Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States Public Policy

/archive 1

importance ratings

We need to figure out the scope of the different importance ratings. As a starting point, I suggest the following:

• Top importance is for the very broadest articles specifically about U.S. public policy, e.g., Environmental policy of the United States, and for the very broadest programs and sets of policies, e.g., New Deal.
• High importance is for narrower articles about big chunks of U.S. public policy, e.g., Monetary policy of the United States, as well as very broad general articles about public policy that don't focus specifically on the U.S., e.g., Economic policy, major laws that affect significant sectors of public policy, e.g., No Child Left Behind Act, and major institutions relevant to public policy, e.g., United States Environmental Protection Agency.
• Mid importance is for narrower or less important topics than High: non-U.S.-specific articles about narrower public policy topics, e.g., Money supply, institutions with a narrower public policy scope, e.g., Natural Resources Conservation Service, and significant laws that affect a more discrete area of public policy, e.g., Endangered Species Act.
• Low importance if everything else: minor laws or amendments that are primarily significant only in a broader context, e.g. Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966, people who are policy makers but aren't strongly associated with any particular very important policy developments, minor agencies, departments and programs that have a narrow scope, e.g., EPA Safer Detergents Stewardship Initiative (SDSI).

Thoughts?--Sross (Public Policy) (talk) 18:52, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

I guess my first question would be, what is the scope of this project? All articles titled "xxxxx policy of the United States" obviously. I suppose all current and historical US laws, presidential policies, and US policy institutions. But then are we talking about all governmental bodies, policy advocacy groups, and political advocacy groups? Then if we include articles on people involved in U.S. policy, we could really go crazy- current and past policy institutional leaders, people who were notably subject to U.S. policies, people who enacted or lobbied for U.S. policies, people who studied or theorized about US policies or policies that the US later adopted, etc. Are you also suggesting that broader, non-US-specific policy articles be included? I'm of the opinion that the scope of this project really has to be carefully defined. johnpseudo 13:49, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

I only have more questions. It is a difficult area to categorize and we could check this source :See also structure of the PolicyArchive.org database, a possible basis for categorizing articles. Things to definitely include, but I don't know where they fall in the importance level:

• Laws affecting public policy
• Court cases that influenced public policy (ie. Roe v. Wade)
• Issues relating to public policy (ie. voting rights, capital punishment, public education)
• History of U.S. public policy
• Notable persons in U.S. public policy
  • Definitely include:
    • Notable public policy experts and public policy pioneers (ie. Max Weber, a German sociologist and F.W. Taylor an engineer who studied industrial efficiency and created scientific management.)
    • Important activists who influenced public policy (ie. Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King Jr.)
    • Government officials who made important policy changes (ie. Woodrow Wilson did away with spoils system of government employment and implemented bureaucratic merit based government employment and George W. Bush implemented the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war.)
  • BUT where do we draw the line?
    • Do we include all presidents, governors, legislators, judges?
    • What about bureaucrats and appointed positions?
  • How do we distinguish between U.S. public policy and U.S. foreign policy? (ie. The Bush Doctrine is foreign policy, but it clearly has considerable impacts on U.S. public policy.)
• Theories about Public Policy
• Types of policy (ie. environmental, immigration, healthcare)

Johnpsuedo already raised some of the tough questions. My vote would be, to include the broad range of topics and rate the less important articles as such within the project framework. ARoth (Public Policy Initiative) —Preceding undated comment added 20:54, 25 June 2010 (UTC).

Project scope

I'm breaking this into a separate section, since it's different (but related) issue from the importance ratings. We can probably all agree about some of the kinds of articles that are definitely within the project scope:

• U.S. federal laws
• Articles specifically about U.S. public policy and its history, including articles about specific policies
• U.S. policy institutions

Then there are broad classes that we should decide whether they are in or out:

• State and local laws in the U.S. - (these are surprisingly underdeveloped; see all the redlinks in List of U.S. state legal codes) - include them all?
• General articles about public policy that aren't limited to the U.S. but are relevant to it - this is a tricky one; I think these are relevant to the Public Policy Initiative (and students might want to work on some of them), but it might or might not make sense to include them in the WikiProject.
• Policy advocacy groups and think tanks - These seem pretty relevant to the WikiProject to me.

Then there are other kinds of articles that we need to find the dividing line for:

• People - Which biographies, if any, are properly part of this WikiProject? This is by far the trickiest; ARoth and johnpseudo have good examples above of why including people a) often makes sense, and b) represents a continuum from people intimately involved in public policy and relevant to it, to essentially every U.S. elected official and government employee who has an article. The latter seems a overbroad to me. Any ideas?
• U.S. governmental bodies - Are all government bodies relevant to public policy, or just some subset?
• Political advocacy groups - These ones are tricky too; many would probably make sense, but others are important for policy but only indirectly concern themselves with it, and others probably only have very tenuous connections to public policy.

--Sross (Public Policy) (talk) 18:22, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

I think the only way to have a clear definition here is to limit the scope of the project to articles with subjects that are US Policies or are about US policies. That would be quite restrictive compared to what you seem to have in mind right now. But keep in mind the list of ~100 policy areas that used to be linked on Frank Schulenberg's user page (can't find it now); It would still be a hugely ambitious task to write good articles on each of these, not to mention each of the individual laws/other types of policies that fall under each of those subject areas. So it would completely exclude policy institutions, state/local laws, general articles not specific to the United States, biographical articles, and U.S. governmental bodies. This definition is obviously at odds with your current conception of project scope, but another idea would be to start with a very limited project scope and expand the scope on successive iterations of the project (B1, B2, future iterations...). It seems to me the advantages of having a broad project scope (get more attention from wiki editors, allow more independence for participants) would be outweighed by the disadvantages (overwhelming administrative work, more-questionable value of quality improvement data - as the impact of project participants is diluted by general wikipedia editing). Yet another idea would be to allow project participants to expand the project to include any policy-related article they become interested in editing, whenever they feel the need. johnpseudo 19:10, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Just to clarify, are you including articles about individual laws in your proposed scope? And why exclude U.S. policy institutions? I see at least some drawbacks to including most of the other broader categories we're talking about, but policy institutions seems like a natural fit.--Sross (Public Policy) (talk) 19:38, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Here's Frank's page we were talking about that got moved: User:Fschulenburg (Public Policy)/Public Policy.--Sross (Public Policy) (talk) 14:57, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

I might even exclude individual laws in the interest of keeping the scope manageable. I'd exclude U.S. policy institutions simply because the line is blurry between "policy institutions" and "advocacy institutions" and just "political groups". johnpseudo 14:39, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Scope - Biographies

As far as people are concerned you might be interested in the following categories:

• Category:American activists
• Category:American civil servants
• Category:American diplomats
• Category:American educationists
• Category:American economists
• Category:American politicians
• Category:American lobbyists
• Category:American judges

ϢereSpielChequers 02:05, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

This is a massive undertaking, and here are some brief mullings on where to begin.

Public policy is a mixture of direction (Congress/Executive Branch), interpretation (Supreme Court), popularization (news media), and polarization (interest groups and the public). None of the four elements can be ignored, but there is almost always an Issue at the crux of any public policy matter. Laws affecting public policy are usually responsive, not proactive. Therefore, IMHO, the sensible approach is to consider as the primary delimiter some of the recurring themes addressed by government (internal improvements, tariffs/international trade, slavery, piracy, the banking system, Federal/State relations, interstate commerce, taxation, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, voting rights) and restrict the discussion as much as possible to the national forum.

An example. With regard to the history of US public policy, you will find that one of the bellwethers of the 19th century is the American approach toward the veteran, specifically the Union veterans of the American Civil War. Correlations between the income from sales of public land/railroad fees and the outgo from pensions to invalid veterans and their widows and orphans are both direct and startling. The Bureau of Pensions was one of the most massive bureaucracies of its time, necessitating a huge building of its own. Calculations of the percentage of the Federal budget which went to pensions will encapsulate the history of entitlement programs and the underpinnings of their growth to today's Social Security, VA, and Medicare dilemma (now everybody wants a share like they got a share). A detailed and honest discussion of the political influence of the Grand Army of the Republic is warranted; it was the most effective lobbying group of the 19th century and into the 20th, and for sources start with the monograph Glorious Contentment and Congressional documents.

Genehisthome (talk) 17:19, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Random input

I would suggest checking out Wikipedia:GLAM/BM, Wikipedia:WikiProject Murder Madness and Mayhem, Wikipedia:WikiProject North of the Rio Grande, Wikipedia:WikiProject AP Biology 2008, and Wikipedia:WikiProject AP Biology 2009 to see successful collaboration projects and how they worked. The real trick will be attracting several motivated editors to do what you want them to do. In my opinion, that is the hardest part of all of these efforts. I would also try to publicize this event more to try to attract motivated editors. With that in mind, I would make sure that this information gets posted in the Signpost (See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions). Remember (talk) 13:42, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, we've definitely been studying the successful projects from the past. Part of the challenge here is that the goal is to find ways to make good assignments scale; something like Murder, Madness, and Mayhem could never work at the scale of, say, 50-100 classes per semester without a lot more Wikipedians helping out (see the post-mortem from the FA-team, which really pins down a lot of the hardest issues) . And instructors less deeply involved in Wikipedia than the ones behind those projects you linked could never have pulled it off, without a lot more help. So like you say (and as always with projects that start from the Foundation rather than the community) the great challenge is getting editors motivated to participate in productive ways. My hope is that this will really be taken over and led by Wikipedians, because that's the only way it will have a longer-term impact, if it becomes a full-fledged part of the community. As for the Signpost... look for a piece about it in the upcoming issue, and yeah, I want to leave regular updates at the Suggestions page as the project progresses.--Sross (Public Policy) (talk) 14:00, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

You also should check out Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Google Project when you get a chance. Remember (talk) 19:46, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Embassy

We encountered an idea at WP:GLAM/SI for a embassy for Wikiprojects, WP:GLAM/SI/WikiProject embassy that way you have a list of projects that are directly related and some people who specialize in developing that content, formating, templates, categories, etc, ready for access. Might want to consider the Idea. Sadads (talk) 23:08, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

open access

As I mentioned when this was announced, it would be nice if this project considered the accessibility of sources within its scope.[1] See also [2], where a previously unavailable source was made available on Wikisource.

While it would be nice for this project to promote putting the original sources on Wikimedia Commons in PDF/DjVu/etc format, and engage in transcribing the text on Wikisource, I would consider it an important step for a project like this one to consider whether a high fidelity copy of the related sources are available on the Internet and are transcribed for easy copy&paste and discussion.

Also important is the need to consider whether the sources are likely to remain available. Obviously, relying on sites like GeoCities has proven to be problematic - we still have links to GeoCities ([3]), tripod and angelfire. Nearly as problematic is linkrot. e.g. the link Pub.L. 110-140 on Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 is right now reporting "Error Detected", and in fine print "Sorry, but the page you requested could not be found".

I did a quick audit of refs on Energy policy of the United States, which is a top importance 'B' article, and reported my results at Talk:Energy policy of the United States#broken links. Most of those are likely to have been copyrighted, and thus cant be archived on Wikimedia Commons, but several are by government, NGOs and even the UN. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 03:54, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Wow, that's a lot of broken links for one article. We should make sure to emphasize the importance of stable linking when we start working with students for this project; as you say, only a small portion could be archived by Commons or Wikisource, but many others probably have multiple different sources, some of which will be more stable than others.--Sage Ross - Online Faciliator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 11:17, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Categorization

At this point, there's not much of a category tree for U.S. public policy. The closest thing to a supercategory is Category:United States federal policy, which should be the parent category for many or most (but not all) the articles in this project's scope. I'm going to start filling out the category tree a little more fully soon; please help! One thing that might be useful for us is something Frank Schulenburg suggested: we can look at the way http://www.policyarchive.org/ organizes topics, and in many cases seems like a reasonable way to categorize similar Wikipedia articles. Frank wikified the their category structure at User:Fschulenburg (Public Policy)/Public Policy.--Sage Ross - Online Faciliator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 11:34, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Beware of presentism! Today's American policy priorities are not necessarily those of all time! A clear division between modern policies and historical policies, and the reasons for the change (the adoption of the Constitution is a good dividing line, World War Two is another), is practical.

Genehisthome (talk) 17:23, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I believe the presentist mindset is driven by who and what we are interacting with for our Grant money and initial classes. Sadads (talk) 17:30, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

It's true that the classes, in particular, will probably be focused on issues of present-day relevance, and I think that's also part of the motivation behind the grant. But that doesn't mean we should be intentionally presentist in the way we approach categorization or the general inclusion of articles for this WikiProject. The overall point is to improve public policy coverage, not improve present-day topics. And having good history should be relevant even for people who's main concern is present and future policy.--Sage Ross - Online Faciliator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:19, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree, in the long run we need to be very broad in our historical reach, but what sub-subjects do we need ready for the fall? Sadads (talk) 18:20, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Training answered that question. We should expect the following subject for the classes: at George Washington, Policy Analysis and Political management topics (both classes are introductory so students will be able to interact with a broad swath of articles); At Georgetown, Arab World and US Policy and Native American issues of worldview perception etc (hopefully in collaboration with WP:GLAM/SI and the National Museum of the American Indian); at Syracuse, Onondaga, New York related political articles, and at Indiana economic theory and Urban development related policy. This is only tentative but may give us a good place to start until we get requests from the campus ambassadors and the syllabi, Sadads (talk) 21:59, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Cool. So we should definitely try to incorporate those areas into the public policy category tree, to the extent that it's possible.--Sage Ross - Online Faciliator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 22:50, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Communications policy

One area I noticed that's not part of the public policy category tree is communications policy. For example, net neutrality in the United States isn't in a relevant category. There's a lot of other telecommunications policy content that similarly could be better categorized. I'm going to try to bring some structure to this area. The policyarchive.org categorization for this area groups together "Media, telecommunications and information policy", but I don't think that fits well with our category conventions. The three components of that might make sense as separate categories, but I'm not sure how clear the distinction is between media policy, telecommunications policy, and information policy. I'm starting with creating Category:United States telecommunications policy and we'll see where it goes from there. Feel free to help populate this cat. --Sage Ross - Online Faciliator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 13:09, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Video from Campus Ambassador training

Here's the video that Frank Schulenburg made at the Campus Ambassadors training last week, which brought together ambassadors and some of the professors who are participating in the public policy initiative. It's a nice 8 minute overview of what's going:

First Wikipedia Campus Ambassador Training, 10-12 August 2010

--Sage Ross - Online Faciliator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:55, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

United States Public Policy articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the United States Public Policy articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:47, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Merge three noticeboards

I have started a proposal to merge three United States related Noticeboards into one due to all three having no, or extremely limited activity, in the last year. I believe this will invigorate the noticeboard if we keep any of them at all. I propose merging:

• Wikipedia:U.S. Southern wikipedians' notice board
• Wikipedia:U.S. Northern wikipedians' notice board

into

• Wikipedia:U.S. Wikipedians' notice board.

Please provide comments here (including support or oppose). Comments are necessary to ensure that this does not intefere with ongoing efforts. If no comments are received in 7 days I will assume there is no problem and proceed with the merger. --Kumioko (talk) 19:39, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Assessment of Article

I'm in the Wikipedia and Public Policy class at Syracuse University, and I'm trying to move forward with my article; however, being new to Wikipedia, I'm having a difficult time advancing my article without having an idea of where my article currently stands. If someone could reassess my article on Alaska Ballot Measure 2 (1998), it would be greatly appreciated. Kcahlber (talk) 15:09, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I made some formatting changes and copy edits, and I have left some comments on your talk page. Anyone else, please feel free to comment further. -- Ssilvers (talk) 17:37, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Assessment of Fair Sentencing Act article

The Fair Sentencing Act article is currently rated as Start-Class but hasn't been checked against the article quality rating metric. It also has not received a rating on the project's importance scale. I was hoping the article could be given an up-to-date assessment based on the criteria for the United States Public Policy WikiProject so I can see where the article stands and what areas on the rubric I need to focus on improving. Thanks! Gsrogers (talk) 19:12, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Foster care

We have two newbies who have taken over the Foster care article in perfectly good faith, but, I believe, incorrect in their organization. They are not used to high level articles/policies, but articles (like places) where everything is lumped together. I have not been able to convince either of them. The article is seen by 500 or more people per day. This really needs some experienced editors. One isn't enough! Student7 (talk) 01:10, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

United States related Tag and Assess proposal

There is a proposal on WikiProject United States to task Xenobot with tagging and assessment of articles that fall into the scope of Wikipedia:WikiProject United States. Please take a few moments to provide your comments about this proposal.

If you are interested in joining Wikipedia:WikiProject United States please add your name under the applicable section here. --Kumioko (talk) 17:08, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

RFC: Should there be a separate article called Targeted killing

• Ongoing Request for Comment, at Talk:Assassination#RFC:_Should_there_be_a_separate_article_called_Targeted_killing.
• New comments should go all the way to the bottom, below subsection, Discussion break.

Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 22:26, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Immigration

There are a bunch of pretty good articles on immigration. But there are too many and the information is therefore scattered. There needs to be an outline. For example:

• Immigration to the United States (containing summaries of the following)
  • History of Immigration to the US
  • Bureaucracies handling immigration to the US (from 1891 BTW)
    • Have to have a "History of bureaucracy" which will duplicate some of the foregoing.
  • Illegal Immigration
    • History of illegal immigration

Anyway there is stuff all over the place now. Someone tried to merge two articles in May and never got any comments. So the main problem is not voting on an outline per se (!) but getting attention for the problem of scattered information. Right now, everybody is supporting their own "baby" and ignoring other articles, apparently. Student7 (talk) 19:16, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Invitation to help with WikiProject United States

Hello, WikiProject United States Public Policy! We are looking for editors to join WikiProject United States, an outreach effort which aims to support development of United States related articles in Wikipedia. We thought you might be interested, and hope that you will join us. Thanks!!!

--Kumioko (talk) 15:36, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Commons category

Are there more images like File:Politics of Piracy Fall 2010 Class Picture.JPG that would justify creation of a dedicated Commons category related to this project? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:58, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Invitation to participation!

Hello!

As you may be aware, the Wikimedia Foundation is gearing up for our annual fundraiser. We want to hit our goal and hit it as soon as possible, so that we can focus on Wikipedia's tenth anniversary on January 15 and our new project: Contributions. I'm posting across these Wikiprojects to engage you, the community, to work to build Wikipedia by finance but also by content. We seek donations not only financially, but by collaboration in building content. You can find more information in Philippe Beaudette's memo to the communities here.

Visit the Contribution project page and the Fundraising page to find out how you can help us support and spread free knowledge. ⇒DanRosenthal ^{Wikipedia Contribution Team} 20:04, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Science policy

There is a discussion going on at Talk:Science policy about a reorganization/expansion of articles in that field including Science policy, Research funding, and Science policy in the United States. Any feedback would be appreciated! Antony–22 (^talk/_contribs) 05:47, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Public Housing

The lack of adequate access to affordable housing should a critical public policy concern in the United States. Since its creation in the 1930s, public housing has been associated with high rates of drug-use, violence, and crime. Officials at the Hartford Housing Authority note that “putting under one roof people who share similar social and economic difficulties breeds more of the same kinds of problems” and thus densely populated public housing units have proved ineffective at proving acceptable living conditions. Despite the critical nature of these issues, the current public housing page on Wikipedia lacks a detailed description of public housing alternatives that reduce the concentration of poverty and crime. Acernst08 (talk) 09:36, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

A consideration for cross project consolidation of talk page templates

I have started a conversation here about the possibility of combining some of the United States related WikiProject Banners into {{WikiProject United States}}. If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please take a moment and let me know. --Kumioko (talk) 20:32, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Suggested policy change to the tagging of non article items

I have submitted a proposal at the Village pump regarding tagging non article items in Wikipedia. Please take a moment and let me know what you think. --Kumioko (talk) 02:14, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Say Yes to Education

Would people please take a look at this article, Say Yes to Education, and see if you can add anything? Also, the article has an orphan tag. I was able to add a couple of links to other articles. Can anyone think of any other articles to link it to? All the best! -- Ssilvers (talk) 06:14, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Help needed on US health care reform

WP:MED has received a request for assistance at Talk:Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act#Kikodawgzzz.27s_edit. As US public policy is not really within the diseases-and-treatment scope of WikiProject Medicine, I'm passing the request along to you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:53, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

US Collaboration reactivated & Portal:United States starting next

Casliber recently posted a suggestion on the talk page for WikiProject United States about getting the US Wikipedians Collaboration page going again in an effort to build up articles for GA through FA class. See Wikipedia:U.S. Wikipedians' notice board/USCOTM. After several days of work from him the page is up and ready for action. A few candidates have already been added for you to vote on or you can submit one using the directions provided. If you are looking for inspiration here is a link to the most commonly viewed articles currently under the scope of Wikiproject United States. There are tons of good articles in the various US related projects as well so feel free to submit any article relating to US topics (not just those under the scope of WPUS). This noticeboard is intended for ‘’’All’’’ editors working on US subjects, not just those under WPUS.

The next item I intend to start updating is Portal:United States if anyone is interested in helping. Again this is not specific to WPUS and any help would be greatly appreciated to maximize visibility of US topics. The foundation has already been established its just a matter of updating the content with some new images, biographies and articles. Please let leave a comment on the Portals talk page or let me know if you have any questions or ideas. --Kumioko (talk) 23:32, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Public Policy

Question: Why do we only have a WikiProject United States Public Policy and not a more general and universal WikiProject Public Policy page as well or instead of?

I ask this because although many of the articles out there in academia and on Wikipedia are focused on public policy in the United States there are also many, and will be increasingly more, articles on public policy that are more generally and universally applicable such as policy analysis. To only have a project that only focuses on public policy in the United States around which to write and evaluate articles on a subject that involves people from all over the world seems a bit overly focused to me. I suppose it is because there is not a large enough group of people with sufficient interest in this subject on an international level to start such a group?

Don't get me wrong though, I do think that it is a great and wonderful thing that there is a WikiProject United States Public Policy. I just wish there was a more universal project in the same way there is a universal WikiProject Law or WikiProject Politics. --Discott (talk) 13:01, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

All WP:WikiProjects are created on the same basis: A bunch of individual editors decide that they want to work together. If you and your ten best wikifriends want to start a WikiProject to work on non-US public policy, then you may do that. We've even got a page to help you find some new wikifriends if necessary.

A WikiProject is not something supplied by the powers that be: it's just a group of editors who happen to like working together and happen to do it often enough that they want a page to talk to each other about what they're doing. If one doesn't exist for a given topic, or if it's gone dormant, the only thing that means is that nobody was interested. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:54, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for getting back to me on this WhatamIdoing. I assumed as much and will look into it. Although I suspect it will take me some time to move on this as I A) want to get more involved in this existing and exciting project and B) get better prepared and work out the level of interest in setting up such a project. I just thought I would bring it up as I am sure it would come up in the future anyway and so it might be good to get people thinking about it in mean time. --Discott (talk) 08:12, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

New article: Freedom of Expression(R)

New article, created, at Freedom of Expression(R). Additional assistance in research would be appreciated, feel free to help out at the article's talk page. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 18:03, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

New article: Net.wars

New article, created, at Net.wars. Additional assistance in research would be appreciated, feel free to help out at the article's talk page. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 21:53, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

New article: The Best American Magazine Writing 2007

New article, created, at The Best American Magazine Writing 2007. Additional assistance in research would be appreciated, feel free to help out at the article's talk page. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 00:20, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Manual of Style?

Is there a MoS for public policy articles? If not, I suggest one be developed in order to assist with article writing. Basket of Puppies 20:01, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

That would be certainly a good idea, however unfortunately, we look at a lot of different types of articles from court cases, to history type articles, to laws and general issues. I think the first three have mos's somewhere, but if you wanted to write an MOS on articles that look like Energy policy of the United States, or Economic policy of the George W. Bush administration, I would really applaud the effort. We may want to consult some of our professors though on what they think of our outline and such though, to make sure we are covering the major topics in the field, Sadads (talk) 20:13, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Copy that. I'll check with Professor Weil when I see him on Monday. Basket of Puppies 20:41, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

WikiProjects are encouraged to write up style advice. There are many examples (some of which are very well done) at Category:Style guidelines of WikiProjects. (NB that these pages generally aren't "official" WP:Guidelines, despite the category name, and you don't have to do a formal WP:PROPOSAL.) See Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide#Advice_pages for some information.

Since this project covers so many different types of articles, you might like to consider adapting the approach that we took at WP:MEDMOS#Sections, which I think is helpful for some purposes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:49, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I'll talk this over with my professor. I know nothing about policy. Basket of Puppies 01:20, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Template on a recent article

Hi, someone put a talk page template ("This article was the subject of an educational assignment supported by WikiProject United States Public Policy and the Wikipedia Ambassador Program that ended in December 2010.") linking to this project on the 2011 Egyptian protests talk page, and the template says the public policy project ended December 2010. I'm a bit confused since the protests started in late January. Is the template misplaced or just outdated? Any ideas? Ocaasi (talk) 10:53, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm not sure why that was added. The Egyptian Liberal did it here, perhaps confusing it with the article on Egypt's Democratic National Party, which a student did work on (and still is working on). I'll remove it. (On a side note, that class ended in December, but other classes are part of the project this term.)--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 13:37, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. It's crazy enough over there without thinking that the Public Policy project predicted the protests before they started ;P And yes, I'm glad that the project is still going (it just would have meant you needed to update that template). Ocaasi (talk) 13:41, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Healthcare policy -- the IPAB

The Independent Payment Advisory Board was recently protected for 24 hours due to some edit warring. Perhaps someone here would find the topic interesting. Here's a NYT blog post about it. Jesanj (talk) 13:32, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Collaboration for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Greetings, I realize this may not be exacltly in the scope of your project but I wanted to let you know that the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution has been chosen as the U.S. Wikipedians Collaboration of the Month for February 2011. As a project who may be interested in this article we encourage you to help to build it up to better explain the subject and to get it promoted. --Kumioko (talk) 20:49, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Featured portal candidate: United States

Portal:United States is a current featured portal candidate. Please feel free to leave comments. -- RichardF (talk) 14:25, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Adding "Popular pages" to U.S.-related projects

A very interesting tool of the Wikimedia Toolserver is called WikiProject Popular pages lists. These lists are similar to project-related article lists like U. S. article lists used for generating assessment statistics. The Popular pages lists include the rank, total views, average daily views, quality and importance ratings for the listed articles. Here is the full list of projects using popular pages lists. An FAQ also is available at User:Mr.Z-man/Popular pages FAQ.

I recently added links to lists of popular pages as shown below to the U.S. Portal - WikiProjects box and the nominations sections for each of the selected articles boxes.

---

Portal:United States/Projects/Popular pages

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Because this project was not included, I am bringing up the popular pages tool here. This tool makes it very easy to track three of four balancing dimensions when selecting articles for showcasing at a portal - quality, importance and popularity. When tracking the fourth dimension, topic, the related article lists tool (such as for U.S. article lists tool) also might be useful by filtering on categories of interest.

If you do decide to use this tool, feel free to update Portal:United States/Projects/Popular pages as well.

Regards, RichardF (talk) 02:15, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Robert McFarlane

User:Robert Carl McFarlane made a request on the editor assistance noticeboard that changes he made to Robert McFarlane be reviewed. We believe that he is referring to these. They were reverted en masse as "whitewashing", but it seems that this was a hasty judgment. Would someone with an interest in Iran Contra/Regan-era foreign policy like to give this a read over? If biographies or foreign policy are out of the scope of this project, feel free to remove this message. --Danger (talk) 03:11, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

US National Archives Wikipedian-in-Residence opportunity

Just officially announced...

"This summer, we hope to strengthen our institutional relationship with the Wikipedian community by hosting a Wikipedian in Residence. We are currently seeking applications for this student position for the 2011 summer. The Wikipedian will gain an insider’s look into the National Archives and develop an appreciation for the records and resources we have available." — US Archivist David Ferriero

This is a summer intern position, with stipend, for a student to work at NARA 2 in College Park, Maryland.

Full blog post and

• Full blog post - by David Ferriero
• Application + details (pdf)

Please spread the word and encourage all good candidates to apply. Cheers. --Aude (talk) 21:37, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Mailing list

Who would I talk to to get taken off the mailing list? I sadly don't have time to contribute to this project. J Milburn (talk) 09:51, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

:Which mailing list do you want to be on? The newsletter or the ambassadors one? I think we are trying to keep the ambassadors one to just people in the Ambassadors program, Sadads (talk) 10:55, 28 March 2011 (UTC) Sorry about that, I didn't read very closely, Sadads (talk) 11:44, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Off the mailing list, Sadads. J, are you on the Google Group mailing list or the Public Policy Initiative Updates mailing list? If you email me and include what address you are subscribed with, I'll make sure you get taken off.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 11:26, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I've emailed you. J Milburn (talk) 11:35, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

United States Bill of Rights is a candidate for the U.S. Collaboration of the Month

The United States Bill of Rights article has been submitted as a possible candidate for the U.S. Collaboration of the Month. --Kumioko (talk) 16:20, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador article supported by this WikiProject

Please be advised of a discussion at Talk:SAFE Port Act#Merger with Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006?, which affects the article Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. That article is part of an educational assignment at Michigan State University supported by WikiProject United States Public Policy and the Wikipedia Ambassador Program during the Spring 2011 term. Further details are available on the course page. OCNative (talk) 03:38, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Possible Public Policy articles (Homeland Security)

A somewhat WP:POV presentation on nuclear safety has led me to believe that there is an opportunity for a set of articles on Homeland Security, involving local (unclassified, we're not WikiLeaks!) plans for response/evacuation, as the case may be. If acceptable to the current participants (who haven't have a chance to reply at this writing), there are issues that may need advice and ideas: content, naming the articles generally so there are npov and invite (by their title) other responses to emergencies of a public nature. See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Energy#.22Homeland_security.22_articles. Student7 (talk) 13:58, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

This is a runaround, an attempt to remove from nuclear power articles any information on nearby population, any by extension any information about evacuation plans and risks.Extremely hot (talk) 18:40, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes. We currently have a WP:COATRACK, WP:SOAPBOX situation with nuclear plants in the wake of Fukishima. This is an attempt at WP:NPOV which is being furiously opposed! But regardless of what happens to those articles, these articles, IMO, could still be viable. Student7 (talk) 12:51, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Declaration of independence

There is presently a debate over whether the list article Declaration of independence ought to include a hatnote pointing specifically to the United States Declaration of Independence. Those in favor argue that historical, demographic, and practical factors justify this treatment, while those in opposition argue that no country's document should receive special treatment under any circumstances. I am bringing the discussion to your attention because United States Declaration of Independence is included in this wikiproject. Please see here if you are interested in weighing in on the matter. Thank you. —Bill Price (nyb) 17:46, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Filipino Americans second or third largest ethnicity of Asian Americans?

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Filipino American#second or third. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 15:03, 28 May 2011 (UTC) (Using {{pls}})

US National Archives DYK collaboration

This summer I am serving as the first Wikipedian in Residence at the US National Archives (see Signpost article); in order to serve as a hub for activity related to the National Archives' collaboration with Wikipedia, I have recently created a project page at WP:NARA. Since it seems relevant to this Wikiproject, I wanted to point members to our first editing project, which was recently announced and can be found here. The National Archives is an incredible resource for images and other documents related to American political history. I would be grateful for any input as we work out the details, and, of course, your participation once it launches. Dominic·t 14:45, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Article help

A request for help with an article;

Safe Planet (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

This article is about a United Nations initiative.

It's not come about via PP; instead, it's something I 'accepted' via the articles for creation process.

Another user has queried whether it is acceptable - I think, mostly, because of the sourcing.

So - I'm asking for help.

I think it is a notable, and worthy, Encyclopaedic topic - and, given the topic area, I wondered if anyone from the USPP could put their skills to work, helping to improve it a little.

The references need work (although I've improved a few), it needs wikilinks, and it could/should be expanded with information from independent reliable sources - I've listed a few of those on the talk page.

Thanks, in anticipation.  Chzz  ►  04:02, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

United States Bill of Rights has been selected as the United States Wikipedians' Collaboration of the Month for June 2011

The United States Bill of Rights, an article within the scope of this project, has been selected as the United States Wikipedians' Collaboration of the Month for June 2011. The goal this month is to get this article to Good Article standards by July 4th, 2011. All editors interested in improving this article are encouraged to participate. You can also vote for next months article of the Month here. --Kumioko (talk) 16:04, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Contradiction in content between Filipino American & Indian American articles

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Filipino American#June 2011. This is the second event regarding similar content. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 22:24, 4 June 2011 (UTC) (Using {{pls}})

Integrated watchlists are now working

The Integrated watchlist tool is now up and working. It facilitates Wikimedia's Public Policy collaboration beyond Wikipedia to Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Commons, etc.. This works: User:Yair rand/interwikiwatchlist.js. It is explained here: User talk:Yair rand/interwikiwatchlist.js. Maybe some developer money could be found for making it work as a preference. Please pass this on. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:45, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

United States Declaration of Independence article needs to be adopted

I have performed a review at Talk:United States Declaration of Independence/GA1. However, the nominator has exercised his WP:RTV. The article needs someone to adopt it and address my concerns in order to regain its GA status. I will allow seven days for someone to step forward.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 02:34, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Input requested in article move discussion

Hi. Readers at this page may be interested in contributing to the discussion at Talk:Jeffersonian democracy#Requested move. Thanks in advance for any input. -GTBacchus^(talk) 16:40, 9 September 2011 (UTC)