Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities/Archive 2

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Misc.

Linking population density

Should we link all the mentions of population density in the city articles et al? We link square kilometers, after all.. -- Sam

If you look at [1] you can see that all of Sweden links it. Could the Ram-Bot (or another bot) link all the US cities?

Impact

Is it wise to add these hundreds and hundreds of entries on invididual cities in the middle of the day? It slows down the server to the point where it is very difficult edit articles or enter new ones...never mind hoping they will be seen on the Recent Changes list.

See newer policy addressing this at Wikipedia:Bots.

Non-US cities and states?

This WikiProject so far only deals with U.S. Cities (since it was copied from U.S. States) however a city is generic enough that this WikiProject can apply to them all. How should non-U.S. states be named? -- Ram-Man September 22, 2002

Old Talk

I don't know if anyone will read and respond to this before I just go ahead and figure out what to do, but I have a problem. I was working on the Towns and Cities of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania using the data provided by the United States Census Bureau. Now the state is divided up into governing bodies lower than the county. Such bodies include boroughs, townships, and CDP (not sure what it stands for).

Just a note: Census-Designated Place. See any of the counties in Maryland for examples. -- BRG

The problem is this. Townships are not unique to one and only one place. That is, a simple city name of "CITY, STATE" will not be sufficient uniquely identify a city. In fact some towns, like Ephrata, Pennsylvania are both a borough and a township. This may not pose a problem for some towns (like Ephrata), but the township name may be repeated in various counties across the state. Thus, a person looking for Brecknock in Allegheny County may get the page for the Brecknock in Lancaster County, and unless they are a native, they won't know the data is the wrong data. And the people in each township *think* that they live in *the* Brecknock. Also, the famed Intercourse, Pennsylvania is not even an official borough or township. There are many towns that are like that. My guess is that they simply lack a governing body in the town (too small or whatever). But these names could theoretically be used as official names elsewhere causing a naming conflict. I am almost positive that similar naming conflicts can exist in other states (but maybe not all). Is the solution to develop a different (and much more cumbersome) naming system? How can we solve this problem? Or do we just ignore it? -- Ram-Man

I don't really have a strong feeling about including population in the introduction. It is a duplication but giving it also in the introduction does help to give a quick impression of the place decided. The city/town/village continuum is very flexible. What the people of sparsely populated Alaska consider to be a city could have New Yorkers rolling in the aisles with laughter. There needs to be enough flexibility to adapt to local circumstances.
Dan makes an interesting point, it may be typical of a lot of people who live in a town that dominates the surrounding county. People outside of Newton are more likely to associate it with its county. Virginia is interesting in that it considers its major cities as apart from counties.
While I'm here I should mention that I've started to question the wisdom of creating a link for every little town. In the little work that I've done, mostly by random selection with West Virginia, I've found a tremendous number of places where the current population does not exist at all. Many of these names come from the US Geological Surveys Website or from a huge number os scraps of paper with name origins that I won in an auction lot. In my wildest dreams, I do not expect that any more than one or two lines can ever be written about some of them. I found it not very worthwhile to start creating an endless series of stubs, and have opted instead to add the one or two lines to the appropriate county page. Eclecticology
I ran into the same problem in Connecticut, where there are towns and townships and boroughs with the same name. We probably ought to just create one page for all of them and indicate on that page that there are different places. -- Zoe
I don't feel right about that, especially since one township name in PA is used by like 5 or 6 counties. That suggests to me that we should have some kind of naming system to keep them apart. A disambiguation page is fine, but they should all have unique names. Somehow we need to have the township , the county and state. Take "Washington township" for example. We could have [[Washington, Pennsylvania (Lancaster County)]] or [[Washington, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania]]. Does it matter? But for something simple like the town I was born in, Ephrata, Pennsylvania should include both the township and the borough on the same page and just explain the differences under the "Law and Government" heading.
Well, then I vote for Washington, Pennsylvania (Lancaster County). -- Zoe
I got off track trying to track down the Brecknock Townships that you mentioned, and could not find one in Allegheny County as you suggested. I did find one in Berks County which makes mere sense since it is adjacent to Lancaster County, and the two townships are themselves adjecent. See http://pasdc.hbg.psu.edu/pasdc/Search/Search.html and http://dgmweb.net/genealogy/6/PA/PA-Cos.htm
In any event and in both occurrences of Brecknock the word "Township" is a part of the name, so it must be a part of the article title in the same way that the word county is a part of a county's name. This is not the case for most boroughs but using it is certainly a consideration when it is something distinct from the city or town. The word "borough" seems to mean different things in different places though and I would avoid it unless it's absolutely necessary. I did raise the issue during the course of the city name disambiguation discussion, and proposed the [city, county, state] format when it would be needed because there are two or more uses of the same name in the same state. Based on the above this would give us [Brecknock Township, Lancaster, Pennsylvania] and [Brecknock Township, Berks, Pennsylvania]] The word "county" can be left out here since it's only purpose is as a disambiguator, but I still tend to use it for counties whose name is the same as that of a state. For Ephrata you would then have [Ephrata, Pennsylvania], [Ephrata Township, Pennsylvania] and [Ephrata, Washington]. I hope this helps. Eclecticology
PS- I've actually visited Ephrata, PA! Reading Thomas Mann's novel Doctor Faustus had made me curious about hearing Beissel's musical style.
PS2- CDP = Census Designated Place.
It seems a waste to me to have both [Ephrata, Pennsylvania], [Ephrata Township, Pennsylvania]. Wouldn't it be simple to just add a new heading to the city which explains the cities within a township (at least in this context a township includes multiple towns and may or may not be a town itself). Or even simpler, forget making two, just put the information in under the Government heading. If we do separate them, there is very little to say in an article on [Ephrata Township, Pennsylvania]. It would be a poor excuse for an article. Oh, and I prefer the city, county, state format with the word "County" removed. -- Ram-Man
For sure. Especially if the town is in the township of the same name. There's always a need to look at each case on its own merits. If you combine them now, nothing prevents us at a later time from dividing them when there is adequate material. Eclecticology
Regarding that city, county, state format with the word "County" removed: I really, really do not like removing the word "county" there. Nobody refers to most counties by their name without the word "county" and in the specific case of Pennsylvania (which seems to have prompted this thread) I have heard of "Springfield, Delaware County" actually used to distinguish it from the other Springfield in the Philadelphia suburbs. -- BRG
I think that a simple redirect should work too. As was said above, it is mainly for disambiguation purposes rather than the name of the place. -- Ram-Man
I agree with BRG here; the word "County" must not be removed, or you've created a bizarre name monstrosity that no one would ever come close to producing spontaneously. --Brion 02:10 Oct 21, 2002 (UTC)
Than we shall keep the word "County" (or "Parish" or "Census Area") to avoid any additional problems. -- Ram-Man

doton-maps for Texas?

I was hoping to make one of those nifty DOTON maps for FA candidate Marshall, Texas, but I can't seem to find the map of texas image without one of the counties highlighted. Would anyone happen to know where the blank is located? Secondly, given that Texas is so bloody huge that the city's position within the county will not be terribly clear, I'm inclined to think that (unlike the example on Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities) only a zoomed-in part of Texas should be shown. Has this already been discussed somewhere? -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 02:04, 22 May 2004 (UTC)


City template

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump on Saturday, September 13th, 02003.

I think it would be beneficial to have a standard template for creating pages about Cities and other things. Does this concept exist in wiki? I mean when I create a page rather than looking for a page about a city and copying it and then replacing the info with info about the new city, it would be nice if on creation I could say "use City template" and it would insert all the text with fill in the blank information.

This would also make the pages feel consistant.

Yes, the general concept is the "WikiProject". Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities isn't particularly good at the moment, but if there was a template that's where it would be. -- Tim Starling 05:30, Sep 12, 2003 (UTC)
The template is US-Centeric A.T.M. take a look at this template, its for an icelandic town. I thing that thing needs internationalisation ASAP.

I'm thinking there should be a subheading like Architecture or Notable Buildings ... or "Notable Buildings and Public Works" (e.g. bridges)... or... well... something like that. What do others think? Dpbsmith 03:23, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)


Big City Details Table

Just did a circuit of some of the bigger U.S. city pages and thought there might be a use elsewhere for this table I just cooked up, since several of the city pages have the city flag and/or seal in the page layout. If it's of use, have fun, if not, ignore away. :) jengod 19:10, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

Image:Losangelescityseal.jpg Los Angeles city flag
(Seal of Los Angeles) (Flag of Los Angeles)
Nickname: The City of Angels
Mayor: James Hahn
City Flower: Birds of paradise
City Tree: Coral tree

Template:SampleWikiProject


Re: Proposed infobox on meta-page. I've been thinking about making a citybox for awhile now, and I have some suggestions:

May want to add a color somewhere (see Wikipedia:Infobox -- not required, but often nice)
Add a box for the current mayor
Add a box for the form of municipal government used
Consider how to make one for cities like Baltimore, Maryland or Richmond, Virginia, which are independent cities not part of any county
Consider using two different cityboxes -- one for a relatively small number of extremely large cities (New York, London, Tokyo, LA) and a larger one for smaller cities. Using Frederick, Maryland has a few landmarks and claims-to-fame: "Francis Scott Key" and Fort Detrick come to mind. It would be a Good Thing to put the two or three most famous or interesting facts about a medium-sized city in the citybox IMO, btu obviously wouldn't work for New York City or Paris.

I think I have a few more comments cogitating, but I gotta go now.

Tuf-Kat 22:05, Feb 20, 2004 (UTC)

FYI... I've now completed adding town highlight maps for all 251 towns in Vermont Redjar 15:53, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I would like to add the latitude and longitude measurements to the city articles, however I want to know how to format it. I have can provide the information in decimal form or "degrees, minutes, seconds" form, or both. Also, what should they look like? -- Ram-Man

How about: "The {place type} is located at 34.11210 N, 118.41120 W." Yeah, I know correct decimal degree notation uses a minus sign for the Southern and Western Hem. but I think this form will work for the decimal degree camp and the old-school degree, minute, second camp. This is also the form that U.S. Gazetteer (1990) uses (available via http://dict.org ). --Dan

Yes, but some others look possibly more attractive, such as: 34.11210&deg North, 118.41120° West. Or what about this: 4°25'21" North, 118°41'12" West. Of course we could always do *both*: 4°25'21" (34.11210°) North, 118°41'12" (118.41120°) West. I vote for the latter, though I prefer the "Degrees, Minutes, Seconds" format. -- RM

That looks good to me - although I've never seen it like that before. BTW, is it really necessary to have so much precision for something as large as a town or city? Wouldn't 2 or 3 decimal places do just fine? Then again using the standard figures does have advantages. How about we use something nice and attractive (such as the older degree, minute, second format) for the main text and then have the very precise decimal degree info in parenthesis? --Dan

This is what I was thinking of: 34°25'21" North, 118°41'12" West (34.11210, -118.41120) --Dan

That seems easier on the eyes too. I like that. -- RM

Coolness. Then both camps get their the notation they like. --Dan

What about this slight mod? 34°25'21" North, 118°41'12" West (34.11210°, -118.41120°) -- RM

The ° symbol is not used in decimal degree notation. --Dan
Hehe, yes I just realized that ;-) -- RM

With regards to city coordinates, I added the precision so that if anyone wanted, they could find the place easily. I don't know if it is usable with GPS because i've never used it, but I figured the more precise the better. I would prefer to keep the seconds, but I rounded off the decimal places for newer articles. The decimal notation will have all the precision that one might need, since it will be more precise than the "degrees, minutes, seconds" notation. Hope this is fine! I have been looking around, and at least some of the Census Bureau's stuff is in NAD83 format. I don't know if this applies, but it may. -- RM

Excellant! Yes, the seconds are fine and I have no real problem with them if they are extressed in whole seconds. Also, the only people who might ever need such extreme precision would be using decimal degrees and not degree, minute, second notation anyway. --mav
Did you want me to change the format or add anything else (besides the rounded off seconds values)? -- RM
I did put forward some ideas in an email I sent you. But the elements I talk about can be added later (such as a ==References== section). --mav
I'd prefer to add a reference to one controlled page, such as [[U.S. City References|<sup>1</sup>]] rather than add the same data each of 30,000 pages. I don't know if you noticed, but I did place my references in the WikiProject Cities. An alternative, and maybe this is what you meant, would be to have a page like this:
== References ==
U.S. City References
That works for me. Although one thing to consider is how useful that would be in print form. But I do understand that from a maintenance viewpoint having one page is best. I leave that choice to you since you are the one doing most of the maintenance. --mav
I did think about having it in a printed format, and although that is not the chief goal of wikipedia (with links being not well-suited to print), it would be by far the easiest solution to stick the single link in and avoiding the "== References ==" stuff altogether. Later if we want the references on every page in a print, or even just a note at the bottom of the page, the bot can do a single pass over the articles and simply replace the link with the appropriate information. -- RM
"...avoiding the "== References ==" stuff altogether." So where would the link be linked from within the article? --mav
I was thinking about using superscripts within the article, such as in this example: Autaugaville is located at 32°25'56.676" North, 86°39'12.132" West (32.432410, -86.653370)1. That said, what should the name of the references page be called? What namespace should it be in? -- RM
Make it 32°25'57" North, 86°39'12" West (32.432410, -86.653370)1 and I'll be happy. :) Good question on the name... Since the idea of having a credits:namespace never caught on I guess that only leaves us with the wikipedia:namespace... But I'm not at all excited about having a Wikipedia page linked from so many articles though since this establishes a bad precedent. I'm stumped. Maybe we should revisit this idea on the mailing list. Perhaps somebody else will have a good idea. If you need to get to work soon, I don't see a big problem with creating links to U.S. City References. We can move the page to a better title later and redirects will make everything work. --mav
I'm going to call it Geographic References so that I can use it for Counties and so forth. -- RM
Sounds good to me. --mav


I don't know if this is mentioned anywhere: I put this in the intro of Buffalo, New York:

"The city is also famous as the birthplace of .. Ani DiFranco"

Is there anwhere else it could/should go? --Sam

The only place I think it would belong is the first paragraph, in which you summarize what the town's "claim to fame" is. And always mention who the person is, as in: "The city is also famous as the birthplace of singer/songwriter Ani DiFranco, (born 1970)." If a person did something to make the town famous while living there, then that event could be included in the History section, but I can't think of anyone (except the first test tube baby) whose birth was an important historical event. GUllman 17:20 Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)
Well, there is the question of the relative importance to encyclopedia readers of the place and the person. Jerry Lee Lewis is a lot more important than Ferriday, Louisiana, but Buffalo, New York is a lot more important than Ani DiFranco. The articles on the people should always give the birthplace, but while Jerry Lee (and his two piano-pounding cousins) made Ferriday famous, Ani did not really do much for making Buffalo famous. I wouldn't put it in the first paragraph in any case, but for a major city I imagine a list of "local notables" would be more appropriate. Theodore Roosevelt was born there too, but even that wouldn't make the first paragraph of an article about a city that has been there more than 200 years. Ortolan88 PS -- It's not polite to delete huge chunks of talk pages. The usual practice is to archive them and leave a note behind when they get too big. O88
Oops, for Theodore Roosevelt read Herman Hollerith. That dope, Ortolan88
Very few celebrities "made a city famous" during the time they lived there, but many cities today take advantage of, even depend on, the tourism that is generated by their association with a famous person. The houses where they lived are significant tourist sites; streets and motels are named after them; gift shops sell knicknacks and t-shirts with the person's picture on them. You can't get near Hannibal, Missouri without seeing Mark Twain's name everywhere. So, if there are public displays or some benefit to the local economy -- if a resident or visitor could tell just by looking around that Ani DiFranco was from Buffalo, New York, then mention it in the introduction. Otherwise, readers can click on "What links here" for a list of the less famous people and events associated with the city. GUllman

The auto-generated Demographics sections are so staggeringly minute and dull that they interfere with reading; I suspect lots of city article content never gets seen because readers don't figure there could be anything interesting after statistics about "89.43% of households". How about changing the recommended template so the census detail is at the very end, after references and links? People who are really interested in that kind of thing can still find it, but it doesn't get in the way of the average reader. Stan 18:42 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)

That is a Wikipedia-wide standard Stan. Of course the history section should always be before the demographics section. Hm. It would be neat if Rambot put HTML comments in the city articles explaining where to put the history sections. I have corrected a great many city articles where newbies but the history section at the very end. It also might be interesting to experiment with right aligned tables to visually display the demographic information with percent bars and different colors. That way a person, at a glance, can get a quick feel for the makeup of the town. I'm sure if somebody made a nice mock up then Ramman may consider sicking Rambot on the convertion. --mav
It seems like every few months I have to run the rambot over the articles to do *something* with them to make some global change. If someone wants to work up some new format, we can see what we can do about it. I'd be ok with that idea. -- RM
This just seems like a case where the standard causes useful information to be overlooked because the demographic data is larger than everything else about the town put together. For countries the problem is solved by pushing the data into a separate article, leaving only a single link behind, but of course that's overkill for cities. A graphical version would be a much superior alternative and could maybe be made more compact too. Stan 01:09 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Feel free to suggest some format. Nevertheless, I've seen articles which have a reasonably large geography section in which the census sourced data plays on a fraction of the total. Personally sticking the generated stuff towards the bottom seems sufficient to me. It should be noted that this demographic data *is* useful. I know a number of examples where the information in these articles has been useful for some family question or something. I don't know if you could make a table that would contain all the information. And if you did, most of the existing articles would become tables and not articles. Just a thought. -- Ram-Man 02:16 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I've created the Geographic references article as a general source for the references that the city and county articles use. My question is, should I place an explicit reference to them at the bottom of the page or are the existing inline citations sufficient? e.g.
== Reference==
*[[Geographic references]]


No articles

I have created Wikipedia:US cities without articles to place all cities linked to but without articles. Most should probably be redirected, I think, but maybe not... In any case, all the links should be filled with something. Tuf-Kat 04:38, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)

Hispanic, Asian in Rambot data

Please have a look at Wikipedia_talk:Bots#Disambiguation_Bot_.2F_Rambot_data. -- User:Docu

Cities, towns, CDPs, etc.

This is a current disagreement: should there be a duplication of population size for a city in the introduction? Is it redundant or is it important enough information to be added to an introduction? -- Ram-Man

A city is defined more by its population than any other factor and to have the population down amongst the standardized "tabular" information seems to be a mistake. By the same token, Denver's height above sea level might be in the first paragraph and appear again in the geography section. I see no harm in giving the population twice, but please put a date and a source on the data, at least in the tabular section.
Is the population the number of people inside the city limits or the number in the metropolitan area (as defined by census or other official body, not the chamber of commerce)? I live in a city Newton, Massachusetts that is also part of the Boston metropolitan area. There is no Newton metropolitan area.
By the way, "city" is a legal classification in Massachusetts. We also have "towns" and there are real differences between them. Towns can have town meetings, for instance. Ortolan88
All information is from the United States Census Bureau, which I will state. They list whether it is a "town" or "city" or "village" or whatever it might be. That is what I use in the articles. There are different ways to define towns. Some people define a town by its legal limits, the postal address, and other factors. As such, when this information is valid for the Census Bureau, it may not be the same as some other body. (I previously didn't site the source of data, and I should have!) All these differences can be noted in the article. -- Ram-Man
I added data to Newton, Massachusetts to show an example of the articles. -- Ram-Man
Sorry, I didn't realize this was an example page, so I edited it. I grew up in Newton, and I think most people from Newton would agree it's very clunky to start out by saying that it's part of Middlesex County. I didn't know what county I was in until I had left. The only reason you ever pay attention to the counties is when you go to court. DanKeshet
All of the other city entries include the county along with the state. It may be that in some states, like Massachusetts, that such a description is odd sounding. In fact I am sure there are a lot of little differences among states and counties and such that I have no idea about. I think I will just have to let others fix my mistakes. Still I would suggest keeping the county because it a) is what all the others are like, and b) it makes my life easier ;-) BTW, it is a real page, and editing it is fine as it helps me to get an idea how to improve the entries I will be adding. -- Ram-Man
I added lots of local color to Newton. Every contributor should look up the town they live in, the town they were born in, the town they went to college in, etc. and add to it. Counties too. Ortolan88

People who live in Deer Park, New York (on Long Island) "actually" reside in Babylon Township. There are many other "cities" which are really part of a larger administrative or political unit. The neat CITY, STATE format works great when addressing a letter -- the zip code will disambiguate. But how do we handle Deer Park, et al.? --Ed Poor

New York is one of those odd states with a much more difficult layout. I think I may have to skip the articles for that state and figure it out later. The census bureau defines Deer Park as a CDP with a population and all. It also defines Babylon (calls it a town for some reason). It gives both places a different code (suggesting that one is contained in the other) but does not specify the relationships. I suppose someone is going to have to edit each entry and add the appropriate information. But I think the county entries already have much of that data, so it should be fairly easy... just not automated. As mentioned in a discussion above, Pennsylvania is also strange in that it has boroughs (towns) and townships with the same names. It causes more problems :) -- Ram-Man
The reason it calls Babylon a town is that it is a town under New York State law. Ed Poor is wrong in referring to "Babylon Township": New York does not have anything called a "township" but its towns are what, in other states like New Jersey and Pennsylvania, would be called townships. And in those towns (or townships in those states where they are so called) there may be villages or other entities. Each state may have to be treated separately. In Maryland, for example, a town is an incorporated place, like a village, and may have fewer than 100 people. Yet there are places like Silver Spring that are bigger than any city in Maryland except Baltimore, but have no official status except that the Census Bureau has made them a CDP (the USGS and USPS also recognize Silver Spring, but it is entirely governed as an an unincorporated area of Montgomery County). -- BRG


We have not had a naming question in a while. First it was how to disambiguate cities ([[City, State]]). Then it was how to disambiguate cities that are duplicated within a same place ([[City, XXX County, State]]). Now I have another problem. Some places are located in the same state AND county. These places differ *only* by their designation: "city", "town", "village", or "Census Designated Place". These terms are not part of the name. What would be a good way to represent this?

Bethel (town), Fairfield County, Connecticut and Bethel (CDP), Fairfield County, Connecticut

or something else? -- Ram-Man

Perhaps Bethel, east Fairfield County, Conneticut, for some. What else would differentiate them? Someone from that county might know... -- Sam
My guess is that these are really one in the same place, just that one place contains a larger area than the other. There are a large number of such things. Maybe the "town" is the legal limits but the "CDP" is what the census bureau uses for the town and surrounding area. Just a suspicion. In any case, they have different data associated with them. If I had to choose just one, i'd have no idea which one to choose. -- RM
Perhaps someone at the census bureau could help? Otherwise, each case will have to be looked at... are there other sources for the same information? -- Sam

Orphaned towns, villages, cities, and CDP

To prevent naming conflicts, many towns, villages, cities, and CDP's were named by RamBot in the following format: "TownName (town), State", "VillageName (village), State", "CityName (city), State", and CDPName (CDP), State". Many (most?) of these pages are orphaned because most people don't add the (town), (village), (city), or (CDP) to the wiki link. For example, many of the county pages link to town names without the proper syntax. My recommendation is to create redirect pages from, "TownName, State" to the page that the user expects. For instance, if there is a town and a village with the same name, most people will want to be directed to the town. If there is ambiguity whether the user would want the (town), (village), (city), or (CDP) the most "popular" page should be the main page and a note (see also?) should be added the page that links to the others. Or if it is unclear which page should be the primary page, a disambiguation page should be created with links to each. Is there anything wrong with this plan? A list of orphaned pages can be found here: Wikipedia:Articles orphaned without redirects. If you do any clean-up, please remove the entry from that page.

Rather than assuming what a user is looking for (town, village, city, county or CDP), I suggest that you create a disambiguation page at PlaceName, State containing links to all the entities. See Canandaigua, New York for example.
According to the disambiguation guidelines: "Do not disambiguate, or add a link to a disambiguation page, if there is no risk of confusion. Ask yourself: When a reader enters this term and pushes "Go", would they expect to view any of the articles listed on the disambiguation page?" It may be different in other states, but in Vermont (where I'm from and the towns I've been working on) people in normal communication refer to a town as: "Hyde Park". If they are talking about the village (a subset of town) they will say: "Hyde Park Village". So if someone enters "Hyde Park, Vermont" in the search box, and presses the "Go" button, they definitely expect to go to the town page. Again, this may be different in other states, and a disambiguation page is probably more necessary in states that have multiple towns with the same name. - Redjar 13:21, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • Yes, if there it is clear that one is the principal entity then there's no problem with redirecting to that, though it should probably include a link to the other similar to how Lou I describes below in Essex, Massachusetts. Problem is that editors like me who are not familiar with an area sometimes have to disamabiguate without knowing for sure what the locals would consider to be the principal entity. When in doubt, I give them all equal weight. Bkonrad | Talk 13:52, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
There is related discussion at the bottom of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Counties and a note at Talk:Census-designated place. In New York, specifically, a village population is always repeated in (included in) that of the town in which the village stands, while a city is not. My own choice for how to hanle the situation is to put the city article at the main name and then have a (town) article. I'd reverse this on the others and use one article at [[Placename, New York]] for the town and then use [[Placename (village), New York]] for the second entry. See Essex, Massachusetts for a sample of how to link the articles. A related problem in New York, for places like Shortsville, New York, is that you hav to go back and figure out what town it is part of. Lou I 12:08, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I noticed this problem, too, when I came across the empty Freeport, Maine. is empty. Freeport (town), Maine is the only Freeport in Maine, as far as I can tell. Is there an automated or semi-automated way to fix this problem, since it's a systematic error? --Beland 06:32, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)