Talk:Tri-Cities

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I rearranged the Tri-Cities in America, with the most populous at the top and descending. I also took into account the appropriateness of the name (for instance, someone looking for the Quad Cities probably wasn't trying Tri-Cities) and the depth of the corresponding article. If anyone has any objections, holler, but I doubt anyone will... --Matt Yeager 03:29, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

I object, but I am not about to get into an edit war over this (on a scale of 1 to ten, my objection is a 1.5-- very mild). I just don't see that any particular "Tri-cities" area as being the most "well known." If I am Joe Random and I am searching for a Tri-Cities article on Wikipedia, it is probably because I live near that one and have a POV that it is a significant geographic region. All the Joe Randoms from Colorado can POV-push that Tri-cities area as a huge important place. It seems like unless you have an objective measure like population of each tri-cities region, you are just preferring the Tri-cities area you live near. Alphabet is unquestionably NPOV. So, in conclusion, I don't care at this point and will allow the status quo to be the consensus, but if anyone comes on here with an axe to grind about the order, I think we should change it back to alphabetical order or go with ranking the Tri-cities areas by sum of three populations. MPS 14:35, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Alright, here's my reasoning for the current order: Virginia's and Nebraska's don't have articles; they should be last. Colorado's, Illinois/Iowa's, and New York's aren't referred to as "the Tri-Cities"; they should be next to last. (That's what I meant when I posted the edit summary saying "(almost) Nobody's looking for the Colorado one"--Colorado's isn't even called the "Tri-Cities"!) Michigan's is a one-line stub, which makes me doubt that that name is particularily commonly used (with a claimed population of 400,000, you'd think someone would care enough about it to write something--then again, the three seperate cities added up only have a population of about 140k), so it goes next from the bottom. North Carolina's two both have common names other than "Tri-Cities"; they go next.

WA and TN/VA should be the top two in some order by process of elimination. TN/VA has a rather short article, and has a slightly lesser population than WA's. (I know the TN/VA page claims that the area has a population of about 500k, but I looked at the city pages and they add up to about 120k. No reason is given for the discrepancy.)

Really, either one of those could be placed on top, but I think the better article (if I do say so myself =P) ought to be placed higher up. Matt Yeager 05:35, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Matt, I am thinking about writing an article on the Tri-cities of Greater Richmond) area. It will include a large regional mall complex, Fort Lee, Virginia, and a great deal of Civil War history. I hope that doesn't mess your order up. : ) : ) : ) What I am saying is we have to consider more than just the current status of wikipedia; we have develop a rule that will stand for the long term. I am ok with however you want to order/reorder them, but I suggest that the length of the article is not necessarily a good metric for how significant or notable a region is. MPS 21:41, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, I see your point (and am kind of amused at the same time). I kind of agree with you, but I will be keeping a pretty good eye on this page. I think we can agree that the ones that aren't referred to as the "Tri-Cities" should be at or near the bottom, and then from then on, it should be based on population--but most of them either don't give a population figure (the red links) or give a figure that appears to be pulled out of nowhere (like Michigan's 400,000--which includes 260,000 phantom residents of the Tri-Cities area that don't live in one of the three cities). So I did the best re-orginization that I could that made sense. (If I'm being totally honest--after I put a lot of effort into the Tri-Cities, Washington article, I was upset that some stubs and red links were listed above it. As it's the only half-decent article there, I put it at the top.) But you can put VA's wherever you feel they should be after you write the article. Matt Yeager 23:13, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Matt, Thanks. I am also thinking of putting VA first in the List of US states because VA is my favorite state and I think VA's article is pretty solid. just kidding : ) : ) but see how that logic doesn't withstand the NPOV test? Anyhoo, I'm ok with VA's tri-cities being at the bottom ... the least shall be first, you know. Also, in Michigan some cities have "townships" around the cities that contain the suburbs of that town. So while the population of the three cities can be small, if you draw a big circle around them, you'll include the township populations as well. MPS 22:30, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

lol, I see. But really, if you want to have a vote (for consensus), there will probably be 0 votes for each option, except for 1 vote for "article depth" and one for "alphabetical order". ;) Seriously, I thought I explained that it was pretty logical--from the bottom up, we have reds (makes it impossible to know the population), then municipalities not named "tri-cities"... surely you can agree that THAT is NPOV. After that, they're basically listed by population of the three cities combined. If you have a better idea, be bold... it really doesn't matter much to me. (And thanks for the information on townships--that makes it a LOT more clear! =) ) Matt Yeager 05:22, 13 November 2005 (UTC)