Template talk:Los Angeles County, California

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article falls within the scope of the WikiProject Los Angeles, a group of Wikipedians interested in improving the encyclopaedic coverage of articles relating to Los Angeles, California, and who are involved in developing and proposing standards for their content, presentation and other aspects. If you would like to help out, you are welcome to drop by the project page and/or leave a query at the project's talk page.
List	This article has been rated as List-Class on the Project's quality scale. (If you rated the article please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the priority scale.

	This article is part of WikiProject California, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to California on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, or visit the project page to join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Template	This article has been rated as Template-Class on the quality scale.

[edit] CDP

CDP is an unfamiliar abbreviation and should be spelled out. I didn't know what it was when I read it, and I have a master's degree. It is can also mean many things to many people. See CDP for a list of them. Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 05:48, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Its pretty much standard across the county nav templates to abbreviate census-designated place as CDP. If a user is unsure what CDP means, they can click on the wikilink. VerruckteDan (talk) 13:32, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

There are a few Louisiana parish templates that list them as "Census-designated places", but I don't think any navbox for a US county does, while hundreds list them as "CDPs". Moreover, it's not like the link goes to CDP: it goes to census-designated place. Nyttend (talk) 14:02, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

We have to remember that WP is used by everybody from students to savants, and most people are unfamiliar with technical abbreviations. I can't put my finger on a WP policy regarding abbreviations right now, but most stylebooks warn against using odd abbreviations, and this is certainly one of them. If you can find a policy either allowing or (preferably) favoring the use of CDP, kindly let everybody know. Also, it does readers no favor to make them click on a link to find out what any given word or abbreviation actually means when it can be simply presented to them in the first place. VSY (very sincerely yours), GeorgeLouis (talk) 17:10, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

P.S. WP stands for Wikipedia. (Smile.)

The idea of a "census-designated place" is unfamiliar to many people. We don't need to use abbreviations with many other things too, but we do. Navigational templates, after all, aren't everything; if you're looking at the San Gabriel article and decide you want to look at Lennox, it won't take that long, and as soon as you get to the Lennox article, you'll see an explanation of what CDP means. Please don't continue taking the template away from the usual format. Nyttend (talk) 17:50, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Request for comment

18:20, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I would find Census-designated place only slightly less obscure than CDP. Since there's room, we could consider spelling out here; but it's not mandatory. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:46, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree in every respect with PMAnderson. Powers ^T 14:54, 12 May 2008 (UTC)