User talk:GoldRingChip/Archives/2014

United States Senate election in Massachusetts, 2012

Hello, I am trying to promote United States Senate election in Massachusetts, 2012 to good article. I've started a peer review, if you have any available time, would you please comment on it? Thanks, Grammarxxx ^{(What'd I do this time?)} 23:49, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

2012 House of Representatives Elections

You asked a question regarding whether a congressional district could be said to be "renumbered"; I answered briefly in the limited space for an explanation when I hit "Undo" on your comment. Frankly, I don't know if that's the correct protocol; if not, I apologize (I thought that I needed to hit "Undo" in order to post the additional changes I had been working on for 10 minutes; when I tried to save them, I was told that there was a "conflict" due to other editing going on, and then I lost my changes). In any event, I explained what I did re: House members who retired in 2012 here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_2012#Seats_of_Representatives_that_retired As I wrote there, I'd like to know what other editors of the page (such as you) think about my changes. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 02:05, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Acts of the 113th Congress

Hey! Saw your merge proposal. If you are looking for something else to work on that's related to that, the Acts of the 113th United States Congress article only goes up to 31 and there are now 78, according to [beta.congress.gov beta.congress.gov]. At least some of them should have pages on List of bills in the 113th United States Congress (which may need updating to reflect their passage). Anyway, hope you are doing well. Thanks! HistoricMN44 (talk) 19:46, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

President of the Senate

Article I, section 3, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution provides that the Senate shall elect a President pro tempore, who would serve as the presiding officer "in the absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the office of President of the United States." When the Vice President becomes Acting President pursuant to the 25th Amendment (whether because the President cedes power temporarily under Section 3, or because the VP and a majority of the Cabinet officers declare the President incapacitated under Section 4), the Vice President would be "exercising the office of President of the United States" and would not be able to preside over the Senate for the duration of his time acting as President. Are you suggesting that a VP that is acting as President of the U.S. would be able to break a tied vote in the Senate and then sign the bill into law? Such interpretation would give the person executing the office of the presidency simultaneous control over a co-equal branch of government, and would be just as anathema to the structure of the U.S. Constitution as would having the Speaker of the House in the line of succession and permitting him to act as President while still presiding over the House.

I would ask you to reconsider your edit removing from the list of Presidents of the Senate those Presidents pro tempore who were in office during periods in which the Vice President acted as President of the U.S. upon invocations of Section 3 of the 25th Amendment.

AuH2ORepublican (talk) 00:12, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

• • An interesting dilemma! And you're right to question my interpretation. I don't know the answer to whether a VP, acting as P under 25A, could simultaneously act as Senate President. But that would be WP:OR, and there's nothing out there saying it couldn't happen. If you find support for that supposition, then go ahead and make the changes. Until then, however, there's nothing saying that the PPT "becomes" Senate President during invocation of 25A.—GoldRingChip 12:50, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

• Thank you for your response. I thought about it some more, did some more reading, and then discussed it with a constitutional law professor who has written on the subject of Acting Presidents; we concluded that "exercise the office of President of the United States" (which is what triggers the VP being ineligible to preside over the Senate as per Article I, section 3, clause 5 of the Constitution) is synonymous with "powers and duties [of the President being] discharged by the Vice President as Acting President" pursuant to Section 3 of the 25th Amendment. This means that when the VP discharges the powers and duties of the presidency as Acting President pursuant to the 25th Amendment, the President pro tem automatically would become President of the Senate because the VP would be "exercise[ing] the office of President of the United States." Given the similarity of the language in Article I, section 3, clause 3 to that in Section 3 (and Section 4, for that matter) of the 25th Amendment, I don't see how the text of Article I, section 3, clause 3 could be interpreted any other way; and even were the language ambiguous, the Constitution's structure would prevent an interpretation that would allow an Acting President simultaneously to preside over the Senate. So I'm going to revert your edits and add the PPTs as "Presidents of the Senate" during the periods in which the VP became Acting President due to invocations of Section 3 of the 25th Amendment. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 18:07, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Two questions:
    1. Wasn't that WP:OR?—GoldRingChip 13:15, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
    2. Is the PPT Acting as Senate President or actually IS Senate President?—GoldRingChip 13:21, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Request for comment

There is a discussion at Talk:List of United States congressional districts related to style of new district-level maps for the post-2013 United States congressional districts. Your input would be appreciated. Thank you. --7partparadigm ^talk 02:10, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Undoing all my work

We've discussed this before, so I don't understand why it's coming up again: Why do you keep undoing all my work? I have done all this work with the intent to move the congressional district articles in a new direction, where each piece of data is given its own cell in the table, and the formatting is made clearer. Yet you keep reverting it for no other reason than to "match all the other states". You are regressing improved formatting for the sake of matching articles that are not likely to be read by the same people. Rather than simply coming in and reverting my work, which I have spent hours doing, I would appreciate it if you raised your objections on one of the many relevant talk pages. Your actions have violated Wikipedia etiquette and have caused me a great deal of frustration. —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 00:40, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

• Specifically, which articles?—GoldRingChip 19:50, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
  • I assume he's talking about edits like [1]. If one style of formatting makes more sense, it should stand on its own merits regardless of how people structured other articles. I can't imagine what the argument is for combining the cells. The whole point of a table is to structure data logically. "Like all the other articles" is not a very good reason to preserve awkward formatting, especially without a discussion. —Designate (talk) 20:02, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Request for assistance

Hi GoldRingChip, I need help finishing updating several pages related to the US congress and ensuring that Wikipedia has current district maps represented. There is not too much left to do, but I could use a hand doing it. Details are here. Thank you --7partparadigm ^talk 18:29, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Districts

Just my two cents: I do not think we should have articles on individual state Senate districts. They are invented from whole cloth every 10–15 years and have no cultural or historical value; they're just administrative conveniences to keep party members happy. Nobody writes about them or identifies with them other than the senators who happen to hold office at the moment. If we want to talk about the districts in general it could go in the state Senate article, but having hundreds of articles with nothing but a list of precincts and map is well outside Wikipedia's scope. —Designate (talk) 02:56, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

• Perhaps you're right. We do it for Congress, but not for the states. Do other states do it?—GoldRingChip 14:45, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Dates election vs. seating

Hello GoldRingChip. I know you've been around forever, taking care of the Congress articles, but now we are back at an old controversy. I just saw this. Well, they were elected on October 17. So far so good. The statute that says that members of Congress have their tenure counted from election day was enacted in the early 20th century. But this was 1791. The same article has a section of "changes" which says "Date of formal installation" which is an odd wording but purports to say when the member actually took his seat, I suppose. In that column, it says "elected on..." which is out of scope there, because nobody can be formally installed before the votes are counted, which took a few days, if not weeks, at the time. Please think about the issue, again, and maybe at some time there will be some encyclopedic consistency. Cheers. Kraxler (talk) 14:35, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

• I just was filling in the info based on the headings that were there. If I made a mistake (which is often likely!), please feel free to correct me. Thanks for keeping up on this.—GoldRingChip 00:31, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

SenateSpecialElections

Hi GoldRingChip! I noticed that you reverted BattyBot's recent edit to User:GoldRingChip/SenateSpecialElections. Is there a way you can edit your page so that it is not included in Category:United States Senate special elections, per WP:USERNOCAT? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 12:30, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

• OK, good idea. Let me look into it and work it out. I see your point, and will solve it. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.—GoldRingChip 12:45, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
• I think I solved it.—GoldRingChip 12:58, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Wonderful - thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:48, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

ANI Notice

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Themane2 (talk) 17:38, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Leaders in House

While there were certainly no Majority Leaders in the House until the 1890s, "Leaders" in this sense refers to Speakers of the House. Look at the 2012 election. You don't see Eric Cantor there, but John Boehner. You should of checked that before wiping data from multiple articles. On the other hand, thank you for addign returns on various election pages. Just be more careful next time. Themane2 (talk) 19:30, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

• I was plenty careful, the question remains: who is a leader? If the speaker is the leader of the majority party, who is the leader of the minority? What if the speaker hasn't been chosen yet?—GoldRingChip 04:40, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
• Dude... look at every US House election... every single one. Look at 2014. It has Boehner and Pelosi, not the House leaders. This getting really strange. Why are you wiping articles, and only those from a certain 10 year span? In many articles, theres almost no content. Why break up a consensus over EVERY article? Themane2 (talk) 00:06, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
• Please do not call me names. Please do not revert without discussion first. It's rude to revert without discussion. There may have been speakers, but they were not decided in the elections and there certainly wasn't a leader of the losing party. For example, Theodore Sedgwick was not the minority leader in the 1792 elections. The House didn't elect leaders until the 1890s. Some of the articles should have leaders, and some shouldn't. If its inconsistent, then the correct infoboxes should be used, not just kept incorrectly consistent. Be correct, even if inconsistent. I've been working on the early election articles in the Senate, and that why I "only" got to edit those House articles. —GoldRingChip 00:54, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
• I did NOT call you names. Please reread my posts. I expect an apology as I NEVER called you anything. Themane2 (talk) 22:46, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
• Please explain minority leaders without party organization.—GoldRingChip 01:46, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

FWIW, I believe the criteria is to have the person who was elected Speaker & the person who was runner-up. PS: the majority party/minority party labels should be deleted, concerning Administration party & Anti-Administion party. The Dem Reps & Feds are consider the first politicial parties. GoodDay (talk) 18:39, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Legislation category

I have a question about a category you created many years ago: Category:United States federal firearms legislation, which I've posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Law#Categories - 'Law' vs 'Legislation'. If you any input it'd be helpful. If not, then no worries. Rezin (talk) 18:36, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Congress succession boxes

There's a discussion going on at Template talk:Succession box#Discussion which may, or may not, interest you. Kraxler (talk) 23:11, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Succession box RfC

I fear you might have missed where the area is so altered as to make such a "predecessor" or "successor" of little or no biographical value indicating that your posited slight change in district boundaries is not what the proposal deals with. It deals with major changes - including changes where the redistricting creates a completely different district. Cheers. Collect (talk) 16:58, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

VPOTUS

While it may be true the VPOTUS wasn't a formal cabinet member until 1919, such massive changes shouldn't be done unilaterally without discussion. I hope you revert yourself to allow a discussion of the matter at WP:USA or some other venue. -- Calidum 18:48, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Considering that the subject of the article is NOT mentioned in the cabinet navbox, the removal of the latter from the article seems to be correct, see for example Daniel D. Tompkins who is not mentioned in the Monroe Cabinet navbox. Kraxler (talk) 11:31, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

At your suggestion, I started a discussion here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States#VPOTUS was not part of the cabinet until 1919. However, I see no reason to revert until the matter is settled otherwise.—GoldRingChip 15:57, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. -- Calidum 19:37, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

I hope you will add to that conversation.—GoldRingChip 02:41, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Date format conversion request

Hi, do you still have access to the script that converts iso dates into mdy dates? If so, could you run it on the Meghan McCain article, which currently is a mishmash of the two and should be all mdy? Thanks in advance ... Wasted Time R (talk) 02:08, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

• Yes I do.  Done. Glad to help.—GoldRingChip 20:05, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

I just want to pipe here and make a request that this particular script/tool be used judiciously – in addition to "fixing" reference 'dates', it seems to also automatically convert reference 'accessdates' from ISO format to mdy dates format. On some pages that's fine. But there are plenty of Wikipedia pages in which reference 'accessdates' are predominantly in the form of ISO dates. On pages like those, changing 'accessdate' format to mdy format, which is not required under MOS:DATEFORMATs (and, in fact, many wiki articles have 'accessdates' in ISO format, intentionally and by design) and would represent a WP:DATERET issue. If I see that in the future, I can't promise I won't revert on those grounds. Basically, I just ask that this particular script be used judiciously, and that those pages in which ISO 'accessdates' are predominant are not converted to mdy dates. Thanks. --IJBall (talk) 03:41, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

• That's interesting: I didn't know some pages had ISO date formats on purpose. I'll be more careful in the future. What is the reason for the intentional use of ISO formats?—GoldRingChip 15:36, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

• Some editors (and I count myself among them) prefer the ISO style for ref accessdates – my personal explanation can be found at my Talk page... I will say this, it looks like you've been using this script at the U.S. elections and politics pages, and those articles to seem to already have a pre-established "house style" in which both reference 'dates' and 'accessdates' are in mdy format – so at those articles, I don't think using your script is a big deal. But I'd be careful about using that script on other types of articles. P.S. Yesterday, I was thinking about the current states of the California congressional district articles and how they're presently unsatisfactory (IMO)... So I may be stopping by your Talk page in the near future with a completely different set of questions on any suggestions you might have to improve those! Thanks! --IJBall (talk) 17:05, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for doing my previous request. I have one more if you don't mind: Tony Bennett. It's also a mishmash of iso and mdy that I want to be all mdy. I'm the primary editor of the page and I'm the one who took it to GA status so there shouldn't be any doubt regarding intent. Wasted Time R (talk) 14:12, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

•  Done—GoldRingChip 17:26, 31 December 2014 (UTC)