Jump to content

Talk:Pittsburgh

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 98.239.250.100 (talk) at 04:15, 24 January 2014 (→‎obsession with livability). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Template:Vital article

User:MrKIA11/Archive Box

Crime section: NOR synthesis, should be deleted?

Deletion consideration for the Crime section first paragraph remarks about "being high for a city of it's size" since no quote exists on the source material for this. It has been suggested that merely interpreting what a list of facts states is considered to be NOR and possibly synthesis. I am attempting to get clarification on this (been a number of days without response). I may be wrong discussing this prior to deletion of facts even though those facts may be synthesized since the consensus seems to be to delete facts first then "synthesize" a rationalization for it. You can join the discussion on the NOR and the apparent delete first policy here: Thank you for your time. [1] Thank you for your time.

Reader feedback: I would like an improved sec...

69.174.58.188 posted this comment on 5 August 2013 (view all feedback).

"I would like an improved section on ethnic population breakdown as well as a section on religious population breakdown." -69.174.58.188

The demographics section of the main Pittsburgh article gives racial makeup and a paragraph below gives European nation of origin make up. (Italian, German, Russian, Greek, Irish, etc.)
Currently there is no religious makeup article or section & I am not certain how useful that may be when considering the wide variety and "big tent" of those who refer to themselves as Christians, Muslims etc. as well as those that may claim a religion or were raised in one but do not practice, eventually the numbers start melting down back to the "square one" of something like "oh estimated to be about 2/3rd Christians, etc." There is a category listing of some of the congregations however, Category:Churches in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The authoritative source of this, the 2010 census, did not ask for citizens religious beliefs and all other private surveys do not have the authority to "force" people to respond. Even though there may be some good "estimates", how useful really is anything more detailed than 1/3 this and 2/3 that with 1/2 of the 2/3 being this subgroup. Even the US Census which is a massive 2 year long undertaking with the authority to compel everyone to participate is still not 100% in accuracy, no religious survey more accurate than some rough percentages can in my experience claim any kind of accuracy. Hope this assists you and let us know if you have further inquiry.

Market St.⧏ ⧐ Diamond Way 20:34, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I added some information from the most reliable source I could find but as the numbers indicate over half did not report. Market St.⧏ ⧐ Diamond Way 03:04, 14 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Multi-reference templates in use

This article uses {{Pittsburgh Film}}, {{Pittsburgh etymology}}, {{Pittsburgh Names}}, {{Pittsburgh history}} templates in the lead to create multi-references. To me, this is a deviation from standard editing procedure and the citations should be broken-out separately. For example, this is what {{Pittsburgh Film}} produces:


Any other thoughts?--GrapedApe (talk) 04:15, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

GrapedApe messaged me on this at my talk page, to summarize my thoughts are 1st the cites were initially intended for use across multiple wikipedia articles (some of which I'd like to create in the near future) as a way to ensure that (to me especially) references weren't 'lost' that could be useful on several articles. 2nd, as those references were added to the main article's lead a few spots became repetitive with citation-text word-citation-text word-citation-text word etc. and also 3-4-5 citations in a row. If an editor wishes to move a few of the less necessary citation templates lower on the article or add the templates to the other articles they were intended for I'd love to help. At the time I went off of "It is generally a good idea to keep the main reference (long version) in the body and only use the short "name" version ([1]) in the lead. This makes the lead much easier to edit. This also demonstrates the primacy of content in the body, and that the lead is only based on content and references found in the body of the article.". Market St.⧏ ⧐ Diamond Way 13:43, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The short "name" version referenced in that policy means <ref name=NAME />, not a multi-reference template.--GrapedApe (talk) 04:43, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I was going more off the spirit or purpose of the guidelines. Market St.⧏ ⧐ Diamond Way 18:56, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

World record for bridges?

Currently, the articles reads that Pittsburgh has 446 bridges, which is considered "world record for cities." I would like to notify you that Hamburg, Germany, has 2,485 bridges, more than Venice, Stockholm and Amsterdam combined and is thus listed in the Guinness Book of World Record as "City with most bridges in Europe".[2]--84.119.221.1 (talk) 15:34, 12 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's interesting, will investigate this, but it seems both cities have RSs claiming "world's most", I wonder then what jurisdiction or bridge definition they might be using. Market St.⧏ ⧐ Diamond Way 22:35, 12 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed quite interesting. Reliable sources are only as good as the underlying definition (and quite worthless without). I found another listing [3], where any kinds of bridges (road, rail, pedestrian, over water, road overpasses etc.) have been taken into account. This puts New York City as #1 in the world, at 2,891, followed by Hamburg (2,496), Los Angeles (2,442), Berlin (2,100), Vienna (1,716), Amsterdam (1,539), Hongkong (1,455), then other US cities like San Diego, Chicago, Philadelphia (same US state as Pittsburgh, btw), Nashville, Memphis, Detroit, Kansas, Minneapolis, Jacksonville, Milwaukee, Atlanta and Miami until finally, at #23, Pittsburgh is listed at 715. Ok, the list is compiled from several sources (and my personal guess is that there is insufficient data for many places in Southeast Asia), but all US entries are referenced to data provided by the National Bridge Inventory database. In this light, I'd consider Pittsburgh's claim quite well proven wrong.--137.248.134.8 (talk) 12:42, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I did some more research. The "Pittsburgh has 446 bridges" claim is referenced by [4], where it reads that this means that the city has "three more than former world leader Venice, Italy." And this is where, in my opinion, the mistake is located: Venice simply did not hold this record at all. It's a common misconception that Venice was the city with most bridges in the world. I'm from Berlin, and here every tour guide will tell you the fun fact that there are more bridges than in Venice. Of course, this is because Berlin has an area of 900 sq km, compared to the historic center of Venice at only 7 sq km, but with 345 bridges. Go figure.--137.248.134.8 (talk) 13:34, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to Wikipedia! It may be helpful to register as we can't tell if this is one person or two or even more writing these comments (and without talk pages nor any other edits). The link you provided on the 12:42 post is interesting but very much not a RS, besides its obvious OR there is a massive & obvious error on the Pittsburgh stats. That said there may be more research needed before a claim can be listed like this encyclopedically. Market St.⧏ ⧐ Diamond Way 20:04, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Marketdiamond, I've once been quite an active Wikipedian, but have decided to retire. Nowadays, I'm only active on a few occasions when I find something that in my opinion needs to be improved. Here is another source which I would call reliable: It's in German, and the key fact is that there are 1,102 bridges in Berlin (which is more than any source claims for Pittsburgh; the "bridge definition" used is "under maintenance oversight of the local authorities") [5] Also, as Bridges and tunnels in New York City claims that there are "over 2,000 bridges and tunnels", it's a fair guess to assume that there are at least more bridges than the 400-700 of Pittsburgh. I won't interfere with Pittsburgh's Wikipedia article any further, just would like to point out that to me, the world record claim seems to be unfounded.--37.24.169.207 (talk) 08:43, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I thank you for these sources & your views, as I concluded on my last post there may be more research needed before a claim can be listed like this on Pittsburgh's article. Not certain what your situation is but it appears like 3 separate users are leaving comments here (all their very first edits) what you say has a valid point but please be aware of a "creep out" factor (whether justified or not) in the future, it can be unnerving having what appears to be multiple anonymous and 'new' users all show up with the same view but no history nor talk page. Please be assured that your contributions are not taken as "interference" but appreciated, it would just be more comforting to know who is contributing (level playing field and all). Technically that is not required but I am sure you realize how much more gravitas your comments will command if such things as sockpuppetry are never crossing minds :-).
I would have mentioned this earlier but I was not certain of who or how many I was answering, the first link provided actually lists Pittsburgh twice with two separate counts, that is what I was referring to as the "massive and obvious error". As said earlier there should be more varied sources before a claim like this is made on Pittsburgh however and please don't hesitate to contribute in the future. Market St.⧏ ⧐ Diamond Way 20:52, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Suggested Section Splitting/Trim down article

I disagree with the section splitting proposed however there is some room to trim down poorly fitting and sometimes repetitious syntax that appears like it has been thrown together over months and years. A few parts of the article even have the same thing expressed in two areas between what are obviously add on minor edits as time went on. The (ibids) edits I made took nothing of substance out of the article but trimmed down and compacted the important ideas in the sections. For basketball I even added the women's programs that were absent from the article.

My view is that most every topic still should belong on this article but if other editors wish to trim down the language or syntax that alone can streamline the article to roughly match the bytes of say a St. Louis or Los Angeles while retaining all the topics presently on the article. Thank you. Market St.⧏ ⧐ Diamond Way 20:00, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you have a minute, take a look at St_louis#Sports and Los_Angeles#Sports. The sports section on those pages (and most other city pages) are far shorter than the sports section on the Pittsburgh main page, which runs for about 4-5 pages. Other than major league sports and Division 1 college sports, much of this material could be moved to the Sports in Pittsburgh article. Barryjjoyce (talk) 15:33, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the comment & suggestions. Pittsburgh is a very different city, and this is beyond the typical yinzer caricature sports fan.
  1. I see the Sports in __ articles for those cities and others are below 22,000 bytes while Pittsburgh's sports article is currently almost 70,000 bytes and was over 157,000 bytes before a big section was spun off into its own article. Having a few more sections under sports would be encyclopedic for a city/region that has more than double the data on its sports page than other cities.
  2. Tho I see you & others are trying to trim sports sections in a lot of city articles your 2 examples of LA and StL don't compare much at all with Pgh IMHO, StL lost its NBA, MLB and NFL teams while LA lost both NFL teams with equal yawns by fans of some of those teams. This is even more striking when one considers that Pgh went from a top 10 TV market to barely in the top 25 in the last generation, while StL fell slightly and LA grew, per capita Pgh is much more devoted and focused on its major league teams then many cities larger than it, heck we even had a mayor that sued New Orleans for trying to take one of our teams.
  3. Aside from fan support considerations, the area practically invented modern basketball championships, college basketball, pro football, pro hockey, golf with major innovations in all sports at all levels, and that isn't even considering the first televised football and basketball games as well as broadcast (radio) in general. Pittsburgh takes its sports like Boston takes its college degrees or New Orleans takes its cooking. Having that reflected encyclopedically on the main article of the city isn't only acceptable but necessary IMHO.

Market St.⧏ ⧐ Diamond Way 02:25, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm removing both tags on the article page related to this discussion. I think it can be taken care of here by regular discussion. Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:14, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The size of the Pittsburgh article has been hovering around 170kB - 200kB bytes for the past few months. The guidance from Wikipedia:Article_size says that 30kB - 50kB is ideal for readability, and that any article over 100kB "almost certainly should be divided." The Pittsburgh article is much longer than the articles for other cities of comparable size (see eg, Cincinnati). The art in wiki editing is not to compile as much info as possible, the art is to select what to include and what should be split off (or deleted). I'm not going to get into a prolonged argument or edit war over this, but in its current state the Pittsburgh article has so much info that it is unreadable. Barryjjoyce (talk) 21:43, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your overall view that the article is too long I share and find convincing. Thus my recent edits explained on the first post of this thread. My objection is that any of the current sections be moved wholesale from the main article. As I stated earlier I think a simple run through of the article on syntax, repetition and sentence structure (with very minor deletions of some extra or not-really-relevant data) will bring the article down to a more reasonable size. Market St.⧏ ⧐ Diamond Way 01:47, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

grammar

"Both flagship hospitals annual rank as among the best overall in the United States, with UPMC being among U.S. News & World Reports' "Honor Roll"."

Correction: ...annually rank among the best.....

obsession with livability

Only in Pittsburgh do people have a fetish about some corporate sponsored best or most livable city poll. These polls are biased. They don't consider that unemployment/underemployment and low wage jobs are rampant, evictions and mortgage forclosures are escalating and more and more are falling into the ranks of the poor with less and less social benefits available due to defunding and privatization by finance capital. Pennsylvania's unemployment rate is skyrocketing especially among the youth. One in 4 Pennsylvanians earn poverty wages. The annual report, released On August 28, “The State of Working Pennsylvania 2013,” is authored by Mark Price and Stephen Herzenberg, who both hold PhDs in economics , social wages have been terminated and slashed. So a $179,000 for a house is much more out of reach than ever before. Pittsburgh is especially hard hit.

Pittsburgh has one of the worst particulate pollution problem in the country. Our mass transit system doesn't even make the national rankings. Mass transit is a major factor contributing to living standards. $789.00 in rent is not cheap especially when there are no jobs and people are paying half or more than half of their take home pay to private property owners and investors. As for culture the average worker cannot afford to expose themselves and children to the arts. A $15.00 pirate ticket doesn't count.

Other cities don't even talk about their rankings or "image". Pittsburgh has less and less to offer and more and more to boast about apparently. As for health care, it is part of the service sphere. Under capitalist relations of production the service sphere takes on a parasitic tendency. Even in those areas of health care that are truly needed like emergency care, fewer and fewer people can afford it. There are no social service networks for those under 65 and injured or sick and don't have a car. People have to pay exploitative taxi rates just to get to the grocery store.

Pittsburgh is effectively a police state. One of the most overly patrolled cities and metro area in the US. It is thinly disguised as "crime" prevention but it is ever in reality a form of oppression of the working class to protect private property i.e. monopoly merchant capitalists, banks, courts etc... Try walking in a south suburban neighborhood after 8 pm and sit on a bench with a cup of coffee. Police swarm around like flies to sugar.

Pittsburgh has a lot of good to offer but let's play the livable city polls down a bit. There are many millions and even billions of people in the world that live in disaster free areas that doesn't make their cities "livable". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.239.250.100 (talk) 03:55, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Pittsburgh&oldid=592122892"