Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities

This is the talk page for discussing WikiProject Cities and anything related to its purposes and tasks.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23: 3 months

Requested move at Talk:Vilyeyka#Requested move 3 September 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Vilyeyka#Requested move 3 September 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Safari Scribe^{Edits! Talk!} 01:27, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Cork (city)#Requested move 23 September 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Cork (city)#Requested move 23 September 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. JuniperChill (talk) 20:05, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Storrs, Connecticut has an RfC

Storrs, Connecticut has an RfC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you.

As you may know, the main campus is of the University of Connecticut is located in the town of Mansfield, in Tolland County. The unincorporated village which UConn calls home is referred to as both "Storrs-Mansfield" and "Storrs" - both in substantial official and community-based sources.

Respectful and evidence-supported comments would be appreciated to achieve an accurate and supportable consensus regarding references to this community, keeping in mind that "Storrs-Mansfield" and "Storrs" are both valid names. Wikipedia policy is not clear on its preference between census-designated place boundaries and postal town boundaries, as the two differ and common usage tends to favor the larger postal town boundary.

It is not appropriate to immediately dismiss the need for a new consensus, either due to erroneous or historical inaccurate usage or because of personal opinion. Thank you, Jonathanhusky (talk) 05:10, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Eyes on Aurora, Colorado article

Recently some material related to Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gangs in Aurora apartment complexes has been added to the town's article[1]. Additional views on the topic and it's weight for inclusion would be helpful. Talk page discussion here [2] Springee (talk) 00:03, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Drone photos

Is there a consensus of opinion about excessive use of drone photos? At Winona, Minnesota, an editor has filled the article with drone photos. My concern is that these shots seem unnatural, because no one looks at a city from 500 metres above. Thank you for your input. Magnolia677 (talk) 15:48, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I love drone photos, these are fine. I agree that the one you just removed, which with more of a downward angle, the solar glare, and Sugar Loaf being at the very top, is not a great image, but I don't see any reason to restrict drone images generally. I think the skyline image isn't great either since the panorama is a bit fish-eyed, but pictures from above can still look nice and be informative. Street-level images looking upward can be boring too. Reywas92^Talk 02:25, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I thinned them down a little bit.• Sbmeirow • Talk • 14:35, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I too like drone photos, particularly for small towns. It is true that an overhead view can be found on Google Earth or Google Maps, but those images have easily visible compression artifacts, and are often distorted because the image was not taken directly above the city, but later stretched to make the scale uniform. A decent drone can produce a much higher quality image. PopePompus (talk) 02:36, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WP:IMGCONTENT and WP:IG guidelines apply even though the interpretation can be subjective. Images whose presence/absence that have no effect in visualizing and understanding what's said in the article shouldn't be in the article. Graywalls (talk) 06:51, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What should be done about 2020 census results on US city/town/CDP articles?

There are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of Wikipedia articles about US cities, towns and CDPs which have multi-paragraph summaries of the 2000 and 2010 census results, but no similar summary of the 2020 results. Here is an example of what I mean: Northfield, Minnesota (scroll down to "Demographics"). I found 974 such articles just for Iowa communities. I mentioned this on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), and @Sdkb: helpfully pointed out that this issue was discussed in 2020 here, but the discussion seems to have ended inconclusively. I believe that Sdkb is correct, and a template should be used rather than text being inserted into the article body as was done for the earlier censuses. Probably updating so many articles would require a bot. I have time to work on implementing a solution. I have some programming skills. But I've never made a Wikipedia template or bot. I'd like to get help from someone more experienced in those areas. And I don't want to try to implement some massive update to all these articles without there being a clear consensus from a group of other editors that such a thing should be done.

To prevent the discussion from getting lost in details, I think a template should be produced by a group of people (which I would be happy to join) who are willing to work on it, and then presented for comments, rather than having an open-ended discussion about it before producing anything (which seems to be what happened in 2020). Is anyone interested in working with me on this? Does anyone think that this is either a non-issue, or something that should not be done? Does anyone know of an already ongoing project to address this issue? PopePompus (talk) 23:05, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some articles have had their prose sections replaced by a large table, which is not as accessible to mobile readers and frankly not great for the general flow of the article. I do think we need to templatize a lot of the census update prose (and have it substituted in, or done via a script with good oversight rather than the slap-dash manner that some editors have attempted) as well as the citations to make things more consistent and easier to update. The Census Bureau seems keen on redoing their website for every decennial release, so we can't really expect things to stay static. Sounder Bruce 23:41, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I have used the Census Department API to fetch data without scraping the website, and the labels they used for the various pieces of data changed dramatically from 2010 to 2020. PopePompus (talk) 00:31, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I took a stab at creating {{US census data prose}}. It's extremely rudimentary right now, but will give us a place to work. Some to-do list items:

Data to use: Looking at examples of cities on census.gov, I'm seeing some data points that aren't reflected yet. Not all of them would be appropriate for the demographics section (e.g. commute time would probably belong more in the "Transportation" section most developed city articles have), but we should have a deliberate discussion about what to include.
Wikidata integration: Each of the parameters should ideally have equivalent information represented on Wikidata, which should be fetched by default if properly sourced and on-wiki data is not provided. Looking at Northfield's population as an example, it seems there is some decent info already there, but it's far from the full census. New Wikidata properties might have to be created. And unfortunately subpopulations, which is much of what we'd need here, is something that Wikidata has never figured out how to handle, so some of the integration might have to wait on that.
Historical data: The way I structured the template is to add 2020_ at the start of each variable name. The way it should ideally work is that, with each census, we'll add new variables for the information of that census (accommodating any changes), and then, if info is present for a past census, the template automatically calculates and states a comparison in the prose. Of course, we'll need to decide what sorts of comparisons would be appropriate (do we only ever go back one decade?) before coding this.
Visuals: Many city articles currently have a {{US Census population}} table in the demographics section. That's fine, but (if we can avoid any sandwiches) it'd be nice to also have things like pie charts for the ethnic makeup. This might have to wait until there is a successor to the broken graph extension, but (so long as it's in non-substituted template form) we can do it at any point.
Regional contextualization: Most people probably couldn't tell you with much accuracy what the U.S. median household income is. So if we hope for our articles to help them answer basic questions like "is this a rich city or a poor city?" it'd be helpful to include some comparisons. We're a long way away technically from being able to generate sentences like Foobarville has a median household income of $4.7 gazillion, making it the second-wealthiest city in the state, but a sentence like ...$4.7 gazillion, 1.7 times the state average might be feasible. This is another thing in the "nice to have" category that we wouldn't need off the bat.
General wording: The template currently begins As of the census of 2020, there were, which already has issues. For instance, the attribution is less important than the data, so the data should go first, and 2020 United States census should be the link per MOS:SPECIFICLINK. We should have copy folks (such as WP:GOCE) go over the wording to fine-tune it and ensure it abides by MOS best practices. (Note: The ability to do this fine-tuning at scale is one reason it's good to have this info in template form, as I've argued before. If successful, it'll make these passages sound more natural and less template-y than the current non-templated passages.)

I hope all that is helpful in providing a bit of a roadmap and a sense of the scale of work involved! I can't guarantee how much capacity I'll have to be involved in it — overall I'm probably going to be more interested in high-level questions about what we want these sections to look like than technical questions about how to build the template. Cheers, Sdkb ^talk 01:27, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A) I agree that demographics should not be converted into big ugly tables as some people have been doing in recent years. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 07:54, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

B) "As of the 2020 census" is much better than "At the 2020 census", because "at" makes it sound like it's a one day event or held at a specific location. I don't get why people want to use "at"?? • Sbmeirow • Talk • 07:48, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

C) "second-wealthiest city in the state" is as just as bad as saying "second-poorest city in the state" for other cities. This type of wording tends to further snobery and/or sterotypes of rich or poor communities. Also, it is bad to use ranking, because population ranking changes over time at cities grow or shrink at different rates, thus 5 or 10 or 20 year from now the city may not have the same population ranking, thus causing "timeline rot" in articles. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 07:48, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

D) since this affect a mountain of articles, please ensure it goes through a review process to refine it, because updating articles! Real examples need to be provided so people understand in advance how it will look when inserted into an article. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 07:58, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of creating a monster of a template (also remember that there will be more census to come), I can only encourage once again to use Wikidata as data source / database. Of course, the census data on Wikidata is not complete, but that is something which can be done. The topic of subpopulations has no ideal solution yet, but there is some on the table and there is multiple ways how to upload the data to Wikidata and then to retrieve it from Wikipedia. Additionally, from this procedure all language versions would benefit. I would be surprised if this community supported a mass upload of the census data in the prose versus retrieving it from Wikidata (which can be used for the infobox, the article text or both). Yellowcard (talk) 09:27, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with you in thinking that Wikidata is a much better approach for all the reasons you mentioned, @Yellowcard, but be aware that English Wikipedia is known for having a particular aversion to Wikidata — some editors don't like having to go to a separate project, or feel that Wikidata is too susceptible to vandalism.

The best thing you can do to help increase the likelihood we use Wikidata as our primary or only source for the census data is to ensure that the data there is as good as possible. That means ensuring that every variable in {{US census data prose}} can be fetched from Wikidata (which will involve resolving the subpopulation question). It also means ensuring that everything has full citations (reference URL (P854), title (P1476), retrieved (P813), publisher (P123), stated in (P248), language of work or name (P407), archive URL (P1065), and archive date (P2960)) that can be imported by {{Wikidata}}, not just "stated in" references. Sdkb ^talk 15:07, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I know it is in German and therefore hard to read, but I agree with your second paragraph and would like to refer to the table on de:Benutzer:Yellowcard/USA. Here is a plan on interesting data from the census and ACS and the corresponding Wikidata properties where existing. The references should be good for anything that was uploaded from our side. I also see several problems, one of them is the mentioned sub-population, but nothing which really cannot be solved besides the limitations in time resources... Any cross-project collaboration would be highly appreciated. Yellowcard (talk) 00:22, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely agree with more Wikidata integration and a more uniform prose layout. I also think we could do well in having standardized Census citation templates similar to {{Census 2021 AUS}} to prevent inappropriate formatting changes and fix linkrot issues (such as the Decennial Census citations all pointing to a dead page). Sounder Bruce 23:20, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion about inclusion of long list of past leaders in municipal agencies being due/undue

There is currently a discussion at Talk:Queensland_Fire_Department#Leadership_name_inclusion_discussion if it's appropriate to include a comprehensive list of former leaders in the article. I'd also like to hear general input on how this community feels about such list of former leaders in articles about city / state agencies. Graywalls (talk) 00:49, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Merger of WP:VILLAGES into this project

Or at least the talk page banner being merged into this project's. Given this project explicitly has villages in its scope. People continually tagging an unused project is bad. PARAKANYAA (talk) 02:37, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment for Sibu

Sibu has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 15:30, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting places...close to the city!

I seek your assistance with an issue I see frequently on city article, and that is the inclusion of "interesting places" (amusement parks, museums, historic sites) that are located close to, but not within a city's boundaries.

At Talk:Wheaton, Illinois#Addition of locations located outside Wheaton, I am disputing two golf courses located in a neighboring county that borders the city.

This is not a travel guide. If an interesting site is located outside a city, it should be added to the correct article. Thank you for your input. --Magnolia677 (talk) 18:29, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If it is just outside the city and heavily tied to said city (instead of another city/entity), then I don't see why we should exclude mentions of notable places. A golf course is borderline, but there's plenty of landmarks and cultural attractions outside of the city proper that would be mentioned (such as the Las Vegas Strip, which lies partially in Paradise, Nevada; or many airports that were never incorporated into a city). Having a rigid rule would hurt the usefulness of articles and go far, far beyond WP:NOTTRAVELGUIDE. Sounder Bruce 18:50, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For reference to those not watching both pages, I've commented at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities/US Guideline#Including locations outside the city and the linked talk page. Reywas92^Talk 19:49, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

User:SounderBruce I know there are many unique examples, like Las Vegas, but an editor at Hoboken, New Jersey, could also add the Empire State Building as a nearby site. So often I see small towns puff up their article with mention of state parks and museums many miles away. You mentioned "heavily tied to said city", and I agree that local airports, stadiums for city teams, and city-owned properties should be included, but a private golf club in the next county is not appropriate. It would be useful to have a consensus about what types of sites should be included. Magnolia677 (talk) 22:24, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I already refuted your incongruous Empire State Building example at Talk:Ely, Minnesota#Ely Wolf Center. That is in a different incorporated city several miles away and is associated with such different city. These golf clubs are immediately adjacent to Wheaton, associated with Wheaton, and are not associated with another other city, so this would be the best home for them to be mentioned. If the state parks or museums are closer to and are more associated with a town than any other by means of address or common understanding, then they could be included regardless of official borders. Reywas92^Talk 21:44, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There was a certain (since departed and now-former) admin who spent years engaging in editing activity based on their peculiar views on Census Bureau geography. As with any admin, they tended to attract other admin types to their talk page. I remember one discussion in or around 2012 where consensus developed that writing about communities in the context of their ZIP Code Tabulation Area boundaries instead of the census-defined boundaries responsible for the article's existence and presumed notability (city, town, village, CDP, etc.) was a horrible idea. Of course, people reveal themselves to be paper tigers when they say such things, all the while content has been and continues to be developed on precisely that basis.

Since someone mentioned Las Vegas, it was also a decade-plus ago that an editor or editors went around editing a substantial number of articles to clarify which things were in Las Vegas city limits, or Paradise CDP, or elsewhere in the Las Vegas Valley. We don't show much of a commitment to NPOV if we let that activity stand while refusing to take a similar approach to our coverage of other communities, including confusing the ZCTA with the clearly defined corporate limits of an incorporated community in many cases. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 01:16, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment for Kuala Terengganu

Kuala Terengganu has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 17:41, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment for Cluj-Napoca

Cluj-Napoca has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 16:41, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment for Wilsonville, Oregon

Wilsonville, Oregon has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 17:34, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]