Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities

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Proposal to delete "Notable natives"

That a person was born in a city or currently resides there is not relevant to an encyclopedia article about the city. If the person is an important part of the history of the city or if they currently conduct important business there, then that information might should be integrated into the relevant parts of the article, and possibly temporarily included in a "notable persons" section, but that does not entail recommending a "Notable natives" section, as a home for persons whose only connection to the city is when they were a child or who happen to retire there and have joined the garden club, as a permanent establishment of cities articles. - Centrx 19:08, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. You might scoff at a town's claim to fame that "George Washington slept here", but towns that only have local historical importance are very proud that its citizens helped raise a nationally important person through his/her formative years, or that of all the places they had visited, he/she chose that town to retire in due to its special characteristics. These lists appeared in many articles under variously-worded titles very soon after User:Rambot added 30,000+ U.S. town names, so there is great demand and interest in adding and sharing this information. GUllman 20:48, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Many people are proud of many things but that does not mean that it warrants an entry in an encyclopedia article. I do not scoff at the claims, but they are not relevant to an encyclopedia article about the town. The information is already in the articles about the persons. Does this pride also extend to Malcolm X being imprisoned in the state prison in Concord, MA (since deleted) or the adult porn star residing in Worcester, MA, and does that indicate some special characteristics of the towns?

If we are adducing that these people chose the town for some special characteristic, then if those special characteristics are important they can be mentioned in the body of the article, independently of a Who's Who listing why each person came to the town. What of listing children who nominally resided in the town but in fact went to a private school somewhere else and when at home generally stayed to themselves? Demand and interest in particular trivia is also not relevant to an encyclopedia. There is also demand and interest for cleverly written biographies of non-notable persons whose dozens of friends who come look at the page and who are also clearly proud of their friend.

Pride is a feeling of parents for their children and demand is a desire just the same for pornography and ludicrous television shows. They are not the criteria for inclusion in a body of knowledge. - Centrx 04:51, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

When you go on vacation and have a tour guide show you around the city and tell you "about" it, what do you want to know? If there are people with different interests taking the tour with you, then a good tour guide will point out different aspects of the city. What is important to one person is fascinating trivia to another and useless trivia to still another. A historian, a marketing agent, a celebrity hound, and someone intending to move to the city each have their own tunnel vision.

Wikipedia does not have to copy what encyclopedias have included before -- it is a new kind of reference work written by users containing what they feel is either important or fascinating to them, and therefore would be the same for others. It not only states facts, but encourages the increase of knowledge through the discovery of connections between subjects; its unique collaboration and linking aspects foster serendipitous discoveries. These may be discovered using the "What links here" feature, but even if you think of using it, would you learn anything new if you only clicked on the names that were familiar? Even with a high speed Internet connection, you would get discouraged before you clicked every link. Those virtual tourists who want to know "Is anyone famous from here?", can see a list of names and their claim to fame at a glance. GUllman 20:47, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

What then, would be the cut-off? The list becomes less and less useful as the number of persons increases. Why not make the cut-off be where there is actually some important connection between the city and the person that warrant mention in an encyclopedia? On other end, why not also include persons who happened to visit the town, or who vacation there in the summer? Is this list going to include all of the persons who have lived there ever, with the list ballooning as the famous people move or add new residences, or new people become famous, even when in 20 years no one will remember or care that Lindsay Lohan lived somewhere? The tour guide caters to whatever he thinks will cause people to pay to be on the tour, not whether the information belongs in a database of knowledge or whether people in 50 years will want to know the history of an area. The Boston Duck Tours, for example, talks about Dunkin' Donuts and newly built modern-looking courthouse while leaving out nearly all of the sites on the Freedom Trail. - Centrx 21:09, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, in 20 years, fans of 40-year-old Lindsay Lohan will still get a twinge of excitement when they stumble onto the page for Merrick, New York for some other reason and see that she grew up there. Eighty years from now, however, if Wikipedia is still around, most of her fans will have passed away, and that line may have been removed as no longer significant compared to other celebrities. Just as nearly every word of the quaint and outdated articles in the 1911 Britannica had to be rewritten for today's style, the list of people we consider celebrities will be constantly reconsidered in the coming decades.

Even in today's mobile society, the majority of people have only one place that they most fondly call home. And even if they had moved several times and visited a lot of places, don't worry! People have been adding Notable Natives for the past 2 1/2 years, and they have already settled on an unwritten guideline for inclusion. Trust your fellow Wikipedians to keep the b.s. out as they have in the past -- they don't allow articles to be bombarded with "Paris Hilton slept here one day."

But I don't understand what is wrong with catering to the questions that people ask. What is an encyclopedia for? If someone has a valid question, especially one that is often asked, they should be able to find the answer, regardless of whether they are a Boston Duck or a Freedom Trail type of person. GUllman 08:44, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

First, the fact remains that the more listed "notable natives", the less useful the list is; it does not serve the purpose if the reader has to wade through the latest pop singer, the adult film star, and the college football athlete who just so happened to have been born in that town, in order to find the author and the U.S. Senator who actually chose to live there, participated in the town, and were part of its culture and affected its policies. Note also that people adding notable natives does not mean that anyone actually reads it or cares to link through to the article about the person; it indicates the pride of the editor who already know about it and not the usefulness or interest of the reader who may look at it.

Regarding the 1911 Britannica and the inclusion of non-timeless information: If it is not important for the information to be included 80 years from now, then it shouldn't be included now, barring of course some future event or discovery. The Britannica articles may have been rewritten or integrated with the rest of an article, but the information that it actually contains was not deleted, barring developments in science that proved it false (although even there it may be included for historical purposes), etc. While the style may have been changed, the actual information remained the same; analogously in "notable natives", this would be like rearranging the order of the persons listed, or renaming the section title, or rewording a brief description of the person, it would not mean taking the person out of the list, unless it was discovered that the person actually never lived in the town. - Centrx 07:20, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I also support the removal of the 'Notable Natives' section for two reasons: a) The only way this section can remain NPOV is to list them all, and we know this would be impossible, especially in the light of the varied opinons of what and who "notable" is; b) especially in the light of "modern notoriety", this section would be not only subject to 'a)' criteria, but be incessantly changing. At most, I would consider "historical native" personalities consistently appearing in 'mainstream' references and history books - but even then, I don't much see what this has to do with the description/function of the city itself. THEPROMENADER 12:43, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

If you use that first argument it kind of defeats the whole purpose of Wikipedia Romenader. Who among us does not approach this with at least a tad of bias, Western Civilizations founders (ancient Greece) noted that inherent imperfection when they invented the term "polis" to describe ones social existence and interaction, thus the modern term "politics" whos major tenet is that we all have some bias. Wether we let it affect our judgment is the test of civilization but to pretend that ANYTHING that might be a result of some minor bias is void for inclusion here, well time to let the Matrix or the Terminators rule us. Your comment though very thoughtful and well intentioned sounds a little like the one Neo gets from the Architect. Logical, reasoned, perfect in everyway but for those cursed anomalies. I say it is those anomalies that give us the impressions we have of certain cities. As in most human issues, we will know excess when we see it. The people obviously have to have a regional, national or global claim to fame and that is what the respective discussion forums are for to debate those on individual cases. I think a whole lot of what makes a city--another "human" endeavor-- is not the glass, stone or steel, not even the geographic features but possibly the humanity, and how better to summarize that humanity by noting the best and brightest or possibly the most infamous from that area. Just my two cents interested in other opinions. Hholt01 17:59, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Although Wikipedia sets its own standards for whether a fact is "encyclopedic" or not, we may consider the example set by professional encyclopedists. World Book Encyclopedia (2006) refers the reader to related articles in the set in the "Study Aids" section at the end of the major articles on states and cities, including biograpies of people associated with the city; not just politicians, but also artists and authors. Encyclopedia Americana (2004) has an info box in each of its state articles listing "Prominent People Identified with (the State)" with a thumbnail biography of each one. City articles in Americana can be found (though not very often) that mention in the text famous people born in the city who didn't otherwise contribute to it. (The article on "Cincinnati" has two paragraphs near the end on famous Cincinnatians; "New Orleans" talks about composers and writers born there; "Savannah" mentions the birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low as a tourist site.) I know that when teachers assign grade school students to report on a state, or their local history, they sometimes have to include famous people. So, they are definitely not unencyclopedic, but in setting a policy, how do we extend the analogy from an annually updated encyclopedia with articles on only major cities to a constantly updatable one with articles on all cities? GUllman 03:29, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I gather one major distinction in that is that all the persons listed there are definitively historical and famous—Juliette Gordon Low for example is long dead—and still, these artists and authors can actually important to the history of the region and its cultural life. There is also a difference between a "Prominent Person Identified with the State" and someone who just happened to be born there or to live there briefly. The criteria here now, or rather lack of criteria, is that any person can be added, even if they are the flavor of the month. That again is the problem with the otherwise ill-conceived comment above, there is still here some criteria used, it just goes undefined as a vague differing notion inside the heads of many people. If there is no criteria, are we to just add every person born there with an article on Wikipedia to the list? What about the persons with no articles? If there is no criteria at all, it is only a matter of time before everyone is added to the list and the list becomes meaningless. - Centrx 20:42, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how even a long list would be meaningless, since the entries are short and easily browsable. I also don't think any of the lists will become unwieldy; over half the U.S population lived in small towns before 1920, and even if a large city spawned an unusually large crop of celebrities, we could divide the list by time period to identify the cohorts. And it's useful -- ever since it began, Wikipedia has grown by "playing a word association game" as a means of requesting new articles, and many people inevitably associate places with their famous residents. So far only one person has joined you in support, so may I suggest that you start with articles where you feel the Notable Natives list has already grown out of control, make your case on their Talk pages, and work your way down to shorter lists. GUllman 00:07, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I think it is valuable information to list notable people by the city they've been born, died or where they spend an important part of their lives, because place partly forms people. This is already done in Wikipedia by adding a category (Category:People by city) to the articles of the notable people in question. The article about the city could, in its introduction, refer to the name of its inhabitants e.g. "Residents of London are referred to as Londoners". In the article on Londoners a reference is made to the category: Category:Londoners.

These people by city categories are rather broad/unspecific though. It would be nice if you could get a list of artists or politicians etc. from a particular city: more specific categories could be made but these will make the list of categories to long/complicated. Are there (future) possibilities in Wikipedia to search to articles containing 2 (or more) specific categories, e.g. Category:Londoners and Category:Living people? A more advanced search would greatly increase interconnection between information.

Notable people will automatically be mentioned in context: a cultural context (a statue in a park), a political context (a pivotal figure in a political debate) et cetera.

I think this concludes a special section on notable natives in City or Town articles (or other geographical entities) is superfluous. Brz7 13:28, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm very surprised you came to that conclusion; up until the final sentence, I thought you were making a good case for keeping the notable natives section! Articles are for information. Categories are for simple classification of articles. Not all users use the category links (and what the chance of a successful Boolean category search for a specific birthplace and occupation, even if it were avaialble), and the categories don't appear at all on Wikipedia's mirror sites. We do not have categories set up for every town in the world, let alone for natives of each town, so keep this info spelled out and browsable in the article. GUllman 21:03, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your reaction. I was brainstorming on different ways people could get information on notable natives. I think there are quite a few options available, enough to make a separate notable natives section superfluous. Notable natives can easily be integrated in the various sections of city articles, directly put in context: people that can not be put in context of the cultural, political etc. history of the city are probably not notable enough to be mentioned (but could be included in the categories). Categories I think are a supplementary way to get to know more about notable (and less notable) natives. Still hope for more more advanced search options in wikipedia :). What other ways are there to get information on notable natives? Lists? Any ideas?

I think the discussion here is also whether the main city article is a touristic city guide or not. Best regards, Brz7 21:46, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps this perspective is useful (it's not an argument, more of an observation): I've created "Notable people, past and present" sections in a number of town articles in Connecticut. In a place like Greenwich, Connecticut or Ridgefield, Connecticut the list grows and grows eventually, so I create subheadings ("Athletes" or "Actors, Musicians and other entertainers" for instance), and at some point the list becomes so big and unwieldy that I create a new article for it (for instance: People of Greenwich, Connecticut, People of Ridgefield, Connecticut, People of Bridgeport, Connecticut). I leave behind on the town page a "Notable people, past and present" section with only the most famous or important people in it, along with a "See also: ...." link. This works just like any other section that becomes too big for a page but is thought worth keeping: you make another article out of it.

For a long time, I've known about celebrities in the local communities around here -- it was part of my job. But in adding people to Wiki pages over the past several months, what I've found is that I'm constantly surprised at the people who pop up -- famous people, that neither I nor the vast majority of people knew had any link to these communities (it's usually historical). I'm absolutely convinced that these sections/articles are fascinating to local people. They certainly pick up other contributions quickly. I create the people sections/articles usually by using the "what links here" device on the left column of each page, and I make sure that I click on the last "500" to get as many links as possible.

Also, I try to use a relatively large list: I call it "notable" people because I don't want to have to decide between someone who's famous and someone who is just "notable" although I define "notable" as being someone who is known well beyond the boundaries of the community, is known nationally in a broad field (nationally known business people or people known nationwide in a particular industry, for example). Essentially the list is for people who have or deserve their own Wikipedia articles. Often the lists are entirely made up of people who already have their own Wikipedia articles. I use the word "people" instead of "residents" because I want to keep the list broad enough to encompass someone who may not have lived in the community but may have come by and influenced it. I discovered that Andrew Carnegie spent a few summers in Darien, Connecticut, for instance. He was by no means a resident, and didn't affect the history of the town in any way, but no two ways about it -- it's fascinating, at least to people around here.Noroton 18:55, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your ideas on this issue. (Quote) "I'm absolutely convinced that these sections/articles are fascinating to local people." Yes, it is interesting to know more about where notable people live/ where they are born, also for non-local people I think. The articles you created I'd rather call lists, e.g. List of People of Ridgefield, Connecticut et cetera. These lists could add valuable information since they are more categorized than the data you get when using the categories (see my comments above).

Furthermore I still think a separate notable natives section is superfluous: in the more elaborate main articles (cf.

Main article: History of New York

) or in exceptional cases in the city/town article the names of notable/famous people can be integrated in the article. Their inclusion in these articles indicates their contribution to the history, culture etc. of the particular town/city. Brz7 17:02, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

The problem with Notable Natives is that it is too restrictive. The place of one's nativity is probably less important than where the individual had her or his formative years, or became "notable." Therefore this should be changed to Notable Residents. To limit it to natives will result (and likely has resulted) in revert wars between those who want to list an individual strongly associated with a city, and those who insist on the narrow but correct definition of native. Kablammo 01:34, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

City Function?

An essential part of a city's existence is its function. How operate its street maintenance, parks, water & sanitation, cemeteries, communications, and civil constructions? These bring invaluable information about everyday living conditions of any given agglomeration. Shouldn't these be included in the WikiProject_Cities definition as well? THEPROMENADER 12:50, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm working to bring Dallas, Texas to featured article status too and I'm putting all of this into "infrastructure"... drumguy8800 - speak 19:13, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, just kidding, apparently that isn't even in the template list. I'm not taking it off the article though -- i have it placed underneath Education and its subsections even have their own subarticles (or at least some of them do). There also isn't a notable natives section on the Dallas page.. it seems like any notable native should be talked about in the History section or subarticle. At the bottom or top of the subarticle, there can be a 'see also: list of important people from ___' drumguy8800 - speak 19:17, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

If I understand the original posting correctly, you want to note what services exist and who provides them -- correct? If so, why not put that in the "Government" section, perhaps as a sub-sub heading? These seem to be government functions, and if they are performed by either the municipal government or some other authority, I think this would be the spot that a curious person would look for that information. If the section gets too big, it can always be calved off into its own article. That's my two cents, anwyay.Noroton 19:02, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Spell out source units in text for demographics and geography

In the main text, units like "/km²" should instead read "per square kilometer", etc. See also WP:DATES#Units of measurement. Can we get a bot to do this? -- Centrx 21:38, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I think that most of the pages for the U.S. cities were created by Ram-man and his bot Rambot. That is why most of the demographics and geography sections all have a cookie cutter look to them. I have been editing the articles to fix some of the short comings. Some things that I have been fixing in the U.S. cities articles when I have been converting them from the old infobox to the new Template:Infobox city are: swapping unit order in text—US customary spelled out and metric in parenthesis (with non-breaking spaces) and placing an mdash to make one sentence. I did not major in English, but I don't think a sentence should ever start with a number. Also, population density should read persons per square mile/kilometre. Here is an example of what an updated sentence should look like.

Original:According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 28.3 km² (10.9 mi²). 27.7 km² (10.7 mi²) of it is land and 0.5 km² (0.2 mi²) of it (1.92%) is water.

Updated: According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 10.9 square miles (28.3 km²)— 10.7 square miles (27.7 km²) of it is land and 0.2 square miles (0.5 km²) of it (1.92%) is water.

I agree with Centrx about spelling out the units in the text of the article. I think it looks better and makes it easier on the eyes to read.—MJCdetroit 01:31, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Do we know which of the measurements is the original and which is the conversion? In general I agree that for US-related articles US-style measurements should generally be listed first, but per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Units of measurement the original should be listed first. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:46, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

As for the U.S. census bureau, its quickfacts reports values in U.S. Customary and I believe that its TIGER data base reports figures in both systems.—MJCdetroit 01:59, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Do you think it is necessary to specify how much is land when that is implied by how much is water? —Centrx→talk 23:29, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Also, how about:

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 10.9 square miles (28.3 km²), of which 10.7 square miles (27.7 km²) is land and 0.2 square miles (0.5 km²), or 1.92%, is water.

This has two separate changes, one getting rid of the mdash, which is not grammatically necessary and is problematic right after a parentheses. The other putting the percentage in the text, without parentheses. —Centrx→talk 23:34, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I saw some of those changes being made and the % in parentheses looked a little funky to me. —Mike 03:24, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I found this on one of the pages I was updating and thought it was a great way to specify the geography:

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 116.1 square kilometers (44.8 square miles). 114.3 square kilometers (44.1 square miles) of it is land and 1.8 square kilometers (0.7 square miles) of it is water, comprising 1.52% of the town.

I love the phrase "comprising x% of the town." The only thing I don't like about that phrasing is starting the second sentence with a number. Just thought I'd share :) -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 17:59, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

new cat to helpcotrol city infobox templates

I have begun to split up category:Infobox templates, starting with Category:City infobox templates, which is, of course, of particular interest to this project. Circeus 00:56, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

GR1, GR2 etc?

What do these links mean? They all resolve to the same place - Geographic references. Given the # in their links I imagine that they're supposed to go to footnotes. They don't. Loganberry (Talk) 15:59, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

They used to be section id's (see this revision). It looks like the update at 20:31, 4 February 2006 broke the links. It's now just a numbered list rather than linkable sections. --harpchad 16:43, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, that editor partially reversed self immediately after that edit. The break appears with this edit. older ≠ wiser 17:17, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Sarajevo

Sarajevo is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 23:47, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

What's wrong with "town"

What is wrong with calling an unincorporated community a town? I understand that in some areas a town is an incorporated place but the dictionary also defines a town as something smaller than a city and larger than a village. Just because the word "town" has a legal definition in some places, does that invalidate the common usage of the word?

It really rubs me the wrong way to see a community that the average person would call a town called a census-designated place. Not only is it demeaning to reduce a community to a three-letter acronym but not always geographically accurate. For example, Bostonia is a neighborhood in El Cajon, California. The USGS locates Bostonia inside the city limits of El Cajon. However, the Bostonia CDP only includes unincorporated land and includes little of the area that people around here call Bostonia. So, starting the article with "Bostonia is a census-designated place" is just plain wrong (I fixed the article). Another example is Lakeside, California. The area that people identify as Lakeside is as large as the neighboring city of Santee. However, Lakeside is split into two CDPs called Lakeside and Winter Gardens. How can you start an article with "Lakeside is a census-designated place" when nearly half of the place people call Lakeside is not even within the CDP boundaries? On top of that, in the next census the CDP boundaries may change.

What's wrong with calling Lakeside an "unincorporated town"? It looks like a town and people call it a town. Calling it a town gives the impression that it's bigger than crossroads with a gas station and a convenience store but not as big as a full-blown city. I think it is more informative and much better than "Lakeside is a census-designated place". Rsduhamel 03:59, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I see no reason, could it have been a result of importing demographics? —Centrx→talk • 05:00, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

The issue might have to do with thefactnumerous article were originally automatic generations by a bot using US census data? Also, Wikipepedia:Verifiability is involved. How do we source what is defined as part of "Lakeside, California"? The census has the advantage of being relatively authoritative. Circeus 05:10, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it is important to distinguish that whatever statistical data given about the CDP applies ONLY to the CDP. The local understanding of the area described by the same name as the CDP may differ in significant ways. This is especially true where a CDP adjoins an incoporated municipality. A portion of the area that is locally known by a name may lie within the incorporated municipality, but the statistics for the CDP do not include that portion. So, in sum, it is OK to edit an article and include details about the area as a community, but it is still important to explain that the place name is used by the Census to describe a CDP and that the statistics may not exactly correspond to the local understanding of the community. older ≠ wiser 11:55, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with calling a community a "town" as long as it's very quickly made clear in the article that the "town" is not a place incorporated as a town. Perhaps we could even say "unincorporated town". I don't see anything demeaning in that, and it lets you use the word you want. Let's not confuse anyone however -- a newcomer to a community may be wondering where to find local services, for instance, and be confused by talk of a "town."Noroton 19:06, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd call it a "neighborhood," "area" or "district," especially if it straddles legal boundaries; "town" often implies a specific identity, with or without a governmental entity, and thus should be avoided. To use Rsduhamel's original example, we could have two articles, one about Bostonia, California (Census Designated Place) and one about Bostonia, California (neighborhood), with cross-references. --Orange Mike 00:00, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Dawson Creek FAR

Dawson Creek, British Columbia is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 21:24, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Notable natives question

Am I correct in assuming that, if you are going to add a "notable natives" section it should be limited to only the most notable natives, and should not omit anyone as notable as the people on the list (in the interest of NPOV)? Am I also correct in assuming that, in the interest of article balance, these lists should be relatively short? I would rather prefer not having such a section, but I am in a dispute with a new user who wants to insert several minor celebrities into an article. Guettarda 04:40, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

The more people there are in the list, the less useful it becomes. Sometimes the people are extremely minor, and sometimes they have no relation to the town beyond being born there and moving out at 10 years old, if that. There is a long discussion about this above, but there was no conclusion except status quo. There are uses for the list (see Concord, MA, which also has an extreme case of adding a minor person to a list of major persons), but in general it is just people adding favorite people to otherwise non-notable towns. —Centrx→talk • 06:57, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Infoboxes, specifically Infobox City

I've proposed a change to the appearance of Template:Infobox City, see Template talk:Infobox City#New look, more similar to template:Infobox Country which has generated hardly any comment. This relates to my proposal at Wikipedia:Geographical infoboxes, which has also generated hardly any comment. Feedback on both would be appreciated. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:04, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Cities in Ireland

The current text of this article is disputed, comments and views are welcome and requested. See Talk:Cities in Ireland. Djegan 15:32, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Proper format/structure for a city page

What is the proper format/structure/template for the section titles for a U.S. city? I see two templates listed on the project page. Sorry if this is a stupid question.--Daveswagon 00:42, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I must be missing something because I only seen one. Unless you are confusing template and infobox. I think if you follow the format for section titles set up in Template for a U.S. City starting with History though External links, you should be fine. San Jose is usually the example that is given for the infobox and it appears to have the section titles setup in a similar fashion. There are no stupid questions; only stupid answers. Hopefully that's not a stupid answer. MJCdetroit 18:31, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Piccadilly Circus

Piccadilly Circus is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 21:59, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Why I joined

I just wanted everyone to know that I'm most interested in helping to establishing best practices for city and city-related articles, and also recruiting more major cities to start their own projects. I'm currently very busy with WikiProject Louisville and WikiProject Kentucky, but if there's any efforts along the lines of what I'm interested in, please let me know about them and I'll try to carve out time for them. Thanks! Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 20:51, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

ZIP Codes?

ZIP Codes...so do they need to be added to the cities' pages, if so where? Based on Ram-Man's talk page. I have all the data complied, I just need to know where on the page to place it. -- Vanvleit Talk 15:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

For anyone who doesn't know already, there was some previous discussion here. Wmahan. 20:39, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Also here -- Vanvleit Talk 16:10, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed the discussion on the other pages before and just checked them out along with a cursory examination of ZipCodeStats.com. It's kind of interesting, but based on how it misrepresents basic statistical information, I'm really not sure how much confidence I have it the site in general. For example, The short description for Albion, Michigan [1] (which happens to be where I live states:

Mostly comprised of thirty somethings (median age 34) with a strong lean of 4.2% more females in the population. Where as the top ethnicity is combo some other_race (1%), this area's second largest ethnic population is combo african american (23%), but it is not very inter-ethnically diversified (97.4% of the population is of one race). The average per capita income is $17,452, where families earn $12,265 more when accounting for two household bread-winners.

I can say with confidence that Albion is most certainly NOT "mostly comprised of thirty somethings". This seems a very elementary misinterpretation of median age. The other sentences are nearly unintelligble. Now, the site does say it is "beta", so perhaps it is unfair to be overly critical at this stage. But like I said, such basic mistakes don't do much to inspire confidence. older ≠ wiser 01:07, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Bkonrad, but that is sort of strying from topic, which is contributing ZIP Codes NOT Census data. I explain this exact issue on the Spam page (bottom). And yes, that is one of the reasons for the "Beta" moniker, but as I explain on the Spam page, the ZIP Code data should be correct. -- Vanvleit Talk 16:10, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

My view is that it might be nice to have ZIP code information, although I can't really think of a practical example of when someone might want a list of ZIP codes when reading an article about a city.

Assuming that there's a consensus for adding the information, there's the question of where to get the data. I think Vanvleit had a good point when he raised the issue of keeping the information updated; ZIP codes change and we would need a plan to prevent the information from becoming out of date.

Wikipedia has a general policy of using public-domain or otherwise freely available information when possible. For example, User:rambot used public-domain information such as census data (see Wikipedia:Geographic references). The same is true for external links; we tend to favor links to the Open Directory Project or Project Gutenberg rather than the various commercial sites in their respective genres. So I think it would be better to get the ZIP code data from a noncommercial source rather than Vanvleit's commercial site if possible.

I realize that finding public-domain data might be a challenge. After a brief search it appears that the official source of ZIP code data is the USPS.[2] It also appears that they say sell the data commercially, so presumably they won't allow it to be shared freely. Wmahan. 20:53, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, here is my proposal. I will be doing ongoing crawls the USPS with my little ZipBot to compile the list of ZIP Codes for ZipCodeStats. I will also be crawling the Wikipedia city pages. Why don't I just insert the ZIP Codes from the USPS into the Wikipedia page, and cite the appropriate query at the USPS? (i.e. http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/zcl_1_results.jsp?pagenumber=0&city=MADISON&state=WI). This would let the Wikipedians fact check and edit the data directly from the USPS. This way there will not be any links pointing to ZipCodeStats. Additionally, I can also update the ZIP Codes in the Wikipedia when I update the ZIP Codes in ZipCodeStats (though this could get a little tricky if people are modifying it manually) -- Vanvleit Talk 14:48, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the offer. That might be the best course to take, but ensuring that we have continued access to the information could be an issue. To quote the link I mentioned above:

Look-Up is intended for interactive use, not automated script processing. Although we do not intend to impose a limit on the number of address inquiries we allow a customer to request in a given session. If we determine that our open-access policy is being abused or overburdened, we will have to review it. Regardless, we do not intend to offer batch processing capabilities via this service.

I also wonder about the possibility that taking the information from the USPS in bulk could be considered a copyright violation. But my initial impression is positive. I'd be interested to know what others think of the idea. Wmahan. 22:51, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

That has the ring of the USPS's policy to prevent abuse of their servers. As all are aware, I am sure, access abuse of a service can be costly (if not crippling) to the service provider. Nobody wants their servers slammed. The way I crawl data, it takes a little while because of wait intervals in between requests. This is out of consideration of the service provider. A good example of this is how the GoogleBot crawls a site (which is one request at a time) vs. how the MSNBot crawls a site (stuffing it with a bunch of requests at once). This also means that it takes a little longer to analyze the data (about two days @2sec/request). I also start my ZIP Code requests from 00001 and climb all the way up to 99999, this way I know that I have thoroughly looked at ever possibility. And these same practices would be applied to the data insertion and analysis of the Wikipedia. -- Vanvleit Talk 16:40, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Why do we want to clutter articles with zip codes? This seems to me to be in the category of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a directory. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:52, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

---

So the following example would be for Madison Wisconsin (Please enter talk items above this line):

ZIP Codes For Madison (Example)

53593, 53701, 53702, 53703, 53704, 53705, 53706, 53707, 53708, 53711, 53713, 53714, 53715, 53716, 53717, 53718, 53719, 53725, 53726, 53744, 53774, 53777, 53778, 53779, 53782, 53783, 53784, 53785, 53786, 53788, 53789, 53790, 53791, 53792, 53793, 53794

City / County Overlap

I know this is a project just concerning cities, but I thought this might be a good place to ask anyway. I've been working on the articles for the cities in my home county. The county has an article unto itself as well. How much redundancy should be included between the county article and the various city articles. For example, the combination of the Notable Natives from each city would necessarily comprise the list of Notable Natives from the county. Same thing with Points of Interest. Should these be omitted from the county altogether? Should I just include them word-for-word in the county article? Something in between? Acdixon 18:54, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

As far as the entry on notable natives is concerned, there's another discussion on this talk page. I think references to notable natives should be limited to villages/towns/cities, and these references (see my contribution to the discussion) I think should not be explicit (by creating a subsection).

Points of interest (I prefer an other category) of a county I think should be put in detail in the city article and superficial (only the most notable objects, so not word for word) in the county article. Brz7 23:36, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Comments on Taichung City

All, I am working on my first city to try to bring up to the standards expected for cities on Wikipedia. This article has come a long way from the time I started working on it. However, I would like some feedback. Could other project members please leave feedback on the Taichung City talk page so I can improve the page even more.

Thank you. Ludahai 05:01, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I am fairly new at this myself, but it looks good for the most part. I corrected the wiki link for the sister city Makati as it does have article. I only had time right now to give it a quick look. I will read the whole article once I have moved and settled in my new place. The History heading is usually the first heading instead of Demographics and Economy/Education are both usually before sports, but these things are not a big deal. It looks good. --Abernaki 07:58, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Requested move: Los Angeles, California to Los Angeles

Only 2 1/2 months after the last failed requested move, and after the failure of a bunch of other requested moves at San Francisco, New Orleans, and other cities, there is yet another request to move the article on the City of Los Angeles from Los Angeles, California to Los Angeles. I have emphatically stated my position. I think it is important that editors involved in this project also express their opinion on this requested move. This is at least the third attempt to move the Los Angeles, California article. Please go to talk:Los Angeles, California#Survey #3 to express your views.

There needs to be a well-designed survey of editor's views on the naming of city articles in the United States because there is a small group of editors who are determined to overturn the long-standing Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements)#United States guideline, even if they have to do it a city at a time (succeeded at Chicago, but recently failed at San Francisco, California, New Orleans, Louisiana). ^BlankVerse 10:35, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

There is a survey in progress at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements) to determine if there is consensus on a proposed change to the U.S. city naming conventions to be consistent with other countries, in particular Canada. --Serge 05:50, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Copyedit requested

The city of Dundee is currently up on WP:FAC here, but its been requested that it gets a final copyedit from someone unfamilar with the text. Is there anyone here with the skills who would be willing to pitch in. I'd hate to see an article that otherwise appears so close to being promoted fail.  YDAM TALK 21:30, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

List of city squares by size

Prato della Valle

This list includes the largest town squares of many cities.

You may want to contribute more cities or improve existing entries (many articles on city squares could need references on the area). -- User:Docu

Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 14:46, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Satellite images

Does anyone know where I can find high resolution satellite images that can be used on Wikipedia? From what I understand all of NASA's work is in the public domain but where do I find the images and how do I capture them? --Krm500 00:11, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

A couple nice websites with NASA satellite images are http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ (although not all the images there are NASA, I'm not entirely sure about how to tell which are ok to use), and http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/ (which is a "near-realtime" archive of imagery from the MODIS sensor on the Terra and Aqua satellites; ..the site takes some time to figure out, but is chock full of imagery). Pfly 05:34, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

How about the satellite images from the link "this location with Daily Terra, NASA" on the coordinates link in the top right corner?--Krm500 02:25, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Survey on proposal to make U.S. city naming guidelines consistent with others countries

There is a survey in progress at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements) to determine if there is consensus on a proposed change to the U.S. city naming conventions to be consistent with other countries, in particular Canada. --Serge 05:50, 28 October 2006

This proposal would allow for articles on American cities to be located at Los Angles or Boston instead of Los Angeles, California or Boston, Massachusetts, bringing article titles for American cities into line with articles for cities such as Paris and Toronto.--DaveOinSF 18:18, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

However the proposal would allow U.S. cities to be inconsistent with the vast majority of other U.S. cities and towns, which (with a few exceptions) all use the "city, state" convention. -Will Beback 23:37, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Berlin

You are very welcome to comment on this city-article. Is it already mature enough to promote it towards FA-candidate-procedure? Thank you !Lear 21 13:47, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Suggestions for new sections on cities

I think a useful addition to the Cities pages would be:

Animal / insect life - what type of wild animals are around the city? Might you find deer in your backyard? A cougar? Pigeons? What type of insects are there? Are there tons of mosquitos? Flies? Are there lightning bugs?

Natural disasters - does the city regularly experience tornados? Is there a volcanic history in the area? Is it prone to earthquakes?

I haven't a clue as to how to add this myself, to my city let alone all the ones I don't know anything about. But I think it would be useful information, especially for someone who was thinking about moving there. It's not the type of thing that's really mentioned unless you specifically ask residents.

Bath

Bath is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy (Talk) 19:06, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

ThumbOfMI.com

I would like to propose adding the web site http://www.thumbofmi.com (ThumbOfMI.com) to 4 Michigan counties - Huron, Tuscola, Sanilac and Lapeer. Those 4 counties make up a region in Michigan called the "Thumb of Michigan". (Look at a map of Michigan, it resembles a hand, those 4 counties are in the Thumb.) The site itself is a collaboration of news headlines, from all 4 counties, on the main page along with a forum and chat room for residents. It is a fairly rural and agricultural area, and even though the residents are spread out, they all know what's going on elsewhere in the Thumb. Ultimately, I think the addition of the link to all the cities and villages in those 4 counties would be great, I'm going slow and am requesting the site be added to at least the 4 counties. Thanks. Stasmi 20:59, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Spamming by a unit of Journal Communications?

Please look at the note of mine on Talk:Journal Communications, and see whether they are doing this to places you watch, or if Talk:Jackson, Tennessee was an exception. --Orange Mike 00:03, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Traffic Generation Protocol

I am wondering whether it is unkosher to place the following on the Chicago page to generate interest in the Wikipedia:WikiProject Chicago. I am going to be WP:BOLD and see if anyone has a problem with it. Let me know if others have encountered difficulty with this sort of trafffic generation or if it has already been deemed inappropriate. TonyTheTiger 19:56, 14 December 2006 (UTC) Template:CHICOTW

Linking to city pages

I looked for this in the MoS but couldn't seem to find it anywhere. Is there any sort of convention about how to link to a city when the state is also being included. Would it be Corpus Christi, Texas or Corpus Christi, Texas, Richmond, Virginia or Richmond, Virginia? —ShadowHalo 11:07, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Depends on your purpose and the context. If you want to send people to the city, I'd say use Richmond if that's clear enough, or Richmond, Virginia if you want to leave no doubt which Richmond you speak of. --Orange Mike 16:51, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Where is the list of projects and requested editions?

Per the above question, where do I add new projects to this wikiproject?--Sefringle 00:59, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Geography Section and Citing Sources

I am having a difficult time citing sources in the sections/articles related to Geography. I have searched many other cities around the world and it seems to be a common problem. If anyone has any suggestions on how we can overcome this problem I would appreciate their assistance. Further, is the Geopgrahy section supposed to include climate data? Alan.ca 12:35, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 19:48, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Neighbourhood Infobox

I'm new to Wikipedia so I apologise if this topic has been covered before. I searched and didn't find anything. I'm working on an article on the neighbourhood I live in, Sunnyside, Calgary and I was wondering if there is an infobox I can use for it? If not I'd like to try making one but was interested in getting some feedback first. Mark 22:38, 9 January 2007 (UTC)