Talk:Timeline of drafting and ratification of the United States Constitution

Old comments

A better title for the article is welcome. The scope as it stands is only the ordering, drafting, and ratification of the Constitution, but it is tough to get all that into a decent title. Unfortunately the current title might suggest that amendments, etc. would also be covered. Christopher Parham (talk) 19:46, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

soo is anybody going to udate the timeline? Im retty sure aot has changed in the last 7 years —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.174.222.45 (talk) 02:34, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to remove date-autoformatting

Dear contributors

MOSNUM no longer encourages date autoformatting, having evolved over the past year or so from the mandatory to the optional after much discussion there and elsewhere of the disadvantages of the system. Related to this, MOSNUM prescribes rules for the raw formatting, irrespective of whether a date is autoformatted or not). MOSLINK and CONTEXT are consistent with this.

There are at least six disadvantages in using date-autoformatting, which I've capped here:

Disadvantages of date-autoformatting

• (1) In-house only

• (a) It works only for the WP "elite".
• (b) To our readers out there, it displays all-too-common inconsistencies in raw formatting in bright-blue underlined text, yet conceals them from WPians who are logged in and have chosen preferences.
• (c) It causes visitors to query why dates are bright-blue and underlined.

• (2) Avoids what are merely trivial differences

• (a) It is trivial whether the order is day–month or month–day. It is more trivial than color/colour and realise/realize, yet our consistency-within-article policy on spelling (WP:ENGVAR) has worked very well. English-speakers readily recognise both date formats; all dates after our signatures are international, and no one objects.

• (3) Colour-clutter: the bright-blue underlining of all dates

• (a) It dilutes the impact of high-value links.
• (b) It makes the text slightly harder to read.
• (c) It doesn't improve the appearance of the page.

• (4) Typos and misunderstood coding

• (a) There's a disappointing error-rate in keying in the auto-function; not bracketing the year, and enclosing the whole date in one set of brackets, are examples.
• (b) Once autoformatting is removed, mixtures of US and international formats are revealed in display mode, where they are much easier for WPians to pick up than in edit mode; so is the use of the wrong format in country-related articles.
• (c) Many WPians don't understand date-autoformatting—in particular, how if differs from ordinary linking; often it's applied simply because it's part of the furniture.

• (5) Edit-mode clutter

• (a) It's more work to enter an autoformatted date, and it doesn't make the edit-mode text any easier to read for subsequent editors.

• (6) Limited application

• (a) It's incompatible with date ranges ("January 3–9, 1998", or "3–9 January 1998", and "February–April 2006") and slashed dates ("the night of May 21/22", or "... 21/22 May").
• (b) By policy, we avoid date autoformatting in such places as quotations; the removal of autoformatting avoids this inconsistency.

Removal has generally been met with positive responses by editors. If anyone objects to my proposal to free the dates of autoformatting in the main text in a day or two on a trial basis, please say so below. The original input formatting would be seen by all WPians, not just the huge number of visitors; it would be plain, unobtrusive text, which would give greater prominence to the high-value links.

Critically, since I’m an FLC reviewer, I want to state in unequivocal terms that whether or not contributors object to this proposal will have absolutely no bearing on my review or declaration at FLC. I’m proposing the action because FAC is an influential process, not because nominators might feel under obligation—they shouldn’t. Tony (talk) 16:06, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Vermont

I got my hands on the official version of the US constitution recently, and noticed that the introduction makes note of the ratification of said document by FOURTEEN not thirteen states. It seems that Vermont ratified the constitution as if it was one of the previous thirteen while Kentucky, which joined the Union a year later, entered the union in a different manner entirely, applying and being voted on by Congress.

So I added the ratification of Vermont as the 14th state. Either we count it, or we take out North Carolina and Rhode Island, both of which entered the new Union after it had begun to function. Ericl (talk) 16:49, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

The 13 original states, including North Carolina and Rhode Island, were mentioned by name in the Constitution (Art. I, Sec. 2) and joined the union by ratifying the Constitution. Later states, such as Vermont, needed approval by the federal government to be admitted to the union. —Mrwojo (talk) 22:37, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Page Revision

Having viewed many excellent Wikipedia history text timelines and after taking a look at the archived discussion of this article's layout and content, I decided take revising this article on as a project. The issues raised in the archived "featured list" discussion have been addressed, there are now inline citations (I may have been a bit zealous on these), more key events are noted, and more information given about those events.Drdpw (talk) 02:40, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

File:Constitution of the United States, page 1.jpg (and subsequent) to appear as POTD

Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Constitution of the United States, page 1.jpg and subsequent images will be appearing as picture of the day on January 10, 2015. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2015-01-10. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. Thanks! — Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:14, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Picture of the day

The first page of the original handwritten text of the United States Constitution, which took almost four months to draft and over three years to ratify. The first Constitutional Convention began on May 25, 1787, with a quorum at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation. Instead the delegates wrote a new constitution, finishing on September 17 of that year, but its ratification by all 13 states was not completed until January 10, 1791. Since then 27 amendments have been made.

Read further: Page 2, Page 3, Page 4Document: Constitutional Convention; scan: National Archives

Pre-FLC review

Drdpw, you asked me to take a look at this list back when it was at FLC. I didn't see the message in time before the FLC was archived, but I feel it's only fair to give you a review now, as I promised on your talk page. Here's what I found:

• Right at the beginning, I see one problem that might have affected the first FLC. "The following is a timeline of the drafting and ratification of the United States Constitution" looks like a variant of the "This is a list of" openings that have been discouraged at FLC for years. If prospective reviewers clicked on the article and saw this, they may well have been put off of reviewing further, in the belief that the rest of the list was faulty. Perhaps we can open by saying how many years the timeline spans, or with some other summary fact?  Modified
• The Independence Hall link could just be placed in the parentheses to reduce the amount of blue in that passage.  Done
• March 25, 1785: The last s in "states's" should be removed.  Done
• As a general point, I'm not sure you need to be linking any of the items in the timeline more than once, which could be seen as overlinking. I see Maryland and Virginia overlinked in the 1785 section; it's worth checking the list over for others.  Checked
• May 17, 1787: Are there one too many words, or one too few, in "A letter of from..."?  Modified
• May 25, 1787: To fix a with + -ing connector, try removing "being", which doesn't seem to be needed at all in the first sentence here. There are also a couple of these in the 1789 section.  Done
• September 1–8, 1787: Remove comma after "Chief among them are ones related to"?  Done
• Also, there seems to be a grammar glitch in "the length of a presidential term in office he be a natural born citizen".  Modified
• September 17, 1787: Minor point, but the Manual of Style would dictate that the dash here be spaced on both sides.  Done
• July 2, 1788: "Congress President Cyrus Griffin informs Congress that New Hampshire has ratified the Constitution and noting that this was the ninth ratification transmitted to them." For proper grammar, I think "noting" should be "notes"; alternatively, you could remove "and" and add a comma.  Modified
• Some reviewers might balk at the gallery, as these are not seen often in FLs. I normally don't love them myself, but admit to liking this one because of the relevance to the topic (and my own taste for American history). If reviewers insist that it be removed at FLC, do consider adding photos of one of more pages of the Constitution elsewhere in the list.  Agreed
• This isn't a deal-breaker for me, but you may consider splitting out the full versions of book sources to a bibliography and only leaving the author names and page numbers in the actual cites. That would prevent you from repeated full citation information 5–10 times in the reference list.  Done
• Reference 27 is a bare link. That one is a deal-breaker for a lot of people. You'll want to fully format that.  Done
• All caps in references 57 and 58 should be removed.  Done
• Can any of the external links be trimmed. Ten seems a bit excessive to me, and we don't want a linkfarm to develop over time.  Done
• Link checker] shows one external link that might be dead. If nothing else, that would make trimming the ELs easier.  Done

It looks like a lot of items, but most of them won't take much time to work through, and I found the content itself highly enjoyable to read. Make these fixes and it should go a long way towards making your next FLC successful. Giants2008 (Talk) 21:46, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

First Congressional Election

The first presidential election is included under the 1788-89 categories but there is no mention of House or Senate elections Carelesswhisper93 (talk) 23:38, 14 July 2019 (UTC)