Talk:Ismay, Montana

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Untitled

This could apply to many small towns on Wikipedia, but with such a tiny population, the percentages seem unnecessary. I don't know if this should be changed, although I suspect probably not. I also would not know if telling the actual numbers would be more appropriate. Any thoughts?

Joe, Montana

I was in Kansas City when the Chiefs started a contest to find a city in Montana to change its name to Joe. All residents of the winning city (Ismay) were given the chance to fly to Kansas City and attend a Chiefs game. I only remember about 15 people showing up on the news. Does anyone remember any more details of this event? --Kainaw ^(talk) 00:39, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

If it's named Joe, Montana why is it listed under Ismay, Montana? Quadzilla99 07:15, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Because Ismay never officially changed it's name to Joe. The name change was a way of generating publicity and temporary. -- Ltvine | Talk 01:01, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

This was even in WWN (which is considered a fake magazine). They wrote the town really was renamed to this, though. Note: I know that's offtopic, but it's not entirely offtopic.89.249.0.170 (talk) 00:12, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Income

"Males had a median income of $0 versus $0 for females." Impossible. Correction needed! Emeraude (talk) 12:45, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

A year later and this problem is still here? Sheeeeeeet, that just don't make no sense. HuskyHuskie (talk) 06:06, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, that's what our source says. Nyttend (talk) 13:05, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you're trying to be cute or if you're really serious, but given that you've reverted the edit, I'm going to have to assume that the latter is true. Okay, let's talk about this.

If I came across a source, say, an article in the New York Times, that said that Barack Obama was 27 years old at the time of his innauguration, would I include it in his article? Of course not, because I know that that's not true. I know it not because I've read other places that he was 47, but because I know that the US Constitution requires presidents to be 35. I know enough to recognize the error, period. I don't even have to seek out other sources, I'm learned enough to realize that it's simply not possible. I wouldn't even countenance allowing a section in the article on "Age Controversy" (some sources say that Obama was actually below the constitutionally mandated threshhold age of 35) unless I had multiple sources indicating it was actually believed, and believed by credible (non-kooks) persons.

Now here we've got an article with an ostensibly sourced comment saying something that's even more impossible than a 27 year old American president. At least a 27-year old American president could be innaugurated illegally, it's not a physical impossibility. But this article actually proclaims a total impossibility. It says that the town has a per capita income of $9,852. That is, you add up the total income of the denizens ($256,152) and divide it by the number of citizens (26), and you get an average (i.e., per capita) income of $9852. Okay, so the article asserts that there IS income in the town. It then goes on to say that the median income for both men and women in the town is zero. Now while the mode of income in the town could very well be zero, neither the median nor the mean can be zero. To say that the median income of men is zero is to state that half of the men in town make more than $0 each year, and half of them make less than $0 each year. That is impossible. The source is therefore in error.

Look, I have to assume that, since you're an administrator, that somewhere along the way someone got the impression that you're possessed of some intelligence. Nothing in the Wikipedia rulebook—not even WP:OR—requires that you put that intelligence away on the shelf while you're editing. So you've got a source that says x. Big hairy deal. Haven't you seen cases where one reliable source conflicts with another? Well, that's what we have here: A source conflicting with the logical truth. So I'm once again going to remove the statement.

Now I will give you this: While something absolutely must be wrong here, I suppose there is a tiny (yet greater-than-zero) chance that the median income figure is correct and the per capita figure is wrong. In other words, maybe nobody in the town makes any money at all, yet somehow the database got that $9852 number tossed in there by mistake. So if that's what you actually believe happened, then fine, we can remove both the median figures and the per capita figures. But I think it far, far, far, far more likely that what actually happened is that whoever entered the information into the government database whence this information came simply did not have or simply failed to enter the male/female figures, and when this article was bot-generated from said database, having no figures to pull from, it simply defaulted to $0.

So are you going to presume the infalibility of a computer-generated database drawn from every community in the United States, or are you willing to acknowledge—given the logical impossibility of the conclusions to which said db leads you—that maybe someone misentered the facts into the database? Given the tens of thousands of communities in the United States, I think it would be pretty unlikely that no errors were made in the data entry.

Are we good? HuskyHuskie (talk) 07:19, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

How do you know that the median income was not 0? If all the residents but one have no income, and one resident has an income of $256,152, the mean income will be $9,852 but the median income will be $0. Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No. Nyttend (talk) 19:28, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

This page says that 61% of the population is in the labor force. So no, it's not possible. HuskyHuskie (talk) 20:10, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, I suppose that 53 weeks of silence provides adequate evidence that you recognize that your position has been established to be completely untenable; so nice of you to acknowledge it and not let me waste my time coming back here to check for your reply. What a dick.HuskyHuskie (talk) 02:12, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Income issues, revisited

Well, several years ago, I spent a good amount of time on this article schooling another editor on the limits of sources and the critical role of logic in the determination of what should be included in our articles. I came back tonight expecting that past argument to have been rendered moot by the inclusion of (hopefully more accurate) information from the 2010 Census. But it turns out that, while new population figures have been entered (and I'm sorry to see that "Joe, MT" does not appear to be headed in a promising direction), the income figures are identical to those of four years ago. Now while I would imagine that User:Nyttend would not see that as anything to question, I tend to consider this to be so unlikely as to approach impossibility.

Would someone who knows about such things be able to explain this? Is it, perhaps, just a failure of the Census Bureau to release income information? HuskyHuskie (talk) 07:45, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Are you reading this right? The only income figures given are for 2000. I have not seen income figures from the 2012 census in any similar article and assume that such figures were either not collected in 2010 or have not been published. Emeraude (talk) 09:19, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Emeraude is correct; the bot that adds 2010 data to articles hasn't been including income. You should explain who the other editor is, since your comments in previous sections toward me (especially the conclusion of the final one) obviously don't fit the description. Nyttend (talk) 12:54, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, Emeraude, I would be shocked to learn that such data was not collected during the 2010 Census, although it's not inconceivable. So is this something we can request of a bot operator? I have no experience with such things; if you know anything about it, including where to go, have at it. If you're as ignorant as me, or just don't have the time or desire, I'll look into it, if you wish. HuskyHuskie (talk) 22:28, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I haven't a clue about what data the US census collects, or how Wikipedia's bots use it. Sorry. Emeraude (talk) 08:54, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

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