Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States History

United States History Noticeboard Skip to Table of Contents
Assessment · Collaboration · Review · Outreach · Task forces
Talk page This is the central discussion area for WikiProject United States History. Feel free discuss any topics relating to United States history here. It is recommended that members watchlist this page Collaboration of the month The collaboration of the month for November is Wikipedia:WikiProject United States History.	Peer review Current peer review requests: A-Class review Current A-class review nominations:

America

"America" is an ambiguous term. I recommend the use of United States instead. BradMajors (talk) 01:12, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Dunmore's Proclamation

In the main article pertaining to Dunmore's Proclamation, no mention is made of the effect that the proclamation had on southern colonists and the resulting incorporation of such colonists (who were formerly loyalists) into support for revolution. The primary cause for this movement was the potential loss of slaves for slave-dependent sugar and tobacco growers. I feel that this is an integral element of this chapter of history and ought to be explored in this article. I lack the historical expertise to adequately or properly incorporate this information; otherwise I would write it myself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.8.228.28 (talk) 16:36, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Userbox

Can a userbox be created which does not add the page the userbox is on to a category? BradMajors (talk) 01:15, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Ornithological?

Why does your banner {{USHistoryTalk}} claim your projects purpose is to create a "standardized, informative and easy-to-use ornithological resource"? It would make more sense to focus on US history than on the study of birds. Anomie⚔ 00:18, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

• The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
• The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
• A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 21:29, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for United States History

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:27, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

US Constitution FAR heads up

As a related Wikiproject, I'm informing you that United States Constitution has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Cheers! Zidel333 (talk) 15:29, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Middle Colonies

The Middle Colonies article is in an appalling state. In recent months, the article has been almost entirely a massive copyvio cut-and-pasted from http://school.discoveryeducation.com/teachersguides/pdf/ushistory/ul/mt13c_the_middle_colonies_tg.pdf

For some reason, the article also appears to be a vandalism magnet. Is it perhaps this years' school assignment somewhere?

I've now removed the whole thing by reverting all the way back to an older version of the article. (Note that although the current version of this article, as of the time of this comment, appears to bear a strong resemblance to the text in http://en.allexperts.com/q/General-History-674/Middle-Colonies-1.htm (dated 10/25/2007), the Wikipedia text has been taken from an earlier Wikipedia revision dated 7 June 2007, which pre-dates the publication date of the allexperts.com article.)

Even without this issue, the older version is still completely unsourced, and still reads like a school essay, paraphrase, or cut-and-paste job, although I can't currently find a source candidate. Would someone like to rewrite it from scratch? -- The Anome (talk) 01:01, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I've now trimmed this article down to a stub, for the reasons given above. Even the contents of the stub remain unverified. -- The Anome (talk) 17:19, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Northwest Territory

I've talked with a couple other users about forming a task force for the Northwest Territory, to improve articles about the U.S. Midwest regional history before state boundaries were drawn. Would anyone oppose a task force forming as a subgroup of WikiProject United States History? Mingusboodle (talk) 05:17, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I am an editor who would support this and join such a task force. I already have worked extensively on several midwestern history related articles that would fall within this scope. Charles Edward (Talk) 18:12, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I would also join this.--King Bedford I ^{Seek his grace} 18:32, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I see no objections. I propose we create a taskforce page here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_History/Northwest Territory Task Force Charles Edward (Talk) 20:40, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Manifest Destiny

This article is a good essay on the background and history of the concept of Manifest Destiny. It is often vandalized (especially during the school year), and on occasion attracts folks who wish to assert a point of view, rather than just letting the facts speak for themselves. (An example of the latter might be the recent addition in the introduction of the assertion that Manifest Destiny was used "to justify the genocide of the Native American populations"; the word "genocide" does not otherwise appear in the article.)

I have started a discussion on the talk page concerning the religious influences on the concept. A critical eye on the article itself would also be appreciated. Kablammo (talk) 13:47, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

I'll watch that page for PoV pushers, and do my best to reverse edits that push PoV. Thanks for the heads up. Dunnsworth (talk) 01:44, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 06:53, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts

This is a notice to let you know about Article alerts, a fully-automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles are entering Articles for deletion, Requests for comment, Peer review and other workflows (full list). The reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what happened, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. A certain degree of customization is available; WikiProjects and Taskforces can choose which workflows to include, have individual reports generated for each workflow, have deletion discussion transcluded on the reports, and so on. An example of a customized report can be found here.

If you are already subscribed to Article Alerts, it is now easier to report bugs and request new features. We are also in the process of implementing a "news system", which would let projects know about ongoing discussions on a wikipedia-wide level, and other things of interest. The developers also note that some subscribing WikiProjects and Taskforces use the display=none parameter, but forget to give a link to their alert page. Your alert page should be located at "Wikipedia:PROJECT-OR-TASKFORCE-HOMEPAGE/Article alerts". Questions and feedback should be left at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts.

Message sent by User:Addbot to all active wiki projects per request, Comments on the message and bot are welcome here.

Thanks. — Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 09:48, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

Question about copyright status: historical marker text

There's a question about the copyright status of text on US State historical markers. Please weigh in if you have interest at that thread. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:06, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

The historical markers in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are copyrighted and trademarked by the state. --DThomsen8 (talk) 23:49, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps Reassessment of Union_Stock_Yards

Union_Stock_Yards has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here. Ruslik_Zero 09:12, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Civil war timeline

Is there a Timeline of all the events in the civil war?198.236.11.107 (talk) 19:06, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

GA Reassessment of Mormon Trail

I have done the GA Reassessment of the Mormon Trail article as part of the GA Sweeps project. I have found the article does not meet current GA Criteria and as such I have placed the article on hold pending work. I am notifying all interested editors that this article may be delisted if it is not improved. My review can be found here. If you have any questions please contact me on my talk page. H1nkles (talk) 23:42, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Framers of the US Constitution

Framers of the US Constitution (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) is a new article that may be redundant with Founding Fathers of the United States (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). Someone please sort it out, but try not to bite the newbie! Cheers, Melchoir (talk) 08:21, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

IS THERE ANYONE STILL ACTIVE ON THIS PROJECT?

I am only asking this question since there have been no posts since June and have recently decided to begin peer reviewing and expaning upon articles in the feild of United States History. If possible I would like to revive the effort of expaning upon the selection of U.S. History articles by not simply focusing on the most well known and debated aspects of American History but instead focusing on stubs and untouched aspects of history that will provide a more thorough and complete explanation of the United States.

I have begun this task by reviewing and expanding upon George Washington's Farewell Address. Although I am happy with the content I am positive that it is need of wordsmithing, proofreading, and peer review. My hope is that one of the members of this project will join me in this project since I have failed to find a taker in the United States project.

I look forward to your contributions and criticisms. --Epignosis (talk) 08:19, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Somersett's Case the catalyst for the US Declaration of Independence???

The article says,

"Somersett's Case ... It is one of the most significant milestones in the campaign to abolish slavery throughout the world and is largely acknowledged to have been the catalyst for the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence."

To an American, this is an astonishing statement, since Americans think of the Intolerable acts and other actions of King George III and Parliament, and not of this case. I have added a fact template for this statement.

I have added {{USHistoryTalk|class=start|importance=High|attention=yes}} to call attention to the Somersett's Case article and its astonishing statement about the US Declaration of Independence. --DThomsen8 (talk) 01:46, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

GA reassessment of Jacob Riis

I have conducted a reassessment of the above article as part of the GA Sweeps process. I have found some concerns with the artcile which you can see at Talk:Jacob Riis/GA1. I have placed the article on hold whilst these are fixed. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 19:46, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

When does the generated worklist get updated?

When does the automatically generated worklist get updated? I have added both class= and importance= parameters with values to several articles listed, and added the template to other articles. So, when does the list get updated? --DThomsen8 (talk) 02:29, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Merge Perpetual Union to Articles of Confederation?

There is currently an underattended (me and the article's creator) discussion at Talk:Articles of Confederation#Merge discussion to consider merging Perpetual Union to Articles of Confederation. Might some interested editors be persuaded to attend? - 2/0 (cont.) 22:17, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Uniform Bill of Lading Act and Uniform Bill of Lading Act of 1916 articles

We received a query on the Help Desk about the above articles.

An editor asked if these were the same Act, and I suggested that perhaps they could be merged.

However, another editor mentioned that 64th United States Congress#Major legislation lists:

• August 9, 1916 - Uniform Bill of Lading Act of 1916
• August 29, 1916 - 2nd Uniform Bill of Lading Act of 1916

Could someone more knowledgeable possibly look at the two articles and see if they refer to the same Bill, or whether they cover the two different bills - in which case the articles will need to be amended/moved accordingly.

Thanks -- PhantomSteve (Contact Me, My Contribs) 14:03, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Merge proposal

Redheylin (talk · contribs) has proposed a possible merge of articles North Carolina v. Alford (1970 Supreme Court of the United States case), with the form of guilty plea it spawned, Alford plea. Discussion is at Talk:North_Carolina_v._Alford#Contradiction_tag. Thank you for your time, Cirt (talk) 14:54, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Please also see Wikipedia:Content_noticeboard#Tags_at_Alford_articles. Cirt (talk) 05:16, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:06, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Article needing review/cleanup: African American Women, 1960's

I noticed a new article that needs work and wanted to draw this project's attention to it: African American Women, 1960's. The article needs review; since it appears to be based largely on an ethnography published as All Our Kin, should it be refactored and moved to an article on that study? Or perhaps it could be the starting point for a broader article? Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 09:59, 30 January 2010 (UTC) (Cross-posted to African diapsora project Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_African_diaspora#Article_needing_review.2Fcleanup:_African_American_Women.2C_1960.27s) Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 10:04, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Pulaski

There is a move discussion potentially relevant to participants at this project: Kazimierz Pułaski → Casimir Pulaski at Talk:Kazimierz Pułaski#Requested move (2). -Rrius (talk) 00:33, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Expert Help - American gangsters during the 1920s

The article American gangsters during the 1920s is in serious need of an expert on the subject. The article has very few references, and does not have a lead section. Thanks, Justin W Smith ^talk/_stalk 03:52, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

FAR

I have nominated Marshall Plan for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Dana boomer (talk) 15:59, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

new related WikiProject: United States Public Policy

Hi everyone! I want to invite anyone who's active here and has an interest in public policy and its history to join WikiProject United States Public Policy, which is just starting up. We've got some cool things planned, including working with students and their professors for several public policy courses.--Sross (Public Policy) (talk) 13:16, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Relevant AFD discussion page - The Most Hated Family in America

There is an AFD for The Most Hated Family in America, which is a television documentary film that was written and presented by the BBC's Louis Theroux about the family at the core of the Westboro Baptist Church (info from lede of article).

• AFD is located at: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Most Hated Family in America.

Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 18:20, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

United States History articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the United States History articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:47, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Grace Sherwood, Witch of Pungo FAC

This article is here as a FA candidate. Would appreciate commentary to help improve the article. Thank you. — Rlevse • Talk • 13:26, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

United States related Tag and Assess proposal

There is a proposal on WikiProject United States to task Xenobot with tagging and assessment of articles that fall into the scope of Wikipedia:WikiProject United States. Please take a few moments to provide your comments about this proposal.

If you are interested in joining Wikipedia:WikiProject United States please add your name under the applicable section here. --Kumioko (talk) 17:08, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Plymouth

FYI, the usage of Plymouth is up for discussion, see Talk:Plymouth. 76.66.203.138 (talk) 12:45, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Invitation to help with WikiProject United States

Hello, WikiProject United States History! We are looking for editors to join WikiProject United States, an outreach effort which aims to support development of United States related articles in Wikipedia. We thought you might be interested, and hope that you will join us. Thanks!!!

--Kumioko (talk) 03:18, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Proposed Move Discussion

I have proposed to rename three articles to more accurately affect their scope and content:

• African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968) → American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968)
• African-American Civil Rights Movement (1896–1954) → American Civil Rights Movement (1896–1954)
• African-American Civil Rights Movement (1865–1895) → American Civil Rights Movement (1865–1895)

As a historic fact, a diverse group (and not just African-Americans) were involved in this movement. In addition, the movement fought for the rights of all Americans, not just African-Americans. Its leaders esposed a "big tent" strategy to involve a broad based support. Most Civil Rights legislation addresses discrimination based on race, religion or national origin, and a title that focuses upon racial discrimination distorts the topic. Hence, I am proposing to restore the pre-2006 article names. Your comments are welcomed at: Talk:African-American_Civil_Rights_Movement_(1955–1968)#Proposed_Move. Racepacket (talk) 23:13, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

A consideration for cross project consolidation of talk page templates

I have started a conversation here about the possibility of combining some of the United States related WikiProject Banners into {{WikiProject United States}}. If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please take a moment and let me know. --Kumioko (talk) 20:30, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Quality Scale Examples on Assessment page

Several of the Quality Scale Examples are out of date (e.g. Eric Bana is now a FA quality not a GA quality article). I replaced the one for the Start Class (the old example was upgraded to B class), but others need to be gone through. Also the India link for the FA example goes to an old version of Australia. AJseagull1 (talk) 07:17, 23 December 2010 (UTC)