(WT-en) Stavp

Hey, Dad! Welcome to Wikivoyage. Please take a sec to look at our copyleft and policies and guidelines, but feel free to plunge forward and edit some pages. Scanning the Manual of style, especially the article templates, can give you a good idea of how we like articles formatted. If you need help, check out Project:Help, and if you need some info not on there, post a message in the travellers' pub. --(WT-en) Evan 10:23, 7 Jan 2004 (EST)

Γει�� σου, Σταυρε! I see you've tried to cross a column of cyclists - I was one of the cyclists, and often went to Bikeley to visit my aunt. -(WT-en) phma 23:14, 9 Jan 2004 (EST)

North Dakota

I don't know if you saw, but North Dakota was the 1000th guide in Wikivoyage. Maj came into my office and told me, "I just started three guides in Italy, and we're at 999. What are we missing that we should add as the 1000th article?" I thought a second and remembered our conversation... and that we didn't have an ND entry yet. So there it is! --(WT-en) Evan 14:26, 17 Jan 2004 (EST)

Silicon Valley Definition

The Mercury News was just being lazy. The "local area 1000" just doesn't have the same ring to it as "The Silicon Valley 1000." :-)

The original definition of the term "Silicon Valley" can be found in this 1985 History: http://www.netvalley.com/archives/mirrors/terman.html. The difficult thing about the definition is that it requires an Atlas to translate the exact geography. But basically Southern Alameda is entirely excluded because it is behind the bay from the point of origin in the description. My biggest concern is I think the list of cities which are overenthusiastically included in the SV may be too small.

The important point of view is the traveller's. If someone looks up Silicon Valley, they could be either a) wanting to go there as a tourist, and it's helpful for them to know the core area which is absolutely the SV, and b) someone may be visiting a company that describes itself as "in the SV", so we need to have the extras list so they don't get confused as to why the city they're visiting is not in the SV. -- (WT-en) Colin 14:59, 24 Apr 2005 (EDT)

ND maps

Hi, Just to let you know I'm still thinking about your map. I've been working on some other things lately, mainly trying to get a new version of WWW-Mediawiki-Client out the door, but I intend to tackle your request right after that. -- (WT-en) Mark 03:15, 15 May 2005 (EDT)

Thanks, Mark. (WT-en) Stavp 14:27, 15 May 2005 (EDT)

Suggestions

Instead of formatting a list like this:

 [[city1]]<br>
 [[city2]]

we generally format them like this:

 * [[city1]]
 * [[city2]]

Because we prefer to format stuff using Wikimarkup rather than HTML. It's nice seeing a smaller state like North Dakota getting some attention! -- (WT-en) Colin 20:03, 15 May 2005 (EDT)

Thanks for the suggestion, Colin. I just got all the counties and some of the cities in. Next step is to fill in more interesting stuff. As I edit the various articles, I will redo the formats. (WT-en) Stavp 22:33, 15 May 2005 (EDT)

Oh yeah, defintely give priority to adding new stuff. There's plenty of folk here who could also fixup formatting. Doing the research is the hard part. Thanks for doing it. -- (WT-en) Colin 23:08, 20 May 2005 (EDT)

Image:Lake Sakakawea.jpg?

Hi Stav, it's unclear from just looking at Image:Lake Sakakawea.jpg whether or not you had permission to copy the image. Assuming you did, could you please add a little bit of text to Image:Lake Sakakawea.jpg describing how you have permission? That way it'll be clear and obvious to all comers that it's not a copyright violation. Thanks! -- (WT-en) Colin 23:12, 20 May 2005 (EDT)

The source of the image is a county government web site [http:\\www.visitmcleancounty.com] that has no copyright claim on any page, including the image library. I assumed that it is OK to use materials from a government entity where no copyright claim is made. If this is not the case, I can delete the image and specifically go ask the for permission. (WT-en) Stavp 00:43, 21 May 2005 (EDT)

So to clarify a couple of things: Since the 70s, no one has to explicitly state they have a copyright in order for one to exist. So there may be a copyright. The US Federal Government has a nice law that says most everything produced by the feds is public domain so you can use it -- but that only applies to Federal works, not State and Local. Additionally, it's possible the county is actually licensing the pictures (a typical situation if they got a local photographer to take the picture for them) and might not have bothered to obtain the copyright themselves. So yeah, you'll need to ask in order to keep it. Either ask for it to be used for the Public Domain (from which you can take stuff) or ask them to allow us to use it under our license (Project:Copyleft). Asking for the Public Domain is sometimes easier cause you don't need to explain it to them :-). -- (WT-en) Colin 03:25, 21 May 2005 (EDT)

Gotcha. I have requested permission through the site (WT-en) Stavp 20:39, 21 May 2005 (EDT)

Too many Bismarcks

Uh oh. It appears that before you arrived here, someone accidently created two Bismarck articles -- Bismarck and Bismarck (North Dakota). The right thing to do would be for some kind volunteer to merge the second into the first, and then once we no longer need the second we can make it redirect to the first so there's only really one article with two names. Any volunteers? ;-). -- (WT-en) Colin 02:53, 9 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Appears to be a simple story here. User 24.230.178.133 (perhaps Nzpcmzd??) worked on Bismarck (North Dakota) from December 11 to December 15, 2004. That is the most recent version of the parens-ND version. In the meantime, the state article has always had a link to Bismarck noparens (that link appears to have never been touched since Evan originally created the state article). So this same user apparently realized he had been developing an article over aperiod of fivce days that was not linked to the state page. So he/she clipped and pasted the whole Bismarck parens-ND article to Bismarck no-parens-ND. I did a visual inspection and it appears that the two December 15 versions, with and without parens-ND, are the same. The article in Bismarck no-parens lay untouched till May 7, 2005, when I made a minor edit to add a link to the Burleigh County parens-ND article, as I was setting up the 53-county framework in the state article. On June 3, I put in some more significant changes that continued through June 5. No one has ever gone back to keep Bismarck parens-ND up to date. I believe that it was abandoned after it was clipped and pasted to the no-parens article. I think it is reasonable at this point to delete Bismarck (North Dakota) and redirect any references to it to the newer and more complete Bismarck. (WT-en) Stavp 01:43, 11 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Ah! Thanks, it all makes sense now! No need to delete Bismarck (North Dakota), we can just redirect it to Bismarck. -- (WT-en) Colin 02:23, 11 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Disambiguating (North Dakota) Counties

Please see the North Dakota talk page for my answer to your question that you asked on my talk page. The comment specific to Oliver County is on that article's talk page. Thanks for your contributions; keep up the good work on those North Dakota counties and places. -- (WT-en) Huttite 08:27, 11 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Thanks, for the explanation Huttite. I certainly understand the need for clear and unambiguous conventions in a large multi-contributor project. I think the complexity comes from the very common county names used in so many states. For example (by no means comprehensuive) here is a list of 8 counties in ND that are also county names in other states:

• • Ward County: North Dakota, Texas
  • Golden Valley County: North Dakota, Montana
  • Ramsey County: North Dakota, Minnesota
  • Pierce County: North Dakota, Washington, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Georgia
  • Mercer County: North Dakota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, West Virginia, Kentucky,
  • Logan County: North Dakota, Ohio, Illinois, West virginia, Kansas, Colorado, Kentucky, Virginia, Oklahoma,Arkansas
  • Adams County: North Dakota, Colorado, Illinois, Washington, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Idaho, Mississippi
  • Grant County: North Dakota, Wisconsin, Washington, Indiana, Oregon, Kentucky, Colorado, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, Kansas, West Virginia, Arkansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota

Now, I have not checked if any of these names have been used in other WikiTravel state articles, but I think the odds are if they have not yet been, they will be at some time. I would like to propose that, for the time being, and until the North Dakota article data base is reasonably well filled out, I would like to continue to use the (North Dakota) modifier for each county name. I probably have another couple of months to go to get this done. Once that is done, I would be very glad you or anyone else who is willing to take on the task of renaming and/or redirecting thecounty articles as necessary to abide by the WikiTravel naming conventions. Thanks again for your help. (WT-en) Stavp 15:29, 11 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Update

So, you need to update your user page to include Amita June and Tessa. --(WT-en) Evan 23:54, 11 July 2006 (EDT)