Talk:Unorganized territory

New Title or Complete Revamp

"Unorganized Territory" is a term of art in American federal government - as are the terms "organized territory," "incorporated territory," "unincorporated territory," and "Commonwealth Associated State" (as distinct from the 4 states that call themselves "Commonwealth").

If the term "unorganized territory" is also used as a term of art by other governments, then this page should be revamped as a disambiguation page with links to various articles on unorganized territories in various countries.

If the term is not used as a term of art outside of the USA - and, for one note, I have never seen any Canadian government refer to any area as an "unorganized territory" (certainly none of the three Canadian territories - Yukon, Nunavut & NWT - are "unorganized) - then the sensible thing is to change to the title of this article from "Unorganized Territory" to "United States Unorganized Territory", since that's the only subject is actually dealing with, notwithstanding a couple token passing reference to parts of Ontario and Quebec.

Discussion

There are unorganized territories confusingly listed by organized town names in Wikipedia for Minnesota and perhaps other states, however they have no legal or local meaning. I suggest these pages be removed from Wikipedia, or perhaps renamed to refer to the zip code that serves the incorporated town and surrounding areas. My frame of reference is for the unorganized territory of Northome page. There is also a more valid entry for the town called Northome, Minnesota (no crosslinks between these two pages before today). In this county there are surrounding townships which at one time had a civil meaning, but they were forcibly disbanded, so now they essentially hold survey purposes only. These townships (Bridgie, Engelking, etc) are named, but none are named Northome. There is no unorganized region of any size called "Northome". Possibly these pages were generated by zip codes? There are probably many other pages in a similiar situation, which is why I bring it up on this page. Nerfer 18:47, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't see the problem. There is an article at Northome, Minnesota, which where most people would expect to find the city info. The unorganized territory is a designation by the Census Bureau for representing statistical data in ten states where no minor civil divisions exist in all or portions of some counties. The statistical data is real, and may be of some minor interest. There seems little risk of confusion with the names of the articles being what they are. There should certainly be cross-links from the UT to the city (and perhaps vice versa). older ≠ wiser 22:36, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, thanks to Wiki members I now realize that the term "unorganized territory" is used by the U.S. Census Bureau in these cases (but not apparently by any governing or surveying entity). So for the page I'm interested in, I added a cross-link and a description. The census map link that somebody added is apparently broken, but I was able to find something related. (I left the link there in the hopes that it's restored or somebody else knows what was intended and how to fix it).Nerfer 19:18, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

US

This is overly weighted towards the US, so the US section should be split off into a separate article, similar to the Canadian article, and reduced to a summary here. The intro should also be cleansed of overly heavy use of US based examples. 70.24.244.198 (talk) 12:50, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Since the classification of territories as "unorganized" is essentially US and Canadian, the article must necessarily be weighted in that direction. Since the US is a much more populous country than Canada, it is not illogically more prominent in the examples given. 81.102.15.200 (talk) 11:16, 4 April 2012 (UTC)