Talk:Seattle, Washington

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Seattle, Washington is a featured article, which means it has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. If you see a way this page can be updated or improved without compromising previous work, feel free to contribute.

For the current Featured Article discussion, please see Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Seattle.

This article is part of WikiProject Seattle.

Phinney (Ridge)

Is the neighborhood's name Phinney or Phinney Ridge? --Lukobe 06:17, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Either, equally. -- Jmabel 06:46, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Consolidation

I thought it made sense to combine the Events and History sections with the Founding section. It would be good at some point to figure out a natural flow to this page and make sure the sections follow it; now, each section is good but the overall structure seems a little haphazard. -- Scarequotes 16:38, May 6, 2004 (UTC)

I agree--there's lots of good content here but as an overall article it leaves a lot to be desired. --Lukobe 17:28, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

List of companies

It was probably wise of Lukobe to decide to limit businesses to those that do interstate commerce.

That said, what should the format be for using actual business names vs. familiar abbreviations? We've got Cranium, Inc. and Vulcan Inc., but the Co. after Jones Soda was eliminated. I'd vote for using the full business title in this context, but if we don't want to do that we should be consistent and get rid of the visible Inc.'s. -- Scarequotes 21:50, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

I'm in favor of using the more familiar forms of business names, personally, but I am definitely open to going the other way. Anyone else have an opinion?

Lukobe 22:29, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

History of Seattle paper

I wrote a paper on the history of Seattle. I'd like to contribute it, but I'm not sure the best way to do this.

-- Emmett Shear sarbandia@hotmail.com

The best thing you could do is to integrate in the important facts into the current article. Is the paper a history of Seattle? If it is, I would imagine you could probably include the paper wholesale in a new section titled "History of Seattle" immediately after the table of contents. If the paper is very long, you may want to look at the article on London for an example. That article has a one paragraph "History of London" section, with a link to history of London and the full version there. A history of Seattle page would be appropriate if you have enough material. -- RobLa 05:24, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I just noticed this here on Talk. I've recently added a ton of 19th century history to this page, but haven't really brought it past 1900. Emmett, you should certainly have a shot at filling in anything you consider salient that I've missed on the 19th century, but it would be great if you would start carrying the framework forward into the 20th century. Let me know what you want to do. I'll probably just get out of your way for a while. I think we are getting enough material that later we may want to cut the history material in this article back to a summary and introduce one or more History of Seattle articles (see, for example, what we've done with Romania, History of Romania, and other related articles). But first, let's get the content in, then worry about structure. Jmabel 02:03, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I see that this History of Seattle page now exists. At a quick read, some of it is valuable, some of it is redundant to material under Seattle, and I believe some of it is just wrong. I'm inclined to try to move material around more appropriately between the two articles, and try to identify factual discrepancies, unless someone else would rather take this on. I'm also posting this on Talk:History of Seattle. If no one else claims out this task by Dec 10, I'll plunge in. -- Jmabel 07:49, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Naming issues

This article really should be at Seattle since this is world known as Seattle, Washington and therefore doesn't need a disambiguating title. I'll change this later. --maveric149

Seattle now redirects here. So this is OK. --maveric149

More talk on naming issue is at Talk:Seattle

List of companies, part II

An anon recently added Adobe Systems to the list of companies HQ'd in Seattle. I don't believe Seattle is their HQ, although they have a large presence there. Anyway, someone might want to check this. -- Jmabel 03:36, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Adobe is not headquartered in Seattle. It's headquartered in San Jose. I'll fix it. --Lukobe 04:45, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Is there anything we can do about the alignment? Having the TOC come so early with those two pictures makes for a lot of white space. The TOC would come lower if the first heading began lower, I suppose...? Lukobe 05:11, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

One good solution: add more to the intro section, which is pretty skimpy at the moment. Ideally, someone should be able to read that and skip the rest of the article unless they wanted in-depth info. Much of the information from the cultural section and some select sentences from other sections might work better in a general introduction to the city. As a side benefit, more text up top would mean that the TOC would move down the page. -- Scarequotes 16:00, Jun 16, 2004 (UTC)

Good idea Scarequotes. --Lukobe 16:51, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, I gave it a shot. Hope it's a little bit of an improvement. The article still needs work, especially (I think) turning some of those lists into paragraphs. It currently reads a bit too almanacky. There's a wealth of information here and I think this article could be a "featured article" at some point. --Lukobe 06:08, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Shooting for Featured Article status

I think Lukobe's idea about trying to work this into a Featured Article is a great goal. Checking the featured article list shows that there are two cities with that status already: Marshall, Texas and Newark, New Jersey. They're both much more textual than Seattle is, so that's a good thing to strive for. I think we're going to have to move a lot of the content that's on the main Seattle article now to related pages -- maybe Business in Seattle, Seattle Culture, Seattle Metropolitan Area, Seattle Neighborhoods, etc. Keep the essentials, expand them into prose, and move the lists. This is off the top of my head, though, and I don't want to institute radical changes without some Seattle page writer consensus. -- Scarequotes 18:42, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)

(Copied from User talk:Lukobe and User talk:Jmabel)

Hey there, regarding WikiProject Seattle, how much further do you think we have to go until Seattle is worthy of (self-)nomination as a featured article? Thanks--Lukobe 06:50, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In re: your question about Featured Article status: I really haven't looked at the main Seattle article in a while, just assumed it is in good hands. From your question, I suppose it's time for me to take a look at it soon. (Good timing, because I just finished my paid project and may have some time on my hands the next few weeks. Unless someone hires me quick...) -- Jmabel 06:59, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)

OK, so I looked, made an edit, reverted it, and made another that I hope is seen as "friendly". It's a good article. I myself would be neutral on making it a Featured Article. Plus side: it's dense as all get-out. This must be one of the most link-dense long articles we've got. It obviously is the tip of a well-researched iceberg. Minus side: Consequently, a lot of it reads like lists instead of prose. That may simply be inevitable. Maybe some of the more list-y sections could use an introductory sentence or two of prose? Or maybe not.

Anyway, the quality is high, but Featured Article tends to go to more interesting pieces of writing, and we simply have too much material to make our top-level article all that prose-y. -- Jmabel 07:44, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)

So, the listy sections used to be actual lists, and what we currently have was an attempt to turn them into prose (though a pretty basic one). What I hear is that you think that is the weakest part of the article, and that the listy prose needs to become even more prosey! Makes sense to me. I'll add that to the WikiProject page. --Lukobe 18:52, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think most of the offending content (the listy stuff) is in the Seattle institutions section. Perhaps we should move that section to its own page and keep a shorter, more interesting version here. IMO, we should also cut down the lead section to ~3 paragraphs as per the guidelines at Wikipedia:Lead section and bring in some more content from History of Seattle. ShadowDragon 23:01, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

So I'm wondering: should we create a separate 'arts, culture, and entertainment' page, or do we want separate pages for, say, visual art, dramatic art, music, etc.? The benefit of the latter is that that leaves MUCH more room for later expansion. I'm thinking that might be the way to go...any thoughts? --Lukobe 04:35, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

No strong objection to either approach, but the single "arts, culture, and entertainment" page lets us do something more chronological, and get something of a history of the development of the arts in Seattle over more than a century, relating the various arts to on another in their uneven progress. -- Jmabel 05:32, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)

Good point. I'm not strongly behind the more granular approach, so let's see what others have to say. (And, of course, smaller articles can still be split off the separate article if people end up wanting to write pages and pages on Seattle music. --Lukobe 17:36, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, nobody else has chimed in. I think I like your idea and may implement it in the next few days. --Lukobe 19:28, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

OK, a good portion of the Institutions section has now been copied over to Arts, culture, and entertainment in Seattle. Time to start whittling down what's there! --Lukobe 05:12, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)

Info source

I just added a link to the Seattle Datasheet (http://www.seattle.gov/oir/datasheet/default.htm). The datasheet has a wealth of information that could be incorporated into this article. ShadowDragon 05:53, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thanks ShadowDragon, for this and for starting the WikiProject. --Lukobe 17:31, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Possible spinoff pages

I suggest moving Annexed towns, The city's neighborhoods and Sister cities to separate pages -- List of Seattle neighborhoods, for example. They could be replaced with shorter paragraph-based overviews, or just referenced in the links at the end. Any objections or better suggestions? -- Scarequotes 19:18, Jun 24, 2004 (UTC)

No objections from me. Also, the Annexed towns section really could be incorporated into neighborhood articles. --Lukobe 19:24, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Lukobe. Jwrosenzweig 19:26, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Okay, then. Done. Someone who knows more about the subjects can make them prettier. -- Scarequotes 19:58, Jun 24, 2004 (UTC)

Cultural events

Bite of Seattle a cultural event? Cover bands and food? I'd say Hempfest has a better claim. Maybe add Hempfest, maybe drop the Bite, maybe both, I don't care. -- Jmabel 20:26, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)

Well, the question is, if not under "cultural events," then where? "Fairs" maybe?

--Lukobe 21:41, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Maybe we could change the heading to "Annual cultural events and fairs"? And then expand it a little: brief mention of things ranging from street fairs to the vast number of smaller annual film festivals. (No need to itemize them, just the categories and maybe one or two representative examples in each). -- Jmabel 21:45, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)

Go for it! --Lukobe 04:13, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Staged contribution: Seattle in popular culture

This is no longer "live" 23:27, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC), moving it into the article

Television

Frasier
Here Come the Brides

Movies

Sleepless in Seattle

Non-fiction

I Sing the Body Electronic by Fred Moody (ISBN 0788157930)
The Stranger Beside Me, Ann Rule's book about Ted Bundy (ISBN 0451203267)
Selling Seattle: Representing Contemporary Urban America by James Lyons (ISBN 1903364965)

Detective Fiction

The works of K. K. Beck

Songs

"In Seattle" (theme from Here Come the Brides)
- The bluest sky you've ever seen, in Seattle / And the hills the greenest green, in Seattle
"Mudshark" by Frank Zappa
- There's a motel in Seattle, Washington, called the Edgewater Inn
"My Posse's on Broadway" by Sir Mix-a-lot
- At 23rd and Union the driver broke left / Kevin shouted "Broadway! It's time to get def"
"Viva Sea-Tac" by Robyn Hitchcock
- Viva viva viva viva viva Sea-Tac / They've got the best computers and coffee and smack"

Is this enough to add to the article yet? -- Jmabel 19:35, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

Sure! --Lukobe 19:39, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

high points

(for reference and future inclusion)

1. High Point at 35th and Myrtle (520.7 feet).

2. Near the Bitter Lake Reservoir at Linden Avenue North and North 141st Street (508.2 feet).

3. Maple Leaf at Roosevelt and 91st (473.3 feet).

4. On Queen Anne at Lee and Warren Avenue North (470.3 feet)

5. Volunteer Park at East Aloha Street and 14th Avenue East (457.1 feet).

museums

The list is momentarily very hard to read and only contains a small selection of museums. Is there a way to replace the reference to generic museums in the first sentence with a link that displays the Category:Museums in Seattle?

Which link are you referring to? Anyway, this may not be the most kosher way, but you can always use an "external" link: museum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Museums_in_Seattle)

--Lukobe 05:43, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! I meant the sentence: "There are a number of other museums in Seattle." Yes, grumble, grumble, maybe it needs to be an external link. But that's weird! I tried to enter something like "[[Category:Museums in Seattle|]]", but the whole thing only gets displayed as an empty space. Sebastian 06:00, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly what you are talking about, but maybe what you want is "[[:Category:Museums in Seattle|]]" (note the initial colon, so that it's not just saying "put this page in the category")? In general, not something we use within articles, though. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:11, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)

Meetup

O/T, but is anyone else here interested/involved in the Seattle Wikipedia Meetup? [1] (http://wikipedia.meetup.com/34/) Wouldn't mind having face time with other 'Pedians. - [[User:KeithTyler|Keith D. Tyler [flame]]] 19:19, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

We've just had one a few weeks ago, and have tentative plans to do another early in 2005. Check out Wikipedia:Meetup/Seattle. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:49, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)
Next one is Jan 15, 2005. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:14, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

ATT Wireless

ATT Wireless was cut completely from the article with the (accurate) remark that it "has merged with Cingular and should no longer be listed as a major company in the Seattle metropolitan area." Still, I haven't heard of any big personnel cuts, so there is presumably still a large presence here, and its origin in McCaw Cellular is important in the history of the region. Does anyone have an idea what to do with this? -- Jmabel | Talk 00:58, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

More companies

<moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (assistance)>
Companies based in Seattle: Loudeye (Internet)

Companies in Puget Sound Region: Applied Discovery(Bellevue) (Internet)

HelloBold text, My attempt to make this edit to the "Seattle" pages was unsuccessful(I think)---as you can see I am pretty clueless as how to do this, or anything else on this site. Fascinating, though, and I'd like to come back when I have time to learn things properly. But meanwhile I made this entry in hopes it might be brought to attention of someone who will follow up and place the information correctly.

My apologies for troubling you.---She
End moved text.

Cable television / cable access to Internet

I know that King County just reached a 5-year agreement with Comcast, but I believe that is just for unincorporated areas; does anyone know the current status of Seattle's renegotiation to succeed the current agreement with Comcast set to expire in 2006? This has actually been a somewhat controversial matter, and probably deserves more (here or elsewhere) than the one short sentence we have in the article mentioning that Comcast is the main provider of cable. -- Jmabel | Talk 09:39, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

Sir Mix

While not arguing either way on the merit of overtly mentioning Kurt Cobain (frankly, anyone who sees the word "grunge" and doesn't have Cobain, among others, come rapidly to mind probably won't recognize the name, anyway), I do want to object to the comment accompanying the edit dismissing Sir Mix-a-lot as a "1 hit wonder". I honestly don't know if he's had more than one national hit ("Baby's Got Back"), but around here he has been a major force for a long time on a very vital local hip-hop scene. He's frequently on KUOW as a commentator on the music industry, he is very interesting in the way he has managed in recent years to create an artist-owned way to distribute his music that, by his own account, earns him more money than a major label if he can manage even 20% of major-label sales, he has been extremely supportive of other Northwest acts, has often lent his support to political causes, and has also been uncommonly gracious in interviews about the contributions to Seattle hip-hop culture even of individuals he may no longer get along with personally, notably his ex-partner Nes Rodriguez. He's been about as positive a contributor to a local music scene as one gets. No, he may not be a big hitmaker, but in talking about Seattle and music, he's a name to be reckoned with. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:22, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)

You need to understand the difference between targeting an article for a region and globally. Sir Mix-a-lot (not knocking the guy, I've met him and he's extremely nice) is known globally as a 1 hit wonder. While he may regionally be very influential you have to realize that the residents of Seattle are not likely going to be looking up Seattle on Wiki for information. As such Kurt Cobain (who without a doubt is more widely known) who is associated with Seattle should definately be included. Amazingly there are still people who dont know who he is. I want you to realize i'm not knocking Mix's influence on your area, merely his global influence in comparison. Frankly wiki has enough drive space that 5 words "and musicians like Kurt Cobain" arent gonna screw things up any more than "rapper Sir Mix-a-lot". Lets keep them both and squash this debate, shall we? Alkivar 03:10, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No real problem with that, though I think most of us who live here associate Cobain more with the depressed small town where he and Krist Novoselic grew up (Aberdeen, Washington) than with Seattle. Krist has now lived here long enough to be accepted as a Seattlite; Kurt didn't live long enough for that to really be the case. I don't exactly object, it's just kind of weird to be simply reinforcing an image that doesn't have much basis in reality. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:10, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)

article size

By moving parts of this article to new articles, i have parsed the size down from 45K to 37K. it'd be nice to get it under 35K, if anyone wants to try to help. Kingturtle 21:32, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wikispam?

I just cut the link to immersivevideo.com, which was listed as 360 Video of Seattle Skyline. The link is to their company site; there is, indeed (at the lower left of the page a link to a 360 video of Seattle skyline, but you need to download an unspecified plug-in to view it. I would not object to having a link to that video (not to the company's home page) with a clear statement of what plug-in you need to download. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:36, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)

RE: Wikispam?

User:Jmabel|Jmabel]] | I'm looking at their site you cut and I don't agree with your anaylsis of the link. They do say a QuickTime Plug-in is required and there is a thumbnail photo to the image and link. I don't think you can directly link to the 360 photo becuase its a pop-up. I think this site needs more content like this. Its a shame you cut it..

This comment was left, without signature, by a user named D360.

I didn't realize that the plug-in they wanted to install was just QuickTime; interestingly, their site doesn't make that clear, and the moment I saw that an unfamiliar site wanted to give me a plug-in, I said "hold it right there".

I feel that a site that puts up an admittedly cool thing in a way makes you link their commercial page in order to access it is primarily a commercial site. We usually don't link to those, but I won't scream if consensus goes the other way. What do other people think? -- Jmabel | Talk 05:14, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

sports

The previous "sports" section left the implication that the Kingdome was demolished because it had structural problems, which definitely wasn't true. (The issue with falling roof tiles wasn't "structural", and in any case that was all fixed (at great expense) well before the facility was blown up to make way for Qwest Field.) Besides fixing this, I cleaned up the main paragraph to remove some extraneous history and tighten up the timeline a bit. -ThatSeattleGuy

FAC, redux

Do people want to try for featured article status again? There weren't really any active objections at the end of the process last time, just not enough active support. (At least one person didn't understand that saying "yes, you've answered my objections" isn't considered support.) At the January Seattle meetup several people remarked that they would gladly vote for it, they just don't usually monitor WP:FAC (I don't much, either) and that if we ping them next time they'd be glad to support, assuming they consider it up to snuff. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:25, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Economy and structure (from FAC discussion)

I was going to post this on the nomination page, but decided it would be better here: "As a side note, I think we should consider removing the 'Seattle institutions' header, and promote all the sections in it, (or break the section into smaller categories) as the third and fourth level headers look so similar it gets confusing."

Also, I think if someone more familiar (than me) with the subject adds some approximate dates to the Economy subsection of the History, and re-titles it something like 'Economic history', that might make it stand-alone enuf to overcome the objections. Niteowlneils 05:29, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I also decided I didn't want to add this to the nomination page, either: "(I also think the long, rambling paragraph that basically says 'on the whole, Seattle is quite liberal' could be trimmed a lot, but don't want to try to do it myself)". Niteowlneils 05:30, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I added rough dates to the economic history and added the story about the billboard, since it's quite famous locally and is even known by some people outside the area. --Michael Snow 08:26, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Great, and nice catch on the billboard--certainly made a big enuf splash at the time. Niteowlneils 01:00, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

mayors

I see that all mention of Bertha Knight Landes and Bailey Gatzert has now been cut. This seems to me like an odd decision. Is it linked somewhere that I am missing? At least it should be a see also, no? -- Jmabel | Talk 23:01, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge, I have only moved content, without cutting anything. I moved the mayor comments to Government and politics of Seattle, Washington, but since I'm basically done trying to shrink it, I can move them back to the main page if that doesn't bump it from 34K to 35K. Niteowlneils 00:42, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

They're back, and it's still only 34K. Niteowlneils 01:00, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Comparison of topics and size with other city Featured Articles

	Sarajevo	Johannesburg	Newark, New Jersey	Marshall, Texas	San Jose, California	Seattle, Washington
History	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Geography	Yes	Partial	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Climate	Yes	Yes			Yes	Yes
Bodies of water					text	Sub-page
Demographics	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Government	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Crime		Yes			text	text
Utilities					Yes	Yes
Sports	Yes	table	text		Yes	Yes
Museums, etc.	text		Yes		Yes	Yes
Medicine						Yes
Neighborhoods	Divisions	Divisions	Yes		Yes	Sub-page
Street layout				Yes		Sub-page
Economy	Yes	Yes		Yes	Yes	Yes
Notable natives	Yes		text	Yes	Yes	Sub-page
Parks					text	Sub-page
Music						text
Newspapers	Yes	Yes			Yes	Yes
Radio	Yes				Yes	Yes
TV	Yes				Yes	Yes
Transportation	Yes	Yes			Yes	Yes
Colleges	Yes	Yes	text	List	Yes	text
Schools	Yes				Yes	text
Libraries					Yes	Sub-page
Suburbs		Yes			Link to county#cities	Sub-page
Sister cities				text	Yes	Sub-page
City in literature				text		Sub-page
Trivia			Yes	Yes
Infobox		Yes			Yes	Yes
Division box	Yes				Yes	Yes
Article size	32K	27K	30K	24K	50K	34K

(forgot to sign--also, congrats to everyone that contributed content to one of the most comprehensive city articles. Niteowlneils 04:59, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC))

Bad link to FAC page

Hi all... The {fac} code is directing clickers to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Seattle, Washington, the site of the December discussion. I'm not sure why the new discussion is at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Seattle instead, but since the article is titled Seattle, Washington, using the template code can only direct clickers to the wrong page... so, I added this bit of code: For the current discussion, please see Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Seattle. --Lukobe 05:16, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

Jail ref

For whatever it's worth, the info I added about the jail [besides personal experience :/] came from here (http://www.ci.seattle.wa.us/courts/jail/visitation.htm). I think some Sea inmates stay at the Kent regional center, but since I'm not certain, I won't add it. Niteowlneils 02:32, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

front page feature?

Now that Seattle's a Featured Article, has anyone proposed its being featured on the front page? --Lukobe 23:27, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

Population

The official population estimate for Seattle is 572,600 as of April 1, 2004. [2] (http://www.ofm.wa.gov/pop/april1/index.htm) This is the figure currently used in the article, so the appropriate year is 2004. The 2005 figure will be released at the end of June. Tradnor 20:48, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

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