Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities/Archive 2

message: I was hoping to make one of those nifty DOTON maps for FA candidate Marshall, Texas, but I can't seem to find the map of texas image without one of the counties highlighted.  Would anyone happen to know where the blank is located?  Secondly, given that Texas is so bloody huge that the city's position within the county will not be terribly clear, I'm inclined to think that (unlike the example on Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities) only a zoomed-in part of Texas should be shown.  Has this already been discussed somewhere? -- Finlay McWalter |  Talk 02:04, 22 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  doton-maps for Texas? 

message: Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump on Saturday, September 13th, 02003.
I think it would be beneficial to have a standard template for creating pages about Cities and other things.  Does this concept exist in wiki?  I mean when I create a page rather than looking for a page about a city and copying it and then replacing the info with info about the new city, it would be nice if on creation I could say "use City template" and it would insert all the text with fill in the blank information.
This would also make the pages feel consistant.
:Yes, the general concept is the "WikiProject". Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities isn't particularly good at the moment, but if there was a template that's where it would be. -- Tim Starling 05:30, Sep 12, 2003 (UTC)
::The template is US-Centeric A.T.M. take a look at this template, its for an icelandic town. I thing that thing needs internationalisation ASAP.
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I'm thinking there should be a subheading like Architecture or Notable Buildings  ... or "Notable Buildings and Public Works" (e.g. bridges)... or... well... something like that. What do others think? Dpbsmith 03:23, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  City template 

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This is a current disagreement:  should there be a duplication of population size for a city in the introduction?  Is it redundant or is it important enough information to be added to an introduction?  -- Ram-Man
:A city is defined more by its population than any other factor and to have the population down amongst the standardized "tabular" information seems to be a mistake.  By the same token, Denver's height above sea level might be in the first paragraph and appear again in the geography section.  I see no harm in giving the population twice, but please put a date and a source on the data, at least in the tabular section.  
:Is the population the number of people inside the city limits or the number in the metropolitan area (as defined by census or other official body, not the chamber of commerce)?  I live in a city Newton, Massachusetts that is also part of the Boston metropolitan area.  There is no Newton metropolitan area.
:By the way, "city" is a legal classification in Massachusetts.  We also have "towns" and there are real differences between them.  Towns can have town meetings, for instance.  Ortolan88
:All information is from the United States Census Bureau, which I will state.  They list whether it is a "town" or "city" or "village" or whatever it might be.  That is what I use in the articles.  There are different ways to define towns.  Some people define a town by its legal limits, the postal address, and other factors.  As such, when this information is valid for the Census Bureau, it may not be the same as some other body.  (I previously didn't site the source of data, and I should have!)  All these differences can be noted in the article.  -- Ram-Man
:I added data to Newton, Massachusetts to show an example of the articles. -- Ram-Man
:Sorry, I didn't realize this was an example page, so I edited it.  I grew up in Newton, and I think most people from Newton would agree it's very clunky to start out by saying that it's part of Middlesex County.  I didn't know what county I was in until I had left.  The only reason you ever pay attention to the counties is when you go to court. DanKeshet
::All of the other city entries include the county along with the state.  It may be that in some states, like Massachusetts, that such a description is odd sounding.  In fact I am sure there are a lot of little differences among states and counties and such that I have no idea about.  I think I will just have to let others fix my mistakes.  Still I would suggest keeping the county because it a) is what all the others are like, and b) it makes my life easier ;-) BTW, it is a real page, and editing it is fine as it helps me to get an idea how to improve the entries I will be adding.  -- Ram-Man
:I added lots of local color to Newton.  Every contributor should look up the town they live in, the town they were born in, the town they went to college in, etc. and add to it.  Counties too.  Ortolan88
People who live in Deer Park, New York (on Long Island) "actually" reside in Babylon Township. There are many other "cities" which are really part of a larger administrative or political unit. The neat CITY, STATE format works great when addressing a letter -- the zip code will disambiguate. But how do we handle Deer Park, et al.? --Ed Poor
:New York is one of those odd states with a much more difficult layout.  I think I may have to skip the articles for that state and figure it out later.  The census bureau defines Deer Park as a CDP with a population and all.  It also defines Babylon (calls it a town for some reason).  It gives both places a different code (suggesting that one is contained in the other) but does not specify the relationships.  I suppose someone is going to have to edit each entry and add the appropriate information.  But I think the county entries already have much of that data, so it should be fairly easy... just not automated.  As mentioned in a discussion above, Pennsylvania is also strange in that it has boroughs (towns) and townships with the same names.  It causes more problems :)  -- Ram-Man
::The reason it calls Babylon a town is that it is a town under New York State law. Ed Poor is wrong in referring to "Babylon Township": New York does not have anything called a "township" but its towns are what, in other states like New Jersey and Pennsylvania, would be called townships. And in those towns (or townships in those states where they are so called) there may be villages or other entities. Each state may have to be treated separately. In Maryland, for example, a town is an incorporated place, like a village, and may have fewer than 100 people. Yet there are places like Silver Spring that are bigger than any city in Maryland except Baltimore, but have no official status except that the Census Bureau has made them a CDP (the USGS and USPS also recognize Silver Spring, but it is entirely governed as an an unincorporated area of Montgomery County). -- BRG
We have not had a naming question in a while.  First it was how to disambiguate cities (City, State).  Then it was how to disambiguate cities that are duplicated within a same place (City, XXX County, State).  Now I have another problem.  Some places are located in the same state AND county.  These places differ *only* by their designation: "city", "town", "village", or "Census Designated Place".  These terms are not part of the name.  What would be a good way to represent this?
:Bethel (town), Fairfield County, Connecticut and Bethel (CDP), Fairfield County, Connecticut
or something else? -- Ram-Man
:Perhaps Bethel, east Fairfield County, Conneticut, for some.  What else would differentiate them?  Someone from that county might know... -- Sam
:My guess is that these are really one in the same place, just that one place contains a larger area than the other.  There are a large number of such things.  Maybe the "town" is the legal limits but the "CDP" is what the census bureau uses for the town and surrounding area.  Just a suspicion.  In any case, they have different data associated with them.  If I had to choose just one, i'd have no idea which one to choose.  -- RM
::Perhaps someone at the census bureau could help? Otherwise, each case will have to be looked at... are there other sources for the same information? -- Sam
== Orphaned towns, villages, cities, and CDP ==
To prevent naming conflicts, many towns, villages, cities, and CDP's were named by RamBot in the following format: "TownName (town), State", "VillageName (village), State", "CityName (city), State", and CDPName (CDP), State".  Many (most?) of these pages are orphaned because most people don't add the (town), (village), (city), or (CDP) to the wiki link.  For example, many of the county pages link to town names without the proper syntax.  My recommendation is to create redirect pages from, "TownName, State" to the page that the user expects.  For instance, if there is a town and a village with the same name, most people will want to be directed to the town. If there is ambiguity whether the user would want the (town), (village), (city), or (CDP) the most "popular" page should be the main page and a note (see also?) should be added the page that links to the others.  Or if it is unclear which page should be the primary page, a disambiguation page should be created with links to each.  Is there anything wrong with this plan?  A list of orphaned pages can be found here: Wikipedia:Articles orphaned without redirects. If you do any clean-up, please remove the entry from that page.
:Rather than assuming what a user is looking for (town, village, city, county or CDP), I suggest that you create a disambiguation page at PlaceName, State containing links to all the entities. See Canandaigua, New York for example.
::According to the disambiguation guidelines: "Do not disambiguate, or add a link to a disambiguation page, if there is no risk of confusion. Ask yourself: When a reader enters this term and pushes "Go", would they expect to view any of the articles listed on the disambiguation page?" It may be different in other states, but in Vermont (where I'm from and the towns I've been working on) people in normal communication refer to a town as: "Hyde Park".  If they are talking about the village (a subset of town) they will say: "Hyde Park Village".  So if someone enters "Hyde Park, Vermont" in the search box, and presses the "Go" button, they definitely expect to go to the town page. Again, this may be different in other states, and a disambiguation page is probably more necessary in states that have multiple towns with the same name. - Redjar 13:21, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: *Yes, if there it is clear that one is the principal entity then there's no problem with redirecting to that, though it should probably include a link to the other similar to how Lou I describes below in Essex, Massachusetts. Problem is that editors like me who are not familiar with an area sometimes have to disamabiguate without knowing for sure what the locals would consider to be the principal entity. When in doubt, I give them all equal weight. Bkonrad | Talk 13:52, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

text: There is related discussion at the bottom of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Counties and a note at Talk:Census-designated place. In New York, specifically, a village population is always repeated in (included in) that of the town in which the village stands, while a city is not. My own choice for how to hanle the situation is to put the city article at the main name and then have a (town) article. I'd reverse this on the others and use one article at  Placename, New York for the town and then use  Placename (village), New York  for the second entry. See Essex, Massachusetts for a sample of how to link the articles. A related problem in New York, for places like Shortsville, New York, is that you hav to go back and figure out what town it is part of. Lou I 12:08, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Cities, towns, CDPs, etc.

message: To prevent naming conflicts, many towns, villages, cities, and CDP's were named by RamBot in the following format: "TownName (town), State", "VillageName (village), State", "CityName (city), State", and CDPName (CDP), State".  Many (most?) of these pages are orphaned because most people don't add the (town), (village), (city), or (CDP) to the wiki link.  For example, many of the county pages link to town names without the proper syntax.  My recommendation is to create redirect pages from, "TownName, State" to the page that the user expects.  For instance, if there is a town and a village with the same name, most people will want to be directed to the town. If there is ambiguity whether the user would want the (town), (village), (city), or (CDP) the most "popular" page should be the main page and a note (see also?) should be added the page that links to the others.  Or if it is unclear which page should be the primary page, a disambiguation page should be created with links to each.  Is there anything wrong with this plan?  A list of orphaned pages can be found here: Wikipedia:Articles orphaned without redirects. If you do any clean-up, please remove the entry from that page.
:Rather than assuming what a user is looking for (town, village, city, county or CDP), I suggest that you create a disambiguation page at PlaceName, State containing links to all the entities. See Canandaigua, New York for example.
::According to the disambiguation guidelines: "Do not disambiguate, or add a link to a disambiguation page, if there is no risk of confusion. Ask yourself: When a reader enters this term and pushes "Go", would they expect to view any of the articles listed on the disambiguation page?" It may be different in other states, but in Vermont (where I'm from and the towns I've been working on) people in normal communication refer to a town as: "Hyde Park".  If they are talking about the village (a subset of town) they will say: "Hyde Park Village".  So if someone enters "Hyde Park, Vermont" in the search box, and presses the "Go" button, they definitely expect to go to the town page. Again, this may be different in other states, and a disambiguation page is probably more necessary in states that have multiple towns with the same name. - Redjar 13:21, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: *Yes, if there it is clear that one is the principal entity then there's no problem with redirecting to that, though it should probably include a link to the other similar to how Lou I describes below in Essex, Massachusetts. Problem is that editors like me who are not familiar with an area sometimes have to disamabiguate without knowing for sure what the locals would consider to be the principal entity. When in doubt, I give them all equal weight. Bkonrad | Talk 13:52, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

text: There is related discussion at the bottom of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Counties and a note at Talk:Census-designated place. In New York, specifically, a village population is always repeated in (included in) that of the town in which the village stands, while a city is not. My own choice for how to hanle the situation is to put the city article at the main name and then have a (town) article. I'd reverse this on the others and use one article at  Placename, New York for the town and then use  Placename (village), New York  for the second entry. See Essex, Massachusetts for a sample of how to link the articles. A related problem in New York, for places like Shortsville, New York, is that you hav to go back and figure out what town it is part of. Lou I 12:08, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orphaned towns, villages, cities, and CDP