Talk:Township

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[edit] Disambiguation

I added a disambiguation message, thought that's appropriate since this page contains multiple definitions and points to other pages styled "Township". Am I overlooking some reason this might not be appropriate? Ellsworth 22:38, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

This is more of an article than the usual list-style disambiguation page. It may be compare to chancellor, imperial guard, and municipality rather than, e.g. canton. Rather then removing the text, I'd remove msg:disambig -- User:Docu
I agree with Docu. But now someone completly deleted the article, made a small note in the wiktionary, made wikipedia township-links into external links to the wiktionary which are of less use and turned the link in the subnational entity link into a "Township (dab)" - link. I reverted 90% of this, keeping townhip in line with other subnational entity articles. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 23:23, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, but the content, such as it is, is a disambiguation page. older≠wiser 04:08, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
Feel free to extent. BTW - a lot of the content was deleted by some user. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 15:06, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
And worse yet, some user is going around making "disambiguation link repairs" to articles referencing this article, changing the link in many cases to township (United States). Sorry, but I don't agree that the distinction between American townships and other townships is great enough to warrant linking every instance of "township" to Township (United States). Sometimes, a discourse on just general townships will do nicely. (Of course, it would help if we still had that discourse available in this article.) -- SwissCelt 17:22, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
Actually, I think there is enough difference between U.S. and other places to warrant such disambiguation. Most of the content that was "deleted" was either already in sub-articles or was moved to one. My peeve with the bot that is making these changes is that in many cases it should be using a more specific link to civil township. older≠wiser 17:26, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, I should have been more clear. There is cause to disambiguate, but at the same time not every link to township warrants a disambigation to a specific national article. For example, paper township linked to township. The article on paper townships discusses those entities within the context of Ohio law; thus, it already explains the function of townships in the United States (and Ohio in particular). What may be necessary is a discourse on townships in general: What they are, how they originated, etc. -- SwissCelt 17:41, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
Actually, in that case, paper township, the link SHOULD go to township (United States) rather than to this generic topic precisely because it is a variation on the specifc forms that townships take in the U.S. older≠wiser 18:14, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
I disagree. What information about townships specific to the United States wouldn't (or at least shouldn't) already be in an article about... you guessed it, a type of township specific to the United States? It's redundant. I can see linking to civil township, and have done so with this article by way of compromise, but linking to increasingly specific, disambiguated articles strikes me as a Very Bad Idea. The result would be similar to Native American, where it seems every week some bot is "repairing" the disambiguation link to yet another new article. It's a complete waste of time for us pedants, and it's inconveniencing those who are actually using this site as a reference. -- SwissCelt 22:00, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
What information about townships specific to the United States wouldn't (or at least shouldn't) already be in an article about... you guessed it, a type of township specific to the United States? I'm not sure how to respond -- is this a rhetorical question? Are you serious that you cannot see any difference between linking to township, which is basically an augmented disambiguation page, and linking to township (United States)? Or that you are unable to see the additional contextual information in township (United States) about how townships have developed and function in the U.S. that is not in paper township? I don't entirely disagree with linking to civil township, but to be honest, paper township right now is so poorly written that I could not tell whether such townships are actually functional units of civil government or are only some sort of vestigal paper entity without separate governmental powers. older≠wiser 01:54, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
Are you serious that you cannot see any difference between linking to township, which is basically an augmented disambiguation page, and linking to township (United States)? Or that you are unable to see the additional contextual information in township (United States) about how townships have developed and function in the U.S. that is not in paper township? Neither. I'm stating that the contextual information about how townships have developed and function in the U.S. (Ohio, specifically) should be written in the article paper township, and that contextual information about the initial purpose of townships should be written in the article township. That this information is not presently in those articles is no excuse for a person (or worse, a bot) to guess at the intent, and lead reader and editor alike down an endless stream of needless disambiguation. What's next: Township (Ohio)? How about Township (Podunk County, Anystate)?
to be honest, paper township right now is so poorly written that I could not tell whether such townships are actually functional units of civil government or are only some sort of vestigal paper entity without separate governmental powers. Then edit the article. Or don't. But don't try to fix it in the links. That benefits no one. -- SwissCelt 05:33, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
the contextual information about how townships have developed and function in the U.S. (Ohio, specifically) should be written in the article paper township, and that contextual information about the initial purpose of townships should be written in the article township. Sorry, but I think this approach is extremely bad. Paper township should be about Paper townships, not about the broader spectrum of how townships developed in the U.S. The specific case of paper townships is one specific case which contrasts with how townships developed in the rest of the U.S. Inserting the U.S. contextual information into an minor article about a limited set of instances results in forking of information, which is in general not a good thing. That this information is not presently in those articles is no excuse for a person (or worse, a bot) to guess at the intent, and lead reader and editor alike down an endless stream of needless disambiguation. This is in now way needless disambiguation. It is locating the appropriate context. Township is far too general to provide any useful context. IMO, it would be better as a pure disambiguation page. But some apparently want to see it as some sort of article. Fine. But even at best, it will only provide a fairly superficial overview with pointers to more detailed subarticles. Why link to such a useless article, when you can link directly to an article that provides appropriate context? What's next: Township (Ohio)? How about Township (Podunk County, Anystate)? If necessary, sure. The functioning of townships varies considerably from state to state. There already is a Township (New Jersey). But IMO, in such cases it would probably be better to consolidate such information into an article describing all the varieties of local government in a state. But don't try to fix it in the links. That benefits no one. Baloney. IMO, adding a better link is an improvement worth making. older≠wiser 13:01, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
but IMO from the US-, Canada-, SA- etc township pages the links should go to "Township" and not to wiktionary. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 19:50, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
I agree the linking to Wiktionary is odd. If a more specific link is not known, then linking to township is better than linking to wiktionary. older≠wiser 20:19, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

This article makes no sense —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zellian (talk • contribs) 20:58, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Russian ref

I found and cut down in length:

  • In the context of Russia, the Soviet Union, and CIS states, the term is sometimes used to denote a small semi-urban, sometimes industrial, settlement and used to translate the terms поселок городского типа (townlet), посад (posad), местечко (mestechko, from Polish "miasteczko", a small town; in the cases of predominant Jewish population the latter is sometimes translated as shtetl).

--Commander Keane 15:48, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Aren't Canton and Township the same thing

See discussion in Talk:Canton (subnational entity) Nfitz 04:39, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] England

Townships exist in ... England

Removed this reference to English townships since they no longer exist. (References is made later in the article to the English township as an obsolete legal entitity.) -- Picapica 14:45, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Municipalities in Croatia

Croatian municipalities today aren't the exact equivalent of township because township is a single settlement wich is an administrative unit, while most croatian municipalities today consist out of groups of villages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.1.24.166 (talk) 14:23, 17 December 2007 (UTC)