Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities/US Guideline

message: Should the infobox example on the guideline be updated to reflect the changes made in major cities' articles? The guideline uses New York City as an example, but the infobox in the New York City article has been updated. Xeror (talk) 07:49, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: In general, the infobox in WIKIPEDIA:USCITY should be an example of the goals of this guideline, instead of reflecting a real article that change over time.  Technically, the infobox in WIKIPEDIA:USCITY doesn't have to reflect any real city, instead an imaginary city, such as Wikiville, Moosylvania, that fills in the most applicable fields with reasonable data is all that is needed.  If a real city is chosen, New York City isn't the best choice, because it is a unicorn compared to ten's of thousands of community articles in USA, thus a more realistic smaller city would probably be a better choice.  Though I made up Wikiville for an imaginary city name (but later I discovered "Wikipedia:Wikiville"), and borrowed the silly Moosylvania for an imaginary state name (from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show), we could use Lists of fictional locations for naming ideas to borrow or tweak to create an imaginary city and imaginary state for this article. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 04:19, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think we even need to make up fictional place for the infobox. All we need are placeholders. For images, we can use icons from . The only place that needs real data is maplink. My main focus is on the guideline reflecting how the articles of major U.S. cities, not only New York City, have the infobox presented. Xeror (talk) 14:52, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Updating the infobox example 

message: Your input is welcome at Talk:Minneapolis#RFC on first section of Minneapolis. --Magnolia677 (talk) 21:53, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  RfC at [[Talk:Minneapolis#RFC on first section of Minneapolis]] 

message: Huge numbers of articles for places in the United States use pushpin maps in the settlement infobox, but there seems to be little standardization and / or consensus as to which maps to include. Even the guidelines are inconsistent. WP:USCITY shows a model infobox for New York City with maps for New York state, the United States and North America, while the actual article for New York City includes maps for all three, plus Earth. Meanwhile, Template:Infobox settlement shows model infoboxes for Chicago and Detroit that only include a single pushpin map for the United States, while the article for Chicago itself includes both Illinois and United States and the one for Detroit shows pushpin maps for Wayne County, Michigan and United States.
To me, county, state and United States make sense to provide multiple levels of context. But given that the United States is a rather large and rather well-known country, is it ever necessary to include pushpin maps for North America? Is there anyone reading English Wikipedia articles from outside the country (or from another planet) who would need to have the location of a city in the United States shown on the planet Earth in order to gain sufficient context? Should there be a US City standard or should this be settled by consensus for each city? Alansohn (talk) 13:58, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I would not expect anything larger than the country level for any country, though region could be appropriate for small/less-recognizable country outlines. Earth is too low resolution to be helpful. Reywas92Talk 14:58, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: , agreed, but I'm restricting this question to places in the United States for exactly that reason of global recognizability. Alansohn (talk) 17:15, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

text: In general, SVG maps were created for incorporated community articles in most states, thus is why I removed pushpin maps from those articles, also to shorten the infobox in those articles.  Pushpin maps are more useful for unincorporated communities and ghost towns, because SVG maps weren't created for most of them.  Someone added interactive maps for larger cities.  • Sbmeirow • Talk • 00:17, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think smaller U.S. places that have more recognizability outside the US should be able to be marked on continental or even Earth pushpin maps for ease of instant accessibility of relative geographical context by non-US readers who are familiar with specific smaller US places without needing to take an extra step deeper to dig. In other words, I would advocate judging smaller municipalities on a case-by-case basis rather than having one size fits all. Castncoot (talk) 00:47, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text:  By the way, if I remember correctly, it was actually I who started adding the interactive maps feature to the articles of the more prominent cities quite a few years ago, starting with NYC itself. Then that caught on with the speed of light, and a new functionality was born. Best,  Castncoot (talk) 05:06, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Do infoboxes for US cities need pushpin maps for North America? For Earth?!?!