Talk:List of forts in the United States

Scope of This Page

What is or what should be the scope of this page? Forts in the US that are no longer active? Forts in the US of "significant" historical importance? Should only American forts be included? Should all the forts that have ever been in the geographical area that today is considered part of the United States be included? Right now, the scope is unclear. The article name is called "List of forts in the United States", however, the article says that it is a list of historical forts in the United States. The actual list itself includes forts which are currently actively.143.85.24.20 (talk) 13:47, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up. Maybe it would be a good idea to split "active" forts into the List of United States military bases page? That page doesn't just include bases but also other installations (unless I'm wrong?), so it seems like it'd be a good fit. It seems redundant and very disorganized to have one subject covered over two articles. Maybe for this page, we could make it a "historical forts" page and rename it. Whether or not it should cover forts held only by American forces or not is another matter.

Seems to me like that would be a good course of action. Right now, people reading this page really have no idea what they're looking at. Please bear with me; I'm not too familiar and I'm rusty on my Wikipedia protocol since I've been away for awhile. – TCMemoire 21:14, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

What's a fort? Something named 'Fort Foo' may not be a fort (see Fort Ancient for example, formerly listed as a fort in Ohio). Things in external lists of forts may be camps or encampments, armories or arsenals, depots, and other kinds of military places. Fortified enclosures may be built by a settler (for example the blockhouse at Conner's Post in Indiana ~1808. They may also be built by the military around a settlement, but never used as a military garrison (the stockade around Clarksville, IN, ~1785). I'd propose a definition, but I think a fort is one of those things that I know one when I see one. How about: fort is a fortified structure or enclosure designed to resist siege by Indians or hostile military forces. It is either built by the military or garrisoned at some time in its history by a military company or larger unit. An armory is a fortified structure designed to resist thieves and unauthorized access, not withstand an artillery siege. So Columbus Arsenal is not a fort, even though it's called Fort Hayes. Sbalfour (talk) 15:54, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

There's a lot of red ink in this article. That means the encyclopedia ostensibly contains no information on the items. And the red ink is unsourced. How can that be meaningful? I think it's an ego trip to copy in somebody else's list and say you did some useful work. How do we know the red ink items are valid? I.e. that the somebody else did their research? The presence of an item in this list article is a declaration that such a place exists. Who will vouch for that? What's been happening here is a "me, too" mentality - someone with a collector gene but no scholarship invested, knows an item missing from the list, and sticks it in. Hooray! You just contributed to mediocrity. I say, that either the item must be wikilinked to an existing article, sourced, or include a one-liner with dates and location, so an editor, reader, or scholar can trace the item. I think I'm going to clean up the article accordingly, initially by deleting all unsourced red ink items without descriptions. Sbalfour (talk) 15:54, 23 December 2018 (UTC)