Talk:San Francisco/Archive 3

Climate table

• the colours of that table seem incorrect. Plz correct them. --Pedro 18:22, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

• Please be more specific about "incorrect."--Paul 19:17, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

"The months of May-September are quite dry, with rain a common occurrence from November-March." Shouldn't it be "from March-November"? 65.185.191.51 03:59, 25 October 2006 (UTC)kickasskat

No. November-March = NovemberDecemberJanuaryFebruaryMarch.

March-November = MarchAprilMayJuneJulyAugustSeptemberOctoberNovember

--DaveOinSF 06:04, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Yelamu since 8000 BC?

I have trouble believing that a single tribe existed on the Peninsula for nearly 10,000 years. The Ohlone article states that Ohlone peoples arrived ca. 500AD, displacing earlier residents. I am by no means an expert, but I think this is a fact that needs checking. 68.8.98.130 07:59, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Agreed that this is a reasonable objection to the current wording. Perhaps something like this would be better:

Indigenous people inhabited the San Francisco Peninsula from at least 8000 BC. The Yelamu group of the Ohlone lived on the penninsula when a Spanish exploration party, led by Don Gaspar de Portolà, arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay

That needs a bit of editing, but the facts are better, I think.--Paul 15:48, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

The recent edit comment refers to a 'source' for 10,000 BC, what is that source? The Ohlone article refers to carbon dating of shell mounds in Emeryville, indicating 1,000 to 2,000 BC. SF probably was similar. Please cite per WP:V the 10,000 BC. Thanks! BruceHallman 16:19, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

The source for the 10,000 BC date was the website of the city of San Francisco. All you had to do was click on the footnote and follow the link. This has now been changed to include your SF-specific reference.--DaveOinSF 17:46, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

This source [1] (see page 55) places the oldest carbon dating at about 3,000 BC (5,000 years before present). Where does the 10,000 BC date come from? BruceHallman 16:54, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Nice find. Article has been edited to conform to the citation you found, changing from San Francisco Peninsula to city of San Francisco.--DaveOinSF 17:46, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Warning Tags in the Article

Are all these tags in the article, telling people to work on the SF sister pages and that this article is mature,necessary or even in good form? They seem jerky to me and against everything that wikipedia is about. Unless someone can give me a good reason for those tags to be there, I'm taking them out. (Remember, there is no ownership of these articles) Sparsefarce 19:34, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Please take a look at this recently moved inappropriate addition, and note the edit comment. The "tags" you ask about say -- PLEASE CONSIDER MAKING YOUR ADDITIONS TO THE SAN FRANCISCO DAUGHTER PAGES. THIS ARTICLE IS MATURE. -- The intent is to urge people to make additions to the appropriate place, so other editors don't have to continually correct things. It it not intended to dissuade people from changing the article where it is inaccurate or lacking some critical fact. If you remove the tags, does this mean you are volunteering to visit the SF article several times a week and move edits?

Please note that Wikipedia:What is a featured article? says that a featured article is stable, and defines that as:

"Stable" means that the article is not the subject of ongoing edit wars and that its content does not change significantly from day to day.

Also Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment Grade:FA states that:

No further editing is necessary unless new published information has come to light; but further improvements to the text are often possible.

San Franciso, California is a Featured Article. Would this rewording make you feel any better? -- PLEASE CONSIDER MAKING YOUR ADDITIONS TO THE SAN FRANCISCO DAUGHTER PAGES WHERE APPROPRIATE. THIS FEATURED ARTICLE IS STABLE. --

--Paul 22:39, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

What are the best practices regarding this? i've never seen warnings like this in other featured articles. Sparsefarce 04:50, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone else want to weigh in on this? I've never seen tags like this, and they sound really mean, jerky, and pretentious. Sparsefarce 22:01, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

These tags seem pretty reasonable to me. Moreover they seem helpful and informative. If anything, they're at least polite ("please consider"). I don't see why these would be considered mean, "jerky" or pretentious. It's just polite information. There's nothing un-Wikipedian about giving guidelines for good edits. I don't really see what the fuss is about. --Battlehamster 00:12, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

peer review requested - California Gold Rush

Peer review has been requested for the California Gold Rush article. All comments and suggestions are being accepted with an eye towards possible nomination of that article as a Featured Article. NorCalHistory 07:13, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Survey on proposal to make U.S. city naming guidelines consistent with others countries

There is a survey in progress at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements) to determine if there is consensus on a proposed change to the U.S. city naming conventions to be consistent with other countries, in particular Canada.

This proposal would allow for this article to be located at San Francisco instead of San Francisco, California, bringing articles for American cities into line with articles for cities such as Paris and Toronto.--DaveOinSF 16:11, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

However the proposal would allow U.S. cities to be inconsistent with the vast majority of other U.S. cities and towns, which (with a few exceptions) all use the "city, state" convention. -Will Beback 23:39, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

{{split-apart}}

Can I add this tag because it is getting very long? --Gh87 00:23, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

You should probably look here before you decide.--Paul 00:31, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Is the Falun Gong homophobic

Some editors are having a heated debate on whether the Falun gong is homophobic. The following quotes are from the leader of this group Master Li Hongzhi. It would be great if you could come to this page and vote your opinion here.

According to Li homosexuality is the leading indicator of the depravity and regression of our society. Gays are more visible than ever and laws have been created to protect their evil life style. In Li’s poem “the World’s Ten Evils,” he states: “homosexuality, licentious desires—dark heart, turning demonic.” [2] Li’s strongest words against gays come from a lecture in Switzerland. Homosexuality was one of the factors that led to the collapse of the Greek civilization, he said. Furthermore, “Homosexuals not only violate the standards that gods set for mankind, but also damage human society’s moral code. In particular, the impression it gives children will turn future societies into something demonic.” [3] Li describes a special kind of suffering for homosexuals. They will be made to undergo a particularly slow and painful annihilation: “That person is annihilated layer after layer at a rate that seems pretty rapid to us, but in fact it’s extremely slow in that time field. Over and over again, one is annihilated in an extremely painful way.” [4]

Thanks--Samuel Luo 04:23, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Intro links

I've added some links to the intro as they looked nakedly absent. I then noticed that some of them had been recently removed with a note that WP:CONTEXT discourages intro section links. I find no such language on that page, and would object if it did. Frankly, I think the idea of links being distracting will fade into the sunset as more and more of the world becomes illuminated with hyperlinks. If anything, the links at the beginning of an article help people find major related articles and helps speed people to the article they are looking for. -- Samuel Wantman 00:29, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Please see WP:CONTEXT#Link_density. Many editors follow this advice and defer wikiliking until the subject appears in the main article. No one is suggesting that we not have wikilinks, after all the SF article has over 300 unique links. I think the the WP:CONTEXT suggestion is spot on, and the intro is a lot cleaner and more clear when defering the links until later in the article. WP:CONTEXT also recommends not having duplicate links. Are you now going to go into the body of the article and remove the duplicates?--Paul 00:46, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Many editors don't follow this advice as well. Duplicate links are discouraged unless they are in widely different parts of the article, and then they are (or should be) encouraged. The idea of a link is to help people get to related articles. The normal practice at Wikipedia is to link the first instance of a link and then link additional instances if they return much later in the article. If I see a term that is not linked I assume that it has been linked nearby and above. If we don't follow this scheme for linking people won't know where to find links. If anything, I'd opt for too many links rather than too few. Not having things like the Golden Gate Bridge linked at the top of the article seems just plain wrong. BTW, I've been editing here for almost 3 years and have not run into this before. --Samuel Wantman 00:56, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

In need of serious editing

This article is 87kb, way the hell too long. Even the New York City article gets by on 62kb. The culprits:

• The history section is too long. Somehow, its 2 centuries of history takes up more space than NYC's 4 centuries. The level of detail and headings and subheadings are completely unnecessary seeing as how History of San Francisco, California has its own article anyway. What should be left is a single section as a barebones summary.
• Museums, performing arts, beaches, and parks should be condensed into a single section as in every other city. Especially since all of these things are mirrored in the culture of SF article.
• Article needs rigorously defluffification.

--Loodog 03:35, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

The standard for article size is not kb, but the amount of "readable prose". Read Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/San Francisco, California.--DaveOinSF 06:41, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

The "culprits", by the way, are the inline citations and the climatebox, not the text.--DaveOinSF 06:48, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

The subheadings in the history section were just added today. Take them out if you don't like them. I'm not very fond of them either, as they needlessly complicate things and they could be easily tripled to cover all of the sub subjects. Axe-em, I say. Also, as to the size of the article, take a look here.--Paul 07:28, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Oops. I see that someone has already removed those extra subheadings.--Paul 07:32, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

kb provides a nice objective statistic use to compare readable prose. Regardless, I do believe the article to simply be too long, especially when all the appropriate subarticles that one would create to normally fix such a problem have already been created. In the interests of creating a concise and dense encyclopedia article on San Francisco, a much shorter summary of each of these headings (with link to further detail) would go far. I also think much defluffing is needed; it sounds somewhat like a travel brochure for the city.--Loodog 02:05, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

kb is a completely inaccurate way to compare article size. Every footnote, every wikilink adds to the number of kb without influencing readable prose. As to your opinion as to the article, thanks for your opinion. If you would like to help work on those subpages, most of which are quite poor, please do so.--DaveOinSF 02:53, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

"One of the most recognizable cities in the world"? Says who? Citation needed here. Is a bridge and a street-car sufficient to make this claim? Show photos of San Francisco without these two features, and the recognition rates might fall greatly. Does San Francisco have as many or even more "recognizable" features than Paris, Venice, London, Rome, New York, Oxford, Amsterdam, Washington, Stockholm, Florence, ......? JMcC 11:12, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

There aren't many cities you can take a picuture of and have almost anyone in the world say "Oh, that's X." I'd say X includes San Francisco, New York City, Paris, Washington, and London, and falls off pretty quickly from there. As to needing a bridge and a cablecar... how many would recognize Paris without the Eiffel Tower, or London without the Parliment Building? Absolutely San Franciso is one of the most recognizable cities in the world.--Paul 14:49, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

That should be removed. No other famous city has this written about it in its article. It's fruitless peacock wording. Besides, if San Francisco is one of the most recognizable cities in the world, then no one would have to be told it.--Loodog 01:42, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

"Reknown" and "famous" are also counterindicated by peacock wording avoidance guidelines.--Loodog 01:45, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Featured on Front Page

In light of some vandalism that has already happened, I'd like to request that the article is protected until removed from the front page, at the very least. Tigerhawkvok 08:05, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Main Page advice

These are suggestions based on experience. Use it as you will.

Yes, thanks for nothing.--DaveOinSF 19:38, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

• One of the goals of the Main Page is to attact new editors who will contibute usefully to the article. This can work if you let it.
• This page is going to get edited heavily. My experience is that about half the edits will be vandalism, half will be reverts and there will be a few good edits.
• Someone is going to think of asking that the page be protected. Please see the policy Wikipedia:Don't protect Main Page featured articles to understand why this is not going to happen.
• I recommend that the maintaining editors hold tight and let the process work. Don't drive yourself crazy by trying to make all the reverts. There are lots of other editors who will see the problems and make those fixes.
• If you are an editor who is attracted to this article and see where some changes should be made, you might want to hold off until the article comes off the main page. There is going to be a lot of noise and useful edits may get lost.
• Drive a stake: Figure out which version of the article was stable before it went on the main page. After it comes off, do a diff and use this for cleanup.

--Gadget850 ( Ed) 18:27, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

This sounds like a very logical and effective policy. All other admins and lesser beings, please read Wikipedia:Don't protect Main Page featured articles and stop whining. Spacanto84 19:06, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Why don't you look at the actual facts, e.g the page history, before accusing anyone of whining?--DaveOinSF 19:16, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

This talk page comment is the only contribution ever made by Spacanto84. A logical assumption would be that this was one of the vandals.--Paul 20:00, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

This is ridiculous. Every time I clicked on San Francisco, California, it read HOME TO COCKSUCKING FAGGOTS WORLDWIDE. One time it did not get reverted for seven minutes. Blind adherence to policy that is not working is ridiculous. Please keep this page protected. Check the page history yourself.--DaveOinSF 19:08, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Ditto. See here  Glen  19:11, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

• I semiprotected, I think all the vandalism is coming from newly created SPAs. NawlinWiki 20:51, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Language

The body of this article is very rude. Looks like someone may have tampered with the article alot. Extremely rude and offensive language shouldn't be on this website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco%2C_California

Please could someone return the article back to its true state.

vandalism

There are number of vandalism going on in this article. Wikipedia should just blacklist those people from editing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chrishomingtang (talk • contribs)

We do. Vandalism-only accounts are blocked indefinitely. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 23:28, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Added Route Indicators under Transportation

As every other California County article contains these, I thought it only fitting that the major highway signs be added to this county also. I even double and triple-checked by preview before commiting the changes, making this the SOLE EDIT that I am doing on this pass, to help preserve it's integrity. (I LOVE the "City by the Bay"!) I also notice that the 35 comes in from the south, on the west side of the city. I will do a bit of research, and add the descriptive to that section at a later juncture. Edit Centric 07:44, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, the problem would be with the article for every other county, and not this one. All the listed highways are included in summary style in the text. A list does not add any information and in fact is not desired. If you wish to create a page entitled List of Roads and Highways in San Francisco, the list you created would be more appropriate there.--DaveOinSF 20:01, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

So what you're getting at is creating another daughter article for that purpose? I can see where that WOULD be a better choice, looking it over again. My point was that, for the sake of uniformity between articles, there should be a mnemonic list here as well. I DO, however, have a small issue with your assumption that the mnemonic signage list; "..in fact is not desired". By whom? Can you cite a reference? Without a citation, your statement becomes subjective at best, unfounded and rude at worst. If YOU do not desire the list, just keep in mind that this article does NOT solely belong to you or other San Franciscans, but to the entire Wiki community at large. Addressing the contributions of another Wikipedian in this way just comes off as being elitist and closed-minded, and given the time I have devoted to this community, I really DO have a problem with that. Edit Centric 21:17, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting you actually make a daughter article, but just that that is a way for you to deal with the information you added. As for the general lack of desirability of lists as opposed to prose, please read Wikipedia:Embedded list. ("As a basic principle, you should avoid list-making in entries.") That the entries for all the other counties of California have chosen not to follow this guideline should not force the San Francisco page to abandon it as well.--DaveOinSF 22:16, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Well sh*^ and shinola, you're absolutely right! I went and read the entry that you cited, and turns out that a concensus HAS been reached on that. (Had I known that, I wouldn't have gotten as miffed as I did about your comment, sorry Dave!) Well, it's definitely going to take some time to transpose from list to prose for each article, if that's the format it needs to be in, I'm gonna need some assistance! :-) Edit Centric 15:45, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

FA nomination for California Gold Rush

The California Gold Rush article has been nominated for Featured article status. If you would like to comment on this nomination, please go here to leave your comment. To leave a comment on that page, click the [edit] link to the right of the title California Gold Rush.NorCalHistory 20:06, 2 December 2006 (UTC)