Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Congress/Archives/2013

Requested move at Talk:Raul Ruiz

Greetings! I have recently relisted a requested move discussion at Talk:Raul Ruiz#Requested move, regarding a page relating to this WikiProject. Discussion and opinions are invited. Thanks, Tyrol5 [Talk] 04:19, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Requested move for "Whig Party"

• (Discuss) – Whig Party (United States) → Whig Party Kauffner (talk) 02:09, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Questionable edits to congressional district CPVI

A number of congressional district Cook Partisan Voting Index values have been changed by 2001:558:6020:197:2174:1EFD:C6EE:4AF4 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). Some seem more correct than others. Is there a new release of the CPVI? I undid a few and asked the user a question about them. S/he did not reply and stopped editing. Should these be fixed, undone, or what? If you want my attention, please leave a TB on my talk page. Thanks Jim1138 (talk) 09:22, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Harkin retirement

Tom Harkin's announced his retirement from the Senate, so if a few people could add that article to their watchlists, it'd be good. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 17:33, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Davy Crockett

I'm posting this here in hopes this project has enough members to keep a long-term eye on Davy Crockett. I'm not sure at this point it would qualify for semi-protection, but I sure wish it did. I've recently done a number of edits on the article, and it could stand to be improved even more. But what struck me about the article is how much total junk was in the article, sitting there for years unchallenged, a large chunk of which has been dropped in years ago by an IP editor. The article has been in bad shape for a long time. Some of it has appeared to me to be deliberate hanky-panky. And some of it looks to be good faith edits by persons with limited knowledge of the subject matter. The legend aside, this man was a United States Congressman. It needs watchful eyes to make sure it doesn't disintegrate again. And in an ideal world, such a public figure would merit some dignity in a Wikipedia article. I think it might take some re-working to raise it up to the level of FA or GA, but I'm always hopeful. — Maile (talk) 16:18, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

the "nuclear option" for filibuster reform

I believe the article nuclear option requires some attention, throughout but particularly the opening paragraphs. It would be great if somebody knowledgeable could have a look at recent changes to the lede (defining the term nuclear option) as well as the discussion at Talk:Nuclear option#Changes in Precedent vs. Changes to the Senate Rules. Thanks! Mathew5000 (talk) 20:55, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Request for Comments

Members of this WikiProject may be interested in Talk:Nuclear option#rfc_4D21E4C. Any comments are of course welcome. Mathew5000 (talk) 22:17, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

district creation date

I'm puzzled by the assertion in California's 1st congressional district that the district was created in 1865, given that California achieved statehood in 1849. Were there no congressional districts for 16 years? What about Cornelius Cole, whose bio says he represented the district from March 4, 1863 to March 4, 1865? Does anyone have a reliable source for these dates? —Stepheng3 (talk) 19:35, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, there were no districts for 16 years, they used at-large districts until 1865. When Cole was elected they appear to have had three at-large districts, and he filled the first seat, so it appears someone erroneously took that to mean he filled the first district. This should be corrected (and sourced). --Golbez (talk) 19:43, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

The cleanup will affect succession boxes. Should at-large congressmen even have succession boxes for their seats? If so, how should the transition from at-large to geographic districts be handled? —Stepheng3 (talk) 21:21, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

updating U.S. representatives named in geography articles

Back in 2008, an editor decided that thousands of articles about populated places (of all sizes) in California should each have a Politics section indicating the congressional district and the current representative's name and political party. Said editor added this information and then went inactive in October of that same year. The information has been getting updated (or not) in a haphazard manner ever since.

A couple weeks ago I came up with an idea to make it easier to keep this information up-to-date. I created a {{Representative}} template where information about U.S. representative (and state legislators) could be stored centrally, so that when a district's representation changes, one edit will update every instance where the template is transcluded. Since then, another editor and I have added template invocations to about 600 articles, and so far it is working well.

Being unsure whether this issue was unique to California, I designed the template so it might easily be extended to other states or even other countries. Ultimately, it might interface with WikiData. If there's interest, I could help adapt it to meet the needs of this WikiProject with respect to other states' delegations. —Stepheng3 (talk) 20:56, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

That's outstanding. I wonder if this type of template could be applied to the (god-awful and pointless) "Seniority" navbox at the bottom of Congressional articles. Have all the data in one spot so editors don't have to flood hundreds of articles with edits every time a member of Congress steps down. —Designate (talk) 21:56, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I am sure a template could be set up for that purpose, though I imagine it would be organized quite differently from {{Representative}}.—Stepheng3 (talk) 04:18, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

US Legislation

Hi, we're here with folks from the Cato Institute Wikipedia:Meetup/DC/Legislative Data Workshop. Cato is working on a non-partisan, free, open-source, public-domain platform to add content about legislation to Wikipedia articles, using xml data about congressional bills. We're taking notes at the event on this [1]. Is there interest about exploring this further with them? Farmbrough's revenge⇔ †@1₭ 16:16, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I would enjoy to work on the projects. Geraldshields11 (talk) 17:30, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm here working on this as well and it sounds like a great idea. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 17:32, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Me four—here at Cato Institute today thinking about how to ncorporate annotated markup of U.S. legislation. Ask us anything! WWB (talk) 17:34, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

More details

As the project is developing, we've set up a provisional WikiProject at Wikipedia:WikiProject United States Federal Government Legislative Data (WP:LEGDATA), and would love to get input from any editors interested in the project. Please join us there, and we can help you find a task if you'd like to help! WWB (talk) 18:16, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Some people (mostly me) working on this project have just created their first two "stub" articles on notable pieces of current U.S. legislation. We'd love to have some comments about what we're doing wrong or what standards we should follow more closely in the future, especially before things really get going and we generate a lot of content that has to be re-done. So if you want to give Senate Fiscal Year 2014 Budget (S.Con.Res 8; 113th Congress) and U.S. House Fiscal Year 2014 Budget (H. Con. Res. 25; 113th Congress), a look, that'd be great. We could use the feedback. HistoricMN44 (talk) 19:28, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Is this an appropriate way to create an article?

Ignoring the other issues in Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2012, is it appropriate for an editor to create an article with nothing more than a summary of the provisions of a law? Personally, I feel that Wikipedia isn't serving its function as an encyclopedia in this case and readers would be better off getting that information from another source if that's all we are going to provide. Ryan Vesey 20:50, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

• Well… it's a start. I think the intent is to get the ball rolling even if it doesn't have much. THIS article, however, is at least somewhat useful because it has a summary of provisions which is an important aspect of a statute.—GoldRingChip 21:23, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
• No, it's not appropriate, because there's no establishment of notability and the only source is the legislation itself. Bills passed by Congress are not presumed notable. If no independent, reliable coverage exists, the article should be deleted (or redirected to the 112th United States Congress which passed it). If independent, reliable coverage does exist, it should be cited and used as the basis for the article. An article which only summarizes the effect of the legislation is equivalent to an article which only summarizes the plot of a book. It's not encyclopedic. —Designate (talk) 21:45, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

I advise having a look at this discussion. Regards, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 18:16, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

When a member's term begins

See also: Talk:112th United States Congress § Mid-term beginning dates, and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Congress/Archives/2010 § Installed

Rule: Members who are elected in special elections start their terms on the day of the special election if they are qualified and if the seat is already vacant. Otherwise, their terms begin the day they become qualified and/or the day the seat becomes vacant.

• Taking the oath of office is an important ceremony, but it does not start the member's service.—GoldRingChip 12:15, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

There are different rules for the House and Senate, the latter being more complicated. The rules about terms are the same as rules about salaries. To see this, one can read "The Term of a Senator—When does it begin and end?" and look at the service dates used for senators and representatives at the respective chambers' webpages.

Terms of senators elected for a full term are governed by the 20th Amendment. The terms of such senators begin on January 3 of the new Congress, but if they do not present their credentials by then, their term seems to start later. This is true whether it is their own fault (as when Senator Rockefeller stayed on as governor of West Virginia until his term ended in January 1978) or not (as when Senator Franken was unable, by Minnesota law) to obtain a certificate of election until after an election contest ended). In both cases, the individual's term seems to have begun when they took the oath, even though the terms to which they were elected began earlier.

Terms of senators appointed or elected are governed by 2 U.S.C. § 36. The rules can seem complex, but they center around the interaction of three question: was a replacement senator appointed to the seat, was a replacement senator elected to the seat, and had the Senate adjourned sine die (i.e., did it end its session) before a relevant event. Here they are:

1. Senators elected to fill a vacancy when no one was appointed take office the day following their election.
2. Appointed senators' terms begin upon appointment.
3. When a special election occurs before the Senate adjourns sine die, the appointed senator continues in office until the elected one qualifies (i.e., takes the oath), and the new senator takes office upon qualifying.
4. If the Senate adjourns sine die after the election but before the new senator shows up, the appointed senator's term ends on the day the Senate adjourns, and the new senator's term begins the following day.
5. If the Senate has adjourned sine die before the special election, the elected senator takes office the day after the election (making the day of the election day the appointed senator's last day).

Representatives elected to full terms are in the same boat as senators. Terms of representatives elected to fill vacancies "commence on the date of their election and not before". -Rrius (talk) 03:00, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

RfC on Talk:Barack Obama

There is an RfC at Talk:Barack Obama#RfC: Should "the first African American to hold the office" have a footnote in the lead?. Please comment there. Wilhelm Meis (☎ Diskuss | ✍ Beiträge) 21:47, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Inconsistency of dates

I like to edit old congressmen articles and articles about congressional districts. I've noticed that depending on the article some list the pre-1920's congresses as starting on March 4th, and ending on March 3rd, while other articles state that they begin on March 4th, and end on March 4th. I've seen different district articles listing March 4th as the end date and others listing March 3rd. This also is a problem in individual infoboxes as well obviously. A problem is that the citations often conflict as well. For example, Delaware's at-large congressional district lists the end date as March 4th. But Wisconsin's 1st congressional district lists the end date as March 3rd. The individual Congress articles such as 44th United States Congress list March 4th, but relable sources such as Directory of the United States Congress list individual congressmen dates as ending on March 3rd. For example [2]

I'm hoping for a group consensus so we can fix all these articles. Thanks everyone! --Jamo58 (talk) 05:38, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

This may be less than helpful (by adding to the confusion), but here's a link from the official U.S. Senate website with what they say the start and end dates of each Congress were. HistoricMN44 (talk) 13:32, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

• Yes, the dates are inconsistent, unfortunately. Mostly the problem is with historical sources, not with Wikipedia. The Senate website, the Bioguide, and other sources disagree and few, if any, acknowledge the inconsistency. There's been some discussion already about this problem here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Congress/Archives/2008#Congresses from 1789 to 1933. Hope it helps. —GoldRingChip 14:12, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

• So overall there is no definitive answer? So we should just leave all the articles with different dates? I still fell through a discussion amongst Wikiproject US congress we should decided on one of the dates and if down the road it turns out to be the other we can all change them back, but personally the different dates on each page is kind of a pet peeve. Truly I hope we can open this up to debate or mediation. However if the groups decision is to leave the articles as they are I can respect that choice as well.--Jamo58 (talk) 23:26, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

There have been repeated discussions about this, and since the sources disagree somewhat, neither side will budge. For a short summing up of the issue, see an essay I wrote on my talk page. Kraxler (talk) 23:31, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Alas, it's not up to us to make that decision, Jamo58. We run the risk of Original research; we are dependent on our sources. As our sources disagree, I suggest the best we can do is have conflicting information and consistently cite our sources.—GoldRingChip 00:37, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you all for you feedback. --Jamo58 (talk) 00:39, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

There is an article on the Senate's page about March 3 v. March 4. The conclusion is that before 1851 it was sometimes contested, but the Senate decided after some year in the 1800s the end noon on March 4. None of the other parts of the government seem to have objected, and eventually it became ingrained (these are my arguments, not the article's). So any source that claims the last day of a Congress was March 3 in, for example, the 20th century, should not be trusted. Also, CongBio can't be totally trusted on this since they sometimes list January 2 as the end of service date for post-20th Amendment reps and sens who finished out their terms. -Rrius (talk) 08:45, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Ballotpedia

I've opened a discussion here about whether Ballotpedia should be included as an external link in U.S. Congress articles. —Designate (talk) 13:17, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Campaign finance data

I'm working on a WikiProject to add publicly accessible campaign finance data to the pages of US elected official. This seems like a related WikiProject, so is there any interest in pursuing the topic from this group? This data is factual and applies to members of all parties, so I think it is appropriate to include. As an example, the top 10 donors and top 10 donor industries would be included. Thoughts? Will Hopkins (talk) 01:32, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Factual doesn't necessarily mean appropriate to include. See WP:NOT and WP:UNDUE. We don't want to indiscriminately include statistical data unless it's significant to the person's biography. We want to follow the mainstream consensus of what goes into a biography; there is plenty of information that is true and verifiable about any given subject, but not worth focusing on in a biographical context. It's the reason we don't use phone books as sources—phone books are reliable but also trivial, in the sense that they're machine-generated and not human-generated. We should only highlight things like campaign donors if human-authored secondary sources focus on them. —Designate (talk) 02:43, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi Will! I think Designate is right that having pages and pages of tables in people's articles isn't the best way to go. That said, I think where an elected a official is getting their money from is important. You might try establishing strict guidelines for what you might include on each bio. Maybe what percentage of their donations as from small, individual donors? How much money they spent on their campaign (primary and general). The top companies that donated and maybe whether their party contributed money (which could be an indicator of how badly the party wanted the seat or values that member). The other thing that would be important is to make sure there is solid context for interpreting the data. This could mean using scholarly articles and research to develop the articles on wikipedia that are related to campaign finance, beyond just adding data to individual pages. If nothing else, you could add a section to each bio's external links section directing the reader to reliable outside websites that do collect and organize campaign finance data. That could be an easy thing to do that is valuable. HistoricMN44 (talk) 13:40, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

We already use {{CongLinks}}, which can include external links to other sites, such as those that report campaign finances. Is that a good start?—GoldRingChip 15:34, 10 June 2013 (UTC)l

Thanks for the input so far, folks. What I'm gathering so far is that campaign finance data could make sense to include if it is used in the appropriate context and is properly sourced. Properly sourced means accurate, but also coming from a source relevant to the page it is added to. Random acts of factual additions might not serve the ultimate purpose, I agree. Here's my slightly-more-articulate-than-before reasoning: Campaign finance data provides a key perspective the voting record of an elected official. Voting records are a key element of many congressional pages, and given the influence campaign finance can have I think that makes it worth including. {{CongLinks}} could be a great place to start—I'll look into that further. I'll also continue developing campaign finance-related pages on Wikipedia, to make sure there's an appropriate context, and consider further guidelines for what to post. No need to flood a page—only the most relevant stuff should be included, and the rest could be easily relegated to external links. To be honest, I love all of HistoricMN44's tips. Thank you all again for your input so far. Will Hopkins (talk) 02:30, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I happened to be aound today, and my first reaction is that if no one but GoldRingChip ever noticed what was in CongLinks, there's certainly no point in bothering to expand that information into a section of its own. ;-) You'd be better off spending time filling out the missing CongLinks parameters for the existing officeholders. Those sources do a much better, more thorough and balanced job than Wikipedia tends to do (see multiple examples of cherry-picked "issues" for various officeholders). There's also so much money passed from group to group, that focusing on straight campaign donations is, quite frankly, missing the boat for the politicians one would be most concerned about. You can google about where Joe Walsh (Illinois politician) really got his money for 2012 for an excellent example of that. If you're interested in transparency in campaign finance in general, add CongLinks to state officeholders and candidates, esp. The votesmart and followthemoney parameters. The Career Profile of the latter gives a better picture, perhaps, than any one year. Flatterworld (talk) 00:23, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the input, Flatterworld. I've posted some clarifying questions on your talk page to avoid clogging this page. Your FollowTheMoney tip was especially helpful. It appears so far that editors would prefer using a variety of external links to provide the most balanced and helpful data. Will Hopkins (talk) 02:52, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Maplight is simply OpenSecrets and GovTrack, which is not my idea of "a variety of external links". Imo it makes more sense to list the originals, rather than the derivatives, unless there's a clear advantage. Based on your subsequent edit, it appears you and your buddy are more interested in promoting Maplight than in providing new information to our readers. I giess I shouldn't be surprised. From the Maplight About page:

About our data: Read the details about our data sources and methodology. Contributions data provided by the Center for Responsive Politics (OpenSecrets.org). Legislative data from GovTrack.us.

(Copied from what I posted at Talk:John Boehner, the point being it's open to abuse, as it's easy to 'cover up' a major donor. That's a major disadvantage. I see no advantages.) Maplight is simply a combination of Open Secrets and Govtrack (see their About page), both of which are included in External links to give readers access to the very latest data. Hard-coding data from a particular point in time is misleading. Ballotpedia has done that, immediately before contributions by particular people were made. The casual reader is likely to assume the data is current, and not follow the link. Wikipedia is not Ballotpedia. Flatterworld (talk) 15:44, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Photo help

Sorry I'm a newbie to uploading photos and I don't really know what I'm doing. I want to add a picture for Ithamar C. Sloan I went to wikicommons and found this photo [3] It's a picture of him but it is eight pictures of him. So I took the photo and cropped it in GIMP. Now I'm not sure what to do next. Do I need to upload the cropped photo to commons as well. And if that is the case then how do show that this new photo is a cropped of the original. Basically the file history section. I'm sorry for being such a newbie with these questions but I'm really interested in helping add more pictures but wikipedia photo help is really confusing. I'd appreciate any help/advice I can get. Thanks --Jamo58 (talk) 06:38, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, you need to upload the cropped version to Commons. I've looked several times and I can't find a clear, standard explanation of what to write to show it was cropped. I know you're supposed to put the original author and your own user name (or real name) for the authors, and somewhere in the description you indicate that it was cropped, then link to the original. I don't know why this isn't better explained on Commons; it's just alluded to. —Designate (talk) 22:47, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Second Amendment to the United States Constitution

A discussion is ongoing about the lead to the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution article. Please help form a consensus at Talk:Second Amendment to the United States Constitution#Proposal for lead.--Mark Miller (talk) 13:03, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

"No major urban area - San Antonio???"

I notice that the 23rd district of Texas is described as not including any "major urban" area of Texas, and being therefore rural based. The district, however, includes San Antonio, which is the second largest city in Texas, and the seventh largest in the U.S. It is indisputedly a "major urban" area, and colors the district politics enormously. El Paso is not exactly rural, either. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.198.138.94 (talk) 17:13, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Sources for opinion-poll tables

There is a discussion in progress at Talk:United States Senate election in Nebraska, 2014 concerning the formatting of opinion-poll tables. The issue is whether a link to a source should be in the form of an external link, piped through the polling organization's name; or whether it should be presented as a formatted citation. The difference between the two formats can be seen in this diff

I'd suggest that formatted citations are more appropriate, per WP:ELPOINTS, which deprecates ELs in most situations, and whose short list of exceptions doesn't appear to apply here; and because ELs are subject to linkrot, and don't allow the reader to evaluate the source without actually following the link. Another editor maintains that ELs are not only permissible but desirable, as in keeping with the usual practice in articles about elections, and in view of this has reverted my addition of formatted footnotes.

Could we get some opinions from members of this WikiProject? Thanks. Ammodramus (talk) 03:32, 4 December 2013 (UTC)