User:BlankVerse/Sandbox4

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[edit] A rationalization of Los Angeles categories

"Los Angeles" is highly ambiguous. It could mean the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, the Greater Los Angeles Area, the Los Angeles Basin, an airport, a seaport, several different professional sports teams (including the awkwardly named Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim), a university, a state college, a city college, and many other things. It could even refer to something as broad as Southern California. Paradoxically, City of Los Angeles is the name of a passenger train.

As the description at Greater Los Angeles Area says:

"... people outside of Southern California commonly refer to the entire region as L.A. even though it includes five counties, more than 100 distinct municipalities, and more people than any individual state except for Texas, New York, Florida, and California itself."

This confusion about what is "Los Angeles" can easily be seen in the Los Angeles, California article (and especially in the article's edit history) where editors are regularly adding information that does not directly involve the city of Los Angeles. It can also be seen in the What links here for the Los Angeles page that currently redirects to Los Angeles, California. Many of those wikilinks are intended to link to a "Los Angeles" other than the City of Los Angeles.

The question of what is part of the city of LA, and what is not, can confuse even residents of the Los Angeles area. Hollywood, when it isn't being used to refer to Cinema of the United States (or other things), is a district in the city of Los Angeles, as is North Hollywood, but West Hollywood is a separate city. Venice is part of the city of LA, but neighboring Santa Monica is an incorporated city. "East Los Angeles" could mean either East Los Angeles, California (an unincorporated community), the eastern portion of the city of LA that includes communities such as Boyle Heights, or the East Los Angeles region, which is the eastern portion of LA County including the previous two East LA's, plus cities such as Montebello and Pico Rivera. San Fernando in the northern corner of the San Fernando Valley is a separate city entirely surrounded by the city of Los Angeles.

So what does that mean for categories on the Wikipedia. "Los Angeles" by itself should NEVER be used in the name of a category. Instead, the category name should be an unambiguous name such as [Category:Foo in Los Angeles, California] (for the city), [Category:Foo in Los Angeles County] (", California" is unneeded since Los Angeles County is unique), and [Category:Foo in the Los Angeles area] (or [Category:Foo in the Greater Los Angeles Area]).

Current problems in either naming or category descriptions include:

  • Category:Los Angeles, California, which has the description of "Los Angeles, California is a major metropolitan area in Southern California in the United States. Articles categorized under this heading concern the greater metropolitan area, and not just the city or county of Los Angeles. The main article for this category is Los Angeles, California."
    note1: the category, however, is in Category: Cities in Los Angeles County.
    note2: In this case, it is the description that is in error and should be changed. Any articles in the category that are not in the city of LA should be moved to a more appropriate category.

One needed category is Category:Greater Los Angeles Area (similar to Category:San Francisco Bay Area, to be placed in Category:Metropolitan areas of the United States. That category would then get subcategories such as:

The recommended renamings include (in no particular order)
  • Category:Landmarks in Los Angeles -> Category:Landmarks in Los Angeles County (or possibly Category:Landmarks in the Los Angeles area)
    note1: already includes landmarks in various LA county cities such as the RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, California
    note2: There should be enough landmarks to also create Landmarks in Orange County, California
  • Category:Airports of Los Angeles -> Category:Airports of the Los Angeles area
    description: "Airports in the Greater Los Angeles Area."
    note1: With only 13 articles, most airports in LA haven't been added to the category
    note2: Currently only has airports in LA County except for John Wayne Airport in Orange County
  • Category:Los Angeles culture -> Category:Culture in the Los Angeles area (or possibly Category:Culture in Los Angeles County)
    note: Currently only has LA County articles
  • Category:Los Angeles area newspapers -> Category:newspapers in the Los Angeles area
    note1: Includes at least three Orange County publications
    note2: At only 21 articles, it is probably missing several articles
  • Category:Los Angeles television anchors -> Category:Television anchors in the Los Angeles area
    note: I only recognized LA County TV anchors, but there are a couple of Orange County TV stations.
  • Category:Los Angeles musical groups -> Category:musical groups in Los Angeles County (or possibly Category:musical groups in the Los Angeles area)
    note: I only recognized LA County groups. Still, there should probably should be LA County & Orange County, California categories

Finally, if all of these changes are accepted, I would like to see a consensus to make renaming any category that has only Los Angeles a speedy rename. BlankVerse 10:52, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Renames based on XXX in YYY naming
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