Talk:List of governors of Alaska

Succession?

I'm trying to determine who the governorship goes to if both Palin and Parnell go on to Washington. Anybody? Beeblbrox (talk) 18:53, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Art III, § 13 of the Alaska constitution: "Provision shall be made by law for succession to the office of governor and for an acting governor in the event that the lieutenant governor is unable to succeed to the office or act as governor. No election of a lieutenant governor shall be held except at the time of electing a governor." So, in other words, you would have to consult the Alaska law, as it's not in the constitutional. --Golbez (talk) 23:40, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

According to two news stories, Alaska Attorney General Talis Colberg would be Acting Governor long enough to call a special election to replace Palin (or Parnell if Palin leaves office first). ~ MD Otley (talk) 02:59, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

• Plans outlined for election scenarios, Anchorage Daily News
• If Palin and Parnell wind up in Washington, who'll govern Alaska?, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

Order of governors

Since the order of governors used in this article appears to be determined by what Sean Parnell is currently proclaiming himself to be on the state of Alaska website, I felt it would be appropriate to copy and paste this discussion over here, just in case anyone reading this and not the other page can be of help. Originally posted to Talk:Sean Parnell:

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governor number

His website states that he is the tenth governor of Alaska, but the Wikipedia page says that he is the twelth. Does anyone have information about this discrepancy? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.69.112.208 (talk) 22:07, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Egan & Hickel, are only counted once each (even though they served non-consectuive terms), going by the gov website. GoodDay (talk) 19:52, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank goodness you noticed the mistake. Alaska is one of those states that number their governors via individual. GoodDay (talk) 20:04, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I hate to keep harping on this, but so far, all anyone has done to prove that Parnell is the tenth and not the twelfth governor is to point to the website of the Office of the Governor, specifically this page. Taking something you find off of the web as gospel without further discernment is certainly problematic. My experience as an Internet user predates the existence of the World Wide Web. It used to be that "I read it on the Internet, it must be true!" was correctly recognized as an in-joke, not a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Let's dissect two other statements found on the same page:

Governor Parnell first served in the Alaska House of Representatives in 1992 at the age of 29.

Actually, he was first elected to the House in 1992 at age 29. His 30th birthday occurred in between the election and his being sworn into office.

In 1973, Governor Parnell came to Alaska at the age of 10, when his father, Pat, was stationed at Fort Richardson.

Every other source I've read states that Pat Parnell was stationed at Fort Richardson several years prior to the birth of either of his two sons. Without explicitly stating so, Pat Parnell's 1990 campaign bio indicates that he was at Fort Richardson in 1958 and 1959.

The point I'm trying to make is this: it appears as if weight is being given to these statements solely on account of their source, without regard to factual or historical accuracy or completeness.

Like with another issue I addressed recently, has it occurred to anyone that reviewing more than one source may be necessary in this instance? Let me introduce another one, namely: Metcalfe, Peter M., ed. (1991). Alaska Blue Book (Tenth ed.). Juneau: Alaska Department of Education, Division of State Libraries, Archives and Museums..

On page 8, it says:

Walter J. Hickel was elected Alaska's first Independence Party Governor on November 6, 1990. He was sworn into office on December 3, 1990, becoming Alaska's seventh Governor since statehood in 1959. He also served as the state's second Governor from 1966 to January 1969.

On page 19, it says much the same thing:

Walter Hickel became Alaska's second governor in 1966, and its seventh governor upon his election in 1990.

This book is the exact equivalent to today's State of Alaska website, and carries the same weight. The only difference should be obvious, that a web page is easier for the average person to access. With two different governors claiming different things in historically equivalent media, this tells me you need to dig deeper. I don't recall this issue being addressed in Alaska's constitution, but I haven't had the time to pour through it to make sure. In the absence of that, is there a statute, executive order or Supreme Court ruling? That's what you need to go by, not some random thing you find on the web.RadioKAOS (talk) 02:35, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

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Of course, any help in resolving this is appreciated. Lacking that help, it puts the existing order as found on numerous Wikipedia articles in doubt.RadioKAOS (talk) 02:50, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

I would have to say that we go with what the current, or most recent, governor states, unless it's demonstrably wrong (so help me, Virginia, I may never finish your list because of that). The website says he's 10th, but, as you point out, the very same page contains other slight errors, errors enough to throw its specifics into doubt. What could help is, can you find or cite a version of the blue book more recent than 1991? Personally, since you've shown the webpage to be error-prone and we have an official book saying repeats are numbered, I'm inclined to agree with you, but I'd first like to see what a more recent version of the blue book says. (Though I disagree that it's "the exact equivalent to today's website", as it's twenty years older.) --Golbez (talk) 13:58, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Correct name of Mottrom Ball

I'll get back to the other issue when I have enough time to offer a response which does the matter justice, which I don't have today.

Political Graveyard and Who's Who in Alaskan Politics both refer to Mottrone, rather than Mottrom, Ball. I would guess that someone misread an old document they found at the National Archives. I have also come across a few contemporary sources, but they refer to him strictly by his initials, as M. D. Ball.RadioKAOS (talk) 01:14, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Evidently, the attitude here is one of "We'll just sit back and go by what THIS ONE PARTICULAR SOURCE says" and ignore common sense. Don't worry, I took care of it for you: Talk:Mottrom D. Ball#Requested move. I'm making this notice as a courtesy, as this may be of interest to someone over here. RadioKAOS  – Talk to me, Billy 22:42, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Along the same lines: Talk:William Allen Egan#Requested move. RadioKAOS  – Talk to me, Billy 22:17, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Really, there's a gang of these. No explanation of why some entries in the list reflect the person's common name while other entries run totally afoul of WP:COMMONNAME and appear to reflect said particular (peculiar?) source(s). There's a very simple reason why Wikipedia content was intended to be based on multiple sources: individual sources are sometimes known to be factually incorrect or have built-in POV. While many of these names have been discussed elsewhere on the encyclopedia, there are still others which haven't been discussed yet should be (such as J. F. A. Strong). RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 02:15, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Categorization conflict

As the category tree continues to grow exponentially (really more like willy-nilly, but people keep pretending to ignore me when I don't "act nice"), a conflict exists with Category:Governors of Alaska, the category closely corresponding to this list. The problem lies specifically in Alaska's lengthy pre-statehood history and how that conflicts with the prevailing categorization scheme for governors of U.S. states, the majority of which appear to have very limited pre-statehood histories. There is also a problem with our use of "Alaska Territory" in categories, particularly the lack of consistency in its application. In article space, "Alaska Territory" refers to the legal status of Alaska from 1912 to 1959. In categories, it can mean either that or a lengthier period going back prior to 1912; the latter includes Category:Alaska Territory judges and Category:Delegates to the United States House of Representatives from Alaska Territory. I'm just seeking an understanding about consistency, so please avoid any hair-splitting exercises regarding what sort of territory Alaska was or wasn't prior to or after 1912, thank you. Specific problems are as follows:

• The broad variation of content related to both statehood and pre-statehood governors within Category:Governors of Alaska means that the trees of both parent categories (as well as the tree of Category:People of pre-statehood Alaska, see below) contain numerous articles which are out of scope. Pre-statehood governors are neither state constitutional officers of the state nor state governors of the United States, period, and shouldn't be categorized within such trees. Looks like this same practice has been repeated with other states, creating the same issue for every state with a lengthy enough pre-statehood history.
• Category:People of the Alaska Territory is inferior and redundant to the more recently created Category:People of pre-statehood Alaska. Additionally, "pre-statehood Alaska" is a more flexible identifier than "Alaska Territory" inasfar as the organization of the tree. Thus far, they've been used interchangably; it's unclear whether they can be separated without further obfuscating the tree. While statehood prompted both in-migration and out-migration in Alaska, the change of Alaska's status from district to territory most certainly did not. Considering that, the inferior former category possibly fails WP:DEFINING when compared to the latter category.
• There is no direct path from Category:People of pre-statehood Alaska to the pre-statehood governors like there is from Category:People of the Alaska Territory to Category:Governors of Alaska Territory. You eventually get there after several mouse clicks, but wind up at the parent category Category:Governors of Alaska, which is primarily focused on statehood governors and not pre-statehood governors (see above rather than ask me to rehash the argument).

Any advice would be helpful. This may take a few minutes to unravel before it can be taken to CFD, so I suppose you can take your time. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 02:15, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Egan image

Once again, it becomes necessary to ask: what exactly are the so-called maintainers of this list here for if I end up doing the real work for them? That non-free photo of Egan was in this list for eight months without a FUR specific to the list, which I'm quite certain is required. That further begs the question: why should I have to read a robo-message anywhere on this encyclopedia stating "Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously" in big bold letters, when nonsense like this makes it all too obvious that it's nothing but a series of empty words? From what I faintly remember, the Egan article itself is a copyvio, but the page it was lifted from is behind a paywall, so I can't confirm that. The Commons upload interface is burdensome, so you'd better hope I have the patience to finish the rest of those scans/uploads so that you have a free image of Hammond which isn't so hideous. Watching people take shortcuts like that isn't providing me with the proper incentive to want to complete that task, however. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 04:19, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

There being two, maybe three people that handle the governor lists, I dunno, we're probably doing something else at any given moment. I didn't write the Egan article so if it's a copyvio that has nothing to do with this list. The image being unfree is news to me. And the commons interface isn't that bad (don't get me wrong, it ain't great), but at least there are handy tools like Commonist that I would recommend. And I genuinely thank you for your work, but this seems like a rant directed at things in general rather than this article in specific. --Golbez (talk) 05:05, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Order of governors again

Further evidence that there are Wikipedians who appear more interested in influencing readers when informing them would suffice:

• This from KTVA: "Bill Walker is the thirteenth governor of the State of Alaska, not the eleventh – contrary to what is being reported widely across the state and what is posted on Wikipedia’s list of governors for Alaska."
• Then there's an AP piece published by the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner (here), the Juneau Empire (here) and the Valdez Star (here. This piece from the KSRM news department was likely derived directly from the AP story. These links are but one particular snapshot, not taking into account any number of media reports during November 2014 which outright stated that Walker was soon to take office as the 13th governor. As radio and television journalism tends to have a much shorter shelf life on the web, I'm not surprised that Google didn't easily feed me any of that.

When I originally brought up this issue years ago, I mentioned book sources. There were two separate books published during the 1990s which refer to Hickel as the second and eighth governor in two separate editions apiece. The response I received to that at the time basically amounted to "no URL = no assuming good faith". Okay, it's pretty obvious that someone is really desperate to hang on to their precious little star, fuck credibility and the like. The bottom line is this is an all-too-blatant attempt to forcefully turn shades of gray into black and white, in this case by continuing to cherry-pick a years-old, now-unverifiable primary source, in essence one in which Parnell declares himself to be the 10th governor. Wonderful. I declare myself to be the love child of Carmen Miranda and Charles Nelson Reilly. Now prove otherwise. That's how low the bar has been set here, and evidently all over a piece of WikiBling.

As I point out above, I presented reliable sources years ago and was met with a total lack of good faith, so I'm not terribly interested in continuing this discussion here if it's going to be met with the same stonewalling as before. Maybe WP:FLRC would be a good place to discuss this. I've assumed good faith for too many years by virtue of lack of action, and have only seen this list descend further in the direction of a puffery magnet than anything necessarily credible or reliable. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 19:50, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

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Here we go again

The campaign to use Wikipedia to influence the governor's race and perceptions of Alaska politics in general is getting pretty blatant as of late. Giving readers something live in the article which amounts to an incomplete, skewed explanation and believing that they can just click on the reference to get the full story is inexcusable. NPOV is considered a core policy. I'm not sure that's trumped by one editor's desire to hold on to their little star and to give readers one more thing to click on and excusing that away with "I could care less about anything else". Then I see a note stating that Byron Mallott "represented the Democratic Party". How is that anything other than original research, violating another core policy? Here is a sample ballot from the 2014 general election. There you will find "Democrat" next to someone's name in every race EXCEPT the governor's race. Then there are an abundance of Wayback Machine captures of the Office of the Lieutenant Governor's homepage, all of which contain the statement "Governor Bill Walker and Lt. Governor Byron Mallott took office in December of 2014 as the first non-partisan administration in Alaska history." Here is one such example from roughly a year ago, a time largely outside of any campaign cycle. The process of reporting facts entails there being a factual basis in the first place. You're instead attempting to reflect the media's continued pushing of their carefully-constructed narrative involving "Democrat" and Mallott's name in the same sentence, a statement which substantially relates to the Democrats' vacation of the ticket they nominated in the primary election, which occurred two months before the general election. Whether or not the Democratic Party was "represented" became irrelevant at that point. The Libertarian Party holds two seats on the Alaska Public Offices Commission, not the Democrats. This is saying that we're here to carry the Democrats' water, and so long as you can throw out a URL to a reputable enough website to justify it, it's okay, just like they do in the blogosphere. I don't believe that to fall within the core policies of a neutral encyclopedia. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 04:08, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

"hold on to their little star?" man, you really, really make it difficult to make me want to work with you. But because going sentence-by-sentence is the least helpful way to work with someone, and because you do good work here in general, I'll bite the bullet and do that!

"Giving readers something live in the article which amounts to an incomplete, skewed explanation and believing that they can just click on the reference to get the full story is inexcusable." I am not Alaskan and have not been keeping up with the race. It appears to be a clusterfuck, as properly befits Alaskan politics. Someone added that he is not running. That's all I knew. It turned out to be ... I won't say inaccurate, but certainly it lacked the necessary nuance. Your reaction to that was to delete the entire footnote, which contained other, much older and factual information. (is it biased to indicate that his term ends on December 3?) You could have modified the statement. You could have removed the statement. You, instead, removed the whole thing. I then put it back with, hopefully, the required nuance. That you made a paragraph to complain about it indicates that you disagree; you have, however, not proffered a reasonable substitute. So I'm very confused by all this indeed.

"NPOV is considered a core policy." Hot take.

"I'm not sure that's trumped by one editor's desire to hold on to their little star and to give readers one more thing to click on and excusing that away with "I could care less about anything else"." If that's how you read my edit summary, cool. Did ... did you notice that I changed the text? I said so in the summary that you read.

"Then I see a note stating that Byron Mallott "represented the Democratic Party". How is that anything other than original research, violating another core policy?" Good question! I'm sure it has to do with the fact that his article says he's a Democrat. If you found the note incorrect, a change and offering a reason is a much more reasonable solution than .. whatever this is.

"You're instead attempting to reflect the media's continued pushing of their carefully-constructed narrative involving "Democrat" and Mallott's name in the same sentence, " This is where I ask who the 'you' in this sentence is. Is it me? Is it the person who added this tidbit, User:Richard Kickem? Is it the royal 'you' for Wikipedia as a whole?

"The Libertarian Party holds two seats on the Alaska Public Offices Commission, not the Democrats." ... okay? Hooray for them?

Anyway, I've changed Mallott back to independent here, because the ballot scan is compelling for that. --Golbez (talk) 06:18, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:List of Governors of New York which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 14:29, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Birth/death dates

We don't need the birth/death dates of the governors in this article. Wish the dynamic IP would stop trying to force them in. GoodDay (talk) 02:43, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Is there consensus to exclude that content? Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:54, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Usually the onus is on the person making the edit to justify it, so, is there consensus to include it? --Golbez (talk) 14:27, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Is this a formal inquiry into consensus and which do we go with? Is the proposal for consensus to add the content or exclude the content? --ARoseWolf 17:04, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

I would love to hear reasons for adding it; so far no one has supplied with one, there's only been edit warring and then complaining over my methods. I am not making a 'formal inquiry' into consensus, whatever that means. --Golbez (talk) 17:13, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

• As far as I can tell there has not been a discussion on the birth/death dates, but this could function as one to determine whether there is consensus to include them.Jackattack1597 (talk) 17:07, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

My reasoning for removing it: The point of a list like this is to say who was in the office, how they entered it, and how they left. Nothing more. All prose and entries serve that goal. Biographical information like that does not add to an understanding of the above. These lists have had everything from simply life span, to birthplace and residence, first lady, profession, etc., and that's just not needed. There are other articles to catalog that kind of information. Now, I assume the reasons for adding will be forthcoming. --Golbez (talk) 17:13, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for explaining your position, @Golbez. I would very much like to hear why someone thinks those dates belong in the article. --ARoseWolf 17:17, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

I see some value in the information if life span is the only biographical information included, but I would definitely oppose the inclusion of other such material. Also, this is not the only list where this information has been added. It was added and later removed in [Arizona list], but it is in the current version of the following featured governor lists(this does not include any non featured lists with birth/death dates): California, Delaware, Idaho, Utah, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Jackattack1597 (talk) 18:23, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

What would be the value if they could simply click on the link to the article of the governor and find the information they seek? Could not the same argument be made for additional information that can be found on the individual articles? Someone may find value in adding if they had a spouse and who that is. That information is probably best left to the article but the same argument of value may apply. Wouldn't it be best to keep the list to a minimum on biographical information and, instead, refer the reader to the actual article on the a specific governor, which is why they are wiki-linked in the list? --ARoseWolf18:44, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Birth/death dates aren't used at List of presidents of the United States, so let's not have'em in any of the list of governors articles. GoodDay (talk) 21:33, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Good point, the presidents list does set a bit of a precedent, but it hasn't been that way forever. Looking through the page history, the presidents article had the dates added in March of 2020 removed by Golbez, which resulted in a short talk page discussion that didn't result in any change. I don't think a local consensus on this talk page will result in anything, and while this may be worth a broader RFC on the topic of lifespans in lists of US officeholders, I'm not really sure how it could be structured given that there are different status quos on different pages. Jackattack1597 (talk) 00:05, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

An RFC on the "List of governors..." & "List of lieutenant governors..." articles, may be required. GoodDay (talk) 00:18, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree, because while most lists omit the information, there are enough lists that include it, mainly gubernatorial lists, to make me think that a broader consensus. I would argue in favor of including birth and death dates and age as it's pretty basic information that is useful to the reader, without detracting too much from the appearance of the list, we just have to be careful not to include so much information that the list looks overloaded. Jackattack1597 (talk) 00:32, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

I'd be in favor of any kind of RFC. --Golbez (talk) 03:21, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

This is the sort of discussion that should have begun months ago. I do not feel strongly one way or another, although I think that the birth date allows readers to see how old the person was when they served as governor, and the death date allows the reader to determine if they died in office. What I am sure of is that edit warring is inappropriate, inaccurate accusations of vandalism are inappropriate and misuse of administrative tools to prevail in a content dispute is highly inappropriate. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 00:34, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

How does that inform them about the governor, though? It's exactly the same amount of info as would be gained by including their birthplace. And the rest, eh, there's a place for that. --Golbez (talk) 03:21, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

I guess I don't see the need for the info to be included in this list unless someone is trying to do comparisons like who was the youngest governor sort of thing. All of the information being discussed here is in every article on each specific governor which is wiki-linked in the list. It just seems like it would clutter the list with redundant information found by making one additional click. Imo, the time in office is sufficient enough. --ARoseWolf 13:03, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Ditto on the blatant disregard for WP:INVOLVED on the part of Golbez. Their long-term behavior also dangerously creeps towards blatant WP:OWN. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 04:00, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

If you want to comment about Golbez, this ANI thread is still open:https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Persistent_IP_vandalism_of_List_of_governors_of_Alaska

Jackattack1597 (talk) 20:54, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure an article Talk Page is the right place to discuss another editor's or admin's actions. If anyone believes they have done something wrong or abused their privileges then perhaps they should be reported for that. I think its best to keep this conversation on target and how best to proceed with development/improvement of the article itself. --ARoseWolf

So, it's been long enough that the ANI section has been archived. I'd rather this get resolved so we don't have outstanding complaints about me just sitting around, so can we maybe move forward on something? --Golbez (talk) 03:32, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Personally, I think the ANI case should be closed. Golbez, whom, to my knowledge, I have never dealt with on Wikipedia before, has acknowledged they would not abuse their power as an admin. They were clearly involved and shouldn't have made certain calls which required them use said power as I wouldn't call this a case of vandalism but a content dispute. We are discussing the validity here on the articles talk page of that content which is what should have been done from the beginning. I don't believe the account that initiated the alterations has discussed it here but we have. However, there has not been a formal proposal for or against anything, just an open-ended question. --ARoseWolf 14:47, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

People think you break a rule and they flood in, have to actually discuss an article and it's crickets. I'm learning a lesson and I don't think it's the one y'all wanted to teach. --Golbez (talk) 02:31, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 29 September 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. No real consensus found after almost a month of the discussion being open. Splits are outside of the scope of the RM process and should be discussed in a different section. (closed by non-admin page mover) — MaterialWorks 13:40, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

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List of governors of Alaska → Governor of Alaska – Current article describes the position of the Governor of Alaska and includes lists of governors as subsections. A move to the requested title better fits the contents of the entire article, and corresponds with other U.S. states. ZephyrTurtle14 (talk) 16:07, 28 September 2023 (UTC) This is a contested technical request (permalink). Mdewman6 (talk) 00:27, 29 September 2023 (UTC)— Relisting. estar8806 (talk) ★ 00:25, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support for consistency with other U.S. state governor articles. Mdewman6 (talk) 00:28, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Comment Maybe a split would be better? Killuminator (talk) 00:50, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Looking at Template:US_Chief_Executives, it's almost evenly split between states that have separate "Governor of X" article and "List of governors of X" article and states that just have a list article. In my opinion, states that just have a single article should be titled with the list topic rather than "list of". List articles are allowed to have non-list content, sure, but all articles are allowed to have tables, and if we're only going to have a single page, it should be titled after the topic. Or maybe the solution is for all to have separate list articles. Pending the outcome, what may be needed is a larger RM to achieve title consistency. Mdewman6 (talk) 00:58, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Though Colorado and Massachusetts have a single article at "Governor of X", with Colorado being there per Talk:Governor_of_Colorado#Requested_move in 2010. Mdewman6 (talk) 01:02, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

My standard response: If you can build enough content to justify this being about the office, then go for it. But make the content before the move. I can guarantee the content here isn't sufficient; I've explicitly kept it to things relating to the list (i.e. how people became governor, who they were, and why they left) and nothing that a full article might have on the relative powers of the governor to the legislature over time, party control shifts, how powerful the governor is, etc. etc., that can be handled in a main article. I'm somewhat not sober at the moment so I hope this makes sense :) --Golbez (talk) 02:08, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

PS it's nice to see several people watch this article because I'm going to make a suggestion soon that we nuke the district officials :o I have reasons! I'll explain them! But unlike everything else I've been doing obviously that would be a dumb thing to do unilaterally, so I have to convince you fine people first. --Golbez (talk) 02:08, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. This is clearly a list article and the title should reflect that. Also, this is a Featured List, so moving it and expanding its scope to make it a standard article rather than a list article could cause it to lose its Featured List status. If you want to make a separate article on the Governor of Alaska go ahead, but this list article should not be moved. Rreagan007 (talk) 18:44, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
• Support. also support a split, as suggested above, if there's a consensus. HandsomeFella (talk) 21:01, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

This sounds fine to me. The previous RM was only for capitalization issues (List of Governors of Alaska → List of governors of Alaska). It doesn't seem that contested to me. Upon noticing that there is a section of comments here, I will say differently: this seems basically fine for an article called "Governor of Alaska". Is there really a lot to say about it besides this? I mean, sure, it's not FA level, but it does explain what the governor of Alaska does. jp×g 00:19, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

@JPxG: Looks like you accidentally created a new section. There is already an identical request open from earlier. BegbertBiggs (talk) 22:57, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Oops, sorry. jp×g 00:17, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose as this is clearly a list. An example would be Governor of California, which is a full length article about the constitutional and statutory position of governor. Though this article does have some information about the position of the Alaska governor, I am not convinced that this is not a list. If it could be expanded/restructured and split, then I would support. cookie monster 755 02:33, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Department Commanders

I've been working on all these articles, and it's helped me formulate a basic set of rules for who should be included. Like, for territorial governors, it seemed to make sense to keep the main list to those specifically commissioned, i.e. they were confirmed by the Senate or appointed during a recess. That let me prune some acting secretaries that had been elevated to full governors in other articles. Rambling a bit, but I'll reach a point.

So we have the department commanders here. The military officers in charge. Unfortunately, this table has a few issues. First being, it's not well sourced. The only source in this article is a facts almanac, which offers no sourcing of its own. The articles themselves seem to reference only that book, or similar almanac-type publications, or other wikis. I'm not saying this is all made up - I'm saying we need a lot better sourcing than what has been provided so far.

Secondly, it kind of reeks of synthesis. Being the highest ranking official in a territory doesn't make you inherently in charge of it. Maybe if you've been formally commissioned to be in charge, but just existing in the territory, doesn't seem like enough to say conclusively.

Which leads me to the core question: Did anyone consider these as equivalent to a commander back in their own time? If so, then we can find sourcing of that; if not, then we have to seriously decide if this table should even be here, or if it counts as synthesis by giving them greater importance than they actually had. --Golbez (talk) 05:31, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

It's been a few weeks and I know some people watch this article, so, @RadioKAOS? I know you're around here. --Golbez (talk) 18:35, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Well it's been five months so I guess I'll just start deleting things. That usually gets peoples' attention. --Golbez (talk) 02:43, 16 May 2024 (UTC)