Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Congress

A resource for political actions, in addition to normal history sources, is the page facimilies of the Statutes at Large volumes available at the Library of Congress. I took dates from there for statehood. I don't know what other sources say. The second Congress did not convene until the Autumn of 1791. BobCMU76 12:12 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

Statutes at Large

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The pages for each Congress should mention promimently when the Congress sat. I would suggest at the top of the page. Rmhermen 22:52 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

The session dates are available here. Locations are not shown, The third session of the first congress met in Phila. I believe the second session of the sixth congress first met in D.C. BobCMU76 11:41 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

This document from the Congressional Record lists Congresses, sessions, dates of convening and adjournment, length (in days), President Pro Tem, and Speaker through the convening of Congress in January 2003. It states that Congress met for the first and second sessions of the First Congress (1789 and 1790) in New York City, from the third session of the First Congress through the first session of the Sixth Congress (1790 to 1800) in Philadelphia, and, since the second session of the Sixth Congress (1800), in Washington DC. As an aside, I think using numerals rather than spelled-out numbers (107th Congress, not One Hundred Seventh Congress) would be far easier to read (with redirects based on the spelled-out versions), and also would reflect longstanding practice. This style is used by both houses of Congress. OtherDave 13:06, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

I've assigned myself the task of adding the dates for each session of Congress, along with the location, to each individual Congress's page, using the format I found at the First Congress as an example. I noted on the page for the Sixth that it was the first to have a session in Washington, and on the page for the Seventh that it was the first to meet 'only' in Washington. For subsequent Congresses I will simply include Washington as the location. OtherDave 22:50, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

session dates vs. period served

OK, I'm a little confused about how to describe the dates that a member of Congress served, particularly for pre-1934 Congesses. The Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress seems to do it two ways. For example, I'm looking at the entry for Lucius Lyon. Here [1] the 23rd Congress is listed as 1833-1834. But here [2] the dates are given as March 4, 1833-March 3, 1835. So should I write that he served from 1833-1834 or from 1833-1835? I suppose I could include the exact dates, but that seems to me a bit tedious for persons elected to multiple terms. Bkonrad | Talk 16:23, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The bioguide simplifies things because, today, congresses begin and end on January 3. In the past, it was early March. When it says the 23rd congress is 1833-1834, it means March 1833-March 1835. He should certainly be listed as serving from 33 to 35. Personally, I don't think exact dates are needed unless the person started or ended their term at a date other than the proper start-end date, like if they resigned, died, appointed or contested the election. --Golbez 14:46, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Tables

I've joined this because of the work I've been doing on the tables of state delegations; good examples at US Congressional Delegations from Kentucky and US Congressional Delegations from Florida. These could be a very useful cross-reference tool. These list who served in what congress from a particular state; the #th Congress articles list who served from what state in a particular congress. --Golbez 14:46, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Congregator

I've been playing around with a program I wrote (called congregator) to extract data from pages at [3]. I created a page for the Thirty-second_United_States_Congress as a trial run and then went through and checked the links. More to come.K4 pacific 03:23, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Be warned - the BioGuide's database is sometimes wrong. I typically run into 1-2 errors per state, where it lists someone in the wrong congress, or doesn't list them in the proper congress. (The bios themselves are fine, but the database linking them together is not) --Golbez 05:24, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I've found that the bios are not 100% reliable either. Usually just small errors, but enough to make double-checking things worthwhile. older≠wiser 11:36, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC) PS, re: K4 pacific's program--I think it's great--just add a note at the top that the data was automatically extracted and needs to be verified. older≠wiser 11:39, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Your script is linking to the Georgia disambiguation page, no the state. I have fixed the Thirty-second_United_States_Congress page, but your script needs tweaking. Susvolans 13:00, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll look into it. I haven't done any besides Thirty-second_United_States_Congress and Ninety-eighth_United_States_Congress yet because I am working on a way to automatically verify the links. K4 pacific 14:03, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Articles about congresional districts

Not sure if anyone is still watching this project or not. I'd like to start making articles about Michigan's congressional districts, describing some history and listing representatives from the districts. If possible, I'd like to get maps showing the area represented after each redistricting (although that would require some digging). I'm just wondering if anyone has already tried anything similar and I'm also looking for naming suggestions. I was thinking of First Congressional District of Michigan, but I see there are some other variations under Category:U.S. Congressional districts. Such as North Carolina congressional districts (only lists current districts), United States House of Representatives, Texas District 1, 1st Congressional District of Kansas and First Congressional District of Hawaii. Personally, I think the last naming form is clearest, but curious if anyone else has thoughts about this. older≠wiser 19:49, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)

Ordinal number first has my vote, for what that's worth (10th Congressional District of Maryland). I think it's easier to read in a list than the spelled-out version would be (Twenty-ninth vs 29th). I just looked at the web pages for 20 House members; roughly 3 in 4 use the equivalent of "3rd" rather than "third" on the home page; at least one of those who spell out the name also uses the numeral elsewhere on the member's site -- "Congressman Wombat of the Ninth District... voters in the 9th District." OtherDave 13:06, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Seventy-first United States Congress?

Is this article correct? Seventy-first United States Congress? It doesn't look right. Can someone working on this project please fix it? thanks :) Kingturtle 07:17, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Can you be more specific? I went to the page and added dates for all three sessions, a little project I've assigned myself (dates from the Congressional Record). I did not try to verify names of leaders, though I see the page does not mention President Pro Tem of the Senate (as opposed to the majority leader). OtherDave 14:12, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

i could help this project

i saw the congress pages on the most linked to and nonexistant wikipages list, so i added to the 91st United States Congress and created the 90th United States Congress. all i planned on doing (for now) was copying, pasting, and wiki'ng info from house.gov. then i saw that there was a project for these pages. with "your" OK, i will continue to do so for the remaining missing congress pages, and formatting to any style that you planned on using.
- Somedude 01:41, 2005 Mar 25 (UTC)

Following Somedude's lead, I've been putting specific dates for sessions (see note above). OtherDave 22:50, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Thomas Project

I think you should have every page link to the Thomas Project ([4]) where possible. This is a service of Congress has lists of all Bills passed by each Congress since the 93rd (e.g. [5] etc).Chris Martin 16:46, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Looks bad

I SPENT HOURS ON THOSE SENATE LISTS AND I HAVE IT MESSED UP! I HAVE SAID TIME AND TIME AGAIN THAT IF YOU MESS WITH THOSE LISTS IT LOOKS LIKE CRAP! AND IT DOES LOOK LIKE CRAP, It does not look neat! --Jack Cox 21:08, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

You are so... right. Yeah. I messed them up. Sorry. They do look bad.

So I've since tried to clean them up.

* I put in "nowrap"s in the columns,

* I eliminated the (D), (R), (I) abbreviations because they take up unnecessary space since the colors already indicate party

* Changed "Members of the XXXth Congress" to "United States Senators in the XXXth Congress" because the Senate is a continuous body unlike the House.

I made these changes to the 105th through 109th("Current") templates for your perusal.

What do you think?

--Markles 00:42, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Bless you for using cellpadding! I have been working through the individual Congresses, adding session dates and adding or adjusting the previous/next navigation (the one at the bottom of the page, under External Links), giving it cellpadding of 6. Re Senators: while I agree the Senate is a continuous body in that the terms of office for its members extend through three congresses, the Senate is a part of Congress and thus subordinate to the entity as a whole. Senator Byrd of W. Va., for example, is very much a member of the 109th Congress, as he was of the 108th, 107th, 106th, etc., etc. So I'd go for the simpler "Members of the XXth Congress" label for both houses. OtherDave 22:55, September 8, 2005 (UTC)

Categories

The use of the 'catch all' category Members of the U.S. House of Representatives for individual members is just not workable. There is some work that is breaking former members out by state. And there are two forms in use: U.S. Representatives from Missouri and Members of the U.S. House from Maryland. We ought to strive for some consistency. So, just edit the proposal, and add any comments after it. Thanks, Lou I 12:30, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Proposed categories

1. Each state should hacve a category for current and former House members, in the form of U.S. Representatives from Statename. Each category should have a parent category entry of [[Category:Members of the U.S. House of Representatives| ]].
2. An additional category should be reserved and used for current house members, such as U.S. House Members

discussion

House

The use of a blank in the parent category entry will force all 'subcategories' to the first page of the now massive Members. Once we get the list down to a workable size (none), we cabn reinsert the state names to get headings/toc entries. Lou I 12:30, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

I think U.S. Representatives from State goes better with U.S. Senators from State, as many senators were also representatives at one point. --tomf688^<TALK> 00:11, September 8, 2005 (UTC)

Senate

We could continue a single category for the members of the U.S. Senate. The list is not so large as to make this unworkable, but I prefer the Category:U.S. Senators from Foo by state. Lou I 12:30, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Both

People will want to view these things several ways: members of either body by party (especially after the 25th Congress or so), members by State (= state delegations). Is there an option for some sort of database from which the information can be pulled? If so, then the "XXth Congress" page could have links for "House membership by state" (with parties indicated), "House membership by party" (with state indicated). It seems counterproductive to clutter up the "Congress page" with a huge list of names when the accomplishments (or failures) of the Congress are more pertinent, as long as there's an easy way to find out who the participants/culprits were. The 108th Congress has four lines for legislation out of info that 'print preview' says would chew up 28 pages. Isn't this what hyperlinks are all about? Or am I misundestanding something? OtherDave 22:55, September 8, 2005 (UTC)

Removing the list to its own article make sense.What does anyone else think? Lou I 12:22, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

To do

Moved from main article page:

1. . Please add all Senators and the Congresses they were in. See article Old version of Ernest Hollings article] for an example.
   
2. . Create more boxes for Governors.
   
3. . Would like to know about possibility for adding Categories about what Congresses the Senators or Reps were in so that we can make a list for example

Category:Senators in the 108th Congress

Category:Representatives in the 108th Congress

Jack Cox 12:50, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I disagree.

1. Adding all Senators and the Congresses they were in will create excessive clutter. It's interesting information, but too much for the articles. See Old version of Ernest Hollings article.
2. Governors shouldn't be included in a project regarding the U.S. Congress, as they aren't in the U.S. Congress.
3. Categories aren't intended to be lists. See Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes.

Perhaps this could have some discussion.

--Markles 16:51, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

NOTE: I've been adding templating to former Senate pro tems, just so you all know. Staxringold 01:08, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Individual Member Categories

Current use of categories for individual members:

• The votes from CFD and renaming is now completed for [[Category:United States Senators from Foo]]. The U.S. Representatives category vote failed to reach concensus in any particular version of category name.
• I have created a sample of a category heading for House members, at Category:U.S. Representatives from Kentucky. Please comment or edit it. After a pause for comments, I plan to duplicate this across the states, and for the senators as well.
• Thinking about this also raised a question about the delegations articles. In the current use most states have two articles: the U.S. Congressional Delegations from Kentucky and the List of United States Senators from Kentucky. I'd like to suggest that we remove sanators from the delegation detail, leaving a note and link to the Senate list in the house (delegations) article.
• U.S. Congressional Delegations from New York has a Senate section that uses a column form to present both 'Classes' of Senator in a single table. I'd also like to suggest that our List of Senators from xx use a similar format, but with the congress and dates link first, then the two classes as the second and third column. Comments?
• If we do this, what about the few articles like List of United States Senators from Delaware that contain aditional information?
• There are also a couple of clean up details, such as List of United States Senators from Kansas, which is a redirect to the delegations page.
• In the wishful thinking department, I wish I could think of a better way to present the table of representatives by date/district some way that didn't scroll off the page to the right. Maybe something like a spreadsheet that keeps the first (date) column but hides the next 10, letting me see districts 11-15. Any suggestions are welcome...
• After the pause for comments, I'll add a summary of the layout for individual member usage to the project page.

Thanks for your consideration, and intersperse comments above, or use my talk page Lou I 17:18, 16 October 2005 (UTC) talk

Lists of Senators

I've modified the List of United States Senators from Texas as an example of the format I'd like to follow. The toughest part of this activity is the footnotes. My next target is Pennsylvania since it covers all Congresses. If anyone has comments let me know. I've also compiled a color and link schema from several of these articles, described below. Comments are welcome, but if you get them in early I can incorporate any improvements in this pass. Lou I 21:45, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

That's excellent. The format and the footnotes make sense. But it can be definitely hard work to collect that information at one time. Tfine80 21:49, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Party color codes in lists

Several lists of senators, delegations, and other politicians use color coding to show political parties. This table shows the most widely used colors, but they're not universal. (See the Texas Senator list linked above for an example.) After a pause for comments, I'll put this or a list improved by comments on the project page. Also, any suggestions on a color code for anti-federalist? Lou I 22:13, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

color	party	party link source codde
CCCCCC	Heading
DDEEFF	democrat (D)	[[Democratic Party (United States)|(D)]]
FFE8E8	republican (R)	[[Republican Party (United States)|(R)]]
CCFFCC	democratic-republican (D-R)	[[Democratic-Republican Party (United States)|(D-R)]]
AAFFAA	national-republican (N-R)	[[National-Republican Party (United States)|(N-R)]]
FFFFCC	whig (Whig)	[[Whig Party (United States)|(Whig)]]
E6E6AA	federalist (F)	[[Federalist Party (United States)|(F)]]
none	anti-federalist (A-F)	[[Anti-Federalism|(A-F)]]

Advice?

Hiya, I need opinions on how I've been doing on expanding the Seventy-third United States Congress. Still some technicaly tweaking needed, but I think it's about as complete as it will be. I feel the need to create a template with all the Congresses listed on it (since it's hard to navigate between them as it is right now). I'd be willing to make such a template, if it's a good idea? Also, I am expanding the [[U.S. Congressional Delegations from <state>]] pages that have gaps before the 73rd Congress. I've already done so for U.S. Congressional Delegations from New Hampshire, U.S. Congressional Delegations from Mississippi, U.S. Congressional Delegations from Iowa, and U.S. Congressional Delegations from Rhode Island. Finally, I would like an opinion on United States House of Representatives, New Mexico District 1. There wasn't a clear example on those Congressional District pages (since there were so few of those pages) so I thought what I did (which was slightly based on Kansas') was presentable. But I would like a second opinion! YourNickname 22:43, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Finding a Congress - About the querstion of a navigation template... I don't think we need one, we now have two ways: the List of United States Congresses and the category Category:United States Congress by session which is easier to navigate. I use the category since it's link is already at the bottom of each article. (More comments later)... Lou I 00:04, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Congressional Lists (was Congressional Trivia Lists

There are a lot of Presidential Trivia Lists, are there any Congressional trivia lists?

I am about to create a list of Congressional delegations ranked by partisan composition, which will be similar to the chart I created here.

Surely there are other trivia lists that I have overlooked. Articles about women members, African American members, and Asian members etc. could be included in a new Congressional Lists template. Anyone have some good suggestions on how to proceed? NoSeptember 23:05, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

I created the new article Partisan mix of congressional delegations. NoSeptember 14:49, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I created Template:Congresslists, I welcome improvements (I'm sure I have not found all the articles that should be included). NoSeptember 13:20, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Great! I've edited it a little. I think it should be a general navigation box, not just trivia lists. What do you think? --Mark Adler 19:25, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Looks good, and you are right that "trivia" was really not the right term. We needed a congressional list template and it could be so much more; I hope it grows into something similar to the potuslists template. NoSeptember 08:42, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Peter G. Gerry

Please take a look at Peter G. Gerry. This was on the requested articles list, it had 20 something links but no article. I had troubles with the infobox and need to add in preceeded by and succeeded by. But, it is coming along, and help is welcome. I also started a topic for his wife and added it to DYK. Joaquin Murietta 01:05, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

List of United States Senators from X

Hi there:

Markles put up merge notices on List of United States Senators from New York and U.S. Congressional Delegations from New York, intending to merge the former into the latter. I posted a message on his talk page, and he recommended that I post a message here to get some discussion going. If this is not the correct place for this discussion, please let me know what the correct location for it is.

Anyway, for each state, there are two articles, named "List of United States Senators from state" and "U.S. Congressional Delegations from state". The "U.S. Congressional Delegations…" article currently includes a table listing the Senators, although it is not identical to the tables in the "List…" article. Some options we could take with respect to these articles are:

Option 1

Merge the "List…" article into the "U.S. Congressional Delegations…" article.

Option 2a

1. Pull the "U.S. Senators" section out of the "U.S. Congressional Delegations…" article and merge it into the "List…" article.
2. Rename the "List…" article as "U.S. Senate Delegations from state".
3. Rename the "U.S. Congressional Delegations…" article as "U.S. House Delegations from state".

Option 2b

1. Pull the "U.S. Senators" section out of the "U.S. Congressional Delegations…" article and merge it into the "List…" article.
2. Rename the "U.S. Congressional Delegations…" article as "List of United States Representatives from state".

One point in favor of options 2a and 2b is that the "United States Senator from state" link in succession tables doesn't have to point to a section of an article but to an article in its own right. (The same point applies to "United States Representative from the nth District of state".)

So:

• Does anyone have additional options to offer?
• What is the best option?

— DLJessup (talk) 02:57, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, my initial reaction is that 2A sounds pretty good. Many of the Congressional Delegation articles are pretty montrously long anyhow. older≠wiser 03:11, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

After I wrote my above posting, I realized that I had left off Mark Adler's response to my proposal of what became options 2a and 2b above:

I'm on the fence about splitting Senators and Representatives. It's handy to keep it all in one article, but in a state like New York, it will be extremely cumbersome. And yet, the cumbersome-ness comes from the plentitude of House reps, not the senators.

Please look at his talk page to be sure that I didn't take the above excerpt out of context. I'm also writing him a message asking him to write here on that talk page as I write this. (And I just had a collision with Bkonrad while writing this as well….) — DLJessup (talk) 03:15, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

• I'm with Bkonrad in supporting 2A. jengod 21:21, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Acts

Would this be the place to discuss USA PATRIOT Act? I'm trying to get it up to scratch - it's a slow process. - Ta bu shi da yu 16:46, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Ideas to consider

I just reorganized North Carolina Congressional Districts, using a gallery for the maps of the districts and using gallery captions to replace the auto-generated TOC. I also put icons representing the party of each district's officeholder. I think the result improves upon its predecessor in a couple of ways and hope you take it into account for any style guidelines you follow.

BTW, I would have expected the article's title to be North Carolina congressional districts, which would better follow Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Lowercase second and subsequent words. 66.167.252.174 22:25, 20 November 2005 (UTC).

I noticed Markles (talk · contribs) was apparently unhappy with the reorganization, and instead of explaining why (either here or at Talk:North Carolina Congressional Districts), he all but reverted them entirely. Since Markles (talk · contribs) is a member of this project, I hope he explains here why he felt that was necessary. 66.167.252.20 07:48, 22 November 2005 (UTC).