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To WikiProject Urban Settlements or something similar. WikiProject Cities tags are and will be used most of the time (90%+?) on villages and such (as they are more popular), and seeing the WP:CITY tag on villages is a bit confusing. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 12:30, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
I think the name works just fine... I believe "city" is generic enough. Really, I don't think anybody really pays too much attention to the names of WikiProjects or would be confused if some BFE town was marked with the WikiProject Cities tag. There doesn't seem to be too much obvious benefit to such a rename. Best, epicAdam( talk) 21:09, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
If anybody is working on any sort of populated place (past or present) in California this book has some good information. It just has short snippets on each place name, but I've been using it for cities, unincorporated communities, and ghost towns in Yolo County, and it has been a great resource. Just wanted to share it if anybody is interested. Killiondude ( talk) 08:51, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
I'd hoped to better structure this since it's been bugging me for a while, but I've basically laid it out at Talk:Athens#Population_figures_.2F_infobox in response to a little population figure editwar going on there. Basically, where does the authoritative data for population of city, metro and urban areas come from? Best or latest? These numbers get changed on a daily basis, in every city article. Is there a best practice or can we create one? Census data tends to be every ten years, new figures come out much more often - which wins? Franamax ( talk) 14:38, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
Most major cities do not have airports! They normally require two mile runways which won't fit into most major cities which are urbanized. Airports properly belong in the metro article which encompasses the city and/or the higher level geographical grouping such as "state", "county", "province," etc. And generally, places, unlike WikiTravel, should not be looked upon as portals to another area. That is a tourist outlook. So I don't read the Paris article to see information about Versailles or Chartres, which are properly in other articles. I do read the Paris article to learn (or get a link to) the Louvre, Arch de Triomphe, and the Eiffel Tower, which are properly within the context of "Paris." We need help with this. Editors are putting anything "within sight" into articles with clear geographic and governmental boundaries. In Wikipedia, articles have clear boundaries. All an editor needs to do is stick to the WP:TOPIC. Student7 ( talk) 18:44, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
The problem is that you altered, unilaterally, the guidelines both for WP:USCITY and WP:UKCITIES so that they reflected the position you feel ought to apply here, and you did this shortly after you started to remove material from a number of articles about airports. You then raised the issue both here and at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about settlements#Airports...and other resources, in this last case only after I had reverted the changes you had made to the UKCITIES guidlines and made some modifications to make the advice more clear. You then continued to remove sections about airports from various articles.
Most of these changes, but not all of them as I write this, have been reverted. It is clear that you do not appear to have consensus yet for the changes you are making, and so, pending a consensus view emerging, I suggest that you revert your own changes so as not to preempt the results of any discussion here. Whatever happens, I think it would be very unwise of you to carry on making any more removals of material about airports until the matter is further discussed. There is a fine line to be drawn between being WP:BOLD and being reckless, and I hope that the view is that you have not crossed that line from being bold into being reckless, but I imagine that any further removals until the matter is resolved would be viewed as being reckless.
I also think that the choice of some of the edit summaries used in removing the material are not particularly helpful: this summary and this summary, for instance, suggests that honest attempts to add material to articles by established editors are instances of confusing wikipedia with wikitravel. This seems to me, and possibly others, to be an exaggeration in that it pre-supposes that your interpretation of the various guidelines is the only one and widely accepted, which we are disputing, and that the editors who added the material were deficient in their knowledge in some way. This is not a good way to proceed; the edit summaries were badly phrased.
As for the substantial issue, it seems quite reasonable for transport sections of settlement articles to mention what facilities can be easily accessed by people in the settlement, even if those facilities do not formally lie within the settlement limits. This is because as previously noted, such facilities are often an integral part of the economic activity of a settlement. It is not the case that to include information about airports means that the articles appear to suggest that the settlements "claim" them entirely as their own, or falsely claim that the administrative control of the airports is in the hands of the settlements' authorities: the articles are merely providing information that any encyclopaedia would think useful to include for a settlement, even when they are not some (jumped-up) travel service, which you seem try to caricature the situation as being like. Let me put it another way: if all material were to be excluded from a settlement's articles that concerned things not formally in that settlement, then distances from state capitals, position within the larger state or country, and other such things would also be omitted. I don't think this is credible, and I note you seem to be single-mindedly concentrating on just airports here, rather than dealing with these other issues. The fact is that to remove these other aspects would be unacceptable and I think clearly so, and you probably know you wouldn't have a chance of persuading anyone round to your point of view; and for the same reason, removal of information about transport facilities and communications with other settlements (like airports) is unacceptable. DDStretch (talk) 17:39, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
Saying it often enough, or loudly enough, or using value-laden language to describe those who disagree with you as "holdouts" will not convince, except cast doubt on the seriousness with which you are choosing to continue this line. It seems to me that there are clear reasons why your own point of view is not achieving anywhere near a consensus view, and yet you choose to label people and arguments as "holdouts". Unfortunately, it may probably lead people to begin to wonder why, I'm afraid; if so, many may well think you would have brought this upon yourself. DDStretch (talk) 03:42, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
Hello, I have traveled from WikiProject Geographical coordinates, where we seek wider opinions on whether {{ coord}} should offer a N/S/E/W labeled format for decimal coordinates (example: 43°07′N 79°20′W / 43.12°N 79.34°W) either as an option or by default, or if the existing unlabeled format (example: 43°07′N 79°20′W / 43.12°N 79.34°W) is sufficient. Please comment there if you have an opinion on this. Thanks! -- GregU ( talk) 17:53, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
Article updates are availaible at Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities/Article alerts. It has also been transcluded to the Main project Page below Articles currently under review. No human activity needed. ArticleAlertbot will take care of the updates. Does anyone feel this is incorrect? Kensplanet T C 08:47, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
Ok, I've updated the article alert template, changing are options to include only the featured and good article categories, excluding featured/good topic candidates, and including peer review. I've dropped requests for comments from our options since it not a formal article review process; RFCs instead should be posted either to this talk page, or to the announcements section, located immediately below the review section. I am still not sure if this is going to solve the problem of having FA categories listed before GA categories, which is where that belongs. Dr. Cash ( talk) 22:20, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
I'm a bit concerned about the London article. It's currently a GA, but even from a cursory glance at the lead I'm confident that this article would fail a GA-review. We have several outstanding "citation needed" tags, as well as dead links and uncited claims. London is a Top priority for this project, and is one of the most important cities in human history. Perhaps this project could apply some collective TLC? -- Jza84 | Talk 15:25, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
I've had Almu listed at Peer Review for some days now, & the only feedback I've gotten is an automated script, which hasn't been very useful because it was designed to provide advice about achieving GA status, not for what I was looking for -- some opinions about my choice of the statistics I pulled from the 1994 Ethiopian National Census. This isa test edit to see if I'm on the right track for other Wikipedia users. My goal is to provide the most useful or defining statistics from this document for every town it covers, & at this moment this article includes far more than for the average Rambot-created entry. On one hand, I don't want to bury the reader with too much information (this census provides extensive statistics on age break-downs & the housing of Ethiopia, for example), but on the other I want to provide enough to answer expected or reasonable questions about each town. Please spend a moment reading the article (no, you don't need to know anything about Ethiopia other than it is in Africa) & offer your opinion. (Who knows -- maybe once Ethiopia has been handled in this much detail, other editors might follow suit with articles on better documented countries like Germany & the UK. I assume their census reports are available under a license that makes incorporating their material into Wikipedia doable.) -- llywrch ( talk) 17:50, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
It was mentioned in the Dundee talk page that the article no longer met many of the criteria for FA back in 2007. I imagine the requirements have either changed significantly or the article has degraded through subsequent editing. I've therefore nominated it for FA review. Catfish Jim and the soapdish ( talk) 14:15, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
I've spotted a couple places where {{ Infobox Settlement}} has been replaced by {{ Geobox}} (one example at Ketchikan, Alaska). What is the WikiProject's position on the use of infoboxes for cities? Is there value in changing, or remain with the current standard? --- Barek ( talk • contribs) - 18:24, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
As most cities use Infobox Settlement rather than Geobox, it's probably not very helpful to convert one or the other articles from Infobox Settlement to Geobox. -- User:Docu
What are the notability criteria for neighborhoods? I assume not every neighborhood is automatically given an article (like every city/town is)? Do we just follow standard "significant coverage in reliable third-party sources"? -- SatyrTN ( talk / contribs) 22:31, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
Could some of you guys and gals please take a look at the article for Webster Springs, West Virginia and reassess it? I ask because I'm the one who expanded it and feel it should be left to an unbiased third-party. If you have any questions drop me a line on my talk page, I'd be happy to hear from ya. Thanks, Cra sh Underride 20:24, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
This is a general call for help from any experienced editors on the project. The article on Akron, Ohio is in pretty bad shape and seems to have been hijacked by a user who edits the article and virtually nothing else. There are about three of us who are trying to fix the article and bring it up to a better standard (currently C class) but it seems most of what we do is constantly removing excess cruft and repeating much the same over and over on simple things like what pictures are appropriate for a section. If any of you could offer input on the talk page to help this user understand Wikipedia policy better and/or help improve the article, it would be much appreciated! -- JonRidinger ( talk) 02:34, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators. All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. §hep Talk 00:26, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
I nominated the Spokane, Washington for peer review almost a week ago now and the review has only produced one quick suggestion on how to improve the article. Ive been trying to seek out reviewers myself that are involved in the WikiCities project (which resulted in the one comment on there so far), and still hardly any luck. I encourage all potential reviewers out there to give this article a chance, your time and effort wont be wasted! Thanks, Anon134 ( talk) 00:58, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
Hillsboro is at FAC, please leave feedback on the nomination page. Dabomb87 ( talk) 19:30, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
There are about 160 articles on places in Connecticut that use {{ Infobox Settlement}} somewhat different from other areas:
official_name Chester, Connecticut Suffield, Connecticut Naugatuck, Connecticut subdivision_type [[NECTA]] [[NECTA]] [[NECTA]] subdivision_name New Haven Springfield MA Waterbury subdivision_type1 Region Region Region subdivision_name1 Connecticut River Estuary Capitol Region Central Naugatuck Valley
Hartford, Connecticut uses a form closer to the one of other US cities:
|subdivision_type = Country |subdivision_name = [[United States]] |subdivision_type1 = [[U.S. state|State]] |subdivision_name1 = [[Connecticut]] |subdivision_type2 = [[NECTA]] |subdivision_name2 = Hartford |subdivision_type3 = Region |subdivision_name3 = Capitol Region
If it's ok, I'd go through the articles and adapt the others accordingly. -- User:Docu
Hi! I would like to have the prose at Gulfton, Houston improved to an FA level, but I need some outside help to ensure the prose fits. There was the first GA review here: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Gulfton, Houston/archive1 - I fixed the images, but the prose still needs some help. Would anyone mind looking over the article? WhisperToMe ( talk) 04:33, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
Come on, to have something like "the shitty country" stated there for a wikilink to country of Serbia right there on a wikiproject page is wrong. Why is a member of this wikiproject or of wikipedia in general allowed such leeway with such ethnicly insensitive language, I'm not Serbian but as a Jew I know what racism and ethnic hatred can do in this world if allowed to even exist in the smallest amounts. An Albanian, or a sympathizer of their plight should also know better than to return the ethnic hatred that SOME, and hopefully a very small minority, of Serbians have towards them. 24.182.142.254 ( talk) 01:29, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
I found many unreferenced statements in Detroit - also there is an original research concern in the section "Architecture" - Please address these. If not, Detroit could lose its featured article status. WhisperToMe ( talk) 20:06, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
Crossposted in Wikiprojects Cities, Hungary, Slovakia [alphabetical order]
Since a long-running and banal edit war over the names by which the Bratislava article should refer to the town was going nowhere, I locked the article down three weeks ago and invited informed and persuasive discussion. There has been none, and today I've turned down a request to unlock the article as I've no reason to think that the edit war wouldn't resume.
This is a Featured Article into which a number of thinking editors have put a lot of work, and it would be a great pity if it ended up listed in WP:LAME. Your informed, dispassionate input would be most welcome on that talk page. -- Hoary ( talk) 00:22, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
Incidentally, I took a quick look through the history of the article and got the impression that the most constructive editors had been, in alphabetical order:
Taken together, the talk pages (and block logs) of these four show a considerable frustration with (and, I infer, eventual defeat by) nationalists and fanatics of all stripes. -- Hoary ( talk) 00:51, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
I have nominated Mumbai for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Cirt ( talk) 03:06, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
Akureyri has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Articles are typically reviewed for one week. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here. Dabomb87 ( talk) 16:25, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
Could someone please review and add this page to the WikiProject Cities? It is a good article nominee. 71.171.133.69 ( talk) 20:35, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
Some of you may be interested in a discussion I have started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities/Guideline concerning the lack of consistency among the tables used in US Cities to show historical population figures. Thanks, Sher eth 23:07, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Puerto Williams is a settlement with some 2,200 inhabitants in the southern tip of sout america. It has a sea port, bank, kindergarden, an airport, restaurants, hotels, a school, a police station, a marina, a museum, a tourism office, a univeristy centre and is the capital of a Chilean province.. could this place be considered a city? Dentren | Talk 14:27, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
According to the US Census, the 2007 estimated population for Raleigh was 375806. Editors are changing the number to 385507, citing raleighnc.gov. Is that fine or should we stick with Census numbers only? (I assume it's the latter. If not, APK needs to erase some hidden comments.) APK straight up now tell me 22:33, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
Is there a consensus as to if coordinates should be included in prose or not? See Fernley, Nevada, where it says "Fernley is located at 39°35′55″N 119°12′54″W", which is essentially meaningless unless you know where that is off the top of your head (location based on major landmarks the reader can identify with is more useful in my opinion). All it does is give you a link to the geography page, however if the coordinates are located in the title/infobox you have that link in two other places in the page. I looked through a couple of FAs and there seems to be a mix, some have coordinates in the geography section, some don't. I looked for a MOS for city pages and didn't find it (is there one?)-- kelapstick ( talk) 16:04, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
This message is being sent to WikiProjects with GAs under their scope. Since August 2007, WikiProject Good Articles has been participating in GA sweeps. The process helps to ensure that articles that have passed a nomination before that date meet the GA criteria. After nearly two years, the running total has just passed the 50% mark. In order to expediate the reviewing, several changes have been made to the process. A new worklist has been created, detailing which articles are left to review. Instead of reviewing by topic, editors can consider picking and choosing whichever articles they are interested in.
We are always looking for new members to assist with reviewing the remaining articles, and since this project has GAs under its scope, it would be beneficial if any of its members could review a few articles (perhaps your project's articles). Your project's members are likely to be more knowledgeable about your topic GAs then an outside reviewer. As a result, reviewing your project's articles would improve the quality of the review in ensuring that the article meets your project's concerns on sourcing, content, and guidelines. However, members can also review any other article in the worklist to ensure it meets the GA criteria.
If any members are interested, please visit the GA sweeps page for further details and instructions in initiating a review. If you'd like to join the process, please add your name to the running total page. In addition, for every member that reviews 100 articles from the worklist or has a significant impact on the process, s/he will get an award when they reach that threshold. With ~1,300 articles left to review, we would appreciate any editors that could contribute in helping to uphold the quality of GAs. If you have any questions about the process, reviewing, or need help with a particular article, please contact me or OhanaUnited and we'll be happy to help. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 ( talk • contrib) 06:01, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
Hello, there is a dispute brewing over the reliability of http://ustravelweather.com versus http://www.weatherbyday.com. User Mikevegas40 ( talk · contribs) created climate tables in many cities (like Medford, Oregon which is the one I noticed his work at). He linked them originally to the first site which he admits belongs to him. Now, apparently he lost the old domain name and today went about updating all his old links. This action was taken to the admins noticeboard and it was decided that a consensus should be reached here. Before consensus was reached, at least one user ( Allstarecho ( talk · contribs)) began reverting them back.
I would like a consensus to be reached before this turns worse than it has to be. The climate tables need to be sourced, and the link " http://ustravelweather.com" is no longer reliable. There is nothing in policy that says a user cannot host content on their own site and reference it from WikiPedia (provided it is licensed under GFDL). The user agrees to this, so the question is whether or not http://www.weatherbyday.com is reliable for the purpose of the climate tables.
I think it is and am a little ashamed at how this is turning out, and my involvement is turning personal so I am going to leave it in the hands of other capable editors. Thank you for your time. Zab Milenko 00:50, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
Without touching on the issue of the reliability of the data, there is a certain amount of impropriety in an editor creating multiple links back to an apparently for-profit resoruce that the same editor owns. I hesitate to pass judgement on said editor's motives; it may well be that they are merely interested in the dissemination of the information, but the appearance of improper behavior is still there. Editors should not be linking to websites they own, and it is as simple as that. Sher eth 14:32, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
Hi, could someone from this WikiProject give their view on the above article, which is at GA reassessment? I don't think it is quite GA quality, but I would like an informal second opinion, just to be sure. Thanks, Dabomb87 ( talk) 16:29, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
I notice that WP:CITIES suggests that lists of notable residents are acceptable. This seems surprising to me, since a resident (How is that defined?) is not at all influential to a city. That someone lives (or had lived) in a certain city doesn't change that city at all. Surely, in the case of a politician or civic leader, that might be true--but the lists we see throughout these articles are not so limited. That a news anchor or musician came from a particular town means nothing to the town in any substantial way.
Wikipedia's so-called discussion pages are terrible vehicles for communication, but I managed to find an archive that shows a recent discussion. It seems this ended in no concensus for the removal of the section. Where was the concensus for its inclusion? -- Mikeblas ( talk) 02:36, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
I do agree that bulleted lists of "notable people" are not what we want in articles. Too much maintenance and too much risk of vandalism. However, I have seen some very well written articles on cities, at the higher-level review ratings (think GA & FA), having prose-based notable people sections. This works quite well and, while some may still think this is trivial, just because it's rather trivial doesn't mean it shouldn't be included in an encyclopedia.
As for having separately linked lists of notable people, linked to under 'see also', those specific lists are not covered by this wikiproject. I don't have a problem with them existing necessarily, but they are kind of minor. Dr. Cash ( talk) 00:48, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
I've started a discussion about notable natives at the Village Pump. Not sure to what extent it has already been discussed elsewhere, but if you want to share your thoughts at the pump with regard to Wikipedia policy/guidelines, feel free to contribute there as well. -- JBC3 ( talk) 06:44, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
While we are on a topic of useless lists, can something be done about all those sister/twin cities lists which take up space, do not add much to the actual article, and are available in the form of a list (which is much easier to maintain than all those sections scattered through the articles) anyway?— Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • ( yo?); 17:42, March 19, 2009 (UTC)
This discussion is a serious one gaining traction at the village pump to become policy. It is a proposal to remove the unofficial policy that all settlements are notable by default and therefore can have an article as long as there is something referenced to the effect that it does exist. Personally I think that topic should have come here first, since this is the wikiproject covering that topic. Those who are interested in saving the many hamlet, settlement, and minor civil divisions that may get AfD just because nothing majorly famous happened there may want to go and throw in their two-cents. Camelbinky ( talk) 21:59, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
I have nominated Sheffield for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. YellowMonkey ( cricket calendar poll!) paid editing=POV 06:32, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
I have nominated Vancouver for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Aaroncrick (Tassie Boy talk) 10:15, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
Because there's a discussion about it here you may want to contribute to if you have feelings about it.-- Loodog ( talk) 14:05, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
I wonder if it is in error that the banner has appeared at Talk:Gigha. As settlements go they do not come much less urban anywhere in Europe. I realise the scope of the project is broad, but if you do so intend (and I don't mind one way or another) you might consider changing the projects name to "WP:Settlements" or similar as certainly virtually every article about an inhabited place in Scotland would qualify. (Alternatively, we could start WP:Rural and include New York and Tokyo). Yrs, mystified, Ben Mac Dui 13:34, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
Sorry to but in on this so late, but the 'Cities' banner has been causing confusion on the Worcestershire project too. The only 'city' in Worcestershire is Worcester. Everywhere else in this rural county are small towns, villages, and hamlets. I agree that 'Cities' on the banner is a misnomer; there are strict conventions in the UK about the use of the word city.-- Kudpung ( talk) 04:59, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
I have reviewed Manhattan for GA Sweeps to determine if it still qualifies as a Good Article. In reviewing the article I have found several issues, which I have detailed here. Since the article falls under the scope of this project, I figured you would be interested in contributing to further improve the article. Please comment there to help the article maintain its GA status. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 ( talk • contrib) 19:44, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
User:Carlossuarez46 has been going through the United States Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), looking for GNIS-listed U.S. unincorporated communities that do not currently have WP pages. For each such found community, he has created a WP article with a corresponding {{ Infobox Settlement}}. He has also included these communities in the corresponding county templates, e.g., {{ Mono County, California}}.
These edits have sparked discussion on various talk pages (with myself, User:Hjal and User:Norcalal): no consensus has come out of the discussion, and interesting WP-wide potential policy questions have been raised. Carlossuarez and I agreed that we should bring the discussion up to the community, to see if we can reach a broad consensus on these issue.
To my mind, there are three main questions in the discussion:
Let's separate these discussions into three subsections: — hike395 ( talk)
GNIS comes from the United States government, so does have a prior assumption of reliability. However, I've seen enough problems with GNIS to raise doubts in my mind as to its reliability. If we decide that GNIS alone is or is not enough to establish that a community exists, then this would affect the decision on the second question.
My doubts about GNIS come from contradictory evidence that I've seen with my own eyes, and from sources that WP would find reliable. Examples of GNIS errors in Mono County include:
I can find more, but disproving each of these is quite a time consuming task. Instead, I would propose that we consider GNIS as not definitive for the existence of a current community -- before WP states that a U.S. community exists, it should have another supporting reference /to attest to its current existence/.
Comments? Thoughts? — hike395 ( talk) 08:41, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Agree with Hike about criteria we should use. The Dog Town example is a particularly apt howler of an error; I drove by this "populated place" several times before noticing the sign and ruins. Dog Town is well-know enough that I'm generally shocked that USGS has made such an obvious blunder. This, and many other examples, put the whole database in suspect and thus anything in there needs to be backed-up by independent reliable sources. Not to mention that no article should be the result of a single source, let alone a database with known very obvious errors. I'm going to be in Mono County on vacation next month and will be taking photos of many of these "populated places." That's not to say that we shouldn't have info about all these places in Wikipedia, but that can be done in list/table-form for places that do not have significant coverage in multiple reliable sources (preferably some sources outside of government databases or published gazetteers). Of course, the Dog Town article does meet this criteria. Many others have not demonstrated this; it is not other Wikipedians job to disprove that a topic is notable. The onus of proof is on the person adding the article. -- mav ( talk) 00:22, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
Much has been said here already. As to the specific question posed in the section heading, Should GNIS be considered a WP:RS for communities? -- my answer is a qualified no. GNIS is clearly a reliable source. However, it includes a vase amount of information and there are many gradations of items categorized as "populated places". Some are historical locations of former, sometimes temporary settlements, such as logging or lumber camps. In general, if the ONLY source available for a place is an entry in GNIS, that is not sufficient for a stand-alone article. GNIS is a reliable source for corroborating and supporting details (such as coordinates, elevation, sometimes dates or alternative names), but a bare entry in GNIS is not a solid basis for creating stubs. Such places can and most likely should be listed in an article for a larger geographic division, and there should be redirects created, but without additional sources GNIS alone should not be used as the basis for creating stubs. older ≠ wiser 13:58, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
The issue many local editors are running into is one that speaks to the quality of the encyclopedia. After scores of additions of unincorporated communities by User:Carlossuarez46, it is clear that in places like Humboldt County, California (other editors mention Marin and Mono Counties) the use of United States Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) has led to the creation of articles related to places that do not really exist or at least certainly are not notable. One example is Dinsmores, California. There has never been a "settlement" or community at the location listed, so how does a Wikipedia contributor disprove that? Obviously there will be NO other references to a place that has never been. In this particular example, I have consulted the Dinsmore family and it is clear that there has NEVER been a settlement related to the plural of their name, with the exception of a hunting cabin and a couple outbuildings, which were never located at that elevation. Of course, all will realize this is "original" research. But all will also realize the point I have made. Of particular interest here is the fact that there has never been a notable community at the altitude listed in the Dinsmores, California, article at any point in the history of the county. There are dozens of these and other problems now that all these additions have been made. It truly is a mess and it is unfortunate to say the least. For one such as myself who became involved in the encyclopedia specifically to address inaccuracies in articles related to the California North Coast and its history, I find this particularly tragic. I do not relish the fact that places that never really existed cannot be disproven by their nature of never having been. 20:05, 19 June 2009 (UTC) User:Norcalal
I'm perhaps late for this discussion, but I note a couple FAQ entries at the GNIS website. They are about the "historical" tag but seem to relate to this discussion. This one says, in part (emphasis mine), "A feature with "(historical)" following the name no longer exists and is no longer visible on the landscape. Examples: a dried up lake, a destroyed building, a hill leveled by mining. The term makes no reference to the age, size, population, use, or any other aspect of the feature. A ghost town, for example, is not a historical feature if it is still visible." And this one, "The term “historical” as used in the GNIS means specifically and only that the feature no longer exists on the landscape. It has no reference to age, size, condition, extent of habitation, type of use, or any other factor. For example, a ghost town is not historical, only abandoned as might be noted in the historical notes field." I take these statements to mean that GNIS "populated places" may be, in fact, ghost towns. Pfly ( talk) 10:09, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
Given that GNIS entries can be historical or defunct communities, when should they become WP articles? Always? I'm curious what other editors think. — hike395 ( talk) 08:46, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Only when significant coverage can be demonstrated beyond an entry in the database or mention on a map. Omnedon's first two sentences are dead on about these places but I don't think we have a street criteria (although that would likely work in most cases). What I'm concerned about is whether or not we can find enough reliable material on any topic to be able to write more than a paragraph about it. If not, then the info should be in a list or considered for outright deletion. -- mav ( talk) 00:02, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
I agree with others here who have described that a mere entry in GNIS alone is not sufficient basis for a stand-alone article. older ≠ wiser 14:02, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
I believe this is a separate question from the article one, above. I would suggest that the bar for appearing in a navigation template should be higher than that of having an article. An entry in a navigation template competes with other entries for user attention (while navigating). I would propose that we limit the appearance of a town in a navbox unless it is incorporated or a census designated place. Or some other criterion for appearance: I would love to hear other suggestions.
Comments? Thoughts? Suggestions?
Thanks for your attention! — hike395 ( talk) 08:51, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
I think such templates should have a hierarchy, listing incorporated places first, CDPs and then significant unincorporated communities followed by a link to a complete list of unincorporated communities. But the issue here is the creation of articles on unincorporated communities whose only claim to verifiability is an entry in a database with 2 million other named places. I don't think we should have separate articles on topics that can never be more than a microstub with an infobox due to a lack of significant coverage. See WP:N. -- mav ( talk) 23:46, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
A comment in a previous section drew my attention to Dinsmores, California, where we are presented with an article that consists of a line of text, a boilerplate infobox and then a navigation template that absolutely overwhelms the article. The real irony is that the existence of articles on places of questionable notability and the subsequent addition of them into the template is precisely what leads to the existence of articles that are overwhelmed by a bloated navbox! Template:Humboldt County, California is a fantastic example of why the resolution to this question is so important; the utility of such a vastly overpopulated template suffers considerably. Sher eth 20:15, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
I think that Orlady's comment about post offices is valuable: I would refine the definition of a community to be "a place that you can use in an postal address". I'm still researching how to cross-check such places against population. In relatively vacant areas, it is difficult to get systematic verified populations of communities. For example, June Lake, California had to get a study done by Mono County to figure out its own population (tourism and second homes cause a lot of complexity).
For use in county templates, I would suggest including all places that can be used in a postal address, and creating a list article to hold other GNIS unincorporated communities, and link to the list article. — hike395 ( talk) 14:22, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
Granting that verifiability is all that is needed to discuss the topic somewhere, do all such places merit a stand-alone article? Is there some reason why these can't be presented in list form, grouped in an appropriate manner. Most of these places will probably not have enough written about them individually and will essentially become a perma-stub. If all the article has is boiler-plate text, it would be better presented in list form. -- Polaron | Talk 01:26, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
This is a list of locales in Mono County, California. It comes from the USGS Geographic Names Information System, as a list of unincorporated communities in Mono County, California. The population of each of these communities has not yet been verified.
Location name | GNIS link | Coordinates | Remarks |
---|---|---|---|
Dunderberg Mill | [1] | 38°06′14″N 119°15′02″W / 38.10389°N 119.25056°W | Two versions are current on how the place got its name: first, that it was named after the Union Navy man-of-war USS Dunderberg, and second, that it was named from the nearby Dunderberg Mine. [1] Dunderberg is a Swedish word meaning "thunder mountain." |
Dog Town | [2] | 38°10′13″N 119°11′51″W / 38.17028°N 119.19750°W | The site is registered as California Historical Landmark 792. A landmark plaque by the side of nearby U.S. Highway 395 marks the location. |
What do other editors think? Improvements welcome! — hike395 ( talk) 08:40, 17 June 2009 (UTC) ||
I suggest that the members of this project start to formulate an agreed upon format for such lists and create an example for a single county by copying info from all the unincorporated stubs and summarizing from the non-stubs. Only when that is done for a county could anybody, IMO, be able to successfully nominate the stubs for that county for deletion/merge/redirection/whatever. -- mav ( talk) 03:21, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 5 | ← | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | Archive 11 | → | Archive 15 |
To WikiProject Urban Settlements or something similar. WikiProject Cities tags are and will be used most of the time (90%+?) on villages and such (as they are more popular), and seeing the WP:CITY tag on villages is a bit confusing. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 12:30, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
I think the name works just fine... I believe "city" is generic enough. Really, I don't think anybody really pays too much attention to the names of WikiProjects or would be confused if some BFE town was marked with the WikiProject Cities tag. There doesn't seem to be too much obvious benefit to such a rename. Best, epicAdam( talk) 21:09, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
If anybody is working on any sort of populated place (past or present) in California this book has some good information. It just has short snippets on each place name, but I've been using it for cities, unincorporated communities, and ghost towns in Yolo County, and it has been a great resource. Just wanted to share it if anybody is interested. Killiondude ( talk) 08:51, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
I'd hoped to better structure this since it's been bugging me for a while, but I've basically laid it out at Talk:Athens#Population_figures_.2F_infobox in response to a little population figure editwar going on there. Basically, where does the authoritative data for population of city, metro and urban areas come from? Best or latest? These numbers get changed on a daily basis, in every city article. Is there a best practice or can we create one? Census data tends to be every ten years, new figures come out much more often - which wins? Franamax ( talk) 14:38, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
Most major cities do not have airports! They normally require two mile runways which won't fit into most major cities which are urbanized. Airports properly belong in the metro article which encompasses the city and/or the higher level geographical grouping such as "state", "county", "province," etc. And generally, places, unlike WikiTravel, should not be looked upon as portals to another area. That is a tourist outlook. So I don't read the Paris article to see information about Versailles or Chartres, which are properly in other articles. I do read the Paris article to learn (or get a link to) the Louvre, Arch de Triomphe, and the Eiffel Tower, which are properly within the context of "Paris." We need help with this. Editors are putting anything "within sight" into articles with clear geographic and governmental boundaries. In Wikipedia, articles have clear boundaries. All an editor needs to do is stick to the WP:TOPIC. Student7 ( talk) 18:44, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
The problem is that you altered, unilaterally, the guidelines both for WP:USCITY and WP:UKCITIES so that they reflected the position you feel ought to apply here, and you did this shortly after you started to remove material from a number of articles about airports. You then raised the issue both here and at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about settlements#Airports...and other resources, in this last case only after I had reverted the changes you had made to the UKCITIES guidlines and made some modifications to make the advice more clear. You then continued to remove sections about airports from various articles.
Most of these changes, but not all of them as I write this, have been reverted. It is clear that you do not appear to have consensus yet for the changes you are making, and so, pending a consensus view emerging, I suggest that you revert your own changes so as not to preempt the results of any discussion here. Whatever happens, I think it would be very unwise of you to carry on making any more removals of material about airports until the matter is further discussed. There is a fine line to be drawn between being WP:BOLD and being reckless, and I hope that the view is that you have not crossed that line from being bold into being reckless, but I imagine that any further removals until the matter is resolved would be viewed as being reckless.
I also think that the choice of some of the edit summaries used in removing the material are not particularly helpful: this summary and this summary, for instance, suggests that honest attempts to add material to articles by established editors are instances of confusing wikipedia with wikitravel. This seems to me, and possibly others, to be an exaggeration in that it pre-supposes that your interpretation of the various guidelines is the only one and widely accepted, which we are disputing, and that the editors who added the material were deficient in their knowledge in some way. This is not a good way to proceed; the edit summaries were badly phrased.
As for the substantial issue, it seems quite reasonable for transport sections of settlement articles to mention what facilities can be easily accessed by people in the settlement, even if those facilities do not formally lie within the settlement limits. This is because as previously noted, such facilities are often an integral part of the economic activity of a settlement. It is not the case that to include information about airports means that the articles appear to suggest that the settlements "claim" them entirely as their own, or falsely claim that the administrative control of the airports is in the hands of the settlements' authorities: the articles are merely providing information that any encyclopaedia would think useful to include for a settlement, even when they are not some (jumped-up) travel service, which you seem try to caricature the situation as being like. Let me put it another way: if all material were to be excluded from a settlement's articles that concerned things not formally in that settlement, then distances from state capitals, position within the larger state or country, and other such things would also be omitted. I don't think this is credible, and I note you seem to be single-mindedly concentrating on just airports here, rather than dealing with these other issues. The fact is that to remove these other aspects would be unacceptable and I think clearly so, and you probably know you wouldn't have a chance of persuading anyone round to your point of view; and for the same reason, removal of information about transport facilities and communications with other settlements (like airports) is unacceptable. DDStretch (talk) 17:39, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
Saying it often enough, or loudly enough, or using value-laden language to describe those who disagree with you as "holdouts" will not convince, except cast doubt on the seriousness with which you are choosing to continue this line. It seems to me that there are clear reasons why your own point of view is not achieving anywhere near a consensus view, and yet you choose to label people and arguments as "holdouts". Unfortunately, it may probably lead people to begin to wonder why, I'm afraid; if so, many may well think you would have brought this upon yourself. DDStretch (talk) 03:42, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
Hello, I have traveled from WikiProject Geographical coordinates, where we seek wider opinions on whether {{ coord}} should offer a N/S/E/W labeled format for decimal coordinates (example: 43°07′N 79°20′W / 43.12°N 79.34°W) either as an option or by default, or if the existing unlabeled format (example: 43°07′N 79°20′W / 43.12°N 79.34°W) is sufficient. Please comment there if you have an opinion on this. Thanks! -- GregU ( talk) 17:53, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
Article updates are availaible at Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities/Article alerts. It has also been transcluded to the Main project Page below Articles currently under review. No human activity needed. ArticleAlertbot will take care of the updates. Does anyone feel this is incorrect? Kensplanet T C 08:47, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
Ok, I've updated the article alert template, changing are options to include only the featured and good article categories, excluding featured/good topic candidates, and including peer review. I've dropped requests for comments from our options since it not a formal article review process; RFCs instead should be posted either to this talk page, or to the announcements section, located immediately below the review section. I am still not sure if this is going to solve the problem of having FA categories listed before GA categories, which is where that belongs. Dr. Cash ( talk) 22:20, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
I'm a bit concerned about the London article. It's currently a GA, but even from a cursory glance at the lead I'm confident that this article would fail a GA-review. We have several outstanding "citation needed" tags, as well as dead links and uncited claims. London is a Top priority for this project, and is one of the most important cities in human history. Perhaps this project could apply some collective TLC? -- Jza84 | Talk 15:25, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
I've had Almu listed at Peer Review for some days now, & the only feedback I've gotten is an automated script, which hasn't been very useful because it was designed to provide advice about achieving GA status, not for what I was looking for -- some opinions about my choice of the statistics I pulled from the 1994 Ethiopian National Census. This isa test edit to see if I'm on the right track for other Wikipedia users. My goal is to provide the most useful or defining statistics from this document for every town it covers, & at this moment this article includes far more than for the average Rambot-created entry. On one hand, I don't want to bury the reader with too much information (this census provides extensive statistics on age break-downs & the housing of Ethiopia, for example), but on the other I want to provide enough to answer expected or reasonable questions about each town. Please spend a moment reading the article (no, you don't need to know anything about Ethiopia other than it is in Africa) & offer your opinion. (Who knows -- maybe once Ethiopia has been handled in this much detail, other editors might follow suit with articles on better documented countries like Germany & the UK. I assume their census reports are available under a license that makes incorporating their material into Wikipedia doable.) -- llywrch ( talk) 17:50, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
It was mentioned in the Dundee talk page that the article no longer met many of the criteria for FA back in 2007. I imagine the requirements have either changed significantly or the article has degraded through subsequent editing. I've therefore nominated it for FA review. Catfish Jim and the soapdish ( talk) 14:15, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
I've spotted a couple places where {{ Infobox Settlement}} has been replaced by {{ Geobox}} (one example at Ketchikan, Alaska). What is the WikiProject's position on the use of infoboxes for cities? Is there value in changing, or remain with the current standard? --- Barek ( talk • contribs) - 18:24, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
As most cities use Infobox Settlement rather than Geobox, it's probably not very helpful to convert one or the other articles from Infobox Settlement to Geobox. -- User:Docu
What are the notability criteria for neighborhoods? I assume not every neighborhood is automatically given an article (like every city/town is)? Do we just follow standard "significant coverage in reliable third-party sources"? -- SatyrTN ( talk / contribs) 22:31, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
Could some of you guys and gals please take a look at the article for Webster Springs, West Virginia and reassess it? I ask because I'm the one who expanded it and feel it should be left to an unbiased third-party. If you have any questions drop me a line on my talk page, I'd be happy to hear from ya. Thanks, Cra sh Underride 20:24, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
This is a general call for help from any experienced editors on the project. The article on Akron, Ohio is in pretty bad shape and seems to have been hijacked by a user who edits the article and virtually nothing else. There are about three of us who are trying to fix the article and bring it up to a better standard (currently C class) but it seems most of what we do is constantly removing excess cruft and repeating much the same over and over on simple things like what pictures are appropriate for a section. If any of you could offer input on the talk page to help this user understand Wikipedia policy better and/or help improve the article, it would be much appreciated! -- JonRidinger ( talk) 02:34, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators. All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. §hep Talk 00:26, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
I nominated the Spokane, Washington for peer review almost a week ago now and the review has only produced one quick suggestion on how to improve the article. Ive been trying to seek out reviewers myself that are involved in the WikiCities project (which resulted in the one comment on there so far), and still hardly any luck. I encourage all potential reviewers out there to give this article a chance, your time and effort wont be wasted! Thanks, Anon134 ( talk) 00:58, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
Hillsboro is at FAC, please leave feedback on the nomination page. Dabomb87 ( talk) 19:30, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
There are about 160 articles on places in Connecticut that use {{ Infobox Settlement}} somewhat different from other areas:
official_name Chester, Connecticut Suffield, Connecticut Naugatuck, Connecticut subdivision_type [[NECTA]] [[NECTA]] [[NECTA]] subdivision_name New Haven Springfield MA Waterbury subdivision_type1 Region Region Region subdivision_name1 Connecticut River Estuary Capitol Region Central Naugatuck Valley
Hartford, Connecticut uses a form closer to the one of other US cities:
|subdivision_type = Country |subdivision_name = [[United States]] |subdivision_type1 = [[U.S. state|State]] |subdivision_name1 = [[Connecticut]] |subdivision_type2 = [[NECTA]] |subdivision_name2 = Hartford |subdivision_type3 = Region |subdivision_name3 = Capitol Region
If it's ok, I'd go through the articles and adapt the others accordingly. -- User:Docu
Hi! I would like to have the prose at Gulfton, Houston improved to an FA level, but I need some outside help to ensure the prose fits. There was the first GA review here: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Gulfton, Houston/archive1 - I fixed the images, but the prose still needs some help. Would anyone mind looking over the article? WhisperToMe ( talk) 04:33, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
Come on, to have something like "the shitty country" stated there for a wikilink to country of Serbia right there on a wikiproject page is wrong. Why is a member of this wikiproject or of wikipedia in general allowed such leeway with such ethnicly insensitive language, I'm not Serbian but as a Jew I know what racism and ethnic hatred can do in this world if allowed to even exist in the smallest amounts. An Albanian, or a sympathizer of their plight should also know better than to return the ethnic hatred that SOME, and hopefully a very small minority, of Serbians have towards them. 24.182.142.254 ( talk) 01:29, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
I found many unreferenced statements in Detroit - also there is an original research concern in the section "Architecture" - Please address these. If not, Detroit could lose its featured article status. WhisperToMe ( talk) 20:06, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
Crossposted in Wikiprojects Cities, Hungary, Slovakia [alphabetical order]
Since a long-running and banal edit war over the names by which the Bratislava article should refer to the town was going nowhere, I locked the article down three weeks ago and invited informed and persuasive discussion. There has been none, and today I've turned down a request to unlock the article as I've no reason to think that the edit war wouldn't resume.
This is a Featured Article into which a number of thinking editors have put a lot of work, and it would be a great pity if it ended up listed in WP:LAME. Your informed, dispassionate input would be most welcome on that talk page. -- Hoary ( talk) 00:22, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
Incidentally, I took a quick look through the history of the article and got the impression that the most constructive editors had been, in alphabetical order:
Taken together, the talk pages (and block logs) of these four show a considerable frustration with (and, I infer, eventual defeat by) nationalists and fanatics of all stripes. -- Hoary ( talk) 00:51, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
I have nominated Mumbai for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Cirt ( talk) 03:06, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
Akureyri has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Articles are typically reviewed for one week. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here. Dabomb87 ( talk) 16:25, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
Could someone please review and add this page to the WikiProject Cities? It is a good article nominee. 71.171.133.69 ( talk) 20:35, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
Some of you may be interested in a discussion I have started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities/Guideline concerning the lack of consistency among the tables used in US Cities to show historical population figures. Thanks, Sher eth 23:07, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Puerto Williams is a settlement with some 2,200 inhabitants in the southern tip of sout america. It has a sea port, bank, kindergarden, an airport, restaurants, hotels, a school, a police station, a marina, a museum, a tourism office, a univeristy centre and is the capital of a Chilean province.. could this place be considered a city? Dentren | Talk 14:27, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
According to the US Census, the 2007 estimated population for Raleigh was 375806. Editors are changing the number to 385507, citing raleighnc.gov. Is that fine or should we stick with Census numbers only? (I assume it's the latter. If not, APK needs to erase some hidden comments.) APK straight up now tell me 22:33, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
Is there a consensus as to if coordinates should be included in prose or not? See Fernley, Nevada, where it says "Fernley is located at 39°35′55″N 119°12′54″W", which is essentially meaningless unless you know where that is off the top of your head (location based on major landmarks the reader can identify with is more useful in my opinion). All it does is give you a link to the geography page, however if the coordinates are located in the title/infobox you have that link in two other places in the page. I looked through a couple of FAs and there seems to be a mix, some have coordinates in the geography section, some don't. I looked for a MOS for city pages and didn't find it (is there one?)-- kelapstick ( talk) 16:04, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
This message is being sent to WikiProjects with GAs under their scope. Since August 2007, WikiProject Good Articles has been participating in GA sweeps. The process helps to ensure that articles that have passed a nomination before that date meet the GA criteria. After nearly two years, the running total has just passed the 50% mark. In order to expediate the reviewing, several changes have been made to the process. A new worklist has been created, detailing which articles are left to review. Instead of reviewing by topic, editors can consider picking and choosing whichever articles they are interested in.
We are always looking for new members to assist with reviewing the remaining articles, and since this project has GAs under its scope, it would be beneficial if any of its members could review a few articles (perhaps your project's articles). Your project's members are likely to be more knowledgeable about your topic GAs then an outside reviewer. As a result, reviewing your project's articles would improve the quality of the review in ensuring that the article meets your project's concerns on sourcing, content, and guidelines. However, members can also review any other article in the worklist to ensure it meets the GA criteria.
If any members are interested, please visit the GA sweeps page for further details and instructions in initiating a review. If you'd like to join the process, please add your name to the running total page. In addition, for every member that reviews 100 articles from the worklist or has a significant impact on the process, s/he will get an award when they reach that threshold. With ~1,300 articles left to review, we would appreciate any editors that could contribute in helping to uphold the quality of GAs. If you have any questions about the process, reviewing, or need help with a particular article, please contact me or OhanaUnited and we'll be happy to help. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 ( talk • contrib) 06:01, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
Hello, there is a dispute brewing over the reliability of http://ustravelweather.com versus http://www.weatherbyday.com. User Mikevegas40 ( talk · contribs) created climate tables in many cities (like Medford, Oregon which is the one I noticed his work at). He linked them originally to the first site which he admits belongs to him. Now, apparently he lost the old domain name and today went about updating all his old links. This action was taken to the admins noticeboard and it was decided that a consensus should be reached here. Before consensus was reached, at least one user ( Allstarecho ( talk · contribs)) began reverting them back.
I would like a consensus to be reached before this turns worse than it has to be. The climate tables need to be sourced, and the link " http://ustravelweather.com" is no longer reliable. There is nothing in policy that says a user cannot host content on their own site and reference it from WikiPedia (provided it is licensed under GFDL). The user agrees to this, so the question is whether or not http://www.weatherbyday.com is reliable for the purpose of the climate tables.
I think it is and am a little ashamed at how this is turning out, and my involvement is turning personal so I am going to leave it in the hands of other capable editors. Thank you for your time. Zab Milenko 00:50, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
Without touching on the issue of the reliability of the data, there is a certain amount of impropriety in an editor creating multiple links back to an apparently for-profit resoruce that the same editor owns. I hesitate to pass judgement on said editor's motives; it may well be that they are merely interested in the dissemination of the information, but the appearance of improper behavior is still there. Editors should not be linking to websites they own, and it is as simple as that. Sher eth 14:32, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
Hi, could someone from this WikiProject give their view on the above article, which is at GA reassessment? I don't think it is quite GA quality, but I would like an informal second opinion, just to be sure. Thanks, Dabomb87 ( talk) 16:29, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
I notice that WP:CITIES suggests that lists of notable residents are acceptable. This seems surprising to me, since a resident (How is that defined?) is not at all influential to a city. That someone lives (or had lived) in a certain city doesn't change that city at all. Surely, in the case of a politician or civic leader, that might be true--but the lists we see throughout these articles are not so limited. That a news anchor or musician came from a particular town means nothing to the town in any substantial way.
Wikipedia's so-called discussion pages are terrible vehicles for communication, but I managed to find an archive that shows a recent discussion. It seems this ended in no concensus for the removal of the section. Where was the concensus for its inclusion? -- Mikeblas ( talk) 02:36, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
I do agree that bulleted lists of "notable people" are not what we want in articles. Too much maintenance and too much risk of vandalism. However, I have seen some very well written articles on cities, at the higher-level review ratings (think GA & FA), having prose-based notable people sections. This works quite well and, while some may still think this is trivial, just because it's rather trivial doesn't mean it shouldn't be included in an encyclopedia.
As for having separately linked lists of notable people, linked to under 'see also', those specific lists are not covered by this wikiproject. I don't have a problem with them existing necessarily, but they are kind of minor. Dr. Cash ( talk) 00:48, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
I've started a discussion about notable natives at the Village Pump. Not sure to what extent it has already been discussed elsewhere, but if you want to share your thoughts at the pump with regard to Wikipedia policy/guidelines, feel free to contribute there as well. -- JBC3 ( talk) 06:44, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
While we are on a topic of useless lists, can something be done about all those sister/twin cities lists which take up space, do not add much to the actual article, and are available in the form of a list (which is much easier to maintain than all those sections scattered through the articles) anyway?— Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • ( yo?); 17:42, March 19, 2009 (UTC)
This discussion is a serious one gaining traction at the village pump to become policy. It is a proposal to remove the unofficial policy that all settlements are notable by default and therefore can have an article as long as there is something referenced to the effect that it does exist. Personally I think that topic should have come here first, since this is the wikiproject covering that topic. Those who are interested in saving the many hamlet, settlement, and minor civil divisions that may get AfD just because nothing majorly famous happened there may want to go and throw in their two-cents. Camelbinky ( talk) 21:59, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
I have nominated Sheffield for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. YellowMonkey ( cricket calendar poll!) paid editing=POV 06:32, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
I have nominated Vancouver for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Aaroncrick (Tassie Boy talk) 10:15, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
Because there's a discussion about it here you may want to contribute to if you have feelings about it.-- Loodog ( talk) 14:05, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
I wonder if it is in error that the banner has appeared at Talk:Gigha. As settlements go they do not come much less urban anywhere in Europe. I realise the scope of the project is broad, but if you do so intend (and I don't mind one way or another) you might consider changing the projects name to "WP:Settlements" or similar as certainly virtually every article about an inhabited place in Scotland would qualify. (Alternatively, we could start WP:Rural and include New York and Tokyo). Yrs, mystified, Ben Mac Dui 13:34, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
Sorry to but in on this so late, but the 'Cities' banner has been causing confusion on the Worcestershire project too. The only 'city' in Worcestershire is Worcester. Everywhere else in this rural county are small towns, villages, and hamlets. I agree that 'Cities' on the banner is a misnomer; there are strict conventions in the UK about the use of the word city.-- Kudpung ( talk) 04:59, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
I have reviewed Manhattan for GA Sweeps to determine if it still qualifies as a Good Article. In reviewing the article I have found several issues, which I have detailed here. Since the article falls under the scope of this project, I figured you would be interested in contributing to further improve the article. Please comment there to help the article maintain its GA status. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 ( talk • contrib) 19:44, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
User:Carlossuarez46 has been going through the United States Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), looking for GNIS-listed U.S. unincorporated communities that do not currently have WP pages. For each such found community, he has created a WP article with a corresponding {{ Infobox Settlement}}. He has also included these communities in the corresponding county templates, e.g., {{ Mono County, California}}.
These edits have sparked discussion on various talk pages (with myself, User:Hjal and User:Norcalal): no consensus has come out of the discussion, and interesting WP-wide potential policy questions have been raised. Carlossuarez and I agreed that we should bring the discussion up to the community, to see if we can reach a broad consensus on these issue.
To my mind, there are three main questions in the discussion:
Let's separate these discussions into three subsections: — hike395 ( talk)
GNIS comes from the United States government, so does have a prior assumption of reliability. However, I've seen enough problems with GNIS to raise doubts in my mind as to its reliability. If we decide that GNIS alone is or is not enough to establish that a community exists, then this would affect the decision on the second question.
My doubts about GNIS come from contradictory evidence that I've seen with my own eyes, and from sources that WP would find reliable. Examples of GNIS errors in Mono County include:
I can find more, but disproving each of these is quite a time consuming task. Instead, I would propose that we consider GNIS as not definitive for the existence of a current community -- before WP states that a U.S. community exists, it should have another supporting reference /to attest to its current existence/.
Comments? Thoughts? — hike395 ( talk) 08:41, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Agree with Hike about criteria we should use. The Dog Town example is a particularly apt howler of an error; I drove by this "populated place" several times before noticing the sign and ruins. Dog Town is well-know enough that I'm generally shocked that USGS has made such an obvious blunder. This, and many other examples, put the whole database in suspect and thus anything in there needs to be backed-up by independent reliable sources. Not to mention that no article should be the result of a single source, let alone a database with known very obvious errors. I'm going to be in Mono County on vacation next month and will be taking photos of many of these "populated places." That's not to say that we shouldn't have info about all these places in Wikipedia, but that can be done in list/table-form for places that do not have significant coverage in multiple reliable sources (preferably some sources outside of government databases or published gazetteers). Of course, the Dog Town article does meet this criteria. Many others have not demonstrated this; it is not other Wikipedians job to disprove that a topic is notable. The onus of proof is on the person adding the article. -- mav ( talk) 00:22, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
Much has been said here already. As to the specific question posed in the section heading, Should GNIS be considered a WP:RS for communities? -- my answer is a qualified no. GNIS is clearly a reliable source. However, it includes a vase amount of information and there are many gradations of items categorized as "populated places". Some are historical locations of former, sometimes temporary settlements, such as logging or lumber camps. In general, if the ONLY source available for a place is an entry in GNIS, that is not sufficient for a stand-alone article. GNIS is a reliable source for corroborating and supporting details (such as coordinates, elevation, sometimes dates or alternative names), but a bare entry in GNIS is not a solid basis for creating stubs. Such places can and most likely should be listed in an article for a larger geographic division, and there should be redirects created, but without additional sources GNIS alone should not be used as the basis for creating stubs. older ≠ wiser 13:58, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
The issue many local editors are running into is one that speaks to the quality of the encyclopedia. After scores of additions of unincorporated communities by User:Carlossuarez46, it is clear that in places like Humboldt County, California (other editors mention Marin and Mono Counties) the use of United States Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) has led to the creation of articles related to places that do not really exist or at least certainly are not notable. One example is Dinsmores, California. There has never been a "settlement" or community at the location listed, so how does a Wikipedia contributor disprove that? Obviously there will be NO other references to a place that has never been. In this particular example, I have consulted the Dinsmore family and it is clear that there has NEVER been a settlement related to the plural of their name, with the exception of a hunting cabin and a couple outbuildings, which were never located at that elevation. Of course, all will realize this is "original" research. But all will also realize the point I have made. Of particular interest here is the fact that there has never been a notable community at the altitude listed in the Dinsmores, California, article at any point in the history of the county. There are dozens of these and other problems now that all these additions have been made. It truly is a mess and it is unfortunate to say the least. For one such as myself who became involved in the encyclopedia specifically to address inaccuracies in articles related to the California North Coast and its history, I find this particularly tragic. I do not relish the fact that places that never really existed cannot be disproven by their nature of never having been. 20:05, 19 June 2009 (UTC) User:Norcalal
I'm perhaps late for this discussion, but I note a couple FAQ entries at the GNIS website. They are about the "historical" tag but seem to relate to this discussion. This one says, in part (emphasis mine), "A feature with "(historical)" following the name no longer exists and is no longer visible on the landscape. Examples: a dried up lake, a destroyed building, a hill leveled by mining. The term makes no reference to the age, size, population, use, or any other aspect of the feature. A ghost town, for example, is not a historical feature if it is still visible." And this one, "The term “historical” as used in the GNIS means specifically and only that the feature no longer exists on the landscape. It has no reference to age, size, condition, extent of habitation, type of use, or any other factor. For example, a ghost town is not historical, only abandoned as might be noted in the historical notes field." I take these statements to mean that GNIS "populated places" may be, in fact, ghost towns. Pfly ( talk) 10:09, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
Given that GNIS entries can be historical or defunct communities, when should they become WP articles? Always? I'm curious what other editors think. — hike395 ( talk) 08:46, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Only when significant coverage can be demonstrated beyond an entry in the database or mention on a map. Omnedon's first two sentences are dead on about these places but I don't think we have a street criteria (although that would likely work in most cases). What I'm concerned about is whether or not we can find enough reliable material on any topic to be able to write more than a paragraph about it. If not, then the info should be in a list or considered for outright deletion. -- mav ( talk) 00:02, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
I agree with others here who have described that a mere entry in GNIS alone is not sufficient basis for a stand-alone article. older ≠ wiser 14:02, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
I believe this is a separate question from the article one, above. I would suggest that the bar for appearing in a navigation template should be higher than that of having an article. An entry in a navigation template competes with other entries for user attention (while navigating). I would propose that we limit the appearance of a town in a navbox unless it is incorporated or a census designated place. Or some other criterion for appearance: I would love to hear other suggestions.
Comments? Thoughts? Suggestions?
Thanks for your attention! — hike395 ( talk) 08:51, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
I think such templates should have a hierarchy, listing incorporated places first, CDPs and then significant unincorporated communities followed by a link to a complete list of unincorporated communities. But the issue here is the creation of articles on unincorporated communities whose only claim to verifiability is an entry in a database with 2 million other named places. I don't think we should have separate articles on topics that can never be more than a microstub with an infobox due to a lack of significant coverage. See WP:N. -- mav ( talk) 23:46, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
A comment in a previous section drew my attention to Dinsmores, California, where we are presented with an article that consists of a line of text, a boilerplate infobox and then a navigation template that absolutely overwhelms the article. The real irony is that the existence of articles on places of questionable notability and the subsequent addition of them into the template is precisely what leads to the existence of articles that are overwhelmed by a bloated navbox! Template:Humboldt County, California is a fantastic example of why the resolution to this question is so important; the utility of such a vastly overpopulated template suffers considerably. Sher eth 20:15, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
I think that Orlady's comment about post offices is valuable: I would refine the definition of a community to be "a place that you can use in an postal address". I'm still researching how to cross-check such places against population. In relatively vacant areas, it is difficult to get systematic verified populations of communities. For example, June Lake, California had to get a study done by Mono County to figure out its own population (tourism and second homes cause a lot of complexity).
For use in county templates, I would suggest including all places that can be used in a postal address, and creating a list article to hold other GNIS unincorporated communities, and link to the list article. — hike395 ( talk) 14:22, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
Granting that verifiability is all that is needed to discuss the topic somewhere, do all such places merit a stand-alone article? Is there some reason why these can't be presented in list form, grouped in an appropriate manner. Most of these places will probably not have enough written about them individually and will essentially become a perma-stub. If all the article has is boiler-plate text, it would be better presented in list form. -- Polaron | Talk 01:26, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
This is a list of locales in Mono County, California. It comes from the USGS Geographic Names Information System, as a list of unincorporated communities in Mono County, California. The population of each of these communities has not yet been verified.
Location name | GNIS link | Coordinates | Remarks |
---|---|---|---|
Dunderberg Mill | [1] | 38°06′14″N 119°15′02″W / 38.10389°N 119.25056°W | Two versions are current on how the place got its name: first, that it was named after the Union Navy man-of-war USS Dunderberg, and second, that it was named from the nearby Dunderberg Mine. [1] Dunderberg is a Swedish word meaning "thunder mountain." |
Dog Town | [2] | 38°10′13″N 119°11′51″W / 38.17028°N 119.19750°W | The site is registered as California Historical Landmark 792. A landmark plaque by the side of nearby U.S. Highway 395 marks the location. |
What do other editors think? Improvements welcome! — hike395 ( talk) 08:40, 17 June 2009 (UTC) ||
I suggest that the members of this project start to formulate an agreed upon format for such lists and create an example for a single county by copying info from all the unincorporated stubs and summarizing from the non-stubs. Only when that is done for a county could anybody, IMO, be able to successfully nominate the stubs for that county for deletion/merge/redirection/whatever. -- mav ( talk) 03:21, 27 June 2009 (UTC)