Talk:List of Texas county name etymologies

Minor disputes

Stephen F. Austin did not found the Texas Republic. In fact, he did not even initiate its colonization. That was done by his father, Moses, who died before he could fulfill his vision. However, Stephen F. Austin did carry out his father's wishes and did much to develop Texas. Initially he opposed independence, but once Austin realized that this would be best for the future of Texas, Austin supported it. H2O 05:37, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Leading up to VFD

While this information is encyclopedic (wonderfully so, IMO!), I don't feel it's useful in it's present form. If I want to know how Austin County, Texas got it's name, for example, I would expect that information to be in the article about Austin Count, not in a list of county etymologies that the individual counties don't even point to! It really should be moved into the individual articles, something that I'm in the process of doing. At present, I'm through G, except for those counties for which this list didn't provide an etymology.
Kenwarren 02:48, Jul 27, 2004 (UTC)

I disagree with your statement that these pages aren't useful. They "were" VERY useful for those of us contributing the county name information as we could see at a glance which counties were left to do. There were still a lot left to go and now we have to go to each individual county page which is a much more tedious process. Once the pages are complete, then would be the time to transfer the information if necessary. Anyway, I think it's still interesting to see all the names at a glance. H2O 19:02, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• • If you'll check the appropriate VFD subpages, you'll see that a compromise has been reached: links in every county article to the appropriate etymology list page. As originally created (as "work" pages without links from counties) the information presented wasn't accessible from the one place a user would reasonably expect to find it.
    (BTW, I've always thought that if an editor has a choice of making something easy for editors to deal with, or easy for readers to deal with, the obligation is overwhelmingly in favor of the readers.)
    Thanks! - Kenwarren 19:10, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)

From Votes for Deletion

This material has been incorporated into the individual county articles. Also includes List of Texas county name etymologies (A to J) and List of Texas county name etymologies (K to Z). - Kenwarren 03:56, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)

• KEEP! Now, I don't care if the information is incorporated into the individual county articles, but I DO care about deleting List of Texas county name etymologies (A to J) and List of Texas county name etymologies (K to Z). What if you wanted to find all the county etymologies in one fell swoop? Look at List of California county name etymologies and List of Minnesota county name etymologies! I contributed much to the page, and I do not want my hard work destroyed. Dralwik
  • I have two reasons for this:

1. First, it creates a maintenance nightmare. Who's going to know to update both locations? Dralwik above probably won't bother with future edits, based on his comment. Once the information is out of sync, both sets of pages are, umm, screwed. The information is no longer trustworthy. To be blunt, this is a problem with Wikipedia in general; I've heard from several people who've uniformly said "Yeah, there's a lot of information, but I looked at 2 articles about aspects of X and they were contradictory. Which one do I trust?" (If this vote goes for keep, I feel strongly enough about this that I'll remove all etymologies from the individual articles for the same reason.)
2. Second, it doesn't make the information easy to find, one of the primary purposes of an encyclopedia. (Wouldn't the Principle of least astonishment apply here?) If I want to know how El Paso County, Texas came to have that name, where would I expect to look? At the article about the county, of course. If I didn't find it there, why would I look at Texas to find a link to List of Texas county name etymologies? For Dralwik who says "don't destroy my hard work" I would say it's not destroyed, it's migrated to where it's actually useful. And I was planning to do the same thing to Minnesota, California, Kansas, and Arizona.

Kenwarren 14:13, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)

• Keep. Note for above: I AM going to continue editing and creating the afore-mentioned pages and I am creating links on each county page to the etymology lists. (See Anderson County, Texas, for example.) Dralwik
  • See my edit to Anderson County, Texas for what I think could be a good compromise; the information will live in the "List of ..." pages, a single location, but is easily available from the individual county pages. - Kenwarren 15:02, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)
  • Kenwarren, on the above edit, I agree to that compromise. Proceed with the edits. Over and out. Dralwik
• Keep. Although the material that was completed was imported into the individual county pages, there was much left to do. The pages stated that they were a work in progress. These pages were VERY useful for those of us contributing the county name information as we could see at a glance which counties were left to do. Unfortunately, there were still a lot left to go and now we have to go look at each individual county page which is a much more tedious process. I wish Kenwarren would have discussed it a little further before he erased all the work we had done. I thought he was just going to copy the info. Once the pages were complete, then would be the time to transfer the information if necessary. Anyway, I think it's still interesting to see all the names at a glance. H2O 19:16, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Keep - ditto what I said above, but I'd also like to add that it is useful to see the whole list to get a feel for why Texas counties were named the way they were. It gives an idea of the kinds of people we Texans have felt were important to us. Same for California, Minnesota, or any other state. H2O 19:40, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Keep, it's useful and precident exists for such pages. But regarding the recent edits to Anderson County, Texas, I disagree with the decision to remove the etymology info and instead link the user to the List of Texas county name etymologies (A to J) article in order to find out who the county is named after. It doesn't hurt to have the info in both places. You don't have to remove good info from the Anderson County, Texas article just to justify another article's existance. - Eisnel 19:50, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • The information will only be good for as long as it takes someone to make a single edit to either a single county directly or one of the lists, without transferring it to the other location. (I figure that would take a week or so.) Then one location or the other is out of date, therefore wrong. Or are you volunteering to do a regular sweep of counties to make sure their etymologies and "list of etymologies" are up-to-date? This situation exists in numerous locations in Wikipedia, and results in people discounting the usefullness of Wikipedia. (This per a number of conversations I've had of late...) - Kenwarren 23:16, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)
    • This doesn't make any sense to me. The information is either accurate, or it isn't. Just because the information agrees doesn't mean it is accurate. H2O 23:53, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Keep (both lists). It's an interesting topic and a lot more sensible to organize this way rather than spread out across dozens of articles. I don't understand the concerns about this information being maintained or up-to-date - these counties have all been named and Texas isn't adding new counties, so once this list is done there shouldn't be any new information to add. MK 02:17, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Delete. I agree with Kenwarren's criteria for judging obscure lists. If the pages are useful to contributors, maybe they can be moved to some meta-space or a user's workspace? Incidentally, even if this is kept, couldn't it all fit into one article pretty easily rather than splitting it up A-J K-Z? [which has been fixed] -- WOT 21:17, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

end-moved discussion

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Dralwik is one of this article's authors and the one who started it in the first place. He would appreciate any opinions. (Click on the "Talk" tab.)

Table Format complete

Finally all 254 counties are in table format with county seat and etymology. Whew. Quidam65 01:55, 28 April 2007 (UTC)