Category talk:Settlements by year of establishment

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The purpose of this category set is to provide category information of the year upon which a city, town, village or other settlement came into existence. Usually, this will be the year in which it was first settled, although other scenarios are conceivable (eg a new town is created by taking the exisiting parts of two older adjacent towns).

In the United States, and to a lesser degree in some other countries, the year of incorporation is given promenence. In some countries, places are simply not incorporated. This category is not for recording the year of incorporation. Previously, a category set was created for this purposed although it was then deleted (see Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Archive debates/2006 September index). Presently, the general Category:Establishments by year set is being used to record both the year in which a place first came into existence and, sometimes, its year of incorporation. This ambiguity is undesirable which is one of the reasons for creating this new set of categories. Greenshed 19:23, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I am not against having a Category:Incorporations by year (or similar). The reason why I have been re-categorizing some articles to their year of settlement is because we don't have such a category at present and that the general establishments category is for when things began. Just becuase a place is unincorporated does not mean that it has yet to be established or founded which is what the general establishments category is about. Greenshed 19:30, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Incorporation, too

This sounds like quite an undertaking!

Since the word "establishment" is a bit vague when referring to a city or town (as you mention - year settled? year incorporated as a town? year incorporated as a city? Can I ask that you leave the "XXXX establishments" category if there is one? For the NH articles that I worked on, that year is almost always the year incorporated, which is the "official" date of recognition of the town. Changing it to a year settled is therefore not a good thing to do. *Adding* the year settled is fine, though. Thanks! -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 21:07, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Colonialist bias

In the above discussion nobody has mentioned that, in the United States, "Settlements by year of establishment" really means, "Year of settlement by people of European origin." For example, Greenshed recently tagged Sitka, Alaska as having been "established" in 1799, when it was very clearly inhabited for thousands of years before that.

I propose to change the name of the category to something that shows what this category is truely refering to. I'd be willing to help once an appropriate name is selected. Dkreisst 04:22, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

The intention here is not to show bias to people of any origin; indeed there are towns founded by Russians, Arabs and others already in this category set. The principal use of this category will be for settlements that were created ex nihilo and so I think that a renaming would confuse things (I'm against the "European origin" renaming as non-Europeans have founded settlements, although I would certainly dicuss any other proposals on their merits/demerits). I would argue that this category could be used for settlements which have been re-established (this is in line with the use of the more general Category:Establishments by year) and it probably would be appropriate to place a settlement which had a pre-colonial existance in the appropriate category (eg. Category:1st millennium establishments).

I must confess not to being an expert on Sitka, Alaska; I just recategorized it from Category:1799 establishments to Category:Settlements established in 1799. If the settlement (not the general area) existed before the colonial period then it may not belong in either Category:1799 establishments or Category:Settlements established in 1799; in which case it should be removed. At any rate I don't think that this one example is sufficient reason to rename the whole category set. Greenshed 11:47, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the 1st millennium establishments link. I'm going to think a bit now. Dkreisst 08:59, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I think this category is very much problematic and has a great deal of political tone in usage - personally, i encountered it on the Afula article - a city established at 1925 or so - when the category was changed for "1925 establishments" to "settlements established at 1925". now, afula was not a "settlement" back in 1925 (long story) and right now it's a city. the term settlement implies many POV political asumtions about afula so i think this category certainly doesn't fit there. Jaakobou 21:28, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Whilst my preference is for the term "settlement", we could consider renaming to "Cities, towns and villages established in year x" or something like that. Greenshed 16:50, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Modern establishment vs actual settlement

I just noticed that the category Settlements established in 1921 was added to Naha, Okinawa. The modern city was established in 1921, yes, but that was truly just an administrative technicality, considering that not only had people been living there for centuries, but it was a proper city - a prefectural capital after 1879, a domainal capital before that, and an active and important port city for centuries before that.

Sorry. My point here isn't to argue about the identity of Naha as a "city", but to point out that in many cases, cities were formally established under a modern administrative system long after they were settled and built up. This is particularly true in a country like Japan, where the feudal pre-modern system of governance was overturned and transformed into a "modern" nation-state over the course of only a few decades. I am sure this applies equally well to countless other countries as well, and it really depends on the definition of "establishment". Is this category scheme aimed at the formal establishment of political divisions under a modern-style government, or is it talking about the actual settlement and formation of a community there under the given name? LordAmeth 23:24, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

It's for the actual settlement / formation of a community under its given name or any previous name. That said, if a settlement was abandoned and re-settled, then I think that it could be included under both its original year of establishment and its resettlement. I've reverted my own edit to Naha, Okinawa - sorry - I had misunderstood what its modern establishment meant. Greenshed 23:50, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Please, no worries. I just wanted to make sure that there was some consensus on what the category was meant to mean. Thank you very much. LordAmeth 23:55, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sweden

I want to add Swedish cities but most of them have any "founding date" like Spanish colonial cities. Instead they have dates for gaining of market-town privilegiies (Köping) and then full town privilegies when they grew enought. Which should be the year of establishment for a Swedish city or town? Dentren | Talk 14:48, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Gaining privilegies is not the same as the settling, founding or establishment of the city. If there is reliable information about the time period during which the Swedish cities first came into being then they can be added to the appropriate cat (e.g. Category:Settlements established in the 14th century). Otherwise, they don't belong here. Greenshed 16:03, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cut-off dates

Like the similar Category:Educational institutions by year of establishment, I think that we need to have cut-off dates for categorising by year, decade and century. This, in time, should avoid having categories containing only one or two articles. I propose the following be added to the category pages:

Where reliable dates exist, articles should be categorised by year for 1500 and later, by decade for 1300 to 1499 and by century for before 1300. Prior to 1500, where greater dating accuracy exists, articles should also be placed in the appropriate Establishments by year category.

If, as categorization continues, we find that some of the decade or century categories would benefit from breaking out into sub categories (ie by year or decade) then we can just amend the text and create the cats. Greenshed 19:34, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the changes for now, but as time goes the 1490s and the "14X0s" categories will be overpopulated and then it will be nessesary to create categories for each year. Dentren | Talk 14:56, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Done. As Dentren states, we can review the cut off dates in future. Greenshed 16:09, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Duplicate categories

Can anyone explain what's going on here? We seem to have two series of categories: "XXXX establishments" and "Settlements established in XXXX", and we're being advised that in some cases articles should be added to both. Surely, in line with normal WP:Categorization principles, we should be putting a settlement article in the second category only, and making that a subcategory of the relevant "XXXX establishments" category.--Kotniski (talk) 12:38, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

This category set is for categorizing settlements by the dates they first came into existance. Some editors want to see settlements categorized by incorporation as well. However, the consensus was against categorizing by date of incorporation (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2006_September_26#Category:Incorporations_by_year) and so some editors take the view that the more general "XXXX establishments" categories can be used for this purpose. Personally, I am not against having a Category:Incorporations by year category set but don't think that the Category:Establishments by year category set should be used for categorizing by incorporation. However, I don't feel strongly enough about it to pick up this particular gauntlet. The one thing I am keen on though is that category sets should be used for distinct purposes and I would be very much opposed to categorizing by both establishment and incorporation here (noting the exceptional case that a town might possibly be settled and established in the same year - hence no problem). Greenshed (talk) 19:53, 7 March 2008 (UTC)