Category talk:Nassau County, New York

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[edit] Manhasset subcat

Seems to me, the pressure here should indeed be relieved, but a tiny category for Manhasset is a poor way to do it. Better to make cats for ToNH and ToOBay, which together would accept nearly a hundred of the current articles. Jim.henderson 23:45, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

The following was put on my talk page and hour ago, but I think it better belongs here: Jim.henderson 02:42, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reason for categories

I tried to explain in the edit summaries, but here's the long version, hopefully easier to understand:

The Category:Nassau County, New York was two pages long and full of articles about train stations, schools, local fire departments, etc. that (it seems to me) are extremely unlikely to be of interest to anyone not close by. Because there were so many articles in the category, it was more difficult to navigate through it to find the article someone was interested in. So I started doing several things (which I've also done for all the counties in Connecticut and started doing for Westchester County and Suffolk County). I created the Category:Transportation in Nassau County, New York and added to the Category:Education in Nassau County, New York and tried to create more local categories that people would be interested in.

I moved no articles about localities out of Nassau because (so far) I think they're the most useful links (the articles tend to link to all the articles with a relationship to that locality, few other types of articles tend to do that). Also, Nassau is a geographic area and a government, which is a lot like the localities within it.

With only those articles, the Nassau category is still liable to go to two pages, which I think makes it much more difficult for readers to navigate through.

For Category:Great Neck Peninsula there are several articles that might never have been seen in the Nassau category by someone browsing who is interested in that area. And I seriously wonder whether people interested in Nassau as a whole is going to be interested in the youth center that's now in the Great Neck category, for instance.

Ideally, every article about a subject located in Nassau County should be in some local category like Great Neck Peninsula as well as in some subject or topical category. That's the way I did it in Category:Fairfield County, Connecticut, and I think it makes navigation extremely easy. Please tell me what you think.

Incidentally, I'm not from Nassau County, and I only made the Category:Great Neck Peninsula page because I saw on the Great Neck, New York page that there is a sense of community among the villages on the peninsula. Noroton 01:51, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh, the purpose of subcatting was absolutely right. It's just the particulars that I question. As it happens, nowadays I live in the inner city, but spent this Sunday in New Hyde Park after bicycling out from Flushing.

What you might not have known is, Nassau County is divided into three townships and two independent cities and about half the people live in one of them. The Great Neck and Cow Neck peninsulas and all their little neckers (I grew up in one of the latter) are all in Town of North Hempstead, and haven't been in Town of Hempstead for something like 200 years. And then you get places like Flower Hill, which is in ToNH but is divided among Port Washington, Manhasset, and Roslyn. So, anyway, the noble purpose of uncrowding Nassau's cat would work approximately as well by moving them all into a Town of North Hempstead cat, as by making four or eight smaller cats that would get more tangled in these local issues.

And yes, the topical cats (especially transport) inside the Nassau cat are also a good idea. It's just the sub geographical cats are, I think, going out of line, in part due to unfamiliarity with this particular political geography. Not a real problem as long as you discuss these matters first in the Talk Pages of the varius cats so others can provide guidance. And of course, even in territories where you are familiar, before moving any substantial number of articles you should put the source and target cats in your watchlist so you see any comments in their talk pages. Jim.henderson 03:02, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

The towns in Nassau County are so large, and Wikipedia is growing so fast, that I think the hourslong effort of categorizing would have to be repeated within about six months if I only moved articles from the Nassau County category to, say the Town of Hempstead category. I think readers are served pretty well by simultaneously having a Nassau-based topical category (if they're interested in looking at a number of high school articles or train station articles, for instance, or are searching for a high school) as well as a purely geographic category, whenever possible. I think people are also interested in knowing what articles there are about their local community -- however they define local community. If the Town of Hempstead or some other town is the community that people most connect with, then it would be best to build up that category first and perhaps later divide it by topic (Category:Schools in the Town of Hempstead, New York, for instance, if Category:Education in Nassau County, New York gets too big (and I'm sure it will). By the way, in a couple of cases I misjudged how many articles there were that actually related to a community (Category:Carle Place, New York for instance, should probably be deleted). I'm also not sure that the Category:Mineola, New York or Category:Wantagh, New York are worth keeping. But Category:Valley Stream, New York and Category:Great Neck Peninsula I think are very useful. Noroton 04:09, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

All right; I am persuaded of the usefulness of the North Shore neck categories, partly because I noticed that many of the relevant articles already have a North Hempstead navbox and I like the idea of cats cutting crossways to navboxes so readers can move along either axis. I won't recat anybody this afternoon, having a life to attend to, but will create a Town of North Hempstead cat in the evening and move appropriate articles there unless someone objects or beats me to it. Also sweep the little P articles out of Nassau and into Manhasset's cat, or the majority that belong there.

Town of North Hempstead has a lot of little articles because sprawl came early there and every hundred yuppies wanted their own village. In contrast, most of Town of Hempstead only became suburban after mid century, when law was less favorable to new incorporations, so even though many more people live there, they have fewer municipalities, hence fewer Census breakouts, thus fewer Wikipedia articles. Southshorelings and denizens of the Hempstead Plains are also more attached to their villages and less to their school districts, making them less amenable to treatment similar to our budding neck scheme for the North Shore. Anyway it's nice to know we've got a plan, sort of, rather than everyone following their isolated dream and the web of subcats becoming more rather than less tangled. Jim.henderson 17:40, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Subcat

Ho hum, so I made a subcat for ToNH, and rehomed the two existing northern Neck cats on it, and then moved a lot of articles into those three and the existing ToH cat. I guess a dozen remain in Nassau County that are also in these subcats, so they ought to be trimmed to be only in the baby cats, not the mama. That's not for tonight, at least not for me. Also a bunch of eastern communities have not been moved because there is no ToOB cat. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow or on the weekend, depending on other things in life. I figure most instutions belong in the Nassau County cat, especially the police, county parks (Safety Town is both) and any others that are run by the County. Oh, and there's no cat for the north end of Cow Neck, only for the base of that peninsula. What name should such a category have, or should there be only one cat for the whole peninsula? If the latter, it seems odd to leave it under the present name since Manhasset doesn't go much beyond Copley Pond.

I do notice that the Port Washington, Rockaway and Hempstead branches each run mostly in one town, but of course the Oyster Bay branch does not, and anyway I figure the railroad belongs in the county or its transport subcat, not in the township cats. The two independent cities, I don't think interesting enough to have their own cats, so their few articles ought to continue to reside in the County category. So, y'all have fun and of course go ahead and correct any small mistakes I've made. If you think I have made big ones, kindly discuss them here before going ahead and doing it your way. Jim.henderson 02:41, 27 July 2007 (UTC)