I'm somewhat nervous about these boundaries: not because I don't trust the Alaska people, but because I'm not sure that they'll get up to 60 stubs. On the stub ideas, I see no reason not to make individual borough and census area stubs, as that's the way we've split states; the way we've done it previously is to create individual county (i.e. B. and C.A.) stubs and upmerge them to regional categories, with regional stubs tags reserved for articles in multiple counties/county equivalents. In connexion with this is the Southwest Fairbanks area: this would be a stub for places in Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, not simply for an area near Fairbanks. Also, there's a problem with two maps: Kodiak Island Borough is split between Southcentral Alaska (by the way, wouldn't it be more natural to call it South Central Alaska?) and Southwest Alaska; we need to put all of the borough into S-C Alaska or S-W Alaska. I know it seems odd, but that's where the borough boundaries are (of course, you could always ask the legislature to change the boundaries!), and we always put individual county equivalents into just one category: it would be far more complicated otherwise. Nyttend (talk) 04:19, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
:For simplicity's sake for those who aren't often at this page, here's my full proposed list of stubs:
- {{tl|AleutiansEastAK-geo-stub}}, Aleutians East Borough
- {{tl|AnchorageAK-geo-stub}}, Anchorage
- {{tl|BristolBayAK-geo-stub}}, Bristol Bay Borough
- {{tl|DenaliAK-geo-stub}}, Denali Borough
- {{tl|FairbanksNorthStarAK-geo-stub}}, Fairbanks North Star Borough
- {{tl|HainesAK-geo-stub}}, Haines
- {{tl|JuneauAK-geo-stub}}, Juneau
- {{tl|KenaiPeninsulaAK-geo-stub}}, Kenai Peninsula Borough
- {{tl|KetchikanGatewayAK-geo-stub}}, Ketchikan Gateway Borough
- {{tl|KodiakIslandAK-geo-stub}}, Kodiak Island Borough
- {{tl|LakeAndPeninsulaAK-geo-stub}}, Lake and Peninsula Borough
- {{tl|MatanuskaSusitnaAK-geo-stub}}, Matanuska-Susitna Borough
- {{tl|NorthSlopeAK-geo-stub}}, North Slope Borough
- {{tl|NorthwestArcticAK-geo-stub}}, Northwest Arctic Borough
- {{tl|SitkaAK-geo-stub}}, Sitka
- {{tl|SkagwayAK-geo-stub}}, Skagway
- {{tl|WrangellAK-geo-stub}}, Wrangell
- {{tl|YakutatAK-geo-stub}}, Yakutat
- {{tl|AleutiansWestAK-geo-stub}}, Aleutians West Census Area
- {{tl|BethelAK-geo-stub}}, Bethel Census Area
- {{tl|DillinghamAK-geo-stub}}, Dillingham Census Area
- {{tl|HoonahAngoonAK-geo-stub}}, Hoonah-Angoon Census Area
- {{tl|NomeAK-geo-stub}}, Nome Census Area
- {{tl|POWOKAK-geo-stub}}, Prince of Wales-Outer Ketchikan Census Area
- {{tl|SoutheastFairbanksAK-geo-stub}}, Southeast Fairbanks Census Area
- {{tl|ValdezCordovaAK-geo-stub}}, Valdez-Cordova Census Area
- {{tl|WadeHamptonAK-geo-stub}}, Wade Hampton Census Area
- {{tl|WrangellPetersburgAK-geo-stub}}, Wrangell-Petersburg Census Area (this is still the official name, despite the separation of Wrangell)
- {{tl|YukonKoyukukAK-geo-stub}}, Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area
:Nyttend (talk) 04:38, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
::I don't see the logic of creating more finely-grained stub categories if the objection to the regional stub categories is that they won't have enough articles -- borough/census-defined categories are guaranteed to have fewer articles. As somebody that works on WikiProject Alaska, having stubs grouped by regions would much more useful to me than having them grouped by census area or borough, some of them being quite obscure. A couple of fine points:
::* The Alaska Office of Economic Tourism places Kodiak in Southwest Alaska, as does the Anchorage Daily News' Alaska.com. The Wikipedia article on Southcentral Alaska claims Kodiak, but I would question its authority.
::* Google shows more than twice as many hits for "Southcentral Alaska" than "South Central Alaska." "Southcentral" is also the form used by the State of Alaska sites and the Anchorage Daily News.
::Lest it be lost in the details: I really appreciate that Nyttend raised the issue of stub sorting for Alaska geo stubs! -- Shunpiker (talk) 05:08, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
- Commewnt - I'm a little surprised about some of the proposed names. AFAIK there's nowhere other than Alaska where there is somewhere called Yukon-Koyukuk, in which case the stub template name should simply be YukonKoyukuk-geo-stub (it doesn't need the AK disambiguator). The same is true for many of the other names. And I certainly am not in favour of a POWOKAK-geo-stub by that name! To answer Shunpiker's point though, as far as I can tell no-one is p[roposing fine-grained stub categories - only templates. The normal procedure when a state or similar region is split is to create all the required templates for the next administrative unit down 9i.e., county), but to upmerge those templates into regionalstub categories. Thus we'd have all the templates Nyttend suggests 9though hopefully with better names, as pointed out), but only four r five regional categories. Grutness...wha? 05:42, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
:I also don't quite understand how you can logically say that the categories are too detailed... then suggest a solution that would be more detailed!
:In any case, here's my take on this: the point of stub sorting is to make things easier for people. Even if we don't have at least 60 in each, that seems like a pretty arbitrary rule, why not 45, 100, 3.1415... etc? What I'm trying to say is, the sheer size of Alaska and the diversity of the regions, it makes sense to use broad terms that describe location in terms of east, west, south, north. Think of it this way: stretched end to end, Alaska reaches from about California to Florida. We are legally a state but in area are about twice the size of Germany- the largest European country excluding Russia. However, we have a minuscule population that is highly rural and spread out, which has led to a rather complex system of census areas, boroughs, and unnamed divisions. I'm a native Alaskan, and given a blank map I probably couldn't place half the boroughs or census areas, there's so many of them and they're relatively arbitrary.- so how is someone who's never been to Alaska supposed to know where Wade Hampton Borough is? The region descriptors are more user friendly! L'Aquatique[parlez] 07:13, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
:::How is having five categories more detailed than having a large number of categories plus a load of stubs still feeding into the main category since they are below threshold? (For the reasons behind the threshold, BTW, read user:Grutness/Stub rationales - it explains the reasons fairly well, even if I do say so myself). If you don't know where Wade Hampton Borough is, you add the WadeHampton-geo-stub tag and it automatically gets put into the right regional category. And thoise categories are there to help editors find things to expand, so if you don't know where Wade Hampton Borough is it's unlikely you'd be looking to expand any stubs in that area anyway. Think of it this way. Permanent categories aid people looking for information. Stub categories aid people looking to add information. People who are looking to add information will know well-enough what area they are looking for and therefore what part of the category tree> Also look at it this way - sure, Alaska is big and stretches a long way, but the number of stubs on Alaska is relatively small - overly fragmenting it with masses of categories would make working on the subject harder, not easier. if there were as many stubs on Alaska as there are on , say, Germany, then it would make more sense to split the categories up more, given that eqach iof them would still be large enough to be useful and practical. There aren't that many - though there are enough that the main category needs some form of split. As such, you have two general choices - 40-odd upmerged templates feeding into a handful of regional categories, or the same number of upmerged templates feeding either into individual categories or into the main Alaska category, depending entirely on a case-by-case basis on whether they have reached threshold. The former case is definitely NOT a more detailed solution, and is the solution generally used where possible by WP:WSS (I suggest you have a look at other cases where this is done, like the state-level US school-stubs, country-level struct-stubs, or - most tellingly7 - otherUS county-level geo-stubs. Grutness...wha? 23:04, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
::I'm not proposing more finely-grained stub categories: I'm proposing a few categories, with several stubs in each. Look at :Category:Ohio geography stubs, in which there are eighty-eight different stub templates, but just seven stub categories. Each Ohio county has its own template, but they're merged into regions, as marked on this image. I'm proposing to do the same with Alaska.
::As far as the borough and census areas: with a geography article, it's easy to find where a place is: use the GNIS, or a map, or something like that; articles can remain in the statewide category if necessary. Look at the map at the top of this proposal, above my four-color map: there are only eleven census areas, and only nineteen boroughs; most Ohioans or West Virginians couldn't likely name all their counties either, but we've split both of those states by counties. I don't really see how this is different.
::As far as Grutness' idea: what name would you rather see for the Prince of Wales-Outer Ketchikan Census Area? I just thought that {{tl|PrinceOfWalesOuterKetchikanAK-geo-stub}} was rather awkward. As far as the AK, see the Indiana, Ohio, and West Virginia geography stubs, and the slightly differently named California geography stubs: all of them include the state name, even though there's not likely to be anywhere else with an {{Ashtabula-geo-stub}} or a {{Tuolumne-geo-stub}}.
::Finally, as far as the size: the stub sorting Wikiproject says that 60 is the minimum. That's not my idea. Please, everyone, seek to familiarise yourselves with Alaska geography and with stub sorting procedures: I think that everyone here who is confused is somewhat unfamiliar with one or the other, as both use specialised terminology. You can find stub sorting procedure elsewhere on this project page, and I've added links to all the borough and census area articles up above, so you can read somewhat about them. Nyttend (talk) 12:02, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
:::And by the way, it would make more sense I think to place Kodiak Island Borough in Southwest, especially as we have Stan Shunpike's state source for such a classification. As far as Southcentral: I was just questioning that because I've not seen that usage; as you've proven that it's more common in Alaska, no reason that Alaska should do otherwise. Nyttend (talk) 12:39, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
:Interesting about the county names in the templates. I'm sure they didn't have the extra letters designating state when they were proposed, and I'm very surprised that those letters are there. As to Prince of Wales-Outer Ketchikan, I'm not sure, but the POWOKAK suggestion doesn't seen a natural one. Perhaps a redirect of one to the other (there's nothing wrong with PrinceofWalesOuterKetchikanAK-geo-stub - it's a bit long, but easy enough to remember if you know the name of the place. Grutness...wha? 23:04, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
::My big objection with the length of PrinceOfWalesetc.-geo-stub was that I expected that this project wouldn't like such a long name. I'm fine with it myself. Actually, as you can see on this archive page, the state name has been in county-level stubs from the beginning: California's stubs (which were the first to receive county-level splitting) had the state included, and Ohio (see this archive page) had the OH included in later stages of the proposal. I wasn't involved in splitting Indiana's stubs, and my proposal for West Virginia didn't include the WV in its stubs, but that's because I proposed doing them like Ohio and California and received no objections. I agree that we're not likely to run into any other PrinceOfWalesOuterKetchikans in the world, unlike (say) a Madison or a Franklin (see how many there are of Madison County and Franklin County nationwide), but I think it makes sense for consistency: after all, the article is entitled Prince of Wales-Outer Ketchikan Census Area, Alaska, and Prince of Wales-Outer Ketchikan Census Area is a redirect to that. Not a big deal, to tell the truth, but I think it's better to include the state abbreviation. Nyttend (talk) 00:05, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
Image:Alaska divided for stubs revised.png
What about this proposal? I've based it on [http://www.dced.state.ak.us/oed/student_info/learn/region.htm this] map from the Alaska Office of Economic Development, conforming it as well as possible to county-equivalent boundaries. With this, I'd propose that the regions be Southeast Alaska (green), Southcentral Alaska (red), Southwest Alaska (blue), Interior Alaska (yellow), and Far North Alaska (purple). This is similar to what we did with West Virginia geography stubs, in which our agreed-upon regional divisions were taken directly from a state transportation department website: [http://www.wvdot.com/7_tourists/7_images/7b_8regionsm.gif this] map is the source for our map. I think we could reasonably link the Far North Alaska stub to Arctic Alaska, with text such as "This article about a location in Far North Alaska is a stub..." Nyttend (talk) 12:50, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
:I second Nyttend's latest proposal. Nice work integrating the AOED map with the borough map. -- Shunpiker (talk) 14:44, 8 September 2008 (UTC) (No relation to Stan Shunpike!)
::Sure, that looks almost exactly the same as my classification. I still stand by my usage of the term North Slope, but I do understand why North Alaska would be more appealing. L'Aquatique[parlez] 17:08, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
:::Would you be willing to rework your regional maps along my proposed borders, if this proposal passes? Nyttend (talk) 17:57, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
::::Yes, absolutely. It should only take a few minutes, there are only a few differences. In fact, I'm on a high speed internet connection right now so... hold on a moment. L'Aquatique[parlez] 18:23, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
:::::Okay, you may need to purge your cache to see the differences. Take a look and make sure I got them all. Also, note the shading I added on the southeast map so you can see it better. L'Aquatique[parlez] 18:39, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
::::::Excellent. When can we start sorting? --Shunpiker (talk) 22:44, 8 September 2008 (UTC)