Wikipedia:WikiProject United States regions/Archive1

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First, an important note for everyone to remember:

A few Wikipedians have gotten together to make some suggestions about how we might organize data in articles about U.S. Regions. These are only suggestions, things to give you focus and to get you going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to follow them. But if you don't know what to write or where to begin, following the below guidelines may be helpful. Mainly, we just want you to write articles!

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Title

WikiProject U.S. Regions

Motivation

The Texas/Louisiana border using popular regional stereotypes. The right image is actually Texas, while the left image is Arizona-there are no Saguaro forests in Texas.

Many encyclopedias use various region models to group the states, often portraying regions as if they were set in stone. Portraying regions as being set in stone can reinforce stereotypes and offend wikipedians who are excluded from, but identify with, a particular region. Regions are often based on stereotypes and personal perceptions making regional boundaries hard to define. In the spirit of wikilove, WikiProject U.S. Regions seeks to provide thoughtful and informative articles on all U.S. Regions while providing a standard regional model for referencing.

Scope

WikiProject U.S. Regions was formed to suggest guidelines for:

• Standards for articles about U.S. Regions
• Structure of articles about U.S. Regions
• References to U.S. regions in other articles

U.S. Regions include, but are not limited to: Census Bureau Regions, Non-Census Bureau Regions, sub-regions, and archaic or defunct regions. The application, guidelines, and standards suggested by WikiProject U.S. Regions seek to achieve five goals:

1. To prevent article wars in regional articles based on cultural affilation.

2. To ensure that all areas that can be considered within the region are included in an article.

3. To ensure, without deleting useful information, that articles do not place emphasis on one particular area of the region over other areas.

4. To eliminate stereotypes from article text and maintain article NPOV.

5. To make sure all references to a region's article are accurate.

Other related WikiProjects

• Wikipedia: WikiProject Geography
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Ecoregions

WikiProject participation

This Wikiproject passes, amends, and removes its policies based on the consensus of its particpants. Anyone is welcome to become a particpant by adding your name to the alphabetical list below.

Participants

• Acegikmo1 (Talk)
• Jmabel - Inactive 19:36, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
• JWB (Talk)
• older≠wiser ( Talk)
• Redwolf24 (Talk)
• RJN (Talk)
• Badbilltucker
• Phizzy (Talk)

Structure

The structure of an article depends on which type of region it is (see: Hierarchy Definiton). Suggested templates will be created for each type of article.

There are standards that every article must meet. For instance:

Avoid generalizations where possible

• Try to avoid statements such as California is a Southwestern State, many people in Northern California would take issue with this statement, especially those in the Cascadia region. There are other problems as well. The most common encyclopedia model of the southwest excludes all of California. Most Americans would agree that Southern California is part of the southwest, so more accurate statements would be Southern California is part of the Southwest or Southern California is southwestern.

Discuss regions thoroughly

• In some of the early versions of the Southwest article, Texas and Oklahoma were included in the state list after the first paragraph and were never mentioned again. The introduction described the Southwest as "Outside the cities, the region is a land of open spaces, much of which is desert.." Much of Texas and Oklahoma is not desert; in fact a lush forest larger than New England covers eastern portions of both states. The American Great Plains cover an even larger area. After reading the introduction a reader would be left with the false impression that both Texas and Oklahoma are deserts. The geographic and cultural diversity of regions should always be mentioned in an article.

Don't abuse Census Bureau regions

• Emphasis should be placed on the Census Bureau only when a fixed national grouping is necessary. The census regions should never be used to exclude a state from or lock it permanently into a region. Discussion about the diversity of regions, and their interpretations even in Census Bureau articles. The Census infoboxes exist to portray census information, not represent various interpretations of the region as Non-Census infoboxes do.

Hierarchy Definition

For an extensive hierarchy see: List of regions of the United States

Naming an article

If a region has a direction in its title, the article should appear at ---ern United States. If the article title includes a proper noun in it (other than "United States"), such as New England, the article should remain unmodified at that designation unless a disambiguation becomes necessary; at which point it should be moved to Region Name (United States). Regions that are described in terms of geographic features will appear as Geographic Feature states (for example, Gulf States).

When a standard is necessary

Sometimes a concrete model is necessary, such as when presenting the census data. Since wikipedia has a policy against no original research we cannot define our own regions outside of our inclusive models. So when a concrete definition is needed one should use the Census Bureau model defined by the United States Government, which has grouped states into regions for decades. Most government agencies, including the FBI, use the Census Bureau Model. The Census Bureau regions are largely ignored by most encyclopedias, a notable exception being Encarta, but are increasingly taught in classrooms. This model should only be used on a national level and when a concrete definition is necessary.

Referencing in U.S. state articles

Texas is a state of the United States of America. All or parts of Texas are often considered part of the South, South Central, Southeast, and Southwest and is also considered a Gulf and Plains state.

Templates and Infoboxes

• Template:U.S.Regions

Add this message by typing {{U.S. regions}}. For a region to be included on the U.S. regions template, a region must be composed of at least two entire states, and portions of at least two others.

All intranational regions currently are using this template.