Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities/Archive 3

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Archive 1 September 2002
Archive 2 November 2004 (partial)

Contents

Advice for writers

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

What should one include in an encyclopedia article about a town? I would keep in mind the three types of people who will look for the article: people who live in that town (or nearby) who are just curiously browsing Wikipedia, tourists planning to visit the town, and historians and genealogists who want background on the town to help them find historical records, and learn how its history might have influenced the historical person or ancestor that once lived there. For the first and second groups, there are already plenty of commercial and tourism sites and chambers of commerce feeding their web sites to Google. I think the encyclopedia would be most useful if it would just summarize what the town's state or national "claim to fame" is, for the civic pride of its residents, and to attract the interest of the non-residents. The history buffs and genealogists would most appreciate knowing the current and past county and county seats, dates of founding and incorporation, origin of the town name and famous residents and historical events -- all of which would provide useful links to these entries.
GUllman 19:36 Dec 16, 2002 (UTC)

Internationalization

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

Shouldn't this page be called "WikiProject U.S. Cities"? It seems purely US-centric at present...

That is not clear. To date there have been no people from outside the U.S. who have been interested in this project. Nevertheless, I am not aware that cities differ all that much from country to country. The information for U.S. cities is probably very similar to non-U.S. cities. I would think all that needs to be done is update this to talk a little more about the other cities. We just need someone with an interest. -- Ram-Man
OK, I have some interest (I am living in Connecticut, but originally come from Australia). I have come across several pages for cities outside the US that don't even have the country as part of the name, let alone the state (or province or whatever). Some cities are well known, but others are less well known. What should the title of these articles be? For example, should it be Brisbane, Brisbane, Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, or Brisbane, Australia? Maybe this has already been discussed and agreed on somewhere before, but I haven't seen it yet.
The naming of US cities seems to assume that everyone that reads the Wikipedia (at least the English version) knows or at least has a passing acquaintance with all the American states. Even if that is true, it is unlikely that most readers will know the states/provinces of all or even most countries. But maybe they don't need to. Let's assume, to be consistent with the US naming convention we use City, State. Even in the rare case where the same state name exists in two different countries, we could always use a disambiguation page. So in this situation should we make Brisbane, Queensland the actual article, and have the others redirect to there? (leaving of course the disambiguation page, and the redirect from Brisbane to it? Nanobug 03:22 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)


Suburbs

Where do the suburbs fit? - User:utcursch May 14, 2004

  • This is certainly an interesting question, but I'm afraid the answer must be developed country by country. Just as you are working on Bombay, others are working on London, New York, Sidney, etc.
  • In the U.S. there are still no general answer. Often we are referring to a neighborhood within a city's limits (see Covedale, Ohio). Other times the relationship is just a note in the article on a neighboring city (see Cheviot, Ohio). There are places (like St. Bernard, Ohio) where residents are offended by the reference and refuse to consider themselves a suburb, even though completely surrounded by Cincinnati.
  • In some instances there is a metropolitan government entity, such as Greater Manchester in England.

In short, I don't think there is a single answer, but there may be several templates that could be shared or adjusted for projects involving a major city. Lou I 20:18, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

Information on suburbs

I'm somewhat dissapointed at the lack of information in many of the suburb articles. For example, in the Salt Lake City article, it only lists information that is within the strict political boundaries of the city. However, locations that everyone knows about, such as Cottonwood Mall in Holladay, Utah (a suburb of Salt Lake) to provide an example, are not included because no one seems to write up extensive information on suburbs. Either that or region articles need to have the same layout as city articles, such as attractions and transportation. Or, we have information on the suburbs in the main city article, just referencing that it's not in the core city. For another suggestion, how about providing the same layout for cities (including suburbs), regions, counties, townships, etc? All in all, I feel that the work on suburbs has been subpar, at least in some cases, such as Salt Lake City (I haven't looked at the suburb articles of some of the larger cities). Any thoughts?


CDP Naming Policy

(Moved from Talk:Census-designated place) Almost all of the CDP entries in Wikipedia came from the Rambot (machine generated) entries created from U.S. Census Bureau data. Handling them in the Wikipedia is sometimes tricky. As the article states, their population and demographics are almost always included in the aggregate numbers reported for another census district. The tricky part is that it may be several districts, and the handing is not universal. The examples given in the article only scratch the surface of truly accurate handling. The 'Tiger maps' of the census districts need o be compared to the political maps of the state or county.

Examples

To try and make the issues clearer, I'll give several examples of things I've found:

  • A village or central settlement within a New England (or New York) town. Usually this is straight forward, but I have found cases where the CDP was actually part of two different towns, even though it was named for one of them.
  • A former village that had been annexed to a city. These are usually straight forward, in that te area is usually still known by name to the residents as a neighborhood.
  • Partial annexation is more devious. A former village or town was dis-incorporated, with most of it annexed to another town of city. But, some parts are now reported as part of adjacent townships, or two cities split it.
  • In some instances where a city is in multiple counties, the CDP is used for the extension into the neighboring county. But, this isn't always thee case. A separate district is always used, but the full demographic reporting for a CDP may not be in the census data.
  • I've also found at least one instance where the CDP totals are not included in any other reporting entity short of the County and State totals.

The net of this discussion is that I recommend treating the CDP as a minor demographic information article, giving it some treatment that makes it obvious that it is less important than other place names. See Amesbury, Massachusetts for an example. This suggestion should be used cautiously, due to the inconsistencies outlined above.

-- Lou I 09:37, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This is a well thought out and well researched proposal. When I created the articles, I assumed that there would be less of a policy decision and more of locals sorting it out. This means that articles live in a state of flux for a while, but at some point someone who knows the particular area learns about what they really are and does something about them. I would even allow that in some cases the census bureau's designation may be PURELY for census taking purposes and have NO real bearing on reality. In that case, you should add the option to simply delete the page from Wikipedia, as it does not correspond to reality and only contains census data. (And I'd like to know about it so that I can keep the database updated). It would also be nice, but not required, that the names of the articles stays the same for maintenance purposes. -- Ram-Man 16:41, Jun 18, 2004 (UTC)



Data quality and presentation

Climate

I'd like to suggest that a climate section be added to the standard layout for cities. There is climate data for major U.S. cities available from NOAA at http://ols.nndc.noaa.gov/plolstore/plsql/olstore.prodspecific?prodnum=C00095-PUB-A0001#TABLES We could construct a table which would contain the average daily minimum temperature, avg daily max temperature, average daily wind speed, average precipitation, etc. for each month of the year. I think this process could even possibly be somewhat automated. Also, the USDA hardiness zone for plants might also be included. --H2O 03:08, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree, I think that climate is an important factor when providing information for a city. It has more of an effect on everything than most people seem to realize and is important to a city's growth/development, and deserves to be included in the standard layout. bob rulz 11:10, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)

Template submission

Hi all. I've been motivated to find a sidebar table for U.S. Cities (specifically but not exclusively), mainly to find a new way to catalog all the robot-inserted census and demographics data that currently overtakes the wide majority of city/town pages, and which city page editors have to awkardly write around.

Please take a look at User:KeithTyler/City table draft/Lynn and User:KeithTyler/City table draft/Rochester for my draft examples. (The images are placeholders and are not correct. :) ) They do not include all of the census data and I wonder:

  • Does all of it need to be stated? (For example, land area + water area = land area, so listing all three is unnecessary, as is percentage of water area.)
  • Does all of it need to be included in a template? (Could the major points be put into the template, with the text of the Demographics section moved to a sub-article (Demographics of Lynn, Massachusetts for example) to retain those details?)
  • I'm not sure about "government type" but I think some indication of the city/town government structure is encyclopedic. Unfortunately I don't know what the official terms for each sort of structure are (for example: city manager and city council with popularly-elected mayor, city manager and city council with council-elected mayor, city mayor and city council where mayor is also city manager, town council, etc., etc.).
  • Should city manager (where one exists) be included at all? Is it an important detail?
  • Any other comments...

Thanks, KeithTyler 23:49, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

I like these a lot. Here are a few suggestions:
  • Spell out "latitude" and "longitude."
  • Include total area and water area.
  • Most demographics do not deserve subarticles. The could be good in a subtable, but I don't see that as a priority.
  • Concerning "government type," I think your examples are on the right track.
  • I would keep the city manager info. They often last longer than mayors and can have more influence over a city's day-to-day functioning.
Maurreen 02:42, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. Do you really think water area is necessary if total area and land area are already given? Given those two, determining water area is a no-brainer. Unless someone knows of a city where land area + water area is less than total area. :)

I edited my examples to remove the bulk of the demographic data, and added a few items like congressional district and postal codes. - KeithTyler 18:08, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)

Miscellaneous observations older≠wiser 20:09, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure that it is obvious that total-land=water. Sure, if you think about it, of course it is, but I don't think we force people to deduce what is meant and then do a calculation as well. Could perhaps reformat a bit to save space--there is a lot of white space in that area now.
  • As for government type--isn't that a bit redundant with the label that appears at the top of the table? E.g., "City of Lynn". But to me, that is more the type of municipality (city, village, town/township) than the type of government (city council/council-manager/strong-mayor/board of trustees/etc.) [Note: I was looking at the Lynn example--I see the Rochester example is different]. It is worthwhile to describe the government type, though that would take some research for each entity and so would likely need to be optional.
    • That is part of the problem. I don't know that there are codified names for these different types of city governments, though they certainly are different. And unfortunately no, the full name of a city is not necessarily indicative of its government type (for example, the city of Agawam, Massachusetts is officially called "Town of Agawam"). - KeithTyler
      • Yeah, there are a lot of oddities with naming and it varies considerably from state to state. I don't recall the specific name, but there is a city in Michigan with the official name "City of the Village of XXXX". Also, in states with strong home rule provisions, cities can rename themselves to whatever they like, but as far as the state is concerned they are still a city and subject to the laws specific to cities. Unfortunately, that isn't always very obvious. older≠wiser 21:37, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)
  • Not sure about including names of mayors or managers. As an optional field perhaps for larger/popular locales, otherwise if it was applied widely, there is a risk of information going stale quickly. Perhaps some sort of As of link to the year the current term expires might help.
    • No less so than for minor countries. - KeithTyler
  • Not sure whether a "First settled" date will be verifiable for many places beyond a circa or a decade.
    • Seems OK to me. It still gives an idea of how old the place is in terms of settlement, which is not reflected by incorporation date (many decent-size cities near me were only incorporated within the past 15 years, though they have existed as unincorps for much longer). - KeithTyler
  • The "Incorporated (in current form)" may cause more confusion than it's worth. Many cities have reincorporated many times, but with minimal noticable difference in terms of the history of the city or lives of the residents. The history pages of many city web sites (at least the ones I've seen) tend to give the date it was first incorporated as a city, even though it may have reincorporated subsequently due to changes in the state legislation for municipalities.
    • That's the kind I'm thinking of. The kind of incorporation date that would be listed on the city seal -- not necessarily minor or forced reincorporations. And by "current form" I mean e.g. township vs. town vs. city etc., whichever reflects the current category the place is currently in. - KeithTyler
  • I think the web site link needs to be labelled--or perhaps more appropriately belongs in the External links section.
    • My thought was that the official city government web page is significant enough to be displayed prominently in a sidebar instead of just mixed in at the bottom of the article. - KeithTyler
      • The web sites for U.S. states and countries appear in the external links section rather than in the table. older≠wiser 21:37, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)
  • How will the location description look for cities that span multiple counties? I've come across cities that lie approximately equally in the corners of four different counties. Maybe the county information is not essential here (but should be in the text of the article).
    • Good point. Not sure. Often, though, for bookkeeping purposes, a state will treat a city as being wholly in the county that it is most within, and that might be a way to go. Else, list all counties. - KeithTyler
      • Again, I think this varies from state to state. For example, in Virginia, all cities are completely independent of any county. In Michigan, I do not believe the state recognizes any "home" county for a city. At least I have not seen any such indication for cities that span multiple counties. older≠wiser 21:37, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)
  • I like including the congressional district, as in Lynn example.
  • I like the presentation of demographic data in the Lynn example better than Rochester, although the age and gender distributions are interesting.
    • I think you caught them while I was in-between editing them :) - KeithTyler
  • In sum however, for articles like Rochester, the tables completely overwhelm the article. Even in longer city articles, the tables may be too much. You might try fiddling with different border styles and font sizes to make it less imposing. I'm not familiar with how it works, but you might want to take a look at Template:US_state for a similarly sized, but less imposing table format.

Made some changes to my examples (apparently my last Rochester draft never went through), including modeling them after Template:US state. I also found some useful articles for Council-manager government and Mayor-council government which I think partially fulfills my intent behind the "Government type" field, though I'd also hope for an indication of mayoral selection (popular vs. conciliary). - KeithTyler 21:25, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)

  • I would avoid using "City of" or similar constructions in the title, because some cities include the word "city" in the name, and I believe a few do this at the beginning of the name.
  • As long as you include total area, whether you also include land and water area I don't see as important.
  • I think the population is one of the most important items and should go high in the table.
  • You might want to either date or break off items that are likely to change, or change more often. This might include congressional districts.
  • If you're going to include postal codes, you might want to also include area codes for phone calls.
  • I expect that few people realize the distinctions you're drawing with government types. Maybe it would be best to just leave that out.
  • The population, total area and location (not expressed as longitude and latitude) are the most important things. After that, what to include is a gray area.
  • Because they are U.S. communities, I prefer putting the imperial measurements before the metric ones.
  • A couple of other ideas for blanks, offered as food for thought: the metropolitan statistical area (if the community is part of such an area designated by the Census Bureau), nearest major city or other familiar place (like "x miles from ..." or "southwest of ..."), one distinction about the community, likely to be filled by a resident (such as "called the garlic capital of the world," or "took 20 years to incorporate," "almost destroyed by a tornado," etc.)
Maurreen 04:31, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
In most cases, the full official name of the city/town is "City of X" or "Town of X", which is why I recommend that (see Massachusetts or Rhode Island). As for zip codes... yes, I was worried that area codes and or exchanges could spill into this as a result, which would a) sometimes be very expansive and b) are much more volatile than postal codes. Perhaps city code in international cases would be less unwieldy.
I don't care which order the measurements go -- I copied the ordering straight from the stock robot text.
I like metropolitan area, but not city distinction -- too subjective and not IMO sidebar-worthy. See List of city nicknames for the horror this concept can create.
- KeithTyler 07:29, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)


Photos and other contributions needed for U.S. State Capital Pages

The most likely city pages to be viewed are probably the state's capital page. Many of these pages have received little attention over the Rambot info. I've gone through and created a table on Requested pictures of which pages need city photos, capitol building photos, and location maps. If you have pictures of a state capital, or live in or near a state capital please help make this pages better. - Redjar 14:17, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Classification and categorization

Rationale for distinct cities vs. towns

I don't understand the rationale for having different categories for cities, towns, etc., in the same state. Maurreen 00:32, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The different types of municipalities have distinctive characteristics (which vary from state to state). In the northeast and midwest, towns or townships are subdivisions of a county (although in parts of the northeast the county is essentially only a land designation with no governmental authority). Villages (or in some states, boroughs) are incorporated municipalities but are generally not completely autonomous while cities are generally completely autonomous. One way to look at it, although it is not entirely accurate for the northeast, is to start with the state level. The state is divided into counties, and the counties are divided into towns or townships. These divisions are generally (or at least were originally) intended to provided governance for more or less arbitrary divisions of land (in the midwest, the boundaries for counties and townships were often drawn up long before there were any permanent white settlers in the areas, mostly so as to provide some semblance of order in adminstering land sales). Villages and cities were generally established to provide for more effective government and municipal services for residents within relatively densely populated areas. Historically, counties and towns or townships were what is sometimes known as "general-law" municipalities, in that their powers and organization were narrowly prescribed and controlled by the state legislatures. While cities, and to a lesser degree villages and boroughs, had what became known as "home-rule" powers--basically, they are municipal "corporations", and are able to do pretty much whatever they like, within the limits of the law. The distinction has become blurred in recent times as some states have granted home-rule powers to townships and even to counties. But nonetheless, they are still different types of municipalities with distinct powers of governance. older≠wiser 01:59, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, that was educational. I knew they were different, but not how. But I wonder if anyone looking up a community would want categories for differenty types. People usually want to see what communities are in a given area, or they're looking for a specific one. It seems like a listing of all communities or municipalities in a state, or whatever, would be more useful. Maurreen 02:18, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Yeah, I can see that. But that is perhaps better done with a list, say something like List of cities, villages, and townships in Michigan (although that still needs a lot of cleaning up). Unfortunately, in many states, towns or townships are really only governmental entities for land managment and not anything like what you might think of as a community (I mean many have population densities of less than ten people per square mile). But then some town or townships are densely populated and seem more like a city than their rural ccounterparts. But it is quite difficult to distinguish them without closer examination. And complicating matters, there is very often an unincorporated community (or even a village or city) with the same name as a town or township that serves as the urban center of the town or township. So, for example, on that list of Michigan entities--it appears to have originally come from a state web site. However, many of the places it included were not incorporated municipalities. The townships that appear on the list were introduced because I (and some others) did not understand that there were also unincorporated communities with the same names as townships in many cases (i.e., if you look at a map, many of the little dots are actually unincorporated communities). And there are also many towns or townships that are not visible on most general highway maps, because they simply do not have anything resembling a "community". In any case, producing a complete list of actual "communities" or places that one might be able to find on a map is more complicated than simply merging all the various types of municipalities. A good start would be with cities and villages (or boroughs). But towns and townships are problematic in many states. older≠wiser 03:14, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
It should depend on the state then; in Florida, cities, towns, and villages are all roughly-equal. They may have different forms of government but are not usually seen as different types of municipalities, so it should be enough to mention in the article whether it's a town or city.

I also suggest possibly including other districts with similar powers, such as the Reedy Creek Improvement District.--SPUI 09:35, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm. I guess once we get it all figured out it will be something to clarifying in the entries. Thanks for the lesson. :} Maurreen 04:39, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Related auto-categorization page

A page devoted to computer-assisted categorization of articles has been created at Wikipedia:Auto-categorization. The first target is counties and municipalities in the United States. -- Beland 10:19, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Air Force Bases

Hi. I'm hoping this is the right place to discuss this.... I was looking up U.S. Air Force Bases where my father once served, and I was surprised to find that one of them is refered to in its article as a town. As I began to investigate, it seems that all cities, towns, and military bases were based on the same template. In some cases, the bases are properly referred to as a base throughout the article, in other cases, it is called a base in one place, but a town in other places, and in a few articles, the only indication that the place in question is a military base at all is the inclusion of an acronym like AFB. I was going to start making corrections to these articles, until I realized what a big job it is. Presumably, it also is a problem for army, navy, and other types of bases as well. Plus, I was worried about whether or not there is a standard template or format for military bases. This Cities page was the closest to a policy page I could find for this issue.

Malmstrom_AFB,_Montana is an example of an article that gives no indication whatsoever of actually being a base other than the acronym AFB. Columbus Air Force Base and Loring_AFB,_Maine are examples of inconsistent language, (sometimes base, sometimes town). Another consistency issue:

Scott Air Force Base (Scott AFB) is a base of the United States Air Force located...

In some cases, where an AFB article starts with this type of sentence, the word base is linked to base and in other cases it is not. This is another reason why I wanted to discuss this here before making lots of changes to pages myself. Presumably, all of the bases should have a standard opening sentence.

AdmN 07:02, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If you look at Category:U.S. Air Force bases, it's clear that the "Foo Air Force Base" form is preferred. In some cases people have taken the census data and pasted into the base article, in other cases the two are cross-linked. In general, I think the human-written articles should suffice - Rambot did not know that places with "AFB" in their name (which the Census just did that way for their own convenience) were actually not towns at all, and so mechanically chose a poor name. Stan 04:01, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Oh, heck. ;-) I didn't even know there was a category. It is incredibly hard to find stuff around here, (especially when the search function sporatically stops working all the time). Thank you. func(talk) 04:14, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
sigh... and now I feel really dumb, because the category link is at the bottom of every AFB page.... func(talk) 04:16, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Towns vs. unincorporated entities, communities etc.

The Rambot has classified many unincorporated entities as "towns", but in some states, the term "town" means a municipal entity incorporated with a specific form of government.

Examples:

(though there are special districts which help define the boundaries), but is listed as a town.

People have begun to notice that the entities in the "Towns in StateName" categories which Pearle is creating are not all "towns" as they conceive of them. So the time has come to decide what to do about these articles and what categories to put them in.

In my opinion, the category name and the text in the article should match up. If the article calls it a town, it should go in "Towns in StateName", and so on for "unincorporated communities", "census-designated places", etc.

Some have suggested that incorporated cities and towns be lumped together, but I disagree.

In order to properly classify things, we need to:

  1. Decide what the proper categories are and what membership criteria there should be, taking into consideration the variations from state to state.
  2. Identify a source for the information we need to put individual articles in the right place.
  3. Implement the classification scheme, probably with the help of a bot.

To get things rolling, I've started a list on the project page. We will need to cover not only US states, but also insular areas and other countries. -- Beland 02:52, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Beland, a couple observations. Too tired to edit the project page directly right now. Some states, for example California, allow incorporated municipalities to call themselves pretty much whatever they want to. Could be city, town, village, etc. Thus you have a place like Apple Valley, California, is an incorporated municipality which calls itself a town and is distinct from the many CDPs and other unincorporated communities listed under Category:Towns in California. Under California state law, all incorporated municipalities have the same status and are governed by the same statutes. So there may not be much point to distinguishing towns from cities by incorporation status in such places. Not sure what you mean by saying There are no unincorporated areas in Massachusetts. There are quite a few CDPs in MA, which are by Census definition unincorporated places.
All of the land area in Massachusetts belongs to one or another incorporated entity. I'm not sure why there are CDPs; perhaps they measure town/city centers. The Provincetown CDP, for example, seems to be a subset of the incorporated town of Provincetown. RamMan's earlier recommendation seems to imply that the CDP article should be deleted. I don't see any particular reason to keep it; in fact, it seems like it will just create confusion. I don't know if any of the other CDP articles in MA are worthwhile.
OK, but that situation is not unique to MA. I mean all of the land in most states is a part of some sort of municipal corporation. In Michigan, all of the land is within either a city or a township (Indian Reservations may be a special case). However, townships and cities are different types of municipal corporations. Townships, in a sense can be understood as being the default governmentsl entity for all land that has not been incorporated into a city. (Villages are a technically a part of a township, even though villages are able to incorporate land from multiple townships--makes things interesting to puzzle out, to say the least). From what I've seen, the situation is very much the same with Towns in Wisconsin. I think New York is similar (at least both the WI and MI systems were modelled after NY, such as it was in the 19th century--they have since all diverged in some respects).
Anyhow, townships (and towns in WI and the NE), often cover fairly large geographic areas, and sometimes include a mix of rural areas, urbanized areas adjacent to other larger incorporated municipalities, and small communities that often have an identity apart from the larger enclosing town or township. The Census Bureau defines CDPs to provide statistical tracking for these areas that are not separately incorporated, but have some aspects that allow them to be identified apart from the enclosing town/township. Unfortunately, the names sometimes get confusing because the same name is sometimes used for the CDP as for the surrounding town/township.
Whether it is worth keeping CDP articles such as Provincetown (CDP), Massachusetts versus Provincetown, Massachusetts is a tough call. Considering the statistics, first all of the CDP's data is a subset of the town's. So out of the town's population of 3,431, 3,192 live within the CDP area. This population is concentrated within the 1.8 square miles of land defined as the CDP. Compare this to the 9.7 square miles of land in the entire town. So 93% of the population is concentrated in about 19% of the land area of the town (1,759.3 people/sq mi in the CDP vs. 355.2 people per sq mi in the entire town). And if we consider the part of the town outside of the CDP, the population is 239 in an area of 7.9 sq mi for a density of about 30.3 people per sq mi. Now, Provincetown is somewhat of an extreme example because it is a rather small town in a geographically isolated area at the tip of Cape Cod with a single concentrated population center, so that while most people would likely readily identify the CDP area as a community, the entire area of the town is so small and geographically isolated that the entire area is very closely identified with the community. There are other towns that cover much larger geographic areas and which may contain multiple communities with distinct identities. For example, the Town of Amherst has population centers and somewhat distinct communities represented by the CDPs of North Amherst, South Amherst, and Amherst Center (which I might note that someone has edited to change the Rambot-generated description of "town" into the possibly also misleading description as "village").
So anyhow, I guess my point is that what the CDPs describe, even in MA, are communities (or urbznized areas) that are not separately incorporated as municipalities. Whether to call them "unincorporated communities" or something else, like "hamlets", is somewhat academic, but I can see where the term "unincorporated communities" can cause confusion. I can agree that there are no unincorporated "areas" in MA (or in most other states that I am familiar with). older≠wiser 15:47, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)
I updated the link descriptions for Provincetown, Massachusetts and the related CDP. This relationship is common to Massachusetts, Maine, and Connecticut. A similar relationship exists betwen some 'town' and 'village' entries in New York. My vote is to keep the CDP entries for New England. Thanks, Lou I 13:34, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Thanks LouI, that is a helpful description in that article. The situation is similar for many CDPs in Michigan or Wisconsin where there is a CDP with the same name as a town or township. older≠wiser 14:00, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)
And a question: Not sure what you mean by all municipal entities and unincorporated areas should be listed in both the appropriate county (or equivalent) and the appropriate state-wide category. What do you mean by listing in the appropriate state-wide category?
I added clarification: the appropriate county (or equivalent) of the form Foo County, StateName; and the appropriate state-wide category, e.g. Towns in StateName. -- Beland 14:38, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
OK, so the first part refers to listing the place in the appropriate article(s) while the latter part refers to including it within appropriate category. older≠wiser 15:47, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)
No, they both refer to categories. Every municipal article should be in at least these two categories. I don't know if there's a good reason to list all municipalities in the county article itself, if you have the category doing the same thing. -- Beland 19:42, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Good to see some discussion on this. I expect things will probably vary considerably from state to state, but if we can establish some internal consistency for each state and at least have some similarities from state to state that will be helpful. older≠wiser 03:51, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

One thing I missed was the existance of "village" articles in MA. I don't know if these have official state recognition, or if they are merely Census entities. They do seem to be worthwhile to keep.

Another question is what to do with the categories that collect the neighborhoods of a particular city. My intuition would be to create a category "Neighborhoods in Massachusetts", which is a little easier to find if you are looking for it but don't know what it's called and makes immediately clear its purpose. -- Beland 14:38, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I forgot to respond here, as I mentioned above, there are number CDPs in MA. As you know, Rambot described CDPs as towns. Many of these CDP articles were subsequently edited to change "town" into "village". I think that this may be where these so-called village articles come from. Village is a perfectly fine term to describe small communities, but it should be explained somewhere that villages don't have status as municipalities in MA (or at least I'm pretty sure they do not). It is also possible that people have added articles about communities that are not large enough to be counted as CDPs--think of all the little dots on a road atlas, many of which are not official towns and are not large enough to qualify as a CDP. This is another type of "unincorporated community" in the sense of not being separately incorporated.
As to your second question, if the "neighborhood" truly is an area within a city and not an adjacent urbanized area outside the city limits, then my inclination would be to only include them in a category for that city and not have a separate state-wide category for such neighborhoods (and not even include them in the county category either, for that matter). older≠wiser 16:08, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)
It might be a good idea to get a hierarchical, auto-generated list of all known place-articles. The US Census has a nice graphical chart and a rambling technical explanation that may help elucidate these issues. -- Beland 03:36, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Re: "town", perhaps Ram-man can clarify, but I belive that Rambbot used the term whenever the census data did not specify either city, CDP, or some of type of entity. Like Beland, I think of a town as an incorporated municipality (although this is not the case in some states). I believe that the census only uses the term CDP in certain circumstances, though I do not know what the criteria are. In Michigan, I changed most occurances of "town" to "unincorporated community" where appropriate (although in retrospect, I wish I had created a definitional article and linked the terms to it). I think it would be difficult to do programatically because the precise circumstances vary from place to place (hence I think "town" was intended as a neutral, if somewhat ambiguous compromise).

Legends

When we actually get to the point where places are properly classified, it would be nice if those class names were links to explanatory articles. I was quite enlightened after reading Township and Civil township, for example. Definitions of "city", "town", "village", "township", etc. may vary from state to state and certainly country to country. It would be nice to have a comprehensive legend to link to that explained the category definitions for that province or nation or whatever.

We might need footnotes like this:

Kensington is a town ([[CDP (footnote)|census-designated place]])
Kensington is a town<super>[[town (census footnote)|1]]</super>

-- Beland 03:36, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Such an article exists for N.Y.: Political subdivisions of New York State. I don't know about other states. Nelson Ricardo 11:51, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

Need greater clarity for weird cases

It's really not clear that the four areas listed under Springfield, Wisconsin are not contiguous. Also, I have the feeling they are not municipalities, but actually county subdivisions (as in a civil township but not actually called that). They are listed in their respective articles as "towns", though. Is this another systematic error, or is Wisconsin actually crazy enough to have four different municipalities with the same name? Hopefully once this is straightened out, there will be an obvious way to make clear what the existence of four Springfield, Wisconsin articles really means.

Plenty of examples can be found under Springfield and Washington (disambiguation), where townships, possible phantom townships, towns, and real live cities appear to mix freely. -- Beland 06:50, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Re: Springfield, Wisconsin, yes, Towns in Wisconsin are equivalent to Townships in other states. Very confusing. What I wonder is why township census data was not generated uniformly by Rambot--there are many states without any township articles. older≠wiser 11:36, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
The terms "town", "CDP", "village", and "township" are all used by the census bureau as designations. I have no idea what they use to decide which is which. I have lived in Pennsylvania and there are many different townships, which are legal entities, that have the same name that are different real places. In fact I currently live in a township, although it is commonly referred to without the "Township" portion of the name. Except in the case where "CDP" was converted (incorrectly) to "town", all of the other designations come straight from the Census Bureau. I can't speak for Wisconsin, but if it is anything like Pennsylvania, the multiple township entities really do exist on their own. Hope this helps. -- Ram-Man 13:01, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Proposal for reorganization of US municipalities

So, I did a ton of research. What do you y'all think?

Is there a specific Census page that shows what municipalities are classified as what? The FIPS data just seems to differentiate incorporated/unincorporated. -- Beland 07:17, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't know about an easily machine-readable file for Wiki-wide updates, but if you use http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/SAFFFacts?_sse=on, it will give you the correct designations. If you want to see all of Westchester County, New York in one place, go to that article. I have ensures the list of cities, towns, villages and CDPs is complete. Nelson Ricardo 12:00, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)
This is interesting stuff, Beland. It'll take me a while to digest it all. I think that what it means to be "incorporated" may vary from place to place and with the Census Bureau and FIPS data--and that there may be as many different types of incorporation as there are types of municipalities in the various states. Hard to say what is "authoritative". For instance, the FIPS data describes Towns in Massachussetts as T1: an active minor civil division (MCD) that is not coextensive with an incorporated place, which is the same description used for townships in IN, IL, MI, MN, ND, NJ, OH, PA, and Towns in WI, ME, and NY (except for East Rochester, New York.
Interestingly, some Towns in Connecticut are identified with that description (T1) and some are described as T5: an active MCD that is coextensive with an incorporated place. (The incorporated place usually has the same name as the MCD, and usually the officials of the incorporated place administer the governmental functions of the MCD.) Could it be that not all Towns in CT are incorporated? Note Illinois also has a mixture of T1 and T5 designations for townships.
Anyhow, I think this is a good start. I think there are more similarities between towns (in NY, WI, and the northeast) and townships in the midwest than differences. They all began with the same concept and have since diverged. I think the more important distinction to be stressed is between towns that began as minor civil divisions of counties (as in NY, WI, and New England) and towns understood as city-like municipalities. older≠wiser 16:02, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)
Census's classification of East Rochester seems to be an error. The town (MCD) and village (incorporated place) are coextensive. Nelson Ricardo 16:55, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)
Well, I think that is precisely what the Census classification indicates--that the Town of East Rochester (T5) is coextensive with the incorporated village of East Rochester. The town is an exception in that it is the only township classed as T5, all the others are T1. older≠wiser 18:14, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)
Sorry. You are correct. I mixed up T1 and T5. But there should be 4 other T5s in N.Y.: Scardsdale, Harrison, Mt. Kisco and Green Island. (Or is the convoluted state of local govt. and census data confusing me again?) BTW, this "T" terminology is new to me. Nelson Ricardo 18:28, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)
You are also correct--all of the towns you mention are classed as T5--not sure why/how I overlooked the others. older≠wiser 18:45, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)
The census's indication for towns in Massachusetts, if I read that correctly, is dead wrong. Towns in MA are themselves specifically incorporated, as towns. Therefore the MCD will always be coextensive with the incorporated area as they are one in the same. (There isn't a shred of unincorporated land in MA.) - [[User:KeithTyler|Keith D. Tyler [flame]]] 19:04, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, this goes precisely to the distinction between "incorporated places" and "Minor Civil Divisions" as defined by the Census Bureau and municipal corporations as understood locally. They may not be the same. The Census is using the distinction for different purposes than local/state government does. Charter Townships in Michigan are incorporated, but are still considered by the census to be MCDs just the same as General Law townships, which are organized "corporate bodies". As for whether there are any unincorporated communities in MA, the state government web site seems to think there are: Commonwealth Communities Mostly, I think this comes down to what terminology to use for refering to developed settlements that are not themselves separately incorporated and that lie within other municipalities. older≠wiser 20:00, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)
Those Mass. unincorporated places (many are probably CDPs) are likely to be part of an incorporated subdivision.
Here's a good source from the Census Bureau all about census geography: http://www.census.gov/geo/www/garm.html Nelson Ricardo 04:00, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)
All of the place names on that list, a list which I am intimately familiar with, are unofficial neighborhood names that are parts of one or more incorporated cities or towns. Many of those place names survive today only as post office branch names. Note that the list you link to (or more accurately, that you link to a link to) specifically indicates the primary incorporated area (city or town) that the neighborhood exists in. The wide majority of those neighborhoods don't have any municipal signage (a notable exception is the neighborhoods in Newton). See also, for example, Clifton, Massachusetts. I stand by my statement that there is no unincorporated land in Massachusetts. Considering the state's push over the last decade to dismantle county governments, if there was unincorporated land, it would make for quite a conundrum. - [[User:KeithTyler|Keith D. Tyler [flame]]] 18:15, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC) PS: I am from Massachusetts.
OK, but the issue is not whether there is any "unincorporated land" in MA, but rather, what terminology to use to refer to and categorize places within an incorporated municipality that are not themselves incorporated. As I explained above, I parse "unincorporated communities" as meaning precisely that, but I can also see how that term may be ambiguous in that the area is actually part of an incorporated municipality and hence NOT unincorporated. Beyond that, a related issue is how to handle CDPs which are artificial entities created only for statistical purposes (and which were quite confusingly described as "towns" by Rambot). older≠wiser 18:30, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)
I'd vote for "neighborhood" in that case, as I've done for the Clifton article. - [[User:KeithTyler|Keith D. Tyler [flame]]] 20:44, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)
Would you have that apply to any/all of such places in MA? For instance, is it correct or acceptable to describe CDPs like Amherst Center, Massachusetts, North Amherst, Massachusetts or South Amherst, Massachusetts as "villages"? I've no problem with such usage, but it really should be made clear that these are not incorporated municipalities. There are lot's more such CDPs in MA. Actually, on the link from the state web site above, I think that most of the entries are in fact not CDPs, but rather are, as you suspect, neighborhoods, old post offices, etc. I did a quick check through a few letters and did not see very much correspondence between CDPs and entries on that list. older≠wiser 22:56, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)
I'm at a loss, because I don't know how the census comes up with their identifications of places, and why they decide that North and South Amherst, which are neither neighborhood names or the names of incorporated areas -- but just sections of the Town of Amherst. I don't like it. - [[User:KeithTyler|Keith D. Tyler [flame]]] 23:23, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

Much has been said about the problems with categorization of CDPs as towns. I have recently completed a large rambot maintainance run on the county/city articles. The next task that I plan on doing is fixing the CDP town mess. I highly recommend that everyone wait until I have done it. I will go into the database, find all those cities that the census bureau specifies as CDPs and I will do another bot run replacing the term "town" with "CDP". At that point all of the articles will be fixed and we can do whatever needs to be done on top of that. It will probably be at least a week until the task is finished due to the sheer volume of articles that need to be updates. With regards to other types of places, it is not hard for me to generate a sorted list of cities with their census bureau/FIPS designations next to their Wikipedia name, as I have them. It is true that CDPs are artificial, but they do sometimes roughly represent the population of a very real region or place that may not fit nicely into a legal entity but may roughly correspond to popular usage. When I first noticed this problem, I assumed that some of these problems would have to be resolved on a case-by-case basis. It is possible that the CDP place may never correspond with another place article and in that case may be a candidate for deletion. But it is also true that it may correspond roughly with a real place enough to make a note that states the correspondence. I can think of plenty of examples where neighborhoods of major cities (like Philadelphia and others) or minor places like Brownstown, PA are considered by natives to be little cities of their own worthy of an individual article. Unfortunately I can't think of a specific example where a CDP roughly approximates to such an unofficial "city/town", but I am sure such a case exists. -- Ram-Man 19:12, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

Chappaqua, New York is one example of a CDP with strong community identity. (Bill & Hillary live there now.) Others include Hartsdale, New York and Valhalla, New York (all these are in Westchester County, New York and all are CDPs without corresponding municipalities; each is part of a town). Nelson Ricardo 19:30, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)
Examples like this were the reason that I translated CDP to town, not realizing it had a specific legal meaning. Most (if not all) people in the "town" of Chappaqua, New York don't call it a CDP. According to the article it is a hamlet. If someone gives me a list of alternate names, such as hamlet, for a CDP, I would be more than happy to create articles that have the wording like that of the Chappaqua article. Originally, I didn't want the articles to contain the cryptic "CDP" name, but I was unaware of the potential side-effect of calling it something else. Wikipedia has come a long way since that time and now it is time to fix it. -- Ram-Man 19:49, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)
Wow. Um, well a few things. What will Rambot do with those CDP articles that have already been edited? And in some cases where the articles have been renamed? Will the bot work through all of the CDPs articles? If so, would it be desirable to have it add a special category to identify it as a CDP (I'm thinking of cases where the article may have already been edited to remove references to town, but have been replaced by something else like village and would not be obvious to someone looking at the article that the "village" is not some sort of official entity).
As a case study of an instance where a CDP does not match local usage, check out Spring Arbor, Michigan, Spring Arbor Township, Michigan and Spring Arbor, Michigan (CDP). Now, I live about 10-15 miles from this place and I initially thought that the CDP was a pretty close approximation of the main population center of the township. It is quite common in Michigan townships for there to be one or more population centers (which often have the same name as the township and may even be incorporated as a village or city, but are more often not separately incorporated). In any case, I think the CDP article was originally at Spring Arbor, Michigan and I described it as an unincorporated community within the township. A local resident evidently saw things rather differently and insisted that the CDP article did not accurately describe the population center of Spring Arbor and did some cut and paste moves and major revisions. So we now have an article about the population center (which also describes the township government, history, industry, and educational facilities) and separate articles for the census information for the township and CDP. He was quite adamant about how he wanted things, so I gave up trying to persuade him otherwise. older≠wiser 19:53, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)
I took a look at the case you mentioned, and that is an example of locals fixing the unknowns caused by weird census bureau CDPs. Despite your end of it, I believe that it looks pretty good, properly explaining what each part means, something I am unable to do.
My main dissatisfaction with those articles as they are now is that the Spring Arbor, Michigan article, which describes itself as an unincorporated community, contains information that is actually about the entire township rather than specifically about the population center. The articles currently fudge the difference between the locality (as approximated by the CDP statistical data) and the Township, which is a real governmental entity covering a much larger area. Most of what is in that article should be in the Township article, but it seems the local did not want his prose mixed up with the census data for the two. older≠wiser 22:56, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)
Now, the rambot can do a number of things. The rambot can function no matter who edits the articles, and has done so many times. If the article has been renamed, the current behavior is to ignore it (for now). I've been busy updating so many articles I have not yet got around to updating it to follow the redirects to the renamed page and then fix the various things that are wrong with it. Naturally, some changes can't be made to redirected/renamed pages such as in the case study given, but other more generic changes (and there are many) can be made. The bot will be setup to replace the previous with CDP. If the article no longer says "town" but does not say "CDP", then "CDP" will be added and whatever the new description is will stay (although I can print out a warning and get a list of those cities that meet this description, if required). The categorization will be fixed to point to a CDP category instead of whatever it uses now (e.g. Category:towns of Alabama). As to your final question, if someone changed it to "village", I have no way of knowing if that is valid or not. It may be (as in the case of Chippaqua, New York) that the new name is the preferred correction. In any case I won't change it if it has already been changed. In the end what you will have is every CDP article having a reference to census-designated place and no references to town. As additional information becomes available to me, we may be able to enforce the correct name of the town as well. Hope this answers all your questions. -- Ram-Man 20:30, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)
Well sort of, though I'm having a hard time visualizing exactly what rambot will do on this pass. I guess I'll just wait to see what happens when it starts. My question about previous edits changing town --> village was prompted by articles like Amherst Center, Massachusetts, North Amherst, Massachusetts or South Amherst, Massachusetts which are CDPs described as villages. Villages is not an official designation for a municipality in MA, but there is nothing in the articles that make that clear. What will Rambot do with articles such as that? I guess if they are added to a Category:CDPs in Massachussetts, that would help sort things out. You say the categorization will be fixed to point to a CDP category instead of whatever it uses now, does that mean only that it will remove the Towns of State categorization or will it also remove it from categories like Unincorporated communities in State or Neighborhoods in City? If anything, I'd hope it would leave those alone and simply add the CDP category. Just exactly what will the CDP reference look like, especially in articles where "town" has already been removed? I mean will it just add "CDP" after the name? So for example, will the North Amherst article be changed from "Amherst Center is a village located in the town of Amherst..." to something like "Amherst Center is a CDP village located in the town of Amherst..."? older≠wiser 22:56, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)
Please be careful with "village". It is an official municipal designation in New York (and some other states). I think labeling a CDP "Census-designated place (CDP)" on first reference and "CDP" or "community" on subsequent reference is safest. Nelson Ricardo 00:20, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
I don't think Rambot will do anything to articles for articles that started out as villages -- the examples I describe above were CDPs that used the generic "town" language. Someone later edited them to describe them as villages. I'm just wondering what will happen in those sorts of cases. older≠wiser 02:44, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
Let's see. What I will change from this:
Springfield is a town in... to: Springfield is a census-designated place in...
Springfield is a village in... to: Springfield is a village and census-designated place in...
Category:towns in Arkansas to: Category:census-designated places in Arkansas
Category:villages in Arkansas will not change because it is not the incorrect town but it will add Category:census-designated places in Arkansas
The only question is what to do with the term "town" in the rest of the article. Does it change to CDP or community? If there is a doubt, I will default to CDP. I was planning to only change those instances of the word town that were added by the rambot. This could be problematic if other people called it a town at a different location in the article, but it isn't safe to just globally replace town with something else in case it is used in a different context. Luckily this should not be too many articles and the rambot articles are all in the same basic format. -- Ram-Man 03:17, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
This looks fine by me. I think I have already manually removed "town" references from most of the Michigan CDP articles. I would like to say "all" the articles, but every so often another one seems to turn up. I think it will ultimately be helpful to have all the CDPs in a category for further examination. I had initially used the term "community" in the Michigan CDP articles until it became clear that not all of the CDPs were "communities" with a distinct identity. For such cases I used "CDP" and attempted to explain what the CDP represented (i.e., the urbanized area surrounding a city outside the city limits as with Greater Galesburg, Michigan, or an aggregation of several communities as in Shorewood-Tower Hills-Harbert, Michigan, or, as with Comstock Northwest, Michigan, it isn't really a distinct community with it's own identity, but is just a geographic area of a township that is part of an urbanized area--these are just a few that I can recall off the top of my head--my descriptions have evolved as I have learned more about the different sorts of things CDPs can represent, so I will need to revisit the some of early edits I made to CDP articles). older≠wiser 14:43, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

Temporary re-classification of CDPs

There has been some upset at the classification of CDPs as towns, even when the body text says "town". I have a list on Wikipedia:Auto-categorization of articles with CDP in the title that will be shortly re-classified as "Census-designated places in StateName", until the proposal discussed above is finalized. Please post there if you have any concerns or advice. I will also shortly be doing the same thing for articles whose body text has recently been changed to indicate they are CDPs. Thanks, Beland 06:38, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

See my response at Wikipedia:Auto-categorization -- Ram-Man 19:45, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

Request for help on List of towns in New York

I've just created this article, using data from http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/SAFFFacts?_sse=on , but some of the links are red. This is because the town articles have "(town)" in the name (the blue links do not). Would somebody be able to easily program a bot to either:

  • create disambig articles for the red links
  • add "(town)" to the red links

I would be very appreciative. Thanks! Nelson Ricardo 06:03, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

I'm also being a troublemaker with List of census-designated places in New York. Because of the inconsistent naming, I have two links for each. Just under 1/2 the links are red. If a bot could fix, that would be great. Else, I will have a very boring weekend. Thank you. Nelson Ricardo 06:39, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
If you take a look at User:rambot and the future and current tasks you will see all of the things in the pipeline. One of those is to perform the disambiguation of cities like the one above. It's a bit more involved than some of the other changes, so it has been put off. You must understand that going through all these cities takes a lot of raw time and I have to find time in my schedule to perform the bot runs. As such patience is required, but it will be done. Just do nothing and eventually the links will go live. Because we will be using categories for the CDPs, I don't know if we should even have "List of CDPs in New York" articles. What does everyone think? In any case, I can easily make sure that the category article exists and possibly the list article if there is a need for it. I can just as easily replace the "List of" links with Category links. -- Ram-Man 12:57, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
Thank you Ram-man. Don't ask me why, but I have an aversion to categories. I find them a to be a scourge and think lists are better (especially for geographic units, if pulled from a reliable source). Nelson Ricardo 17:32, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
I'm using categories for now since they are easy, but I'm going to have to hold off on creating the lists until I figure some things out. They can always be done later, no reason they have to be done now. -- Ram-Man 00:01, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Maui, Hawaii ?

Your Information Matrix has nothing about Hawaii. Does anyone know how cities are organized in Hawaii, and especially on the island of Maui? I've tried digging info out of the internet, but gave up. [[User:GK|gK ¿?]] 13:58, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There are no incorporated places in Hawaii. Census data is reported at the county and census-designated place (CDP) levels. http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GCTTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=04000US15&-_box_head_nbr=GCT-PH1&-ds_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U&-format=ST-7. Nelson Ricardo
Any suggestions then on how to handle Hawaiian communities within the CDPs?
Also, if the information on Hawaii is correct, then User:rambot should probably be used to add that information to all the Hawaiian CDPs. The information should also be added to all the Hawaii county categories such as Category:Maui County, Hawaii. I also think that perhaps all the Hawaiian CDPs should mention that in the title to explicitly suggest that the data in the article may refer to an area that is larger or not the same as the community or communities that the CDP is named after. For example, Haiku-Pauwela, Hawaii should be named something like Haiku-Pauwela, Hawaii CDP and Paia, Hawaii should become Paia, Hawaii CDP. [[User:GK|gK ¿?]] 08:02, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
It is not advisable to name articles with "CDP" in the title, as this is not useful and no one would ever link to such a page. Instead, the article should center around the actual community and only in the appropriate areas (such as Demographics and Geography) should a note state that the statistics are for an area different than the common local usage of the community limits. It would not be a problem either to just replace CDP with community in the opening paragraph if that is appropriate. (The bot could EASILY do this). It could also add the appropriate caveat message to the statistics. Thus the CDP data and the community article should be one and focus on the community with specific references to the CDP explicitly stated only where necessary. -- Ram-Man 12:46, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)
Hi. I work on Hawaiian articles, especially geography ones, and you (Ram-Bot) are right. There is NO reason to rename anything to a CDP name. Hawaiian places are like places anywhere else on the planet. The Census is just another government program. I think GK has some wierd ideas about what Wikipedia is. There are NO rules that a name for anywhere refers to any specific political entity or boundary. Names are entries to information and nothing else. Haiku is a place just as is Pauwela. No one cares if they are or are not in the same CDP, although in providing census data it is always wise to indicate the CDP boundaries - Marshman 17:55, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I agree. CDP should be used in the title only if disambiguation is required. Nelson Ricardo 23:04, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)
My main concern is that the Wikipedia should be a resource for information and clarity, and is NOT a place to become confused. Before the recent rambot changes that made it clearer that some entries were CDPs, they was no real way to tell what the article was referring to, especially since Hawaii apparently handles local government jurisdictions differently than most states. Is that being wierd, or even weird? [[User:GK|gK ¿?]] 07:43, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
That is a very valid concern. But the title is not necessarily the way to avoid the confusion, as long as the article gets it right (many were manually fixed before the bot got around to it). Few people would look for Chappaqua (CDP), New York, so it would not make a lot of sense to name the article that (it's at simply Chappaqua, New York, as there is not city, town or village that shares the name). However Eastchester (CDP), New York is necessary to distinguish it from Eastchester (town), New York, and of course there a disambig page at Eastchester, New York. Nelson Ricardo 04:14, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)
While I agree with the basic sentiment that "(CDP)" should only appear in the title where necessary for disambiguation, I have a minor quibble with what Nelson Ricardo wrote above. In places where one entity is a legally incorporated municipality and the other is a CDP, I think that in most cases the incorporated municipality should have primary topic disambiguation. So I would suggest that the town of Eastchester should be at Eastchester, New York with a link to the CDP in the article, similar to what was done at Provincetown, Massachusetts (although the phrasing would obviously need to differ as the Eastchester CDP is the portion of the town that is not part of Bronxville of Tuckahoe). older≠wiser 20:44, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

City category name conventions

See WP:CFD for a discussion on conventions for city-related category names (like "Cities of Uzbekistan" vs "Cities in Uzbekistan"). -- Beland 08:58, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

For the record, we decided on "of". -- Beland 02:43, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Massachusetts Categories

Seems to me like Category:Unincorporated communities in Massachusetts and Category:Villages in Massachusetts should be merged. Village is not an offical term for municipalities in MA. I'm OK with using the term to refer to unincorporated places in states that don't use it for municipalities (so long as it is explained)--but that would probable exclude the "neighborhoods" in Category:Unincorporated communities in Massachusetts if I'm understanding how it is used correctly. And of course, there is overlap from both with Category:Census-designated places in Massachusetts. I know there is concern in MA about applicability of the term "unincorporated", as the entire state is part of one incorporated municipality or another. Not being from MA, I'm not sure what to suggest, but it seems a little confusing as it stands now. older≠wiser 22:05, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

The proposal on the project page suggests a convention of "Category:Municipal sections in StateName". -- Beland 22:15, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Los Angeles, California

The problem with any large metropolitan city is that the name of the city also becomes a synonym for the metropolitan area. Los Angeles may be worse than most large cities because the various different regions that are labeled "Los Angeles" can overlap, but not wholly contain the other "LA" region (for example, most of the San Fernando Valley is part of the City of Los Angeles, but is outside of the Los Angeles Basin. I personally think that several of the section in the article for Los Angeles, California are a mess because they often conflate the city with the megalopolis. There are several other LA articles (see Los Angeles (disambiguation)), but none of them seem, at least to me, to be best place to put Los Angeles region information. I was wondering if some of the people in this WikiProject might have some suggestions on how to deal with this different LA articles, and the inclusion of non-LA City info in the City of Los Angeles article. [[User:GK|gK ¿?]] 17:41, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Implementation of category/intro proposal

So I'm going to start going through things and see what still appears to be out of order, and what's to be done to implement the proposal on the front page. Please feel free to jump in. -- Beland 02:26, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Remaining problems with PA "towns"

There is only one incorporated town in PA, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania However, Category:Towns_in_Pennsylvania also lists Cornwells Heights, Pennsylvania and Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania, which do indeed claim in their article intros to be towns. Someone familiar with these locales needs to fix the articles. -- Beland 02:26, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Done. One was a manually created alternate name for a CDP area and the other just an unincorporated community. older≠wiser 03:59, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)
Cool, thanks. -- Beland 09:48, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Links to footnotes

Many of the Rambot-edited articles do not link to explanatory text as indicated in the proposal. We need to create the "footnote" article and fill it in with the appropriate text, so we know exactly what links to make. -- Beland 02:26, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Looking at Geographic references, it seems a separate article for US municipalities is in order. Starting one at U.S. municipality notes. -- Beland 02:29, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

CDPs in title

All of the muni articles with (CDP) in the title ended up in a county category plus Category:Census-designated_places_in_StateName except:

I don't know why the Rambot missed them. They should probably be put in conforming categories until the Great Disambiguation of CDPs can occur. -- Beland 09:58, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Defunct Towns

Couldn't we think of a better name for a category before we get too many! There is a small category for Category:Ghost towns, which makes sense in some circumstances. My choice would be Former towns in XX. Another point would be that plcses that are currently neighborhoods (by annexation usually) would get an article under their name with the town note as history. I thought we'df discuss this here, before jumping into the main project page, but I'll put a note there. Lou I 20:23, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well, I'm not particularly attached to using "defunct", but I think it pretty accurately describes the situations in which I have applied it (e.g., Category:Defunct villages in Michigan, Category:Defunct cities in Michigan, Category:Defunct townships in Michigan). These are places which were at one time functioning municipal governments that are no longer. I suppose the category could more accurately be something like Category:Defunct village governments in Michigan, but that seems unnecessary. Note that in some cases where a village or township incorporated as a city, I created a redirect to the city article and describe the former entity in the history section (although the "defunct" category is applied to the redirect and not to the main article). older≠wiser 20:49, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)
Defunct (to me) implies failed or abandoned. Several of the townships in Michigan don't seem to match either criteria. They were either renamed and continue as townships or cities, or absorbed by urbanization. Even an disincorporated town may still be a community of neighborhood, and I don't imagine reesidents would be thrilled to be called Defunct. Maybe we could try Historic townships in XX. I'm working on a list for Oklahoma townships, and have lots of examples. Since they have some (but very little) government function the Counties rearrange/merge them frequently. But, the name is sometimes still sought by genealogists. The category for Ghost Towns would cover part of the need to sort out old place names, and many in the west are interested in them. OTOH, there are places in Texas that just don't exist anymore so, such as those covered by a reservior. Ghost towns isn't appropriate in that case. I'd like to find a generic solution to this that covers more than townships. Lou I 15:46, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
While there may be some negative connotations with the word "defunct", the literal denotation is "Having ceased to exist or live: a defunct political organization." [1] This is precisely the meaning that I want to describe the status of these entities as municipal corporations. Yes, some townships may have incorporated as a city, but they have ceased to function in the capactity of a township form of government. Once the township is no longer functioning, it is rare for any current residents to identify themselves with the township--they identify with the new entity (which fortunately has a different article title in Wikipedia--unfortunately that doesn't apply to cities, villages, or towns). So I don't see any problem with referring to a township as defunct. You may have a point that people in disincorporated villages might object to the community being described as defunct, but technically, the category applies to the form of government and not the community (i.e., the category is Category:Defunct villages in Michigan not Category:Defunct communities in Michigan. Historic townships in XX may avoid some of the problems, but poses a different problem in that there are many existing townships that could very rightfully be described as historic. I suspect that many "ghost towns" or other archaic place names were never even incorporated municipalities--so it would be completely inappropriate to use "defunct" in such cases. For example, there are places like Pryor's Location, Michigan and many other such mining locales. I haven't considered what sort of category to use for these beyond the county where they are located. I suppose some standard for them would be helpful. But I still think "defunct" is appropriate for describing municipal governments that no longer function. older≠wiser 18:53, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

Comment Requested

Hi people, I was going threw some of the cities that i have lived in or visited and i came across Detroit, and personally found it need of some improvement. First off it was a bit to large, going over the Wikipedia size allotment, had a time line for a history, some categories that were out of place, and a extremely long list of persons associated with city. So i went about to clean it up and make some improvements, before i put these improvements onto the page it's self i hope to get some feed back from this group since it runs the convention on cities. I know some of the edits are out of convention, but i will gladly explain all of them in the proper forum. I do request that all comments though be posed on the temp page discussion forum so that it is open to all, but do feel free to contact me in my own personal talk page if you do so. Note though i have received a negative feedback from the persons have made some edits on the Detroit page, even to the extent that a user that has yet to be identified has created what I believe is a sock puppet ,Boothy-Is-Goofy|Talk , to prevent my edits. I look forward to your comments. The new Detroit page is located at Detroit, Michigan/Temp, also comment outside this group is wlecomed as well so feel free to direct others to the page as well. --User:Boothy443 | comhrÚ 19:03, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Question about footers

Is it acceptable to have a general footer for a city, like countries have. Such footer would feature history, neighborhoods, and other articles related to Salt Lake City, Utah. I'm only asking because no cities currently seem to have such footers (although Chicago, Illinois has a neighborhoods footer), and I want to know whether this is intentional. Cool Hand Luke 01:39, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Media

I've been adding "Media" sections to various places such as Needham, Massachusetts to cross-reference information about media markets, local newspapers, broadcast stations, etc. I'd like to suggest this as a general convention. (I could grind over the FCC's CDBS database to generate a list of all broadcast licenses by community of license, but I don't think this would be particularly worthwhile and I'm not generally in favor of dumping a lot of this stuff into Wikipedia except where the market or the stations are truly of encyclopedic significance.) 18.26.0.18 06:37, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Piped link

WikiProject notices

From Wikipedia:Template messages/Talk namespace To be placed at the top of talk pages covered by the associated WikiProject - Suggestions for new projects: 7 Advertise!

Here is a draft Template:WikiProjectCities with info taken from WikiProject_Cities#Scope, but can be shortened if you think it is too long.

It is currently: Template:WikiProjectCities

To use it, place {{WikiProjectCities}} at the top of an article's Talk page. Petersam 05:46, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Just changed it from CitiesTalk to WikiProjectCities to better reflect what the template is Petersam 01:32, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hebrew link?

מה קרה? מלחמה???ŪÁᚍť

(edited by User:66.167.115.167 on 11:06, 13 Mar 2005)

Can anyone fix the above? Petersam 05:54, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What is a native?

How is a "native" generally defined? I interpret it as someone either born in a city or who at least grew up there. I have removed people from city lists who either are natives of a suburb or made their fame there as an adult. Am I being overly strict?

The definition of a native is someone who is born there. Maybe we should change Notable Natives or Famous Natives to Notable/Famous Residents (someone who lives/lived there) instead. Most people in the US who have made contributions to their city have been non-natives. including immigrants. Petersam 17:45, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I don't necessarily have a problem with that, but then cities like Beverly Hills and New York as well as cities with major league teams will have really large lists of people that are really from elsewhere. --Beirne 21:37, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)
I think that there should be a change to Resident despite the fact the lists might get large. I believe it will only encourage more creative editing through necessity. Jasenlee 01:28, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)
In Nashville, I changed it to Notable residents and divided the section into three paragraphs. The first paragraph is for notable natives, the second paragraph is devoted to the most notable country music stars that have lived there, and the third paragraph is for the most notable non-natives that have lived there besides country music stars (ex-presidents, etc.). Theoretically, the country music stars paragraph could be a mile long since almost every country musician in history has lived in Nashville at some time or another, so I just tried to pick the dozen or so most well-known or historically influential. You could probably do something similar with movie stars in Los Angeles, or artists in New York. Although with cities that big, it may be best just to limit it strictly to natives so it doesn't get overwhelming. Kaldari 17:28, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I like that approach. For Chicago we moved it out of the main page and made Notable citizens of Chicago. I like the idea of further breaking it down. Jasenlee 19:30, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)
I looked at the Chicago list the other day. One thing I would do is limit to people actually from Chicago rather than the area. For Cleveland there is a Greater Cleveland article and I have started moving some of the area things over there to clearly distinguish the city and its suburbs.

City vs. metropolitan area

I have edited the Akron and Cleveland articles a number of times because information in them about things like businesses or natives really referred to ones from the suburbs. I'm being strict on this, saying that there is a good place to list the item in the actual location or in an article with broader scope like Greater Cleveland. Is this a problem with other cities? How have others dealt with this? --User:Beirne

Yes, I think such problems occur, and I guess there often is a certain tension between local usage and that of foreigners. It seems to me that local perceptions often are the ones surviving when there are difference in opinions with regards to defining in accordance with legal/administrative boundaries versus a broader understanding of what to understand under the name of a larger city. Helsinki is the example closest to my heart, but there are for sure plenty of others. I know of also Copenhagen and South-Western Scania of personal experience. /Tuomas 08:42, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)