Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities

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State of city-oriented WikiProjects

While working on bringing Wikipedia:WikiProject Louisville back to fully active status, I've noticed that many other city-oriented WikiProjects, particularly in the US, have become largely inactive. And this is despite all kinds of work left to do (in my project alone, I can attest to this). Is this a matter of there being much fewer active Wikipedians in general, or is it something else? At any rate, maybe there should be some effort to reawaken these projects. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 21:51, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiprojects in general are not very active, it's a common problem no-one has really found a solution to (assuming one is desired). CMD (talk) 01:44, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think this would be akin to desiring getting more editors involved generally, and I definitely desire that. That's where it seems the problem lies. I haven't witnessed any particular antipathy to WikiProjects. We just have much fewer active editors. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 00:16, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I honestly think that some city-oriented WikiProjects should be a task force under this if they are not alive. Some people here may be able to help. Arhan D (talk) 20:13, 9 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Historical population figures

Has there been any discussion about whether village and town articles should include historical population data? I think it is absurd for an article about a village with a population of 500 to include a lengthy table of historical population figures. Obviously the current population should be mentioned, but I don't see any general interest in changes in populations over time in the vast majority of articles. 167.98.155.153 (talk) 16:04, 23 March 2024 (UTC) Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Best known for IP[reply]

It's not any more absurd than high percentages of UK village/hamlet articles not having any population data. 98.164.0.128 (talk) 16:50, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not like a telephone directory. A telephone directory shows current information only. But Wikipedia is (or aspires to be) an encyclopaedia, so past information is worth retaining. If it is worth having articles on places like Hovingham, then it is worth recording that the population of Hovingham in the past was nearly double what it is now - and being specific and quoting dates and numbers makes it verifiable. So yes, tables of historical population figures are a good thing, providing that they can be supported by sources.-- Toddy1 (talk) 17:11, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The specific article you mention does not contain a table of historical population. It certainly can be worth mentioning significant changes to populations, but consider a specific case: given that UK census data from 1841 onwards can be obtained, should the article for every town and village in England contain a table showing its population at every census? I see absolutely no value in that. I see it as counter to the very idea of an encyclopaedia, which is not a repository of data, facts or figures, but a body of work which explains and provides context to data, facts and figures. A couple of relevant excerpts from policies:
A Wikipedia article should not be a complete exposition of all possible details, but a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject.

To provide encyclopedic value, data should be put in context with explanations referenced to independent sources... merely being true, or even verifiable, does not automatically make something suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia.

If you think there a policies or guidelines which would support the idea of lengthy tables of population data as encyclopaedic, I'd be interested to know which ones they are. 167.98.155.153 (talk) 16:08, 24 March 2024 (UTC) Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Best known for IP[reply]

Rural settlements & rural localities?

Should "rural settlements/localities" categories (e.g. Category:Rural settlements in Ukraine / Category:Rural localities in Russia) and subordinate cats & articles be tagged with {{WP Cities}}, or are they too small? ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 21:13, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Since they are significant enough to have articles written about them, and numerous enough to be categorized, I think they meet the spirit of WP:WikiProject Cities#Scope, even though they're not explicitly mentioned. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:44, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:İskenderun#Requested move 22 April 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:İskenderun#Requested move 22 April 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Safari Scribe^{Edits! Talk!} 05:50, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Manpool#Requested move 2 May 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Manpool#Requested move 2 May 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Wikiexplorationandhelping (talk) 19:11, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment for Póvoa de Varzim

Póvoa de Varzim 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) 13:38, 22 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Macau#Requested move 24 June 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Macau#Requested move 24 June 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Remsense诉 14:27, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Additional input about "Municipal pop." used on Template:Largest cities

Hi there, I'm engaged in a discussion at Template talk:Largest cities regarding the usage of the adjective "Municipal" in that template, and I'm confident editors here have had that sort of discussion about defining "city" before. I'd love if we could get some addition input from any experts that watch this WikiProject. Thanks! -- Patrick Neil, _oѺ^∞/Talk 14:33, 25 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment for Davenport, Iowa

Davenport, Iowa 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) 20:06, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I regrouped the fields in the infobox. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 21:49, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RfC on consistent naming of German municipal subdivisions

I have requested input on a proposal to stick to a consistent naming schema for first-, second-, and (where applicable) informal third-level subdivisions in German cities. If you would like to participate in the discussion, please add your comments on the RfC subpage. Thank you! --Newbiepedian (talk · C · X! · L) 17:09, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment for York

York 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) 18:03, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Ascalon#Requested move 20 July 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Ascalon#Requested move 20 July 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. --Bolter21 (talk to me) 11:13, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Nusantara (city)#Requested move 16 July 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Nusantara (city)#Requested move 16 July 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. RodRabelo7 (talk) 16:12, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment for Alamogordo, New Mexico

Alamogordo, New Mexico 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) 21:09, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

FAR for Ann Arbor, Michigan

I have nominated Ann Arbor, Michigan for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the 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 "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Z1720 (talk) 16:14, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

User changing settlement-type to "Capital city"

An IP user, User:35.151.61.31, has been changing the settlement type of a number of capitals to "Capital city". Two of these edits were made through a registered account, User:ThaGreenlander. I've explained to them on the talk page of the registered user that I don't believe this is correct because the fact that a geographical entity serves as the capital of a greater entity is a separate matter from the classification of the entity itself. It occurred to me that I ought to bring this to the attention of this WikiProject for feedback and consensus on the proper use of the settlement field in these cases. Largoplazo (talk) 23:07, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Been almost a week editor simply WP:NOTHERE still at it dispite being ask to give input. Have reverted Canadian related articles with edit summary wrong use of parameter ......type of city etc not political standing Template:Infobox settlement - settlement_type - such as Town, Village, City, Borough etc. . That had ..hidden note - Consensus see: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ontario/Archive 1#City infoboxes: "tier" or "conventional" municipal statuses (or both)? Can we get a bot to revert the rest? and a short block to get their attention ?Moxy🍁 06:08, 8 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#‎User changing settlement-type to "Capital city"

Good article reassessment for Lincolnshire, Illinois

Lincolnshire, Illinois 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) 15:32, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment for Galveston, Texas

Galveston, Texas 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) 13:57, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment for Key Biscayne

Key Biscayne 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) 14:45, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Official name in first sentence

Your input would be appreciated at Talk:Minneapolis#City of Minneapolis regarding including "officially the City of Minneapolis"...to the first sentence of the article. Magnolia677 (talk) 22:24, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Chittagong#Requested move 28 August 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Chittagong#Requested move 28 August 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. ASUKITE 15:20, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment for Nouakchott

Nouakchott 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) 02:09, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Port Blair#Requested move 13 September 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Port Blair#Requested move 13 September 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. The Herald (Benison) (talk) 07:43, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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]

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]