Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Oregon/Cities

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Starting up the City subproject's own talk page. Please start discussing city-oriented projects here.

Ajbenj 05:41, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

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[edit] Good City Article Examples?

Can someone give me one or two (or several) of what you would consider a shining example of an Oregon city article? I want to try to make my edits consistent and make sure I'm not forgetting anything. Thanks bunches! Katr67 21:49, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm going out on a limb here, but I'd have to say that the Portland, Oregon article should be the level we're shooting for here. Other articles that have elements of this are:

Hope that helps! Ajbenj 20:33, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Cool, thanks! Katr67 21:01, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
You may want to look at Powers, Oregon and Huntington, Oregon. They're examples of no-no's! Both are unsourced, and Huntington needs some TLC in the editing department once all the info has sources. Ajbenj 23:50, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
I already have actually--very messy indeed. I added something to the talk page for each (I tend to add a city to my watchlist when I look it up, so I saw your comments). People keep using that pesky stateoforegon.com or whatever it is as a source. I even did a quick copy edit on Huntington already, though the references part was too much to take on today when I was supposed to be working so it's still a mess, but a slightly more grammatical mess. Katr67 05:26, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Hmmmm. Do you mean Oregon Blue Book? That's a link I add if there's no other links available. That way, infobox data can be verified. Ohwy.com is annoying and useless. See what you can do with what we have there... Also you may want to take a look at Stanfield, Oregon, Gladstone, Oregon, and Weston, Oregon. Those all desperately need to be sourced. Good info, just not verifiable yet. Glad we have an editor on our side with this! You are quite an assett to the team! Ajbenj 08:36, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Oh gosh no, the Blue Book is a legitimate source, last I checked. It's published by the Secretary of State's Office after all. :) Sorry, I meant this one: http://www.oregoncities.us/ "source unknown and unverified"... Katr67 13:20, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Oh THAT! Yeah, that and alloregon.com are useless. Ohwy.com's probably the one that gets on my nerves the most. It's as close to spam as a website can get! I marked some more articles as unsourced. They are: Aurora, Oregon, Detroit, Oregon, Keizer, Oregon (untagged, oops!), and St. Paul, Oregon. Those need some verifible sources as well. Someone without any Wiki experience must have wrote those up, as I see the same style of writing in many of the suspect articles. Either that or it's copied-and-pasted in from the source. :( Ajbenj 21:35, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
(Re-initializnig indentation) The story behind some of those articles that you've marked as written by "someone without any Wiki experience", is that they're my contributions from the dawn of Wikipedia, long before there were any guidelines or standards about citing sources; I've since improved in my contributions. ;-) As for the sources to the articles Ajbenj mentions, best that I can remember, back then I used (1) Oregon Geographic Names (2) the Oregon Blue Book website, & (3) in the case of Aurora & Keizer at least, the history column in the Sunday Oregonian. I'm not trying to be snippy, but before I made those changes these articles were just Ram-bot skeletons, so I would argue that I did improve on them. -- llywrch 16:20, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Yay for improved articles! I know I've improved my contributions over time and I've certainly added a bit of unsourced info here and there. Thanks for the tip about the history column--I'll be sure to take a look at that. I have a copy of OGN out from the library, so it shouldn't be too hard to verify what you've added. Personally, the kind of edits that bug me are the ones copy and pasted from the type of commercial websites we've mentioned that include POV stuff about how fun and friendly that particular place is. :) Katr67 17:21, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I did some work on Huntington and some of the things that link there. It still needs to be sourced. Katr67 20:16, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Did some work on Powers, there's some more material that needs to be added. Katr67 09:07, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Town, city or unincorporated community?

I am trying to categorize some of these tiny places as I edit. Everyone seems to agree that an incorporated city should be in the Cities in Oregon category, and census-designated places should go into that category. Then we have "Towns in Oregon" and "Unincorporated communities in Oregon". It seems to me that the "towns" category could be eliminated since "unincorporated community" means the same thing. Opinions? Katr67 20:30, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

That's a tricky issue... As far as I am concerned, anything incorporated gets an infobox, regardless of what it calls itself. Lakeview calls itself a "town", but the Oregon Blue book lists it as a "city". Check out the OBB city listings. If it's not in there, it isn't a city. I haven't seen any clear distinctions between a "Town" and a "City" under Oregon laws other than a labeling preference. Legally, there are areas attempting to become "villages" or "hamlets". However the legal status of those are quite unclear to me. So for now, treat "towns" in the same light as "cities", and everything else as unincorporated/CDP/whatever until we find anything that changes that.Ajbenj 03:51, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Actually, I'm using "category" in the sense used in Wikipedia and I'm talking about the difference between Category:Towns in Oregon and Category:Unincorporated communities in Oregon. (City is more of a legal term, while town is more generic, and I agree that anything incorporated is a Category:Cities in Oregon). Having two Wikipedia categories that are similar seems redundant to me. I feel like all the "towns" could be moved to the "unincorporated communities" category and the "towns" category eliminated, since "unincorporated community" is more specific. When I wrote Algoma, I called it a "town" and left it at that, then when I wrote Alicel, I decided to call it an unincorporated community, and wikify the link. These places do not call themselves anything, since they don't (as far as I can tell) have any municipal presence. I don't plan to mess with Category:Census-designated places in Oregon of course, because that category is determined by the U.S. Census Bureau. I think anything not categorized as a city or CDP would be an "unincorporated community." Katr67 20:12, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good to me! I guess the Category for "Town" exists for those places back east that have specific legislation for that status. So fas as I'm aware, Oregon doesn't have anything like that. Anyone else know anything to the contrary? Ajbenj 01:45, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Well I've slowly been sorting our little localities into categories. I found Category:Towns in Missouri about the same thing in Missouri and they put a note on the top of Category: Towns in the United States. Seems like that's what Oregon should do too. How does one go about deleting and protecting a category page? Katr67 20:16, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

For now, move everything out of that category and into the correct one. The note looks like a good idea. After all of that, check out Wikipedia:Categories for deletion and somewhere there, it'll tell you how to get rid of it. Ajbenj 04:48, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I put in a Cfd request for the Category:Towns in Oregon. Katr67 19:01, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

The category has been redirected. Can we blank or archive this discussion? Katr67 05:55, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

While looking for something else, I stumbled across this which asserts that the Oregon requirement for an incorporated city is "minimum population of 150" and that for a town is "the same as a city". By omission, this implies that Oregon doesn't recognize "villages", "boroughs", "hamlets", etc.—at least formally. — EncMstr 03:16, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

That census PDF was last updated in 1990. Oregon now has a few hamlets and villages. See Hamlet (Oregon) and Village (Oregon). As far as I know, Oregon doesn't recognize the legal entity "town", and any references to "town" in ORS are because...well I worked for the agency that edits that stuff and it's a long story. Here's the relevant chapter in ORS: [1]. It appears that there *is* a designation of "Historic Ghost Town". I'll follow up and see if any have been so designated. Katr67 07:20, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Articles that need cleanup/sources

Katr67 16:47, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cities & communities listed under each Oregon county

It's awfully quiet around here...

So I went through each county article and arranged all the communities into subsections (except for Yamhill, Clackamas, Washington and Multnomah--too scary for now) and tabulated some of the longer lists. I added a few redlinks when they already existed, and unlinked some (especially in Tillamook County). If anybody feels like doing a sanity check on my work, that would be appreciated. Basically I'm trying to get rid of the generic (bot-produced?) heading "Cities and Towns" since technically there are no towns in Oregon (see above). That's my little soapbox--I hope that works for everyone. For future projects, besides writing more unincorporated community articles and making redirects where necessary, I'd like to make sure all the communities are in the List of Oregon cities and the List of Oregon ZIP Codes and the list in each respective county article. Anyway, besides trying to make all the articles read somewhat consistently, that's what I've been obsessing about. Happy editing! Katr67 02:28, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

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