Talk:Virginia

Why is the metro listed

There is not section about biggest metro area in any other states site, i have a feeling it was added by a Nova...

Virginia is the South, not the Mid-Atlantic

Geographically Virginia is South-East. The very center of the United States is Lebanon, Kansas. Use that as a point and make a line which is the central United States. Northern Virginia goes through the line but the majority of Virginia is below it. So geographically Virginia is Southeast and not Mid-Atlantic.

--> By this definition, the "mid atlantic" would be non-existent b/c everything is either above or below that line. In reality, Virginia is considered to be in the South and Mid-Atlantic by different people and each of the articles on those regions specifies this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.21.93.189 (talk) 19:49, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

---> Geographically, Virginia is INDEED Mid-Atlantic. The geographic term of mid-Atlantic refers to being at the middle of the Atlantic Seabord not the middle of the United States. That's why Virginia is not called "mid-America". So Virginia is not Southeast. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.253.4.21 (talk) 20:13, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Despite 169.253.4.21's poor argument (positive assertion without any support), he is indeed correct geographically speaking since people tend confuse the historical South (i.e, CSA) with the geographic South. Nonetheless, as Parkwells pointed out, the official US Census Bureau definition says that Virginia is in the South.--Coviepresb1647 (talk) 00:35, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

JUst use the US Census Bureau definition, which is that VA is in the South.--Parkwells (talk) 22:35, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

ARIS 2008

New 2008 religion table?
Christian:		76%		Baptist:	27%
	Protestant:	37+%		United Methodist:	8%
	Roman Catholic:	11%		Lutheran:	2%
	Other Christian:	65%		Presbyterian:	?%
Judaism:		?%		Episcopal:	?%
Islam:		?%		Pentecostal:	?%
Other religions:		4%		Congregational:	?%
Non-religious:		15%		Other/general:	?%

Smaller table?
Christian		76%
	Baptist	27%
	Roman Catholic	11%
	Methodist	8%
	Lutheran	2%
	Other Christian	28%
Other religions		4%
Non-religious		15%

A new religious study is available, and I'm debating using its data. The data currently used is from the 2001 version of this study. However, as it is currently released, it is not as detailed as the 2001 data. You can see what the table would look like here, and you'll see what I mean. Judaism, Islam, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Pentecostal, and Congregational are missing from the data. I emailed the institute, and got a response that full data would be released in two years, or I could pay at least $250. So do we use eight year old info that gives more detail (and will be 10 years old before it may be updated) or do we use one year old data that makes fewer distinctions between faiths?--Patrick «» 18:12, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

To make it clearer, on the left now is what numbers we do have.--Patrick «» 17:08, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I went ahead an implemented this smaller style table. Any thoughts? I kept Islam and Judaism in it, underneath Other religions, with the reference mentioning both 2008 and 2001 studies.--Patrick «» 17:49, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

The US "Commonwealth"

The other uses tag states "This article is about the U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia." Shouldn't this say "US State of Virginia"? It is a US State which uses the word Commonwealth in its official name. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Archons (talk • contribs) 02:54, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Textual references

I've been amping up edits to this article this week in a third push for Featured Article status. One big project I've yet to tackle lies at the bottom. Last time, we failed FAC largely because of a perceived lack of books referenced. I've been considering breaking the books out of the current setup, and moving any that are used more than once to a "Bibliography" section or similar, then using only the Last-Name-Page-Number style in the citation. Is this a good idea? A step forward? My instinct says it's a step back to an older, uglier, less user friendly Wikipedia. But I don't want to fail this again.-- Patrick {_oѺ^∞} 17:49, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I count seven books that are used more than once. Would putting them above the current references make it look like we have a lot or a little number of books?-- Patrick {_oѺ^∞} 18:01, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

And an example of this system might be Boston, Bratislava, or Australia.-- Patrick {_oѺ^∞} 18:10, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

The FA status article for the state of Minnesota, which presumably could serve as an FA template for other U.S. State pages, does not include a bibliography section, so I personally do not think necessary to include. Also, thanks for the good job with all the hard work cleaning up and improving this page. Arbogastlw (talk) 18:16, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Yea, I can't seem to find a good example of what I mean, so that's probably a bad sign. If we did Harvard style for only those seven that are used more than once, it might look weird, like why these seven. Still, if there's a way to highlight the 27 or so books we use, that would help. Anyways, I was going to let the article cool for a week or so before starting to notify old users of it going on FAC again. So if there are any ideas or issues, let's hear them.-- Patrick {_oѺ^∞} 18:53, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Linking

User:Ealdgyth over at the FAC has expressed his thoughts that this page is over linked, both with wikilinks and external links. Since I've previously expressed my preference for more, rather than fewer links, and am not sure what to unlink, perhaps another user could take this up?-- Patrick {_oѺ^∞} 21:48, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I took a crack at the excessive wikilinking. It didn't seem so bad to me, but there was some unnecessary linking of pretty common terms.--Kubigula (talk) 16:55, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a bunch! Looks good. I don't know how I missed adding links to the district and circuit courts of Virginia articles, seems pretty obvious.-- Patrick {_oѺ^∞} 17:06, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Hispanics

Quick question for anyone around here: Should Hispanic be listed in the new table of Race? It gets confusing, since races are first divided excluding it, and then a second time including it. So, for example, 5.4% of Virginians defined themselves as Asian, but some of those also defined themselves as Hispanic, so only 4.8% are non-Hispanic-Asian. This gets confusing since the larger number is used in the text, but in the table each of the other races are given by their non-Hispanic number. This is all trying to replace the old, complicated template that now resides on Demographics of Virginia, but it's becoming complicated itself. The alternative is to ignore Hispanics in the table altogether. Thoughts?-- Patrick {_oѺ^∞} 16:48, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Alternatively, do we just let the numbers add up to more than 100%? Would that be a problem?-- Patrick {_oѺ^∞} 00:06, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

?

7,104 per 100,000.? TKS! TLUG (talk) 10:17, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Eastern elk

An editor has reverted an insertion about the Eastern elk becoming extinct, in part, due to Virginian's overhunting them. He suggests a subpage "Fauna of Virginia."

The easy part first - Fauna of Virginia is just wonderful once there is enough information to fork there. I ran across this headline in the paper, and thought it would be nice to have permanently in the article. Guess what? No place for it, a not uncommon occurrence with article development. So it should probably go somewhere IMO. It seems way too early for a forked article. but if someone wants to establish a stub, I'm uh game.

The second part refers to Eastern elk not being a significant species. No, they aren't significant! They're extinct, for Pete's sake! Want to bury that under the rug? Hmmm. Student7 (talk) 00:45, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Yea, I'm just not sure there's a place for the elk here. From what I understand from this map, they covered much of the east half of the country, and there might be twenty-seven states whose articles this sort of info could go in. I just don't see why we need a whole paragraph on this one extinct species, when we only give a living one, like the ubiquitous white-tailed deer, a single mention. If we had a subarticle on fauna (an/or flora as well), I could see it having a history section, where we could bring attention to this and other extinct species like the Carolina Parakeet (or Giant Beaver!); West Virginia does have a article on the fauna, perhaps we could start an "extinct species" section there as a first step.-- Patrick {_oѺ^∞} 04:11, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Virginia's area

An IP user changed the area of Virginia, and because they'd been cited for Vandalism earlier today, I assumed it was wrong, and reverted it. Never-the-less, I poked around to check that we had it right, citing National Geographic with 42,774 square miles. And while I found a similar number at virginia.org with 42,767, I saw that virginia.gov says 40,767, and significantly the USGS says only 39,594, based on the Census Bureau's 39,594.07. Additionally, WolframAlpha rounds it up to 39,600 while Google sources us. At first I was inclined to believe the .org number there. I know National Geographic's number is from a few years back (read 90's), and we likely have lost some barrier islands due to erosion and rising sea levels, perhaps accounting for the 7 sq mi change. But the difference of 2,000 or 3,0000 sq mi I'd have a hard time rectifying, even though I would think USGS/Census would be the best source. Anyone have an opinion? Anyone got a better source?-- Patrick {_oѺ^∞} 15:57, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I found the issue buried in a Census Bureau document. On page 71 there it says 42,774.20 total area, 39,594.07 land area, and 3,180.13 water area. So I suppose it depends on if you think water area should be included in the number. I'm going to change the page to note these.-- Patrick {_oѺ^∞} 16:48, 3 November 2009 (UTC)