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This article has been mentioned by a media organization: Dan Bahl (October 31, 2023). "We Asked Wikipedia 'Where is Upstate New York?', This Was the Answer". ESPN Radio. Retrieved October 31, 2023. To put it simply, Wikipedias entry on Upstate New York is just as confusing as any conversation we've ever had about the region.

What is considered upstate New York? Plus, although much of upstate New York is rural, much of it is suburban and rugged. Can we specify which parts? 2605:6001:E7C4:1E00:B1EA:9BC8:FF42:C2CE ( talk) 21:31, 13 August 2019 (UTC) reply

The article refers to Upstate New York as a whole. As you may have read in the article, Upstate New York is an ill-defined region, with little consensus on a precise definition. Looking at the counties that are almost always considered to be upstate, while some portions of these counties are rugged, and few (but not many) parts are suburban, this does not apply to the majority of the area. Rural is a broader term (and might be broader than you're considering it to be), as it includes any type of land that isn't urban or suburban (generalizing a bit here, but rugged areas are typically considered to be rural). More importantly, the point of calling out the rural nature at the top of the article is to justify why upstate has a strong agricultural industry, and not to generalize about all of the land.

I believe that the diverse geography of Upstate New York is discussed a bit in the Geography section, and touches on how there is a mix of mountainous areas and rural land. That section could certainly be expanded to better discuss the variation in land - feel free to make the edits there. Vmanjr ( talk) 21:42, 13 August 2019 (UTC) reply

@ Vmanjr: You reverted my edit changing "State" to lower case (or perhaps it just got caught up, citing talk discussion that I am unable to find. This is clearly incorrect: the name of the state is "New York", not "New York State", so "state" is not part of the name and should therefore not be capitalized.

On a slightly related note, MOS:COMPASS would seem to advise that we not capitalize "upstate", either, as most sources I've seen do not do so. {{u| Sdkb}}  ^talk 04:19, 6 February 2021 (UTC) reply

The capitalization "New York State" is by far the more common usage. The name of the city is also "New York", but we capitalize "New York City" as well, not "New York city". And "upstate" isn't the name of a compass direction, so MOS:COMPASS doesn't necessarily imply, but in my experience sources seem to be pretty divided on capitalizing "Upstate". AJD ( talk) 04:47, 6 February 2021 (UTC) reply

@ Sdkb: Sorry - it was unintended collateral damage while trying to handle the problematic edits that came afterward from the IP user. That said, I am in agreement with AJD - "New York State" is the more common capitalization (even the state government uses it officially, and NYS has long been shorthand used in the state), and the capitalization of upstate seems ambiguous at best across all sorts of texts. Personally, I think it would be good to stick to "New York State", and to try to reach some sort of consensus on the capitalization of upstate and downstate throughout the article. Vmanjr ( talk) 12:52, 8 February 2021 (UTC) reply

In the definition section it says, "Westchester is seemingly always considered Downstate under state law." According to the DMV, however, which defines Upstate "as any county north of the NYC border." ^[1] I don't know if this needs to be mentioned in the article or not, but it at least means the passage I quoted above should be changed. Hahafunnyboy ( talk) 21:55, 29 August 2021 (UTC) reply

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect New York (upstate). The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 October 27#New York (upstate) until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. feminist (+) 10:43, 27 October 2021 (UTC) reply

There should be a way to get a population number and even more in depth data straight from county data on Wikipedia or elsewhere without manually working the numbers one by one. B137 ( talk) 00:54, 31 August 2015 (UTC) reply

Namely I questioned that the population of Upstate went through steady decline for an extended period ("Since the late 20th century, with the decline of manufacturing and its jobs, the area has generally suffered a net population loss."). Much of the area is and always has been very sparsely populated. It's easy to ignore all that and only focus on anyplace that's anyplace, that being Buf, Roc, Syr, Albany and maybe binghamton. While these have declined sadly over the latter half of the 20th century, the areas around them haven't necessarily. For example, Monroe County, New York only logged one tiny loss for 1980 of 1.4% but quickly gained it back and is unequivocally higher than ever. Not so with Erie County, New York ( Buffalo, New York) and Onondaga County, New York ( Syracuse). But bring in many of the podunk counties, some of which don't even have incorporated cities, and the population has gone up by almost two million, an increase of more than 35%. If you include most of the next few counties as part of "downstate", that accounts for an increase of a few hundred thousand, not nearly enough to justify saying upstate had a "net population loss trend [over an extended period]", though a few counties did lose some. Not to discredit the Rust Belt for not being awful, the economy is rather stagnant ( New York high-speed rail mentions this) outside of NYC. Little things come and go but nothing major. B137 ( talk) 00:14, 7 September 2015 (UTC) reply

• New York City
• New York
• Rockland
• Westchester
• Nassau
• Suffolk

• upstate 1950: 14830192 - 276129 - 672765 - 625816 - 89276 - 7891957 = 5,274,249

• upstate 2010: 19378102 - 8175133 - 311687 - 949113 - 1339532 - 1493350 = 7,109,287

• Minus all this for any given census year should yield the widely acknowledged "upstate" pop.

• The clear conclusion from all this is that Upstate has NOT been losing population over the [late] 20th century. I'm not advocating for the economy or significance of the sparsely populated and much less know state of New York, but let's recognize the facts. B137 ( talk) 17:54, 5 April 2016 (UTC) reply

A table should be built by taking New York State numbers and subtracting at least eight counties five of New York City two of Long Island and Westchester county. If not the six counties above that up to the 42° latitude line.

Is 'Upstate' capitalized? The article seems to say so, and I can think of comparisons that would support both sides, such as 'mainland China' or 'Upper Egypt', so I assume it comes down to source coverage and consensus, right? Remsense 留 19:22, 6 December 2023 (UTC) reply

• The ngram evidence is pretty conclusive that it should be lowercase. Furthermore, the article is telling us that it is a descriptive term (with no formal boundary) and therefore not a formal name. Cinderella157 ( talk) 01:32, 16 December 2023 (UTC) reply

  Disagree that this is conclusive. You need to examine the usage in each case. The recognised place called Upstate New York is found in upstate New York. SmokeyJoe ( talk) 23:50, 3 February 2024 (UTC) reply

Remsense, I have changed case accordingly but you might like to check. I have to fix a couple of redlinks by moves. There is also "downstate" to fix and I guess a lot of other articles that are overcapped in consequence. Ping Dicklyon if you have nothing to do over the holidays? :) Cinderella157 ( talk) 01:51, 16 December 2023 (UTC) reply

sure thing! Thank you for your input. Remsense 留 01:53, 16 December 2023 (UTC) reply

I don't think the ngram evidence alone is enough to go on. Before making such a significant change as moving pages, can we do an RfC, and research a bit on what reliable sources use? Anecdotally, I have seen lots of reliable sources use "Upstate New York". Vmanjr ( talk) 02:02, 16 December 2023 (UTC) reply

I would be down for this. Remsense 留 02:03, 16 December 2023 (UTC) reply

The term is not intrinsically a proper name that would cause us to capitalise it as a matter of course. The article is telling us that it is not a formally defined geopolitical region in the same way as North Dakota (the formal name of a state) rather than north Dakota, being the northern part of Dakota (see also eastern Ukraine). Sure, there may be plenty of instances where one sees it capitalised but (per MOS:CAPS): only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. This is essentially a statistical question to be determined by objectively polling usage in a large number of sources (a representative sample). Ngrams satisfies this. Generally, the alternative is a source war and who can produce the most sources to support their preferred capitalisation. The ngram evidence is quit conclusive with about 5:1 for lowercase (without considering titles of works, business names and like that would increase the proportion capitalised). Given the overwhelming ngram evidence, I cannot see any reasonable case being made for capitalisation. Cinderella157 ( talk) 04:05, 16 December 2023 (UTC) reply

Totally agree. The n-gram stats are a fair summary of what reliable sources (books) do, and upstate and downstate are generic descriptors. Of course when they're part of the name of an org, that's different; like Upstate New York Property Management in Rochester. Dicklyon ( talk) 06:00, 16 December 2023 (UTC) reply

Based on what I'm seeing, scholarly sources tend predominantly to use "upstate New York", while news articles are about 50/50 when used mid-sentence, with more reputable sources leaning towards "upstate New York" and not "Upstate New York". I think that's enough for me to jump on the lowercase train. Vmanjr ( talk) 20:08, 16 December 2023 (UTC) reply

Regions like Southern California, Western Massachusetts, and Central Florida are consistently capitalized in Wikipedia. Should Upstate New York be different? AJD ( talk) 21:23, 16 December 2023 (UTC) reply

There's plausible support in book n-gram stats for Southern California and Central Florida, but should be western Massachusetts and upstate New York. Dicklyon ( talk) 05:51, 17 December 2023 (UTC) reply

Partially for curiosity's sake, and potentially adding a thread of reason to ward off the potential nihilism of total deferment to the aggregate consensus of sources: I mostly get the rationale Cinderella157 puts forth for capitalized = proper name vs. uncapitalized = adjective modifying proper name, but there are other dimensions to consider, I reckon.
I edit a lot of China articles, and the term mainland China is used a lot (meaning the territory controlled by the PRC sans Hong Kong and Macau, etc.), and it seems more or less identical as upstate New York in terms of what kind of name it is, if you'll follow me. I would consider both to be proper names because they have specific forms (it's specifically 'upstate', not 'upper' or whatever) with specific meanings, referring to specific areas for specific reasons—but in my mind the reason they are uncapitalized is because they are cultural divisions of a polity, and capitalizing them would make them sound like they are polities in and of themselves, because polities often have similar names, like West Virginia and North Macedonia.
So, by that logic I'd also want to write southern California and central Florida, even though they are meaningfully proper names to me as well—you wouldn't write south California, would you? That'd just sound odd.
(Anyway, that's all just my personal hysteria—this is Wikipedia so we defer to sources for these specific style points, but it's still worth interrogating imo.) Remsense 留 06:05, 17 December 2023 (UTC) reply

On first principles, I would not capitalise Southern California or Central Florida since they are descriptive noun phrases (ie the southern part of California). Unfortunately, people's views of what is or is not a proper noun varies significantly, mainly because education tends to treat the subject somewhat simplistically. For this reason, the MOS has chosen to rely on empirical evidence rather than a priori rules. Evidence of usage clearly supports Southern California and a case could be made for Central Florida. Cinderella157 ( talk) 07:32, 17 December 2023 (UTC) reply

I know this is WP:NOTAFORUM and this is purely for my own curiosity, but in your mind what distinguishes a proper noun from a descriptive phrase in this context? They feel semantically identical in their function. Remsense 留 07:34, 17 December 2023 (UTC) reply

On first principles, I would capitalise a polity: so Western Australia but eastern Australia. Cinderella157 ( talk) 09:47, 17 December 2023 (UTC) reply

On first principles, I wouldn't cap west Texas, my home region, nor northern New Mexico, my wife's. Yet the majority of sources do cap West Texas, but not northern New Mexico. Not consistently, though, so WP defaults to lowercase per MOS:CAPS. These are descriptions, not names. Western Australia and Northern Territories and South Australia are names. Dicklyon ( talk) 04:46, 18 December 2023 (UTC) reply

On reviewing the stats, I agree that Central Florida ought to be downcased, too. Dicklyon ( talk) 04:59, 18 December 2023 (UTC) reply

It can vary for other reasons in unusual cases. E.g., "northern New Mexico" as simply a loosely defined geographical area is not a proper name, just a descriptor. But Northern New Mexico is often treated as a capitalized proper name of another sort, culturally/anthropologically/sociologically: a discrete Hispanic cultural zone with a unique history due to long-term isolation between the Spanish Conquest and the coming of the railroads, which has produced distinct religious traditions, cuisine, Spanish-language dialect, etc. But that Northern New Mexico is not a place you can drive through or build a house in; it's a traditional and later analytical social construct. I'm extremely skeptical anything like that applies to upstate New York, west Texas, central Florida, etc. Why "Northern California" and "Southern California" get capitalized in this manner is a good question. The longer there's a continguous "Western culture" history of a place, the more likely regional terms are to be treated as proper names, even if they do not conform to political boundaries. E.g. various regions of England and Scotland. If you tried to down-case the Scottish Highlands or the West Country (or its containing South West [of] England, you'd be shouted out of the room. Cf. also the Camargue and French Riviera, Italian Riviera, etc., which do not correspond to civil divisions (or to historical kingdoms/duchies, etc.). Ultimately, this stuff seems pretty arbitrary, and we have little to go on but whether something is overwhelmingly capitalized in independent English-language sources. For every argument that can be advanced that something "is" a proper name for [insert reason here], someone else has an [insert other reason here] to argue against it, because all these "is of identity or predication" arguments about the term proper name are making Proper name (philosophy) claims which have not only been argued about inconclusively for centuries, they have no connection to capitalization in the first place (e.g. under most philosophy definitions, every named disease, species, doctrine, method, theory, etc., etc., is a proper name unless the name is purely descriptive). What determines Proper name (linguistics) treatment as something to capitalize is primarily just convention (and even when something is clearly a proper name under every definition, it is not necessarily capitalized anyway, e.g. k.d. lang and, increasingly lowercased, the internet). We spend too much time arguing about such matters with OR and POV, instead of just following MOS:CAPS: Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:36, 21 January 2024 (UTC) reply

I agree, it can vary. On checking, there is an abundance of assertions out there (ignoring WP:RS) that Upstate New York, a cultural place, is not simply found by looking in upstate New York. Upstate New York is in upstate New York, but lots of upstate New York (especially the west) is not accepted (by some) as part of Upstate New York.

MOS aficionados should avoid erring by writing oversimplified rules. SmokeyJoe ( talk) 00:01, 4 February 2024 (UTC) reply