Rick wrote: Possibly it's POV, but I don't read it exactly that way. I'd say that the problem is not really POV here, but rather style and selectivity. We could frame it as a POV dispute, but I don't think that the person who wrote it really intended to slight anyone or advocate for anything. In a short article on New Haven, Connecticut, it doesn't make stylistic sense to write about "On Route 4, there is a McDonald's restaurant which was founded in 1987. This restaurant, interestingly enough, is part of a worldwide chain of very similar restaurants. The menu includes a variety of American-style fast food, including primarily hamburgers, french fries, and soft drinks. In recent years, the menu has been expanded to include more healthy alternatives, as well." That's just a parody of an encylcopedia article, if you see what I mean. However, that doesn't mean that extremely detailed information about some restaurants in a given city couldn't be included in a sidebar article. There could be problems with verifiability, of course. But assuming those are taken care of, then even though some particular information may not belong in a short introductory article, it might be perfectly suitable for a broader article. Imagine this, for example: "Fine dining in St. Petersburg, Florida". Such an article could properly go into a great deal more detail than the general St. Petersburg, Florida article, and since fine dining establishments tend to receive press attention, it would likely be possible to include external links so that people outside my city would be able to confirm the information contained in the article. And suppose someone wanted to write a really stupid and pointless article "Fast food in St. Petersburg, Florida", including the silly paragraph I wrote above. And assume that the information could be confirmed. I say: so what? Let's let them do it. It's not a major problem, since it's silly not many people will care to do it. It won't be well-linked from anywhere on the site, so almost no one will ever see it. I'm flexible on this point, because I think that it's hard to make blanket judgments, and that we would need a lot of case-by-case examples before we'd have enough experience to formulate a general rule. --Jimbo

Leave it to you to start making personal attacks. RickK Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: Jimmy Wales wrote: Agreed, but for some POV is a too convenient bazooka for shooting down other people's contributions. McDonald's is an interesting example. They're ubiquitous. If you've seen one you've seen them all. My guess is that there probably is one in New Haven that is very near to these others. It was not mentioned in the article, but unless there was something special or unique about that particular McDonald's -- why bother? I didn't see it as completely silly. I generally take this approach too. Sometimes those who want to remove these things remind me too much of a Dr. Strangelove who would go to any extent to preserve bodily humors. Ec _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.

On 03/22/04 13:54, Jimmy Wales wrote: Another major point in favour of whatever local flavour is to be found is that it helps break up the endless monotonous articles with nothing but the blasted census data. Urgh. - d.

Why don't you just leave this up to normal editorial process, that is to those folks who are familiar with the town. This may require a bit of patience, as it may be a while with some towns before someone logs in and adds, removes or refines this sort of material. With restaurants, as they are somewhat ephemeral, one would expect folks to change this material often. The smaller the town the larger the few businesses in them form and reflect the character of the town. Fred

On Mon, 22 Mar 2004, Ray Saintonge wrote: Well, I'm going to need to take a little time to verify that. IIRC, the nearest fossil beds are U.S. National Monuments. I've actually been using their magazine _Via_ to good effect. Not so much as a source of information, but to remind myself of details to include in Wikipedia, & verifying details that I tend to get wrong (e.g., misremembering dates & places). One of these days I'm gonna have to leave the early history of Christianity alone long enough to write proper articles on Champoeg (where local government for the Orgon Territories started, & the first state park), & Neakahnie Mountain (where a legendary treasure is said to be buried, but the curious carvings have been more plausibly explained as the work of Sir Frnacis Drake). And then there's the article on Wanker's Corner I'm sure the non-USonians would enjoy reading. (The tavern there was quite popular with the Australian tourists.) Geoff