Talk:List of Israeli cities

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Featured list star List of Israeli cities is a featured list, which means it has been identified as one of the best lists produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve it, please do.
Israel Portal
List of Israeli cities is part of WikiProject Israel, an attempt to build a comprehensive guide to Israel on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, visit the project page where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. This template adds articles to Category:WikiProject Israel articles.
Project Israel To Do (Drop-Down Menu):
Featured list FL This article has been rated as FL-Class on the quality scale.
Top This article has been rated as top-importance on the importance scale.

Contents

[edit] Jerusalem is not internationally recognized as an Israeli City

Israel is not internationally recognized as a city that belongs to Israel. I think we should consider removing it for accuracy.

--Raa3 —Preceding comment was added at 02:35, 29 February 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Checking the list

A serious extension, as well as some careful spell checking, are in order. (Elzamam, 25/05/03)

Today this list matches the corresponding list in the Hebrew Wikipedia, with two exceptions. First, understandably the Jewish populated places in the West Bank that are cities by Israeli standards (Maale Adumim, Betar Illit, and Ariel) are in a separate list. Second, although Caesarea is a historic Roman city, I suspect it's not currently considered a city. --Hoziron 04:17, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm converting the text form of the list to tabular form, so that it will be easier for me to add "Gazeteer" equivalents of the cities' names. Also, this will make it more obvious where Arabic equivalents are missing, so that they can be filled in. I've already done the top two regions (Northern & Haifa), will churn this out as my insomnia dictates ;) I'm using [Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names] as a source for Gazeteers' Forms; all of the "common" forms are listed there also, in fact many common forms appear! Suggestions are requested for other sources... --D'n 01:36 22-November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ethnicity?

OK, damage restored, and all the tabling is done. What do people think about adding a 5th column, "Ethnicity"? Most cities would be "Jewish"; while Taybe and Qalansawe (for instance) would be Arab; Rahat Bedouin; and Jerusalem and Lod would be Mixed. D'n 05:39, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

  • D'n: While the notion may appeal to you, it's nevertheless a very bad idea. You will open up a "can of worms" that will be too problematic. How and when will the "ethnicities" end, what criteria to use, are just some of the major problems. Many people will object, as you can see for yourself in the current UNANIMOUS Vote for Deletion (cfd) for Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 December 4#Category:Cities with significant Arab Israeli populations. Otherwise, the rest of your organizational and technical work has been excellent. IZAK 06:14, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
  • In the past I might have thought it worth looking into, but apparently this is a very sensitive area and I don't want to get into a huge minefield. However, I can see some benefits in a tabular format for linguistic purposes, where each entry has the common English name, the CBS transliteration, the locally-preferred transliteration, the English Biblical name, the modern Hebrew name, the Biblical Hebrew name, the Israeli Arabic name, and the Palestinian Arabic name (because of the conventions still used by Palestinian refugees). - Gilgamesh 09:30, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
    • I had an idea that something like this would fall out, which is why I floated the idea here. OK, advice taken D'n 22:24, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] This list is outdated, as is the one at he.wikipedia

Check nl.wikipedia for later developements in Israeli local state. There 71 cities now (up from 70), after two were added, and two were combined (another one was combined with a local council). I have no clue who wrote the Dutch article ;-) gidonb 09:35, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Note, however, that the German Wikipedia has other information. It claims Elad and Mevasseret are cities. gidonb 09:56, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm pretty tired now and with a temperature, won't check the entire list for each city, but I saw two changes in the NL article - Daliyat Al-Karmel is supposedly now a city called Daliyat Al-Karmel-Isfiya, and there's another 'union' there (Baka-Jat). I haven't heard about these at all, but they don't seem too likely. But I also don't think the NL writer was just writing at random. Does anyone have evidence that the NL version is correct? Also, El'ad and Mevaseret are definitely not cities unless they were given such a status around 2005. It's possible with Mevaseret, but El'ad seems quite unlikely. -- Ynhockey 15:18, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ramallah?!

The list includes Ramallah!! which is not a city in israel (Ramla is), ramallah is a city in the west bank! am i missing something?--Mayz 01:51, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

No you're not missing anything, I have no idea who added Ramallah to the list but I'm removing it of course. -- Y Ynhockey || Talk Y 08:48, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Added Arabic names

Added Arabic names of Tira, Yafa, Eylat, Karmel.. (eom). 19:18, 28 January 2006 User:70.225.174.161 IP and timestamp added by gidonb

Thank you! That is a very useful addition to this page! gidonb 16:18, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
I filled in most of the blank slots in the Arabic names colomn. It is not easy to supply an agreed Arabic name for a city in Israel, since the Israeli authorities usually do not supply an official Arabic spelling, and even when they do it is often unaccepted by the Arab population. Jerusalem is the classic example for that. Several things should be pointed out - this list is useless when trying to navigate within Israel. Road signs usually trancribe the Hebrew name using special characters for non-Arabic sounds, a trend which is very uncommon in Arabic press. Hebrew names are sometimes Arabized, especially if the name can be translated, or if it resembles an Arab name or Arabic words. Jewish cities built after 1948 where an Arab village or city previously stood, are sometimes called by their Hebrew name or by their Arabized Hebrew name, and sometimes by their former Arabic name. An example to that is عسقلان/المجدل for Ashkelon. In all cases I used the most widespread forms. I brought two forms if they are both widespread, and I added a name in brackets if it is not widespread, but still worth while mentioning. Two final points - تل الربيع is a somewhat strange translation for the name Tel Aviv, but I don't think it is common enough to populate this table. ج and غ are both used to transcribe the /g/ sound in Hebrew names. This can be a bit tricky because in Arab cities' names they have different values (/γ/ vs. /dzh/). Drork 10:49, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Israel template

I think the State of Israel navigation box should be removed. While it's relevant to the list, I think it interferes with its flow and formatting more than it helps. It also makes it impossible to add more fields, which could be useful (like year when city status was granted or whatever). -- Ynhockey (Talk) 12:30, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree - will do now Flymeoutofhere 14:58, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

The existence of two separate pages with much of the same information seems needlessly confusing, and I don't see why all sets of data can't be accommodated here. TewfikTalk 06:25, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

You are right, especially as the line between a "locality" and a "city" according to the Israeli law is quite arbitrary. DrorK 07:23, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

The other page was originally created when there was no option to create sortable tables and therefore it was useful, so feel free to merge. In addition to that, I think the alternative spellings on this page which take up a lot of space should be replaced by statistical data, such as immigrants and population growth. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 08:02, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Done. Feel free to edit it mercilessly. TewfikTalk 01:26, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Moved?

I must've missed it, but why was this article moved to List of cities by population in Israel? Not only is this against naming conventions (should be: List of cities in Israel by population), but also the table is sortable so it's not really a list by population (also the default sorting is by district/name). Moreover, its primary goal is to list cities in Israel, and their administrative districts, everything else is marginal. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 12:42, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bnei Brak

The picture of Bnei Brak is a bit deceiving. It actually depicts a panorama of a larger area. This panorama especially when taken at night, makes it look like a tourist resort while in fact it is a suburb of ultra-orthodox Jews from lower socioeconomic group. DrorK 21:21, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

This is true, but I had a hard time finding a better free picture. In the interim I'll leave a clarification in the caption. TewfikTalk 21:35, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pictures on the right and columns

Even though I think the pictures are great and relevant, I can't help thinking that they are unnecessary, mostly because there are many more columns which can be added to the table. And even now, there is overlap on Firefox between the images and the table on anything lower than 1024x768 (or a non-full-sized window on that resolution).

I think the table should have the following columns:

  1. Name
  2. District
  3. CBS Name
  4. Hebrew
  5. Arabic
  6. Area
  7. Population (2006)
  8. Population (2000)
  9. Population (1995) --> important because this is the last actual census made by the CBS.

Other less important columns are:

  1. Population density (present in many city lists on Wikiepdia, although IMO not that important because this data is calculable from the area/population statistics)
  2. Population (1983) - previous complete census

Also I think that pronunciation sound files (.ogg) should be added for each city. I might record them myself in the coming days.

-- Ynhockey (Talk) 23:44, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I have no problem with any of these except for the images. That seems to be a technical problem which should have a technical solution, and we shouldn't have to remove content like images for it. As a temporary fix, it seems that most column-width is due to one or two long entries, in the case of the last two it is because of the column-titles, so shortening the sum using a <br> would avoid the problem for now. TewfikTalk 04:05, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
How about a compromise: moving the images to the bottom as a gallery. Not only is this widely accepted in Wikipedia, but also it will retain the images in an organized way (allowing us to add an image for each city if we acquire it), while allowing us to add more columns to the table. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 20:32, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

If there's no objection, I'm going to start working on this page again, per my November 25 suggestion. This could easily make it to FL (I've seen much crappier lists pass), there are just a few very small issues to be resolved. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 20:50, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree - good idea--Flymeoutofhere (talk) 20:34, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Area/jurisdiction

Currently the area of each city is presented in a very awkward way - it's in square kilometers, yet looks like dunams (say, the jurisdiction of Arad is shown as 93.140 km2, not 93.14, and/or 93,140 dunams). I think the areas should be presented in dunams (anyone who doesn't know what a dunam is can click on the link), although if a consensus is reached to keep showing them in km2, then the figures should be rounded somewhat, say to 1 decimal point. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 23:46, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I have been unable to locate the document with all areas together, which is required for the data. I have no problem with presenting it in dunams. TewfikTalk 04:07, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
For the sake that this is an international encyclopedia, either the square Kms should be there,or a note about how to convert. Circeus 04:41, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Its been thus far left in square km. More importantly, I've found the reference for the bot-harvested area data, and so I'm renominating. TewfikTalk 09:23, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
So, what's the verdict? If no one opposes, I'll round all the numbers to 1 decimal point. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 19:56, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Name of article

I think this should be moved back to List of cities in Israel, per the accepted norm on the English Wikipedia. Naming articles without the word 'list' is a practice accepted on Hebrew Wikipedia, where the admins believe that simply not having the word 'list' in the title would make an article encyclopedic, which otherwise wouldn't be. I think it's ludicrous to accept the Hebrew Wiki's norm.

One good argument for why the article should have 'list' in its title is that it's actually a list (!), and not a content-based article on the cities on Israel.

-- Ynhockey (Talk) 18:26, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Very peculiar name change and distancing from WP convention. This article is now the only one in its cat with a unique naming convention. --Shuki (talk) 22:14, 10 February 2008 (UTC)