikipedia:Meetup/Seattle. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:49, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)
  • Next one is Jan 15, 2005. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:14, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

ATT Wireless

ATT Wireless was cut completely from the article with the (accurate) remark that it "has merged with Cingular and should no longer be listed as a major company in the Seattle metropolitan area." Still, I haven't heard of any big personnel cuts, so there is presumably still a large presence here, and its origin in McCaw Cellular is important in the history of the region. Does anyone have an idea what to do with this? -- Jmabel | Talk 00:58, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

More companies

<moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (assistance)>
Companies based in Seattle: Loudeye (Internet)

Companies in Puget Sound Region: Applied Discovery(Bellevue) (Internet)


HelloBold text, My attempt to make this edit to the "Seattle" pages was unsuccessful(I think)---as you can see I am pretty clueless as how to do this, or anything else on this site. Fascinating, though, and I'd like to come back when I have time to learn things properly. But meanwhile I made this entry in hopes it might be brought to attention of someone who will follow up and place the information correctly.

My apologies for troubling you.---She
End moved text.

Cable television / cable access to Internet

I know that King County just reached a 5-year agreement with Comcast, but I believe that is just for unincorporated areas; does anyone know the current status of Seattle's renegotiation to succeed the current agreement with Comcast set to expire in 2006? This has actually been a somewhat controversial matter, and probably deserves more (here or elsewhere) than the one short sentence we have in the article mentioning that Comcast is the main provider of cable. -- Jmabel | Talk 09:39, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

Sir Mix

While not arguing either way on the merit of overtly mentioning Kurt Cobain (frankly, anyone who sees the word "grunge" and doesn't have Cobain, among others, come rapidly to mind probably won't recognize the name, anyway), I do want to object to the comment accompanying the edit dismissing Sir Mix-a-lot as a "1 hit wonder". I honestly don't know if he's had more than one national hit ("Baby's Got Back"), but around here he has been a major force for a long time on a very vital local hip-hop scene. He's frequently on KUOW as a commentator on the music industry, he is very interesting in the way he has managed in recent years to create an artist-owned way to distribute his music that, by his own account, earns him more money than a major label if he can manage even 20% of major-label sales, he has been extremely supportive of other Northwest acts, has often lent his support to political causes, and has also been uncommonly gracious in interviews about the contributions to Seattle hip-hop culture even of individuals he may no longer get along with personally, notably his ex-partner Nes Rodriguez. He's been about as positive a contributor to a local music scene as one gets. No, he may not be a big hitmaker, but in talking about Seattle and music, he's a name to be reckoned with. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:22, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)

You need to understand the difference between targeting an article for a region and globally. Sir Mix-a-lot (not knocking the guy, I've met him and he's extremely nice) is known globally as a 1 hit wonder. While he may regionally be very influential you have to realize that the residents of Seattle are not likely going to be looking up Seattle on Wiki for information. As such Kurt Cobain (who without a doubt is more widely known) who is associated with Seattle should definately be included. Amazingly there are still people who dont know who he is. I want you to realize i'm not knocking Mix's influence on your area, merely his global influence in comparison. Frankly wiki has enough drive space that 5 words "and musicians like Kurt Cobain" arent gonna screw things up any more than "rapper Sir Mix-a-lot". Lets keep them both and squash this debate, shall we? Alkivar 03:10, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
No real problem with that, though I think most of us who live here associate Cobain more with the depressed small town where he and Krist Novoselic grew up (Aberdeen, Washington) than with Seattle. Krist has now lived here long enough to be accepted as a Seattlite; Kurt didn't live long enough for that to really be the case. I don't exactly object, it's just kind of weird to be simply reinforcing an image that doesn't have much basis in reality. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:10, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)

article size

By moving parts of this article to new articles, i have parsed the size down from 45K to 37K. it'd be nice to get it under 35K, if anyone wants to try to help. Kingturtle 21:32, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wikispam?

I just cut the link to immersivevideo.com, which was listed as 360 Video of Seattle Skyline. The link is to their company site; there is, indeed (at the lower left of the page a link to a 360 video of Seattle skyline, but you need to download an unspecified plug-in to view it. I would not object to having a link to that video (not to the company's home page) with a clear statement of what plug-in you need to download. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:36, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)

RE: Wikispam?

User:Jmabel|Jmabel]] | I'm looking at their site you cut and I don't agree with your anaylsis of the link. They do say a QuickTime Plug-in is required and there is a thumbnail photo to the image and link. I don't think you can directly link to the 360 photo becuase its a pop-up. I think this site needs more content like this. Its a shame you cut it..

This comment was left, without signature, by a user named D360.
I didn't realize that the plug-in they wanted to install was just QuickTime; interestingly, their site doesn't make that clear, and the moment I saw that an unfamiliar site wanted to give me a plug-in, I said "hold it right there".
I feel that a site that puts up an admittedly cool thing in a way makes you link their commercial page in order to access it is primarily a commercial site. We usually don't link to those, but I won't scream if consensus goes the other way. What do other people think? -- Jmabel | Talk 05:14, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

sports

The previous "sports" section left the implication that the Kingdome was demolished because it had structural problems, which definitely wasn't true. (The issue with falling roof tiles wasn't "structural", and in any case that was all fixed (at great expense) well before the facility was blown up to make way for Qwest Field.) Besides fixing this, I cleaned up the main paragraph to remove some extraneous history and tighten up the timeline a bit. -ThatSeattleGuy

FAC, redux

Do people want to try for featured article status again? There weren't really any active objections at the end of the process last time, just not enough active support. (At least one person didn't understand that saying "yes, you've answered my objections" isn't considered support.) At the January Seattle meetup several people remarked that they would gladly vote for it, they just don't usually monitor WP:FAC (I don't much, either) and that if we ping them next time they'd be glad to support, assuming they consider it up to snuff. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:25, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Economy and structure (from FAC discussion)

I was going to post this on the nomination page, but decided it would be better here: "As a side note, I think we should consider removing the 'Seattle institutions' header, and promote all the sections in it, (or break the section into smaller categories) as the third and fourth level headers look so similar it gets confusing."

Also, I think if someone more familiar (than me) with the subject adds some approximate dates to the Economy subsection of the History, and re-titles it something like 'Economic history', that might make it stand-alone enuf to overcome the objections. Niteowlneils 05:29, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I also decided I didn't want to add this to the nomination page, either: "(I also think the long, rambling paragraph that basically says 'on the whole, Seattle is quite liberal' could be trimmed a lot, but don't want to try to do it myself)". Niteowlneils 05:30, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I added rough dates to the economic history and added the story about the billboard, since it's quite famous locally and is even known by some people outside the area. --Michael Snow 08:26, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Great, and nice catch on the billboard--certainly made a big enuf splash at the time. Niteowlneils 01:00, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

mayors

I see that all mention of Bertha Knight Landes and Bailey Gatzert has now been cut. This seems to me like an odd decision. Is it linked somewhere that I am missing? At least it should be a see also, no? -- Jmabel | Talk 23:01, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge, I have only moved content, without cutting anything. I moved the mayor comments to Government and politics of Seattle, Washington, but since I'm basically done trying to shrink it, I can move them back to the main page if that doesn't bump it from 34K to 35K. Niteowlneils 00:42, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
They're back, and it's still only 34K. Niteowlneils 01:00, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Comparison of topics and size with other city Featured Articles

  Sarajevo Johannesburg Newark, New Jersey Marshall, Texas San Jose, California Seattle, Washington
History Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Geography Yes Partial Yes Yes Yes Yes
Climate Yes Yes     Yes Yes
Bodies of water         text Sub-page
Demographics Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Government Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Crime   Yes     text text
Utilities         Yes Yes
Sports Yes table text   Yes Yes
Museums, etc. text   Yes   Yes Yes
Medicine           Yes
Neighborhoods Divisions Divisions Yes   Yes Sub-page
Street layout       Yes   Sub-page
Economy Yes Yes   Yes Yes Yes
Notable natives Yes   text Yes Yes Sub-page
Parks         text Sub-page
Music           text
Newspapers Yes Yes     Yes Yes
Radio Yes       Yes Yes
TV Yes       Yes Yes
Transportation Yes Yes     Yes Yes
Colleges Yes Yes text List Yes text
Schools Yes       Yes text
Libraries         Yes Sub-page
Suburbs   Yes     Link to county#cities Sub-page
Sister cities       text Yes Sub-page
City in literature       text   Sub-page
Trivia     Yes Yes    
Infobox   Yes     Yes Yes
Division box Yes       Yes Yes
Article size 32K 27K 30K 24K 50K 34K

(forgot to sign--also, congrats to everyone that contributed content to one of the most comprehensive city articles. Niteowlneils 04:59, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC))

Bad link to FAC page

Hi all... The {fac} code is directing clickers to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Seattle, Washington, the site of the December discussion. I'm not sure why the new discussion is at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Seattle instead, but since the article is titled Seattle, Washington, using the template code can only direct clickers to the wrong page... so, I added this bit of code: For the current discussion, please see Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Seattle. --Lukobe 05:16, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

Jail ref

For whatever it's worth, the info I added about the jail [besides personal experience :/] came from here. I think some Sea inmates stay at the Kent regional center, but since I'm not certain, I won't add it. Niteowlneils 02:32, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

front page feature?

Now that Seattle's a Featured Article, has anyone proposed its being featured on the front page? --Lukobe 23:27, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

Population

The official population estimate for Seattle is 572,600 as of April 1, 2004. [2] This is the figure currently used in the article, so the appropriate year is 2004. The 2005 figure will be released at the end of June. Tradnor 20:48, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think the metro population of Seattle is greatly exagerated, unless the whole of western Washington is considered to be part of Seattle.I live in Canada and i know Canadian stats for metros are more conservitive.For example, Vancouvers area is only 1000sqr mi with a poulation of 2.2 million.Seattles seems to be 10 times that,do people in Olympia realy commute to Seattle —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.66.75.0 (talkcontribs) 25 Sept 2005
Not many, but some do. Many commute from Tacoma. Any many from Oly to Tacoma. I would say that from Olympia up to Everett, and as far east as North Bend, has become a single metropolitan area, though I'm not sure it is appropriate to think of it all as Seattle's metropolitan area. The jobs are very widely spread. There are probably at least 45,000 jobs in Redmond, Washington alone; probably about 10,000 people commute from Seattle to Redmond. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:13, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Population Changes

Changed population figure to 2.4 million to make consistant with wiki article Metropolitan Area

Metropolitan Population

Seattle's metropolitan population, like San Francisco's, is difficult to determine because Greater Puget Sound is continuous but includes two urban centers (Seattle and Tacoma) and four satellite cities (Bellevue, Bremerton, Everett, and Olympia). However, Seattle is clearly the urban center for this metropolitan area, unlike San Francisco, which competes with Oakland and San Jose for this title. 15% of Greater Puget Sound's population is located in Seattle, compared to 5% for Tacoma, 3% for Bellevue, 2.5% for Everett, and 1% for Olympia. Therefore, I would argue that the 3.1 million figure is too conservative and doesn't reflect Seattle's true metropolitan area. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bigcheesebebbs (talkcontribs) 1 Feb 2006

Reverted poulation figure back to 3.1 million to be consitant withList of United States metropolitan statistical areas by population

3.1 might be too conservative? 3,763,569. (2004) according to http://www.demographia.com/db-2004metro.htm My guess is the difference between 3.1 and 3.76 might be Olympia and areas south of Tacoma? Maybe a call to quick information at the Seattle Public Library 386-4636 could clarify?

Local bands

As it stands, the list of "other local bands of note" is rather idiosyncratic, and very biased toward the present day. No mention of The Brothers Four(or really anything from the 1950s); the Wailers (or really anything from the 1960s); the Allies, the Visible Targets, or the Heaters/Heats (all local heroes from the 1980s); or even such relatively recent and relatively well-known bands as (in roughly chronological order of founding), the Fastbacks, the Young Fresh Fellows, Sky Cries Mary, the Gits, Seven Year Bitch, Harvey Danger, Modest Mouse, the Murder City Devils, Maktub, Death Cab for Cutie. (I'm sure there are many not leaping to mind equally deserving of mention.) No particular objection to Alien Crime Syndicate, The Divorce, Ruby Doe, Supersuckers, Vendetta Red, Visqueen, or Zeke, but I think those I've mentioned would merit more mention than the rest of the bands currently listed here (although there might be 2 or 3 on that current list I'm just too damned old to know about). Not to mention Quincy Jones, the Billy Tipton Memorial Saxophone Quartet, the Composers and Improvisers Orchestra, or the Degenerate Art Ensemble. -- June 28, 2005 22:29 (UTC)

I added some bands of significance and from a variety of time periods. I urge you to do the same if they belong on this page.

Time for more spinoffs

With even the Talk page now close to 32kB, and Niteowlneils having tried in vain to prune the article, clearly some topics (eg sport or culture - including some of the bands mentioned above - or government?) need to go the way of History. And even the residual History section may be unnecessarily long in view of the fact that there is a main article about it. Robin Patterson 00:16, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

  • There is an underworked Arts in Seattle article. Probably some of the arts stuff (starting with pop/rock) could easily be spun out of this into that: it would also have a better chance to grow there. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:02, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

Howard Dean & Flying Fish

Naïve question: is Howard Dean and Vanna White reference on the Pike Place Market picture vandalism or what? Nova77 03:52, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

It's been there a long time, and the Market is known for tossing fish around, so I doubt it. Oh, here, this seems to confirm it, at least for Dean--uh, oh, all the vanna ones seem to be mirrors--anyone else know (in the photo caption). Niteowlneils 04:45, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
Looks like User:ShadowDragon added them both with this edit, on 21:03, 11 September 2004. Unfortunately, they haven't made an edit since 16:37, 17 September 2004, so they only way to contact them is if they entered an email address their account can send to. Or, maybe someone could call or visit the Market PR people to verify... Niteowlneils 04:54, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
I see. I am not sure if this information would add anything to the article, though. What do you think? Nova77 22:40, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
Sometimes I think it would be shorter to get a list of celebrities who visited Seattle and didn't toss a fish. It's sort of part of the standard high-profile celebrity Seattle visit drill. I don't know for sure on Vanna, but Spike Lee filmed these guys (I think he used the footage in a Nike commercial). -- Jmabel | Talk 05:24, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

TV/Radio Stations

Are these really needed? What do they add to the artical? (anon 17 July 2005)

From what I've seen it's a pretty standard section of large cities. And Seattle actually has much less detailed info about radio stations at least than Chicago, Illinois, which has an entire list of all the area radio stations sorted five different ways in five different articles. Featured articles Mumbai#Media and San_Jose,_California#Media also have similar TV/radio coverage. Niteowlneils 06:36, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
Although if we think this has gotten too large, we might shorten this section and spin out a separate article. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:13, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

chinese suburbs

what suburb do the chinese of seattle live in. in vancouver they live in richmond.

Seattle doesn't have a particularly Chinese suburb. Even the historically Chinese area in the International District is no longer particularly residential, although it remains a largely Chinese (though increasingly pan-Asian) shopping district. Ethnic Chinese are pretty well diffused through the city and its suburbs, though there are probably more of them south of the city than north, especially among relatively recent immigrants. (The Koreans, on the other hand, are mostly north of town.) -- Jmabel | Talk 06:51, August 12, 2005 (UTC)

Koreans live North of town? There's a large population south of town, in Federal Way, for example, whole sections of Highway 99 have 90% Korean shop signs. 10:39, August 30, 2005

Yes, lots of Koreans (and pretty much all Asian ethnicities) down there, but have you been to Shoreline or Lynnwood? In any event, though my main point stands: there is nothing really comparable to Richmond, BC. -- Jmabel | Talk 16:08, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

Just the facts, Ma'am

I guess I've made my contribution- Mayor Greg Nickels was listed on the referenced page as being non-partisan. His office confirms he is, in fact, a registered Democrat, so the error was corrected.

But the Seattle mayor is Non-Partisan and not elected by party, as are all other city offices... so what's the point of adding in a party affiliation? Aep 23:50, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

The office is a non-partisan office, but the man is proudly a member of a party, and I'm pretty certain he's served in partisan offices in the past. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:26, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Jesus Christ Made Seattle Under Protest

Does anyone else know of this mnemonic to memorize most of the street names in downtown? The initial letters of streets from South to North are doubled to produce JJCCMMSSUUPP (Jefferson, James, Cherry, Columbia, Marion, Madison, Spring, Seneca, University, Union, Pike, Pine) I'm not sure of any origins for this, but I've found it valuable in determining my location downtown. Is it worth mentioning? 10:04, August 30, 2005

Might be. It's been around for a long time (I first heard it in the 1960s, before I moved here, and it was clearly not new then.) Should be easy to find a good citation for it. -- Jmabel | Talk 16:06, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
Here are some good sources to cite; I'm heading out the door, so I'm not following through: [3] good published article; [4] from Frommers; [5] on official county site. -- Jmabel | Talk 16:12, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

Apparently it's been mentioned in this article [6] 19:22, November 15, 2005

Regrades

I see that "regrading projects" was disambiguated to Denny Regrade, but the regrade around Jackson Street was of comparable (though lesser) magnitude; there might have been others I'm not thinking of right now. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:57, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I can't think of any others right now either, but the Jackson regrade was certainly substantial. Where'd the link go before? --Lukobe 05:58, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

There is vandalism interspersed throughout this article

After skimming this "featured" article I found some "bad words" that had not been caught by the previous revert. Then I scanned it again and found one more. So I decided to read it with a fine-toothed comb and found several MORE things. It should now be clean down to the section-heading "Climate." I had to stop reading because my eyes were starting to hurt reading in "edit" mode. Now it is someone else's turn to try to clean up the rest of it. 6SJ7 14:12, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Space needle photo vs. text

The text emphasizes that the Space Needle isn't downtown, but appears so in the many photos taken of it from Queen Anne that show it in front of the downtown buildings. Then the Space Needle photo in the article is ... taken from Queen Anne, and makes it look like it's downtown! How about a Space Needle photo showing all the empty area around it? Tempshill 17:38, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

What empty area...or do you mean one with Elliott Bay as the background, or Queen Anne as the background? --Lukobe 05:59, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
It's pretty clear in the "skyline" picture. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:01, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
On a good day, you can see the downtown skyline from almost anywhere in the city. It's a moot point, I'd say.Atinoda 05:15, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

billboard

Retrieved this from the article:

“Will the last person leaving Seattle — Turn out the lights”. <!-- Did the quote really have a dash in the middle? That makes nosense. -->

Yes, the quote really did have a dash in the middle. http://www.historylink.org/output.cfm?file_ID=1287 --Lukobe 05:56, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Timeline?

The recently added Twoop timeline (in the external links) strikes me as mediocre at best. Is there really any reason to keep this link? -- Jmabel | Talk 05:49, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I have replaced that link with this one from the Seattle Times. The previous one had 42 events, while this one has ~200, plus pictures. EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 06:05, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Much better. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:48, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Name origin

I found this [7] "By most accounts, Chief Seattle was a great speaker and skilled diplomat. He was born in 1786, and his real name in the Lushootseed language was See-ahth. Whites found it nearly impossible to pronounce. [...] A year later, the chief signed a treaty with the United States Government, ceding much of the area on which the city of Seattle now stands" Maybe it should be on [8] or I dunno. {sjöar}

It already is: in the intro and in the founding section. --WAvegetarian 19:22, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Oops, nevermind. I remembered seeing his name in both places, but there isn't anything about him ceding land. There is an allusion to it on his own page. --WAvegetarian 19:28, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Forbes

In 2005 Forbes magazine ranked Seattle to be the most overpriced city in the US based on median home prices and median incomes.

NOTE: The proceeding comment was made by an anon IP in the article. 9 Nov 2005

If that's accurate, why was it removed from the main article? http://www.forbes.com/realestate/2005/07/14/overpriced-cities-lifestyle-cx_sc_0715home_ls.html?partner=msn --SarekOfVulcan 02:53, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I'll restore, with citation, if no one has beaten me to it. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:59, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Gallery

I've noticed that a lot of city articles have been adding image galleries. I think we should follow suit. It's a great way to give a sense of the visual variety of a city, and especially it's a way to add pictures that give a good sense of place but are not of things article-level notable in their own right. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:05, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Or if not a gallery, at least some pictures of day-to-day life? A coffeehouse (very Seattle), one of the neighborhood shopping districts, a PCC store, Red Square at U.W. at a busy time with Suzallo in the background? A street fair or neighborhood farmers' market? -- Jmabel | Talk 22:41, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

How about flickr?--SarekOfVulcan 23:26, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I think it is fine to link to that, but what I'm talking about is a gallery of 15-20 GFDL photos at the bottom of the page itself. - Jmabel | Talk 18:59, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, that sunk in right after I posted. How about a Pike Place Market shot? If you like it, I can upload it. --SarekOfVulcan 19:11, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Decent photo, more or less the sort of thing I'm talking about. Certainly shows more of what the market actually looks like than the one, more iconic, photo we have in the article. I guess my notion would be 15-20 photos which, along with what we've already got, would give a reasonably characteristic impression of Seattle. Let's assume that the reader has a fair sense of what is common to all modern large cities: what 15-20 images of Seattle would set it apart?
I kind of got myself thinking here: there should be at least one image that shows the mountains (probably Rainier): nothing we have now conveys that. Nor does anything we have now convey that Seattle is a hilly city: we should have a photo showing one of the places where there is a staircase instead of a street, or maybe a view of Beacon Hill from the north, or something. I'd like to get a good picture that somehow relates to the music scene (maybe a picture of a street scene on Capitol Hill that incorporates a phone pole full of concert posters?); as mentioned above, a coffeehouse scene would be good; an obviously middle-class person with a backpack, or a phalanx of bicycle commuters on the Burke-Gilman (both things you see in few U.S. cities); at least one of the older school buildings, there are several over a century old; people in the fountain of Seattle Center on a summer day; probably a freeway-ramp beggar; definitely something from one of the floating-home neighborhoods. I'd also like to get a few shots that convey neighborhoods like maybe Alki, West Seattle Junction, the Pike-Pine corridor, Columbia City, Georgetown, you name it, there are many with a very different visual character from one another. And the industrial area in the Duwamish Valley.
This is adding up to more than we'd probably use on this page, so I guess some of this would probably to to Commons, but that's OK. I'm sure other people will have other thoughts, but these are some of the images that leap to my mind. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:58, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Ok, here's a couple of shots: what do you want to do with them?--SarekOfVulcan 07:41, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I started a gallery in the article with these. Let's see what else turns up. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:59, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

I think I'll go bother ChrisB. :-)--SarekOfVulcan 09:13, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

WTO

were the WTO riots really that defining of Seattle? I do not believe they should be mentioned more than once and should not show up in the 3rd paragraph...

  • I'd guess that internationally when one hears the word "Seattle" these days, at least one time in ten that is what is being referred to. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:25, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
"The WTO riots" is a framing of the debate, as defined by corporate media. WTO in Seattle is also a complex, nuanced social phenomenon that is both local and global, is grass-roots global village rather than top-down, contrasting with the corporate globalization characterized by the WTO (to use excessive shorthand to remain succinct). Wikipedia and Wikipedians need to exercise due care in avoiding newspeak of pre-digested, ulterior framing.


Careful research documents that there is far more to this topic than corporate media* reports--which Wikipedia is well-suited to address.
"I'd guess that internationally", from the first prominent delay in Geneva, 1998, Seattle demonstrably had a role in that the roll of WTO has been stalled to this day, and that vastly more important than characterizing the event as (merely sensational) riots. The vigil completely surrounding the opening gala, the simultaneous conference at Benaraya Hall, each vastly outnumbered the (initially police-instigated) riots, yet were little reported by corporate media.
_____
[asterisk] "mainstream media" in Newspeak
--GoDot 07:06, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

rain shadow

The sentence about Seattle being in the rain shadow of the Olympics was deleted. I'm putting some references here for WP:Verify and restoring it.

  • Rain map, Seattle, with under fourty inches of rain a year, is more than sequim but much less than the cascades.
  • KOMO weather explanation "If the Olympics weren't there, Seattle would probably get closer to 50-60 inches of rain a year."

Hope that's a nice enough reference. SchmuckyTheCat 20:52, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I am of Seattle I know this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Paeris (talkcontribs) 20 Dec 2005

Major Events

Should the Yukon Gold Rush of 1896-7 be included in the Major Events section? As far as I know, it was pretty big in the economic growth of the city. I really don't remember much, having only been to that little museum in Pioneer Square once...Atinoda 05:20, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

I think it would be stretching things a bit to call it a Seattle event in this sense. We mention it in the Economic history section. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:49, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Talk about internal links overload...

Although the Seattle article is great, perhaps it needs to conform to MoS a tad bit more, esp. with the density of the blue links, which is almost overwhelming. Anyway, just a suggestion. --172.199.111.194 07:27, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Not sure how we'd reduce those. With so many Wikipedians in one city, we've ended up with very thorough documentation of the city; I don't think we've written anything that doesn't merit an article, though, nor anything that isn't at least a moderately likely link for someone to want to follow. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:09, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

interlanguage links

seems like some of them have been messed up, e.g., Korean. --Lukobe 11:05, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

All is now well. --Lukobe 21:34, 1 January 2006 (UTC)