Talk:Tanana, Alaska

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Previously incorporated?[edit]

The source I'm using right now states that the present city of Tanana was incorporated in 1961. Was there a previous incorporated municipality, perhaps around the time of Fort Gibbon? Another couple of sources I have lying around mention Benjamin B. Mozee, a territorial-era U.S. Marshal and the son-in-law of Henry Wood Elliott. These sources refer to him as a former mayor of Tanana. Without referring to specifics, this appeared to have occurred around a century ago. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 00:12, 15 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Undue weight?[edit]

@RadioKAOS: What is the viewpoint to which you feel the addition of information concerning the killing of the two Alaska State Troopers lends undue weight? I'm not sure that guideline means what you think it means; please review it. Perhaps you mean that the section can be or should be more concise (and it will likely be made so), but this is still a developing story (and a significant event in the life and history of the subject community and of this rural region of Alaska, receiving substantial local and national news coverage). Dwpaul ^Talk 23:00, 8 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

On rereading and reflection, I gather you are actually referring to the recommendation in "Balancing aspects". I still maintain this event is both relevant and very significant to the subject of the article, and that its weight will adjust appropriately given time. Dwpaul ^Talk 23:07, 8 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As I reveal elsewhere, I may possibly be biased. I have years' worth of work-related experience dealing with AST, including numerous dealings with Scott Johnson, which as a whole can hardly be considered positive. That has a lot to do with the culture within AST. Since corporate media outlets strictly shill for law enforcement, you are likely to continue to read a mostly one-sided presentation. Law enforcement is hardly the only profession in which people lose their lives in the line of duty.

Allow me to posit that in addition to what you brought up, WP:RECENTISM also goes hand in hand with WP:NOTNEWS and WP:UNDUE in this case. I realize that institutional memory is the bane of anyone trying to build the encyclopedia through the "three monkeys" approach known as a Google search, because institutional memory can also be confirmed through reliable sources, which may not agree with "your" reliable sources or whatever limited information Google hands you. My point? The killing of Trooper Duncan was just as significant as this killing. I hope you don't expect me to believe otherwise just because it happened 30 years ago and AST obviously didn't have a show on cable television back then. Yet, that's the message I'm getting here when I see mentions of that incident buried in obscure corners of the encyclopedia.

Then again, that incident may not be the best comparison to make. Perhaps a better comparison would be to the police killings in Hoonah several years ago. Now there is some undue weight for you, still present in article space to this day, which calls into question that things will even out in the case of this article. "Strangely coincidentally" enough, members of AST and their supporters have used that incident as a sort of rallying cry, contending that those officers died because the residents of Hoonah "protected" John Marvin back when AST first recognized he was a "problem" to law enforcement. Yet again, all this could boil down to our collective infatuation with temporary headlines and lack of memory. I met Seferino Villarreal (Hoonah's mayor) several years ago. When I started asking him questions about Hoonah's history, his response to me was straightforward: the only thing I really need to know about Hoonah are those killings. Now, I've told this story to a number of Tlingit friends since. The response was typically along the lines of "Boy, he must be new around those parts". RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 05:56, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't have time to be tied up with endless bully board babble then and I certainly don't now. As I could see that we were headed in exactly that direction, I let it go. However, here's another issue. Last I checked, neither Arvin Kangas nor Nathanial Kangas have been convicted of anything related to this incident. Therefore, wouldn't it constitute a BLP violation to mention either of them in such a light in the article? I recall another article several years ago which was deleted. As the deletion discussion brought attention to the article's existence, someone came along and removed mentions of the perpetrator, citing BLP, despite the fact that she had already been convicted of the crimes she was charged with. As that article was created as another blatant WP:NOTNEWS violation because the story was "trending" on one particular day, no one had bothered to properly update it as the case progressed. Shades of what's going on here, really; there was a blip of attention given to a New Year's Eve party gone out of control in Huslia, where a Tanana resident confronted law enforcement and made reference to this incident (something to the effect of "I'm from Tanana and we kill cops there", which was reported by the media). If you really wanted an answer about undue weight, look at how much of Wikipedia's coverage of law enforcement is weighted towards fallen officers, to the exclusion of numerous other facets of more encyclopedic value. If that isn't POV forking to you, then I just don't know what to say. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 02:54, 25 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you didn't look very hard. Arvin Kangas pled guilty to and was convicted of at least one charge related to the incident, and still faces additional charges. Nathaniel's trial for murder is set for April 2015. It is still a developing story. I continue to maintain the discussion of the May 2014 events in Tanana as it currently appears here is not undue (and being nowhere near Tanana, I have no dog in the hunt, while your comments suggest you do). Perhaps another with an opinion will happen along. Dwpaul ^Talk 03:08, 25 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The relevant morsel states: "Arvin Morse Kangas, 59, pleaded guilty to a consolidated count of fourth-degree assault. He was charged with threatening VPSO Sgt. Mark Haglin and pointing to a firearm in a threatening manner while looking at him." Awfully minor compared to the case in general. As with many businesspeople in this community, December is one of my busiest months, so I make no apologies for not following the news as closely as others. As for my comments "suggesting that I have a dog in the hunt", many of us in Fairbanks know Mark Haglin. I feel that any complicity on his part in the deaths of Johnson and Rich has been whitewashed, but DPS's oversight structure has always been akin to the fox guarding the henhouse. Haglin was here in Fairbanks during the time he was placed on leave, and desperately avoided acknowledging anyone he might have known. Then again, that's pretty typical of law enforcement folks when their "I'm just doing my job" attitude is found to be morally indefensible. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 03:21, 25 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

2012_killings_of_Alaska_state_troopers_in_Tanana - I made an article and removed the killings from here, this article is about the place only - not things that happened there - whether those things may or may not be of independent wp:note is another issue, but that story was clearly getting wp:undue coverage here Govindaharihari (talk) 07:44, 25 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Photos?[edit]

Are there any free pictures of Tanana that are less than 100 years old? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.222.25.40 (talk) 22:20, 7 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The easy answer is that there's not a lack of free photos. It has more to do with the lack of warm bodies on Commons. Those who haven't grovelled for the appropriate permissions face a restrictive and even counter-productive uploading environment. Those who have those permissions are content to dump content in very few particular veins, and a topic such as this is not one of them. Coverage of Alaska in general on Commons takes an extremely filtered and skewed view with all the military and tourist photos. Browsing Flickr is a burden if you don't have a dedicated, high-speed connection. It's especially hard to do with mobile data limits or on most wi-fi connections.

The Episcopal Diocese of Alaska published The Alaskan Churchman for approximately three-quarters of a century without attaching copyright notices to the individual issues. I scanned a small handful of photos from that publication taken in Tanana during the 1960s and 1970s. There's also a Flickr photostream which contains quite a number of photos that appear to be from around 2009-2010 and are appropriately licensed. Others have uploaded photos from that stream, but only those which match their particular filtered/skewed view of Alaska, which didn't include anything from Tanana that I'm aware of. These items are on my list, but I wouldn't count on me doing all the work. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 03:04, 3 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]