Template talk:United States topics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents 1 Legal history of marijuana in the United States 2 Template title 3 Two types of separators 4 Sport 5 How should we decide what gets included here?

[edit] Legal history of marijuana in the United States

Should Legal history of marijuana in the United States be included in this template? —User:Christopher Mann McKay^{user talk} 21:35, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Fleshed out the US-specific drug links in the controversies group. Thanks for pointing it out, MrZaius^talk 02:11, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that the link to drug policy is enough to cover the subtopics (specific to marijuana). Certainly there are other topics in the template that could be broken down with similar specificity, but I believe this template should serve as a link to summary-style pages that have links to other appropriate titles, not a list of every "n in the United States" articles. As such, I am removing several of the drug-related topics from the template. Madcoverboy 14:48, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I suppose it is. Didn't occur to me because I created the page from the US section at Prohibition (drugs) specifically to give me an excuse to group those articles here by topic instead of littering them all over the place alphabetically. ;) MrZaius^talk 15:13, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

---

There is a closing parentheses missing in the "society" section. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 129.110.241.17 (talk) 20:34, August 23, 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template title

Currently, the title of this template is "Major topics in the United States". Shouldn't this be "Major topics of the United States", or even simpler "United States topics"? Regards. --Old Hoss (talk) 18:51, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

While I see your point, it seems a slight majority of article titles in this template are "in the United States." While most of the section devoted to history seems to favor "of," most of the topics covering current events seem to favor "in." I counted 39 "ofs" and 43 "ins" but... that really doesn't mean anything. An article titled "Plumbers of the United States" would seem to imply it contains a list of famous plumbers, while an article titled "Plumbers in the United States" would seem to imply content on plumbers in general. Ergo, I think it makes more sense to use "of," since this template is indeed a list of major topics of the United States. More importantly, would anyone care if we changed it? --ErgoSum88 (talk) 08:49, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Two types of separators

There are two types of separators: {{·}} and {{•}}. The former should be used in between parenthesized items, with the latter used between main items. I've updated two groups but more remain. 66.167.49.13 (talk) 06:51, 29 March 2008 (UTC).

[edit] Sport

Should aport not be included in this template? Surely it is an significant as music, film and television. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.200.12.203 (talk) 17:27, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for the suggestion. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 18:35, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] How should we decide what gets included here?

I feel that the inclusion of material here is somewhat haphazard- including "Uncle Sam", the "Puerto Rican independence movement", and "Pornography", while leaving out the "Iraq War", "9/11", and "Feminism". What is our rationale? In other areas of Wikipedia, we rely on reliable sources- I think we should do the same thing here. Nothing should be included here if we can't find a reliable source that declares it to be a "major topic". Also, I'm sure we can find some kind of scholarly history material or other such source that gives a list of what it considers to be "the definitive most-important topics in America". johnpseudo 20:33, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

You bring up a good point, it seems this template has the potential to become rather large and stuffed full of links. Policy states navboxes should not be too large or too small. However, I think most of the current links are notable major topics, although I'm not sure there should be more than one link for the Puerto Rican debate (when was the last time that was even in the news?). I'm also not sure if finding reliable sources declaring "major topics of the US" is feasible. I think the general guideline is, broad-scope topics listed with a few major narrow-scope topics nested adjacent. If you want to add 9/11 or the Iraq War to the list of politics, go ahead, I don't think anyone would disagree with you that these are major topics. This list wasn't created by one person and therefore it is haphazard as such. In the end, we decide what gets included here by adding them, discussing them and so on, just like any other part of Wikipedia. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 06:42, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd say we should add things that fall under 2 criteria. (1) Only include "X in the United States" articles if there are also articles about X for other countries. (2) Include articles that are emblematic, intrinsic, or unique to the US but are also notable internationally. Madcoverboy (talk) 06:48, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah but what other countries? The US has far more articles than all the other countries. Many countries lack basic articles such as sports or personal income. Also, I don't see why they have to be "notable internationally." If someone from another country wants to learn about the US, they probably already know about the Iraq War and 9/11, but most likely they know nothing about Uncle Sam or our transportation system. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 08:36, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Putting aside my reliable sources complaint for now... would you (Madcoverboy) include something here if it was the #1 most-important thing in the United States, but was hardly known about outside of the US? How could we say this is a complete list of "Major topics of the United States" if it's really just a "Major U.S. topics that are considered important outside of the U.S."? johnpseudo 19:10, 5 May 2008 (UTC)