Talk:Cerritos, California

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Contents

[edit] ToDo list

To-do list for Cerritos, California: edit  · history  · watch  · refresh

Objections need to be resolved (peer review) - 27 Nov 2004 (UTC):

  1. The landmarks section is huge, and questionably encyclopedic (Update: fixed)
  2. Much of the information towards the bottom is Rambot data, with little or no changes made to it
  3. The page is full of unnecessary stuff. Check out the featured city articles that have made the cut

Objection need to be resolved (featured articles candidates) - 28 June 2005:

  1. It is too detailed for a single article. (Update: better to be detailed than to be lacking)
  2. The local landmarks section should be broken out into another article or set of articles, retaining two or three of the main ones.
  3. There are too many pictures; there should only be a few, and they should be larger. (Update: pictures reduced in number)
  4. The article seems mostly like a listing of discrete and not terribly-related buildings, projects, etc.
  5. There certainly doesn't need to be three sections for individual high schools. Even one high school should not have a section unless it has had a significant impact in the world's awareness of Cerritos, which is not apparent from the article. (Update: fixed)
  6. All in all, this seems more like a brochure or travel guide than an encyclopedia article (Update: diction modifications)
  7. Some of the photos have questionable copyright status as they have been taken from the City of Cerritos' website
  8. Some of the text is questionable since some of it has been directly copied from the website.
  9. Needs to be divided into separate articles.
  10. Too many, too small images with a bad layout (Update: images reduced in number)
    • Also, pictures are too small (cited several times)
  11. unencyclopedic wording in many places of the article (the city takes prides in its beautification..., Cerritos' tradition of intelligent, progressive government is reflected in its civic facilities., etc...) (Update: reduced);
  12. many lists ("City beautification", "Notable characteristics") (Update: modified);
  13. structural problems ("Tournament of Roses Parade" has the same heading level as "Geography" and "Demographics" (Update: fixed)
  14. some sections are also out of place: the "Landmarks" section should be put after "Geography" and "Demographics", and could probably use a renaming) (Update: fixed);
  15. insufficient references (the single web-based reference is also ill-formatted);
  16. inappropriate lead (Update: fixed).
  17. Add information about the Little India as the area is called and Indian influence on the area. (Response to request: Consider adding the Little India information in the City of Artesia article because that is where the ethnic enclave is located).(Even though Artesia is the place, the Indian community (me included) calls the general area "Cerritos" and not "Artesia". That is the reason I came looking here and not there. A one liner on this article will help...may be link to Artesia on that line. Thanks for the response. - Ganeshk (talk) 15:07, 8 July 2006 (UTC))
  18. the page reads like an advertisement or a travel brochure...I think It is a little fluffy and very biased...i live here and love it but maybe make the laguage a little more ambiguous or take out some useless data...good work but the 55,000 pop page is as large as the los angeles page...and we are not that big.

[edit] City Council Controversy

This is a section that has been set up to discuss the deletion of the properly sourced Cerritos, California#City Council Controversy section, since User:Publicdefender99, who keeps deleting the information, has asked "perhaps we can come to some kind of an agreement?". BlankVerse 08:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

  • I believe the section should be kept in its entirety because it serves as a counterweight to the dominant perspective that Cerritos is a "perfect and flawless community" free from political bickering, and because it involves a larger California issue with the possible election of one of Cerritos' own into the state legislature. AManSac 17:31, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Having the information in the article "as a counterweight" is the wrong reason for including it in an encyclopedia article. The information is, however, something that I think should be in the Cerritos article, and should be in the Grace Hu when an article gets written for her.
    • You do bring up the point that the current article, besides being way too long, is way too civic boosterish, and needs a good NPOV editing, as well as a good weed whacking.BlankVerse 22:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
  • An aside: There have been so many recent controversies, with some councilmen even going to jail, that there almost needs to be a Wikipedia article on recent Sothern California political corruption and controversy. The odds are that most of those city's articles haven't been updated, but desperately need to be. BlankVerse 22:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
What year did the whole controversy occur? It's not mentioned in the article. Jumping cheese Contact 00:33, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
The approval for the housing project was between March-June 2001 when she was on Council, but Hu's case was decided in 2005. AManSac 09:58, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

The coverage of the controversy should stay in the article because it has been discussed during at least two city council meetings, the information is all in pubic records and had been properly cited, and the controversy has even made front page coverage in the Long Beach Press-Telegram (see Ethical issues dog Hu as Nov. election nears). On the other hand, the coverage is currently unbalanced. As I wrote at User talk:Publicdefender99#Hey!: "As for coming "to some kind of an agreement": The Press-Telegram article includes Grace Hu's explanations, so you can include a paragraph on those explanations in the Cerritos, California#City Council Controversy section, and then properly cite the LB P-T article." BlankVerse 08:07, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I strongly believe that this information is inappropriate in this article, so I'm removing this section . This is the article on the city of Cerritos, California, not on local news items. I'm sure there are lots of other things the city council has discussed recently and lots of other local news stories besides the Grace Hu affair, but she gets 2 paragraphs, and nothing else gets anything. Frankly, Grace Hu just isn't that important to Cerritos that we need to discuss her -- this isn't Wikinews. Balancing it out by including Hu's response will not help things. If there was an article on Grace Hu, this information would be appropriate there... but Grace Hu probably isn't notable by Wikipedia standards. Mangojuicetalk 13:12, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
I've reverted the deletion. This isn't about Hu, but about Cerritos, as you correctly state. City Council politics are very important to a city. This incident of corruption was notable enough to result in state action. Many topics with more minor notabuility get coverage too. (Sculpture garden Rose Parade, Capital Improvement Projects, etc). -Will Beback 19:48, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
This really should be taken to Wikinews. It's hardly an incident that will be of any substantial long-term encyclopedic interest. If city articles listed every minor scandal in a city's history, they'd be 500kb each. FCYTravis 09:51, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I suggest that those interested in seeing how a city article should be written, see San Francisco, California. Go check its "Government" section. You'll find no micro-detailed city government listing nor will you find any mention of the umpteen squillion political dustups in the city's history. None of them are encyclopedic enough to merit a mention in the main article. I suggest that this one does not, either. FCYTravis 10:01, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

You can't compare San Francisco with its 750,000 residents to Cerritos, with its 50,000 residents. --Banana Republic 12:43, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
The comparison with San Franciso is inaccurate. While the main article does not have much detail about its government, there are so many articles about the topic that there is a special category just for them, Category:Government of San Francisco. There are entire articles about the Board of Supervisors (essentially its city council) and the mayorship. I don't think that the Cerritos City Council merits an article of its own but it certainly merits coverage here. -Will Beback 20:10, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
Would opponents of this material suport deleting all of the SF government articles as being "unencyclopedic minutia"[1]? Alternatively, maybe we should move this Cerritos City Council material to a separate article? Will Beback 21:44, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
The city council controversy is significant enough to deserve a place on the Cerritos page. As a compromise, how about trimming it down? Jumping cheese Contact 23:11, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
That's a good idea. It does seem a bit long. -Will Beback 23:27, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
I support a brief, balanced summary of the issues (incorporating Hu's response in the LB Press-Telegram article). A more detailed discussion would be appropriate for an article specifically on Grace Hu. I am strongly opposed to excising the entire discussion of the controvery from the article. BlankVerse 00:47, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
I went ahead and reduced the size of the section a little bit and did my best to summerize the scandal further. BlankVerse, if you want, go ahead and incorporate the LB Press Telegram article--I haven't seen it...so I'm not sure if I missed an important point or not. AManSac 07:00, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
I incorporated information from the Long Beach Press-Telegram article [2] (which is still on line, if anyone wants to look at it). I also toned down the first paragraph of the section some, as well as corrected one factual error.
I had also changed the referencing to match Wikipedia guidelines (see WP:CITE). but that part of my changes has been reverted to the previous non-standard method of references. BlankVerse 06:03, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] City Image

  • I originally added the "City Image" section a while ago, and in retrospect, I realize that it's a little too much superfluous information and adds too much of a jingoistic tone to the article. To boot, I don't think many of the points have proper citations. It's also a step in reducing this article's length and therefore, I'm going back on my creation and deleting that section. AManSac 00:03, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
It is interesting that the last anon IP to add the City Image section back in was 65.116.143.83 (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log), which a rDNS shows as app2.ci.cerritos.ca.us. In other words, the edit was from Cerritos City Hall. You can also see from their block log] that the IP has been blocked several times. There is, however, the possibility that the IP is also shared with the Cerritos Public Library (which also has IP range 206.17.120.0 - 206.17.120.255).
I did a quick check, but almost all of the other anon IPs that I checked were from Earthlink. Still, it might be an idea to start keeping track of questionable and vandal edits on the Cerritos article. BlankVerse 06:54, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Why do I think that slmost all of the City Image seciton does not belong? The Cerritos, California article could become a Wikipedia Featured article, although it it has failed FA reviews twice so far. Part of the reason for that failure is that the article is currently H-U-G-E, and reads more like a cross between a Chamber of Commerce promotional brochure, a city manager's report, and a school report. Among other things, the article needs some serious NPOVing to reduce the PR language in the article to help turn it into an encyclopedia article. There is also quite a bit of information that is extraneous and can be excised. For just one example, the entire paragraph on Advisory boards is unnecessary. Almost every city has them. For more examples, almost every section that also has its own article (e.g. Cerritos Auto Square and Los Cerritos Center) need to be pared down, as well as given a better explanation of why the subject of that section is important to the city of Cerritos.

So what is specifically wrong with the City Image section? Part of it is the PR language (e.g. "meticulously maintaining lawns of neglectful residents"), and excessive detail ("Restricting store signage that is not lit well at night and fall on top of an opaque background").

There are a few things in that section that are pretty unusual for entire cities, such as the outlawing drive-through windows and the parking prohibitions (although similar restrictions can be found in planned communities and gated communities). I would support cutting the section down to two or three of those items, then finding proper citations to support the fact that the ordinaces are unusual, and then finding a better title for that section. BlankVerse 07:22, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

AManSac, I understand that you originally wrote the section city image, but that does not mean you own it. Please quit removing it, as there is some important information in that section that make Cerritos unique. --Banana Republic 07:47, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
Please don't add the entire section back up. If you wish, please discuss here what particular ordinances you'd like to see mentioned on the article, and perhaps we can make a compromise by incorporating it somewhere in the Cerritos page without adding another section. AManSac 07:59, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Please do not remove entire sections. That is considered vandalism (yes, even if you originally wrote the section -- BTW the section has evolved since you originally wrote it). The ordinances mentioned in the section make Cerritos unique among the surrounding cities (and for that matter most cities in the world). I can equally challenge you to discuss what specific ordinances would you like to remove from the section, that you think are superflous. --Banana Republic 08:06, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

If anything, the only ordinances that I could see remaining is what BlankVerse mentioned above...namely, parking and drive-thru issues. I'm all for incorporating those aspects in some part of the article, rather than making a totally new section for it. It could even be made a bullet point in the trivia/quick facts section. Although their common theme involves motor vehicles, I don't think a separate motor vehicle regulation section is the best way to add it in. Look, I'm all pro-Cerritos myself...but if you ever want this article to even be considered for something close to a featured article status (which it already has failed on a couple of occassions), you're going to have to work with us to make some major changes in its current context rather than just throwing everything in and having others sort it out. AManSac 08:15, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
Look, I also understand you reported my reverts, Banana Republic, but be sure that in the future, you confront issues that you feel should be included in the article head on and proactively in the proper forums (like this talk page), rather than sneaking off and not making your opinions known and trying to block people who want to improve the page. AManSac 19:59, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Featured article?

There is a list of cities that have already qualified as Featured articles at Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities#Wikipedia featured articles. Two California cities have already achived FA status, San Francisco, California and San Jose, California. It would be nice to see a city from Southern California also achive FA status.

If you look at the Cerritos, California Todo list, there is a very long list of issues from the Peer review and Featured article candidate processes.

Besides those issues, I think there several of the photos in the Cerritos article came from the official City of Cerritos website. Those images are copyrighted and also don't qualify for use on the Wikipedia under the tightened guidelines for Fair use on the English-language Wikipedia. Any of the photos that can be identified as coming from the Cerritos website should be reported as copyright violations, and then attempts should be made to find replacements for them. BlankVerse 08:37, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

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