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Most people would agree that Bakersfield is in Central California as it is in the Central Valley. Most people associate them selfs with Central California not SoCal. Any thoughts? thanks, House1090 ( talk) 05:38, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
Multiple editors, including myself as well as @ Binksternet, Pf1127, and Fettlemap: have undone 98.207.182.194 ( talk · contribs)'s additions for being, in short, unjustified by what the sources say. A region like this one that is not a political division will almost always have ambiguous boundaries and there is no reason to expect otherwise. I suggest the IP stop editing this article until they resolve these concerns here with us.-- Jasper Deng (talk) 00:37, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
I agree. To say that Santa Barbara is not in Southern California, or that the southern Central Coast is in Northern California, is absurd. Thank you to everyone who’s done their best to remedy the situation. Pf1127 ( talk) 01:06, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
I thought I would take a look at how other articles handle this question. Here's what I found:
Conclusion: Apparently the northern California and southern California articles were written from the point of view of dividing the state into two, rather than from common usage or reliable sources. The SLO County and Kern County articles do not buy into that approach. (I can understand that; I have family roots in SLO County, and if you try to tell anyone from SLO that they live in southern California, their response will range from “bite your tongue!” to something unprintable.)
I would like to change this article's definition to one based on common usage and the LA Times definition of southern California - which at this point is the only Reliable Source we have that addresses the question. But if that is too drastic a change to longstanding practice - if we decide to keep the ten counties - then we should change our lead sentence from “generally comprises the southernmost counties of California” to “comprises the southern half of the state of California”. There is no way that “southernmost” applies to San Luis Opispo or Kern counties. -- MelanieN ( talk) 16:01, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
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Yes, but a clean-cut North-South division is also far from accurate. These regions of the state are not mutually exclusive with Central California, so the best way to resolve the issue might be to acknowledge that some counties act as a buffer or overlay area between regions, such as Kern and San Luis Obispo for Southern/Central California.
There are similar issues with the Central California and Northern California articles as well (i.e. Central California is erroneously described as a subregion of Northern California in the lede), so I would definitely recommend investigating these further and coming up with some sort of resolution for all three portions of the state. Pf1127 ( talk) 07:47, 8 April 2020 (UTC)
MOS:COMPASS lists "Southern California" as an example of a title that should be capitalized, but it looks like a local consensus was former here in 2010 to lowercase it. Since the MOS overrides the local consensus, I believe we should restore the capitalization. {{u| Sdkb}} talk 20:43, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
The longstanding definition of Southern California is the lower third of the state, cut in a straight line at 35°45' (just north of Mission San Miguel Arcángel) as proposed in 1859, [4] or following the northern borders of the modern counties San Luis Obispo, Kern and San Bernardino, which are more or less drawn at 35°45' degrees latitude, not exactly a straight line. This definition of Southern California has been in the public mind for more than 160 years, and is still the main definition. It was codified in 1859 by the Pico Act approved by 75% of California voters and signed by Governor Weller, to create the new territory of "Colorado". See Territory of Colorado (California).
Today, this definition of Southern California holds ten counties. Back in 1872, the same area contained six, then seven, then eight counties by 1889. [5] In 1897 the same area held nine counties. Finally, in 1907, San Diego County was divided to create the tenth county: Imperial.
Certainly, there are other viewpoints about the definition of Southern California. But each one of them is of minor importance compared to the widely held ten-county definition. We can and should tell the reader about them, but not at the expense of proclaiming the ten-county definition as foremost by far.
A recent effort by Uni3993 sought to widen the scope of the definition to make Southern California a much smaller place, equivalent to the western urbanized areas of the "South Coast", leaving out the sparsely populated eastern desert areas and northward from the Santa Barbara coast. Uni3993 found website sourcing at TripSavvy, a travel site, and Oakdome, a self-published home-schooling website. These are nowhere near authoritative enough to establish the notional "South Coast" definition as equally important.
Many sources establish Southern California as being the lower third portion of the state, cut west-to-east in a nearly straight line. Post-1907 sources may also talk about a ten-county definition of Southern California.
We should strive to represent the literature in balance, giving much greater weight to the mainstream viewpoint. Binksternet ( talk) 23:15, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
Binksternet Since you wrongly only consider official sources as accurate, do you think this reference is enough to at least add my definition with the word sometimes?
Uni3993 ( talk) 10:47, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
Why was that literature section removed due to lack of notability? I do not agree with this change and it looks okay to stay in article. Would you like to give me further details about why was literature section omitted after editing? I definitely want to listen to that editors. Thank you for reading this. And do not forget the links cited in this source. —-: ThatCaliforniaLover2019 ( talk) 19:22, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
It would be useful to add a map of what Southern California looked like when the Indian tribes (Indigenous Americans) lived there. Such as this map: The Gabrielino Indians at the time of the Portola Expedition. It was designed by historian Allen Welts and copywritten in 1962 by the Southwest Museum. Another example: this map shows ancient tribal routes and communities. Here's a map of the Tongva villages in the Los Angeles Basin. - Artanisen ( talk) 09:21, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Southern California article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1Auto-archiving period: 91 days |
This
level-5 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most people would agree that Bakersfield is in Central California as it is in the Central Valley. Most people associate them selfs with Central California not SoCal. Any thoughts? thanks, House1090 ( talk) 05:38, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
Multiple editors, including myself as well as @ Binksternet, Pf1127, and Fettlemap: have undone 98.207.182.194 ( talk · contribs)'s additions for being, in short, unjustified by what the sources say. A region like this one that is not a political division will almost always have ambiguous boundaries and there is no reason to expect otherwise. I suggest the IP stop editing this article until they resolve these concerns here with us.-- Jasper Deng (talk) 00:37, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
I agree. To say that Santa Barbara is not in Southern California, or that the southern Central Coast is in Northern California, is absurd. Thank you to everyone who’s done their best to remedy the situation. Pf1127 ( talk) 01:06, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
I thought I would take a look at how other articles handle this question. Here's what I found:
Conclusion: Apparently the northern California and southern California articles were written from the point of view of dividing the state into two, rather than from common usage or reliable sources. The SLO County and Kern County articles do not buy into that approach. (I can understand that; I have family roots in SLO County, and if you try to tell anyone from SLO that they live in southern California, their response will range from “bite your tongue!” to something unprintable.)
I would like to change this article's definition to one based on common usage and the LA Times definition of southern California - which at this point is the only Reliable Source we have that addresses the question. But if that is too drastic a change to longstanding practice - if we decide to keep the ten counties - then we should change our lead sentence from “generally comprises the southernmost counties of California” to “comprises the southern half of the state of California”. There is no way that “southernmost” applies to San Luis Opispo or Kern counties. -- MelanieN ( talk) 16:01, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
Sources
|
---|
|
Yes, but a clean-cut North-South division is also far from accurate. These regions of the state are not mutually exclusive with Central California, so the best way to resolve the issue might be to acknowledge that some counties act as a buffer or overlay area between regions, such as Kern and San Luis Obispo for Southern/Central California.
There are similar issues with the Central California and Northern California articles as well (i.e. Central California is erroneously described as a subregion of Northern California in the lede), so I would definitely recommend investigating these further and coming up with some sort of resolution for all three portions of the state. Pf1127 ( talk) 07:47, 8 April 2020 (UTC)
MOS:COMPASS lists "Southern California" as an example of a title that should be capitalized, but it looks like a local consensus was former here in 2010 to lowercase it. Since the MOS overrides the local consensus, I believe we should restore the capitalization. {{u| Sdkb}} talk 20:43, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
The longstanding definition of Southern California is the lower third of the state, cut in a straight line at 35°45' (just north of Mission San Miguel Arcángel) as proposed in 1859, [4] or following the northern borders of the modern counties San Luis Obispo, Kern and San Bernardino, which are more or less drawn at 35°45' degrees latitude, not exactly a straight line. This definition of Southern California has been in the public mind for more than 160 years, and is still the main definition. It was codified in 1859 by the Pico Act approved by 75% of California voters and signed by Governor Weller, to create the new territory of "Colorado". See Territory of Colorado (California).
Today, this definition of Southern California holds ten counties. Back in 1872, the same area contained six, then seven, then eight counties by 1889. [5] In 1897 the same area held nine counties. Finally, in 1907, San Diego County was divided to create the tenth county: Imperial.
Certainly, there are other viewpoints about the definition of Southern California. But each one of them is of minor importance compared to the widely held ten-county definition. We can and should tell the reader about them, but not at the expense of proclaiming the ten-county definition as foremost by far.
A recent effort by Uni3993 sought to widen the scope of the definition to make Southern California a much smaller place, equivalent to the western urbanized areas of the "South Coast", leaving out the sparsely populated eastern desert areas and northward from the Santa Barbara coast. Uni3993 found website sourcing at TripSavvy, a travel site, and Oakdome, a self-published home-schooling website. These are nowhere near authoritative enough to establish the notional "South Coast" definition as equally important.
Many sources establish Southern California as being the lower third portion of the state, cut west-to-east in a nearly straight line. Post-1907 sources may also talk about a ten-county definition of Southern California.
We should strive to represent the literature in balance, giving much greater weight to the mainstream viewpoint. Binksternet ( talk) 23:15, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
Binksternet Since you wrongly only consider official sources as accurate, do you think this reference is enough to at least add my definition with the word sometimes?
Uni3993 ( talk) 10:47, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
Why was that literature section removed due to lack of notability? I do not agree with this change and it looks okay to stay in article. Would you like to give me further details about why was literature section omitted after editing? I definitely want to listen to that editors. Thank you for reading this. And do not forget the links cited in this source. —-: ThatCaliforniaLover2019 ( talk) 19:22, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
It would be useful to add a map of what Southern California looked like when the Indian tribes (Indigenous Americans) lived there. Such as this map: The Gabrielino Indians at the time of the Portola Expedition. It was designed by historian Allen Welts and copywritten in 1962 by the Southwest Museum. Another example: this map shows ancient tribal routes and communities. Here's a map of the Tongva villages in the Los Angeles Basin. - Artanisen ( talk) 09:21, 3 March 2024 (UTC)