Wikipedia:Requests for comment/City population templates

RfC: Does a largest cities/city population template add anything to an article?

1. Should articles (esp. featured ones) about big nations (i.e. with regional or global strategic or economic or military influence) contain a largest cities template/city population template in demographics section?
2. If your answer is "yes" to the question above, should such a template contain images of top 2-4 cities in them? Mrt3366^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 08:49, 13 September 2012 (UTC) (revised for more clarification at 12:32, 13 September 2012 (UTC) after the comment by Dweller)

Note: This is not a discussion about any particular country/article. It's about such templates in general. Please do not change/modify the original form/structure of the RfC.

Although it's not mandatory, try to back your claims with credible rationales that can help reach a consensus. If your comment falls entirely in the lines of I don’t like it or I like it without any reason to back your assertions, it may be ignored entirely.

Relevant policies: WP:Other Stuff Exists, WP:Assume good faith, WP:IDON'TLIKEIT, WP:ILIKEIT and WP:NOTVOTE.

• Users are requested to use hash (#) before comments to make it easier to count.

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Yes, and it should contain images

1. Yes — It may help foreigners (who don't know the locations of the cities or the exact topography of a nation) understand the largest agglomerations better. There are a number of FAs (e.g. Australia, Japan, Germany, Canada, etc) that contain such templates, it helps me understand their city population.
   IMO, as long as any of the facts and images added to the template would be verifiable and relevant respectively, they should contain such templates. Number of images can be determined through availability and discussion. I support 4 images because I believe some people (e.g. people with learning disabilities) may learn from the images what they couldn't learn from texts only. Hence the more number of images, the better. Yes, we can use tables and charts to display the image but these are also a form table/charts. We serve a global audience, so we should not cater to just one set of the viewers and ignore the needs of others. Mrt3366^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 08:49, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

FAs shouldn't contain such templates

1. As this discussion is to support an other stuff exists argument that failed to gain consensus at India it clear that it is not compulsory for a featured article and in some instances clearly does not add to the article. Not all country articles need the template and in some like India it was not needed, only the talk page of individual countries can take a view on the weight of such a template and if it would add to the article. MilborneOne (talk) 11:52, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Additional discussion

This is a bit potty. For me, the answer is:

Yes, for some and no for others and in any case without images

I'll explain why:
Yes: for some countries, it's a useful navigation tool. Ruling it out dogmatically seems silly.
No: some countries self-evidently don't need it. If someone ever takes Palau, Vatican City or Tuvalu to FA quality, the template will be far less useful than in Ukraine, China or Brazil.
Images: Either they'll be tiny, so as not to disrupt the template, or they'll be massive, in which case the template is incongruously large.
There's my opinion. --Dweller (talk) 12:26, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Good opinion. I have clarified the question above. Mrt3366^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 12:35, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. The trouble is that you've introduced a huge lump of subjectivity. Furthermore, by saying that it's essential for country X that's one side of the arbitrary line you wish to draw and inappropriate for country Y that's one place lower in the hierarchy, it'd be open to ridicule.

Don't you think we have enough hurdles to jump at FAC without the need for prescribing or proscribing this particular template? Someone willing to work on (say) Argentina to get it to FA already has enough on their hands without needing to worry about creating this template. Or deliberately not. --Dweller (talk) 12:41, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

• Agree with Dweller. There are other issues here as well. The RfC has been improperly framed. Not only is the statement a thinly disguised and over-conditioned allusion to India, but the potential answers also are slotted into different subsections, which have all the makings of a poll. Mrt3366 has been unsuccessful in having his way with inserting a template in the India page, he has been unsuccessful in having his way in the DRN he initiated soon thereafter. Now he is attempting, a third time, to have his way by posting to what he hopes is a larger forum. In this endeavor, he has been busily advertising the RfC across Wikipedia, from Jimbo's talk page to those of mortal editors. If "India" is what is meant, then the statement should clearly say India. If other countries are implied, where is the evidence that Mrt3366 has posted on their talk pages in an effort to gauge opinion in the weeks before he posted the RfC. Sometimes a disruptive editor, who refused to accept consensus that goes against him, needs to be told, "Enough is enough." Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:26, 13 September 2012 (UTC)