Talk:Gainesville, Florida/Archive 1

2002 discussion about murders

Fernandina Beach seems more likely, though that's not what I have in my notes. I'll check the book I was consulting (last year, when considering making a documentary on Gainesville history--a missed opportunity, to be sure, to bore the hell out of anyone who watched it). --KQ

Well there is a Fernandina Beach, I've been there, and Ram-Man has also visited. There might be a Fernandina too, of course, like Miami and Miami Beach, Jacksonville and Jacksonville Beach, etc. Go Gators!

Should the history include those horrible murders? Ortolan88

There is also a Fernandina which existed in the 1850s.  :-) And yes, the article most certainly should include the murders. There is a graffiti wall in the city on 34th street; anyone can paint anything on the wall without repercussion, but a center section has been dedicated to the victims since shortly after it happened. New people to the town would frequently paint over that dedication, not realizing its significance, always provoking a flurry of outraged editorials; the city eventually planted five trees in the median of 34th street and dedicated each one to a victim. --KQ

Last week there was another outraged editorial about a fraternity that painted over the dedication. --KQ 23:41 Nov 4, 2002 (UTC)

Why should the murders be included in the article when someone else was told off for putting stuff on the Sydney gang rapes in the Sydney article? --- Anonymoues 06:15 Oct 26, 2002 (UTC)

Well, I don't know. As far as I'm concerned, if it's factual, it's fair to include it.  :-) The murders are still an issue in the town, to be sure. --KQ

Well, the gang rapes are an issue in Sydney, and will be important historically anyway as part of the history of Sydney's ethnic relations. m:2000 Sydney, Australia Gang Rapes is entirely factual, but I was forced to remove it by people calling it "non-encyclopedic"... -- Anonymoues 06:23 Oct 26, 2002 (UTC)

Interesting. I don't know the background of that--either the rapes, or the wikipedia controversy. Maybe if you mentioned more of the controversy in Sydney itself? Also, drop or clarify the "racist" issue: Catholicism is not a race, nor is Europeanism. Race itself is quite a tricky issue; and charges of racism should be avoided. Better would be to provide original quotes which seem clearly to be racist, without labelling them as such.

I'd advise writing it again, clarifying and attributing as much as possible. Give original quotes (e.g. the "bash a Catholic" one) and try not to draw conclusions or lead the reader to them.  :-) If it's been controversial in Sydney, as far as I'm concerned it's significant enough to add. My 2¢ anyway. Cheers, & good luck with it. :-) --KQ

The Sydney controversy had to do with the fact that the information on the rapes took up over half of the entire Sydney article, and the racial profiling of the perpetrators was more than a little NPOV. What is there now is still, IMHO, more than necessary, but considerably less that it was. -- Zoe

In-N-Out Burger

Can any "feet on the street" confirm or deny this. Wikibofh_(talk) 15:32, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

It's not a "real" In-N-Out but simply the name of a small burger joint in East Gainesville. There's no connection between this place and the In-N-Out chain.

I posted a followup on this to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:In-N-Out_Burger#Florida_In-N-Out. Regards, chris (11/18/2006)

Southernmost "deciduous" city"

The article stated that Gainesville was the southernmost city which has "predominantly" deciduous trees. That's not true. Many cities in Polk County are predominantly deciduous, including Bartow nicknamed the "City of Oaks." Jcam 01:41, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

While you're right that Oak trees are certainly not limited to Gainesville (and also are an important symbol of places as far South as Miami, Fl)- Gainesville features many other types of desiduous trees that can't survive south of Ocala, Fl. There's a botany class that discusses this at the University of Florida.

Demographics

I noticed that the demographics section concerning race adds up to 106.41%. I haven't taken any statistics classes, but for some reason this doesn't seem right. :P Furthermore, the demographics concerning age add up to 100.1%, but that seems like a negligible amount to me.

Is this variation normal for demographics (I realize most demographics numbers are estimates), and if not, does anyone have the real numbers? --EndTasked 03:36, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Beginning with the 2000 census, respondents were able to select more than one race when describing themselves, thus the total of all races can be more than 100%. See [1] (page 7 and page 8 of the PDF file or pages 2 and 3 of the original document, including figure 3). Bobomatic

External Links

Have just tried to clean up the external links section, as per the request. I have created a Media section, where the newspapers have gone (I removed the classifieds, since those are purely commercial sites). I removed the various links about music and bands - if someone wants to write a section about the music scene these could be brought back in to that section. the airport and bus service was already mentioned in the transportation section, so doesn't need to be listed again in the EL section. There were some good links there, but Wikipedia is not a collection of links, so I tried to stick to official links only. Hopefully this meets with the approval of the editors who edit this page. -- Alucard (Dr.) | Talk 18:31, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Removed copyvio

The entire section about Gainesville being a "Gold Well City" was removed as it was a cut-and-paste job from the WELCOA website. If someone wants to rewrite it, using their own words rather than the press release from WELCOA, have at it. Horologium t-c 20:59, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Unreferenced section

The massive list of famous people is totally unreferenced. Please find references for the people on the list and add them. Unreferenced material can be removed at any time, and it's likely that some of the names on that list are not correct. Horologium t-c 00:19, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

expansion and restructuring

Over the past few days, I have been reorganizing and cleaning up this article, which was turning into a huge, unfocused disaster. I moved the gigantic list of famous people to a separate page, I removed some unsourced and PoV statements, and I pulled a lot of information out of the culture section and moved it to geography, cityscape or the (new, undersized) economy section. I have added a few more sources, and formatted all of the sources using the {{cite web}} template. This article could use a lot more work; although I live in the city, the culture section is something that someone else should tackle, since the music scene here is not my cup of tea. I will do more work on the economy section, and put together a list of sister cities, which I will create as a separate page and add as a {{seealso}} link. There also needs to be a lot more mention about UF, other than a couple of links; the university totally dominates this city far more than almost any other university of its size. Most of the other large universities are located in state capitals or much larger cities, in which their presence does not disproportionately affect the city's culture and demographics; Gainesville would be another small semi-rural town in northern Florida if UF were located elsewhere. Horologium t-c 15:16, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Horologium for all your cleanup efforts. I'll see what I can do to help also. Thereisaplace (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 06:00, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism rush

This page had to be semi-protected because of a flood of vandalism from at least 5 separate IP addresses, more or less at the same time. I have no idea what that was all about, but I reverted every edit from today to fix it. Horologium t-c 23:00, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Article seems to state that U of F is 2nd largest University in US and later 3d largest. I suspect this changes annually, however, article should be consistent. 71.134.243.191 (talk) 00:04, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Moved from article for discussion and copy-editing

(This was originally posted to the article page by an IP address; it needs to be sourced and reworded before re-adding it to the article.) Horologium (talk) 02:32, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Correction: Hogtown was a railcrossing for trains carrying hogs to market from the surrounding counties. Hogtown was renamed Gainesville when the populance wanted a classier name. Look at a map of the regional railroad lines.

Correction: The city is not known as Hogtown 'by a few elder residents'. I grew up in Gainesville, and don't consider myself elderly at 39. Everyone who has lived in Gainesville for any amount of time refers to it as Hogtown. It's the city's primary nickname. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.65.33.92 (talk) 22:15, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Culture Update

I have been attempting to update the culture section by including much needed references, adding a more comprehensive artist list (all artists listed should have wiki pages already or citations have been added or will be added to verify Gainesville origin), and giving a more accurate and at all efforts unbiased assessment of the local music community.

I am also trying to add improved photos, as the ones that are currently up are ugly.

Please give me feedback. —Preceding unsigned comment added by GrLantrn13 (talk • contribs) 21:50, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

The band Dear Dakota, is from Gainesville, Florida. There are growing in popularity, according indictions from Alternative Press magazine. - Thanks-you! --Anaccuratesource (talk) 03:19, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Well here are some pictures of Dear Dakota:

Them: http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewAlbums&friendID=270286246 http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=270286246&albumId=501255 http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3159/2941246414_b5e4734c15.jpg?v=0

Their album: http://www.purevolume.com/deardakota/albums/99512478

- Thank-you! hope it helps.--Anaccuratesource (talk) 18:07, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Why did Horologium remove the part about the dance music scene in the 90s? This was HUGE in Gainesville, and Simons was an internationally known club. Google it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.245.53.4 (talk) 00:10, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I deleted it because it was totally unreferenced, and peacocky to boot. Find some reliable sources to substantiate what you wrote, and it can be restored. Horologium (talk) 00:16, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

"Music Scene" section

I recognize that the indie music scene is a big deal in Gainesville, but this section of the article is desperately in need of drastic cleanup. Of the references (and I use the term loosely), one is a student-run board which lists events that are occurring (essentially an electronic noticeboard), three are to a two-person website with a self-described budget of $20/month, and one is to a personal webpage which was last updated in October, 1996. None of these are reliable and none do anything to establish notability for the ten unlinked bands listed in the article in the last four paragraphs of the section. Only Umoja Orchestra, Morningbell, and The Know How have articles in Wikipedia, which should be the threshold for addition to the list. If someone doesn't find real sourcing, I'm going to go through the section with a thresher and remove everything which is not properly-cited, because until it's cleaned up and properly sourced, it's going to continue to draw crufty links from every college student who starts up a band here. Limiting the section to notable bands and verifiable statements will make it easier to maintain. Horologium (talk) 17:25, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I took a sledgehammer to this section and cleared out a lot of the fancruft which had accumulated over the years. Bands which don't have articles, assertions backed by personal websites and electronic bulletin boards, and totally unsourced drivel all got pounded out. There are still a few dubious sources, but I am fairly confident that we can find suitable sources for discussing TV69 and some of the more notable local bands.

Please don't add bands which fail to meet Wikipedia's notability standards. If the band isn't notable enough to merit a Wikipedia article of its own, it doesn't merit a mention here either. Horologium (talk) 01:09, 8 December 2009 (UTC)