Talk:Alaska

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Former good article nominee Alaska was a Geography and places good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
Date Process Result
January 19, 2008 Good article nominee Not listed
December 3, 2010 Good article nominee Not listed
Current status: Former good article nominee
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Alaska border[edit]

Alaska is not bordered by Kamchatka Krai. Islands far. Please correct. 212.2.129.253 (talk) 12:22, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean by that. Alaska of course does not share a land border with Kamchatka. However (as is clearly explained in the article text) the Diomede Islands are quite close to one another, one in Alaksa, one in Russia. Given the close proximity, there are not international waters between the two, so there is a border of sorts. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:17, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
Kamchatka is has not maritime boundary on the principles of international maritime law, where the state allowed a maximum of 12 nautical miles from the coast (territorial waters). OpenstreetMap and Yandex.Maps and help you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.2.129.253 (talkcontribs) 19:18, 23 July 2015‎
I think the IP isn't disputing the border with Russia, only disputing the border with Kamchatka Krai. From the article on Diomede Islands, the big island appears to be part of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, so it is accurate to say that Alaska borders Chukotka Autonomous Okrug in Russia (already mentioned in the lead section). But the nearest of the Aleutian Islands is still a good distance from the nearest island that's part of Kamchatka Krai. Given that, I tend to agree with removing the mention of that border from the article - unless I'm overlooking something? --- Barek (talkcontribs) - 19:49, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Well, here's what it says now:

Bordering the state to the east is the Canadian territory of Yukon and the Canadian province of British Columbia, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia (specifically, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug and Kamchatka Krai) further west across the [[Bering Strait]

It isn't saying there is a direct international border between Alaska and Kamchatka, it says it is further west across the Bering Strait. I don't see the problem myself. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:48, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
The sentence begins with the words "Bordering the state to the ..." - all locations that follow do border Alaska with the only exception being Kamchatka Krai. The wording as it stands can be read to imply a maritime border between Kamchatka Krai and Alaska; perhaps it's just a question of needing to cleanup the wording, or to break regions that don't share a border into a second sentence. The closest point in Kamchatka Krai to Alaska is roughly 300 miles, which is roughly the same distance by sea for Massachusetts to Nova Scotia - yet no one would even consider implying that those two border each other. --- Barek (talkcontribs) - 21:31, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
Kamchatka Krai does not border with the USA. Even in the Russian Wikipedia is written (ru:Соседи субъектов Российской Федерации). As well as in sections of the United States and Russia width of territorial waters - 12 nm. (the World Factbook). 212.2.129.253 (talk) 06:27, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────I don't personally think the article as currently written is misleading, but if others find it to be so they are welcome to change it, or to make specific suggestions here. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:48, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Good article?[edit]

I think this is very close to qualifying at least as a good article, and I'd really like to see it acknolwedged as one. A look at Talk:Alaska/GA1 shows that many of the issues identified back then have already been fixed. I've never gone through the GA process before, anyone care to join me in tryong to get this article there? Beeblebrox (talk) 19:14, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Here's some issues:
  • I've yet to come across the appropriate style guide. Are the sections in a generally accepted proper order?
  • Byron Mallott was on the ballot as an independent and was elected as an independent, or "Non-Affiliated" as current election law dictates it be called. See candidate profile on page 24 and sample ballot on page 28, both of which describe Mallott as "Non-Affililated" and not as a Democrat. Instead of providing a reliable source establishing that he's serving as a Democrat, his wannabe social media team mindlessly took the media's description of Walker/Mallott as a "fusion ticket" and applied some other state's election laws to that. Alaska law states that a governor/lieutenant governor ticket on the ballot via a nominating petition must share the same affiliation, at least as far as the ballot is concerned. Therefore, the ballot could not have consisted of Walker as an independent and Mallott as a Democrat, as certain editors have attempted to portray it.
  • The lead could still stand to be expanded. It's roughly half of the ideal length for a lead section, and it dwells on a few major topic areas rather than providing an adequate summary of the overall article.
  • In section Geography: "Alaska is the largest state in the United States in land area at 663,268 square miles (1,717,856 km2), over twice the size of Texas, the next largest state.". The figure of 586,412 square miles appears in countless sources over many decades. There is no source or anything else for that matter explaining how or why this figure should instead be taken as valid.
  • As for the section Regions, sources vary wildly as to the number of regions in Alaska and their composition. Most sources agree on either five or six major regions. I don't see how we've established a demarcation which conforms to any interpretation of sources.
  • The sections on the Alaska Heritage Resources Survey and on recording districts should be moved to Alaska Department of Natural Resources, as they describe functions of the department more than they describe items of general interest to Alaska. That article should be also expanded so that it's not overwhelmed by these items. The AHRS could also possibly be mentioned in National Register of Historic Places listings in Alaska due to the similarity of the subject matter. If it's a restricted inventory, that says that the public can't access details, so there's little point in giving it the kind of exposure this article can provide. It seems even more out of place when you realize that the NRHP enthusiasts have created untold scores of articles related to the NRHP and Alaska, yet the NRHP is not mentioned at all in the history section while this is.
  • In section Race and ancestry: well, I see precious little mention of ancestry, even though various Scandinavian and Yugoslavian ethnicities comprise important elements of the early white settlement of Alaska. Then there's Filipinos. Alaska Economic Trends, published by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, reported within the past year or two that Alaska has over 15,000 residents who were born in the Philippines, making Alaska one of only two states where an Asian country makes up the largest block of emigrants from a single country (the other, of course, being Hawaii).
  • In section Religion: "In 2010, the local Muslim community broke ground on the first mosque in the state.". Then what? That was five years ago. It's as if someone stuck a random fact in because there happened to be a source available (update: a cursory search revealed that Al Jazeera reported in December 2014 that the building was nearing completion, but I haven't incorporated that or other sources into the article yet). Also, "local" in this context may refer more to Anchorage than to Alaska as a whole. Resolved ambiguity issue, well, by making the statement less ambiguous. Editing this section brought up another issue. At the beginning of the paragraph which mentions the Russian Orthodox Church, it is unclear whether the intended statement was "the First Russian Orthodox Church" or "the first Russian Orthodox Church" because there's no source covering the sentence.
  • In section Economy: "Federal subsidies are also an important part of the economy, allowing the state to keep taxes low.". This breaking news just in – Generalissimo Ted Stevens is still dead!. In other words, this statement may very well be somewhat slightly outdated. To boot, low state taxes have largely been due to royalty revenues from oil combined with the various budget reserves lying about. This statement may apply to transportation funding, as Alaska is one of very few states whose transportation programs are almost entirely dependent on the feds, though even that has changed as road bonds have made their way back to the state ballot in recent elections.
  • In section Energy, the capacity of the pipeline is mentioned. Peak throughput (and when it occurred) and current throughput should also be mentioned.
  • "The cost of a gallon of gas in urban Alaska today is usually 30–60¢ higher than the national average;". Outdated? There's no source, and it could be as much as $1.00–1.50 a gallon higher in recent times. Prices vary greatly between Southeast and the mainland highway system and just about everywhere else. It may help understanding of this issue if we provided more information on in-state refining capacity and information on what gets imported from where to where, etc.
  • The last paragraph of the energy section repeats information mentioned earlier in the section. The sources appear redundant, too.Eliminated paragraph, consolidated similar-enough sources.
More to come as I go through. Aren't the trophy hunters glad I don't do GA reviews? RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 20:47, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
These all sound like good ideas for improvement, and some of them will probably be essential if the article is to be a GA. What prompted me to consider this again was looking at the only other GA experience I have, where I helped Jean Keene maintain good status. I think with just a little cleanup this is at least as good as that, but being a bigger subject of course there is more to say and more that needs fixing. I think you might be a little tougher than the actual GA reviewers, but I can't find any fault with your basic points. I assume this is going to take a bit of time, and I actually won't be online for a good chunk of the next two weeks as I will be out living it instead of editing it.
As for the regions, I did that, but honestly I don't know that I actually consulted a source at all. I pretty much looked for articles on the various regions and when it looked like I had the whole state covered I stopped looking. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:53, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
There's a few parts of the article which could be improved by simple copy editing; I'll try and work on those without burdening the talk page in chronicling every last move I make. I went through sales tax information for Alaska, as it appears that what we have is not only factually inaccurate but also somewhat POV-leaning. Curiously enough, the highest sales tax rate in the entire state is found in Homer and Seldovia, who pay a combination of borough and city sales tax for a 7.5% rate (year-round in Homer – Seldovia's sales tax rate varies on a seasonal basis, so they pay that much from April to September). RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 01:37, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

External links modified[edit]

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Proposed merge with Alyeska[edit]

Aside from general notability concerns, without an etymological context, the information following the lede could almost certainly be considered trivia. I'm sure there's a place for such information, but in the other parent articles linked; right now it simply serves the purpose of bolstering a notability claim, ostensibly without really doing so to any appreciable extent. Quinto Simmaco (talk) 15:13, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

If that's the case, then Alyeska should be a dab page. Alyeska Pipeline Service Company and Alyeska Resort, among others, are popular uses of the term. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 16:16, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
I came here to say the same thing, a dab page makes sense in this case, not a merger. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:04, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
Agreed – the first paragraph can be incorporated into the 'Etymology' section of the Alaska article, the rest of the Aleyska article can be used to form the information for the dab page. Richard3120 (talk) 03:09, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
Yes check.svg Done. Since we've had three comments in support of a dab page and no additional comments or replies regarding a merge, I have gone ahead and converted it to a dab, feel free to tweak as needed. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:44, 17 October 2015 (UTC)