Talk:Newport News, Virginia

Wondering how to edit this U.S. City Entry?
The WikiProject U.S. Cities standards might help.

Broccoli?

Is it just me, or does the city logo look like a giant piece of broccoli?

School Bus Fleet

To the new contributor: I moved your new section to a more appropriate place in the article and added some internal links. (We have lots of good stuff on school buses on Wikipedia; see the internal links I added). If you want to see a Virginia school bus won by a driver in front of the Virginia State Capitol, try school bus yellow. Why not register as a user, and keep contributing? Yours in Richmond. Vaoverland 05:52, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

Source of name

I removed the WP:POV statement "This is the only theory which has any validity." To the person who added this info, I only deleted your POV conclusion, not your information about one of the many theories regarding the mysterious source of the name. I am sure many of us would like to learn more of this interesting possibility, which seems to be not well-known. Please cite your sources for us. And, why not register as a WP user, and keep contributing? Cordially, Mark in Historic Triangle of Virginia Vaoverland 14:13, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Kiln Creek

I removed the following text, which is a likely copyvio and reads like an well-written advertisment for Kiln Creek if it isn't. I am not anti-Kiln Creek (a beatuftul project and community asset) but we need to follow WP standards, and keep this articel out of trouble. Thanks. Vaoverland 16:06, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

removed text:

Also, Newport News Features a new richer upperscale community named Kiln Creek.

Community Introduction

The Villages of Kiln Creek is a unique community comprised of thirty-one (31) village neighborhoods with 2918 residential units of all variety. We have nearly twelve thousand residents. We are a friendly community where young families and prime-of-life buyers, as well as empty nesters, can find their dream home!

Location We are located in the Tidewater region of southeastern Virginia. Our proximity to the James and York Rivers, the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean make this one of the prime living areas in the continental United States. Another interesting fact is that our community spans the boundaries of two different locals: One half of our development is located in Newport News while the other half is situated in York County.

Kiln Creek is positioned near Exit 256 (Victory Boulevard) of I-64. We are one hour from Richmond, VA and about 35 minutes from Virginia Beach via I-64 and the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel (HRBT).Located on 1,200 acres of lush forested land, and offering a lifestyle rich in rewards and suitable to virtually everyone, Kiln Creek offers apartments, townhouses, condominiums, duplexes, quadplexes, and single-family homes. Lifestyle Community spirit is alive and well in Kiln Creek. The Social Recreation Committee is extremely active and continues to plan new and exciting events that are offered to our residents. Each year in June we celebrate "Community Day" with marathon races, golf tournaments, picnic suppers and fireworks. We offer various clubs for our members such as the Singles Club, Garden Club, Book Club, Bridge Clubs, and our newest addition: the Teen Council.

The Homeowner's Association owns a 4-acre recreation center complex featuring a two-story Recreation Center building; an Olympic-size pool; picnic areas; playgrounds, tot-lots, tennis courts, and a multi-purpose court. We also own our Maintenance Facility building which houses our in-house maintenance staff who tend beautiful green spaces, lakes and common areas throughout Kiln Creek. Our outstanding Maintenance Staff who routinely undertakes the task of maintaining and enhancing our landscaping easements, lake banks, and a twenty-seven mile lake-fed irrigation system.

Government We are governed by a Board of Directors who are elected each year at our Annual Meeting. Additionally we have a Managing Director and Office Staff to administer daily activities.

It Is located in the Western area of Newport News. It contains the highest income in Newport News.Kiln creek has a Golf Couse like its sister community Kingmill of Williamsburg. Kiln Creek has homes priced from th low 200k to the lower 2.0 mil, As it Contiues to thrive Kiln Creek has the fastest property value growth in Newport News Kiln Creek Homes Also visit for golf course info

Citation Needed?

Section 1 (titled "Source of the name") in this article contains a paragraph that appears verbatim elsewhere on the internet (e.g. the official Newport News website, a library's website, among others). Is the present article the original source [that was copied from], or is a reference to another website needed? The paragraph in question is:

Regardless of the origin of the name, the fact it was formerly written as "Newport's News" is verified by numerous early documents and maps, and by local tradition. The change to Newport News apparently was brought about by usage, for by 1851 the Post Office Department sanctioned "New Port News" (three words as the name of the first post office, and in 1866 it approved the name as "Newport News", the current form.

Bob the third 15:00, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Article Grade

I have graded this article as a "B" class, because I think that Start is far too harsh. It would probably stand a good chance of passing good article nomination first time around if it had references! As it stands though, the article is entirely devoid of them, with only a couple of meagre inline hyperlink references which are not stated at the bottom of the article. Does Wikiproject Virginia have a collaboration programme? Maybe this should get on it, I don't think it would that difficult... Chrisfow 11:49, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Citations?

Was the information for this page taken from "tribal knowledge," or are there sources for it? I'm not trying to be a cite monkey; I've actually got rather selfish reasons for asking about it. I'm trying to do some research on the city for a class, and I was hoping to use the wikipage as a jumping-off point. For an area with a history as old as european settlement on this continent, surprisingly little seems to be written about it. Izuko 16:18, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Water

I just realized that the drinking water history and role isn't even mentioned. I'll try to work on that. It is an important aspect of NN past, present and future. Vaoverland 02:21, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Bad Newz

The article mentions the 50 Cent song and the nickname Bad Newz; do we really need the nickname in the infobox? Tjarrett (talk) 12:37, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Survey

WP:Good article usage is a survey of the language and style of Wikipedia editors in articles being reviewed for Good article nomination. It will help make the experience of writing Good Articles as non-threatening and satisfying as possible if all the participating editors would take a moment to answer a few questions for us, in this section please. The survey will end on April 30.

• Would you like any additional feedback on the writing style in this article?

• If you write a lot outside of Wikipedia, what kind of writing do you do?

• Is your writing style influenced by any particular WikiProject or other group on Wikipedia?

At any point during this review, let us know if we recommend any edits, including markup, punctuation and language, that you feel don't fit with your writing style. Thanks for your time. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:39, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

GA Review

The article is very comprehensive, and, for the most part, well written. I made a couple of minor copyedits, cleaning up placement of reference citations and removing the wikilinking of single years (only full dates should be wikilinked). I think the article is very close to meeting the Good Article criteria, but I still have a few concerns that should be addressed:

• The history section is overall very good, but the ending loses me. It seems to go from the year 1932 to a very minor and odd discussion of "Bad Newz" by 50 cent in recent years, and then gets into Michael Vick's problems (which really don't have anything to do with the community of Newport News itself and should just go into Vick's article). The whole paragraph could probably be deleted and no one would notice or care here (except maybe the high school student that added it?).
  •  Fixed The Vick story is gone as is "Bad Newz."

More needs to be added to the history about the city's decline and/or growth in the latter half of the 20th century (gentrification?). Might add something about how it relates to other nearby cities in Hampton Roads?

• •  Fixed I could not find anything related to the city from 1960 to 1999(?) The recent activity with Oyster Point and Port Warwick is significant and was added.

• The 'cityscape' section begins very awkwardly, and it looks like those first few paragraphs could be paraphrased or rewritten better (run-on sentences?). It seems like some information from the history section is being restated here, which is unnecessary.
  •  Fixed I deleted redundant information and moved pertinent history to the history section.

• The 'economy' section is kind of dry and boring. It's really just a listing of some of the major corporations in the city disguised as prose. What are some of the major types of businesses here? Who is the largest employer in Newport News? How did the economy develop? I don't think it's necessary to mention Christopher Newport University here, since it's really an educational institution and should be mentioned in that section -- it's not a major research institution (certainly, there's some research that gets done there, but the focus of that school is on undergraduate education and teaching, not research).

• I'd move the 'culture' section up before 'government', probably to just before 'education'.
  •  FixedI hope you were meaning the "economy" section as education is further down the article.

Actually, what I stated was correct. 'Government' should be right before 'education' (see WP:USCITY). Government is more related to the infrastructure and education in the city (public schools are, of course, controlled by the government, as are public works, like roads and some utilities. 'Economy' should come before 'Culture', and culture should be immediately after it. Some of the sections on sports, media, and parks/recreation are actually somewhat related to culture -- while they shouldn't necessarily be in that section, it is best if they appear right after culture to go along with the flow of the article. Articles also seem to be best with the following beginning: Lead, history, geography, demographics, economy. Dr. Cash (talk) 23:56, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

• •  Fixed Taken care of. My apologies for the misunderstanding.

• Many of the reference citations used as inline citations are not references at all, but just links to the main page of the corporate or institutional website being mentioned. When you cite material, make sure you cite the specific material that is being mentioned, don't just link to somebody's main website -- that's really not much different than putting the link right in the text itself, which is not allowed.
  •  FixedCitations are going to specific pages as opposed to the web site's main page.

• Reference citations should contain more than just a link as well. Include full citation information: author, title, publisher, date of publication, and date of URL retrieval (if it's an online source). This is important so that if the URL ever disappears, the citation information can be used to verify the validity of the source.
  •  Fixed This should be better. While authors and dates of publication were impossible for me to find, I did make sure every cite included a title, publisher, and access date.

Once these issues are addressed, I think the article can be promoted to Good Article status. I'll put it on hold at WP:GAN for about a week. Dr. Cash (talk) 20:04, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Article looks good! Nice work! Promoted. Dr. Cash (talk) 19:54, 15 May 2008 (UTC)