Cato Institute — Saturday, June 8, 2013 at 3:00 PM
Join us!
The Legislative Data Meetup is a meetup for WikiProject United States Federal Government Legislative Data participants in the D.C. area to discuss efforts to increase information about the United States government on Wikipedia. The meetup will focus on what has been accomplished so far and what still needs to be done. All are welcome!
Where & When
Cato Institute
1000 Massachusetts Avenue NW Mt. Vernon Square on the Yellow and Green Lines Metro Center on the Red, Orange, and Blue Lines Nearest Capital Bikeshare Docks: 11 & K; 12 & L Saturday, June 8
3 PM to 6 PM
Sounds really cool, wish I could attend, but DC is so far and my weekend schedule is so stacked with other crap... -- Ynot?14:11, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
... but are still interested in this project, would you consider doing me a favor and reviewing an article or two? Pick an article or two from this page List of bills in the 113th United States Congress and then let me know on my talk page or on the article's talk page what you thought. Could you understand what the bill was about? What other things would you have liked to have known about it? Were there any technical errors (spelling, wikicode, whatever) that stuck out and need to be fixed? I write a lot of articles about legislation, but I don't have a good sense from readers about what works and what doesn't. Comments would be helpful. Thanks! HistoricMN44 (talk) 14:29, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We discussed how to put legislative documents on WikiSource.
We worked on (created anew?) an infobox template for articles about legislation introduced in the US Congress which has not yet become law or never became law.
We discussed some how to frame the outline of legislative articles
Fixed some templates and infoboxes on legislation, including Hurricane Sandy relief bill, whose enactment is now visible in the infobox.
Reviews and commentary
We were asked our opinions on newly added articles so I'll spout some of mine:
In articles about bills, I'd put "Provisions/Elements of the bill" earlier/above "Procedural history", but at least some of them have it the other way. (examples: 1, 2) There's general public interest in what a bill would DO, not who introduced it or when or the procedural detail. (in my opinion)
Articles about bills now give the number of the Congress in which the bill was introduced in the intro paragraph. I'd switch to just giving the approximate date it was introduced. That's brief and easy to interpret. The “113th Congress" context can be clear in the "procedure" section.
It was noted that the articles about congress-persons often do not mention the bills they have introduced and I agreed that it would be good to add this. I added such a reference in the article on Lois Capps and will watch to see if anyone cares to edit that. (Several articles about congress-people seem to emphasize highly the details of their elections not the substance of their votes and proposed legislation . . . I would go the other way.) -- Econterms (talk) 21:45, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]