Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of counties in New Jersey/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was not promoted 06:44, 16 February 2008.

List of counties in New Jersey

And another of those obnoxious county lists... Geraldk (talk) 00:59, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The counties in "formed from" are linked; in the other lists I've seen lately, they haven't been, probably because they're redundant links with the first column, just in different places. Since there appear to be no defunct counties, the lack of such a section is no problem; so I vote Support, except that maybe we don't need width=100%. --Golbez (talk) 01:14, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Done and done, dropped 5px from the population column. Geraldk (talk) 14:59, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - The lead is rather short (FIPS info aside), and lacks references. Tompw (talk) (review) 19:40, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'll work on adidng in-lines this weekend. Geraldk (talk) 13:22, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I consider the lead to a list like this one to be inadequate unless it tells me something about the function and organization of counties in the particular state. There's a vast amount of info on that subject at sources such as this page on the Essex County website and this page on the Morris County website. I'd like somebody to distill that information into a paragraph or two for the intro section. --Orlady (talk) 00:27, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - "...groups of proprietors" seems a funny term to use for the governing bodies of the two original provinces. Is it correct? MeegsC | Talk 10:13, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I'm not from New Jersey, but I believe that "proprietors" is accurate. See Proprietary colony. Remember that this was the 1600s. These weren't governing bodies in the modern sense; they were owners.--Orlady (talk) 14:32, 3 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No reason to have a sort on 'Named for' column. Sorting this is meaningless. Hmains (talk) 05:36, 3 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I fixed that. --Orlady (talk) 14:32, 3 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Really can,t find much to nitpick. I don't like decorative coloring in tables much, but I've hardly had much success in arguing against it here. Circeus (talk) 05:47, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - no expert in New Jersey or US counties but getting better at lists. So, my thoughts...
- The lead has a single citation which relates to FIPS county codes. What about all the other claims in the lead?
- A number of references in the header of the table appear after line breaks. Why?
  - Otherwise, the columns get wider than needed.--Crzy cheetah 21:19, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    - "Wider than needed"? Currently the appearance is poor. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:08, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      - What I meant to say is that when the footnotes are behind the line breaks, a horizontal scrollbar appears, which is very irritating (to me at least).--Crzy cheetah 23:52, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        I made some tweaks to the table formatting, including eliminating the fixed column widths and replacing the line breaks with spaces. That way, the column width adjusts to the content. The resulting appearance looks better to me, but your mileage may vary. --Orlady (talk) 00:07, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Any reason why there's a distinct lack of full stops in the "Named for" column? I guess it's possibly because the text in that column could be a fragment. What it does do is make the reference placement look odd.
- Your primary source for this information is www.getnj.com - I need to be convinced this is a reliable source (e.g. it looks like a student HTML project with plenty of advertisements...)
- Surely the population column should be referenced to the census source?
  - Geraldk didn't use the census info, he provided the 2005 estimates.--Crzy cheetah 21:19, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    - Not sure I understand that. If there's a census available, it should be used and cited. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:08, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      - I agree that census should be used instead. I am guessing the reason he provided 2005 estimates is that the census was done in 2000 and a long time has passed since then.--Crzy cheetah 23:52, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        Since decennial census values are more stable than census estimates (which have a habit of getting revised), I prefer to see the 2000 values listed. Would it be sensible to list both 2000 and 2005? (That would add value to the table...) --Orlady (talk) 00:07, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm happy to discuss any of the issues I've raised here. Like I said, I'm no expert so my intent here is to bring fresh eyes to the debate. All the best. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:00, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I am not the main editor here, but I had answers for two of your comments, so I thought I'd share.--Crzy cheetah 21:19, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I made several changes to the table format in hopes of improving appearance on various display sizes. One change that people may object to was eliminating the setting that reduced the table font size to 95%. That improves its appearance for me by reducing the amount of blank space in the table cells, but others of you may object. --Orlady (talk) 00:07, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for now. I'll probably change my mind if there's a better introduction (see my comment above) and if the http://www.getnj.com/ citations are replaced by reliable sources. (That source may be OK, but it looks pretty insubstantial to me -- sort of like citing another Wikipedia article...) --Orlady (talk) 00:27, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It turns out that GetNJ.com replicates the contents of Federal Writers' Program (1938), The Origin of New Jersey Place Names, New Jersey State Library Commission. Thus the content is good, but I'd feel better about it if the actual original source were named. --Orlady (talk) 00:44, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.