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Infobox redundancies

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
No change from concensus here - There has been no further discussion for a month. New concerns about the use of the official name should be done in a new discussion with more recent information included. DiscoA340 (talk) 19:32, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Can we please discuss the way infoboxes are handled in the articles about US cities? See the Los Angeles article infobox for example. The first three lines contain an absurd amount of redundancy, reading:

Los Angeles, California
City
City of Los Angeles

Firstly, this heading corresponds to neither the common nor the official name of the city, and it contains disambiguation not found in the article title. Normally when an article title does contain disambiguation, that disambiguation is not included in the infobox heading, e.g. Victoria (Australia) or Georgia (U.S. state). But in the case of US cities, and them alone as far as I can tell, disambiguation that is not in the title finds itself in the infobox heading. Why?

Secondly, not only is the name of the state given in the heading, but it is repeated in the very second parameter, which in the case of Los Angeles reads State: California. Then we have the random word "city" floating above the official name, which again often enough includes the word "city". Could this be made somewhat more sensible? Surtsicna (talk) 16:14, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I am also having conflicts with an editor in this redundancy and would like some resolution on it. Right now I have been pushing back on the use of both "name=" and "official_name=" in the infobox because if you already have Los Angeles, California and City, then why also have City of Los Angeles. I propose clarification on what is an "official_name" and when to use both "name=" and "official_name=". --WashuOtaku (talk) 13:27, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

I don't agree that including the official city name in the infobox is redundant, nor is it disambiguation. "Los Angeles, California" is the name of the article - not the name of the city. The "City" line in the infobox could be left out (rather than the official name line): it looks redundant in cases where "City of" is part of the official name. If there is a title problem, it's that not all articles about cities use the same disambiguation scheme. The Los Angeles article title could be "Los Angeles (California)". Or it could just be "Los Angeles", with a "This article is about..." disambig line added below the title. WCCasey (talk) 00:52, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

I agree that the problem is that |settlement_type= overlaps heavily with |official_name= in many cases. One path forward is to remove |name= and |settlement_type= and simply use |official_name= as the header for settlements in the United States. However, in Template talk:Infobox settlement#Redundancy issue, Sbmeirow was strongly opposed to |official_name= and wanted to remove it entirely for US settlements. The compromise was to limit the use of |official_name=. — hike395 (talk) 07:02, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
WCCasey, Los Angeles article title is just Los Angeles. I agree with you that the redundancy stems only from having the "City" line along with the official name. Surtsicna (talk) 18:03, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
Should we just get rid of |settlement_type= if |official_name= is present for US settlements? Or also have |official_name= have higher priority over |name=? i.e., the choice could be between
Choice 1Choice 2
Los Angeles, California
City of Los Angeles
City of Los Angeles
in either case, we would lose the list of cities that are commonly linked to, e.g., List of municipalities in California. — hike395 (talk)
I guess we could say City of Los Angeles, but that would look strange for Choice 2. — hike395 (talk) 18:26, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia is NOT a legal document, thus "City of X" wording shouldn't be used. "<City>, <State>" should be at the top of the infobox to match the article name, and to clarify situations where the article is named "<City>". • Sbmeirow • Talk • 04:09, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi, Sbmeirow. I've deleted redundant uses of |official_name=, but those deletions have been challenged by WCCasey. Is there a guideline that you're thinking of that excludes the official name? I'm looking through WP:NOT and cannot find anything that would exclude official names. I don't think it's WP:INDISCRIMINATE. — hike395 (talk) 04:22, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
Per Sbmeirow and the discussion at Template talk:Infobox settlement, there seem to be three choices to remove the redundancy: — hike395 (talk) 04:39, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
Choice 0Choice 1Choice 2
Los Angeles
City
Los Angeles
City of Los Angeles
City of Los Angeles
Having "<City>, <State>" in the infobox heading is terrible. The reason we have such a formulation in (most, but not all) article titles is consistency, since many place names are ambiguous. Doing that in the infobox too (and/or the lead sentence) seems like a gross overkill to me, not least because the infobox contains a parameter meant for the state name. Surtsicna (talk) 07:40, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
I've fixed the examples, above, to remove <City>, <State>. — hike395 (talk) 16:06, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
IMO, without the <State>, Choice 1 now looks pretty redundant. I think we have a choice between the Status Quo, Choice 0, or Choice 2:
Status quoChoice 0Choice 2
Los Angeles, California
City
City of Los Angeles
Los Angeles
City
City of Los Angeles
The status quo choice being as inexplicable as it is, I believe the choice can be narrowed down to 0 and 2. Without even going into the City + City of Los Angeles redundancy issue, I honestly do not know how anyone could argue that the infobox header should contain something that is not the common name, not the official name, and not the article title. Surtsicna (talk) 16:56, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
I agree that either 0 or 2 is far better than the status quo, even if we drop <State> from the status quo. My main concern is that editors seem to be split in their preference between 0 and 2, and that may lead to a lack of consensus, which will mean "no change". I would urge editors to come to a consensus for either 0 or 2, in order to improve the encyclopedia. — hike395 (talk) 21:13, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
What happens if the infobox is changed to look like this?
Los Angeles, California
(City of Los Angeles)
City
Maybe this could be a good compromise but choice 0 seems to be good. DiscoA340 (talk) 22:28, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
Los Angeles, California
City
City of Los Angeles
Your idea triggered a thought -- we can reorganize the infobox to make it clear which name is official, etc. See Template talk:Infobox settlement#Proposed improvement to infobox (see right). Thanks for making the suggestion! — hike395 (talk) 23:18, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
@Hike395 Glad to help, I think this is a good compromise. DiscoA340 (talk) 23:37, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

People included in an embedded list cannot be required to be independently notable

Until just a moment ago, the "Notable people" section of this guideline included the statement: "To be included in a list of notable people, individuals must still meet the notability requirements per WP:PEOPLE." That flatly contradicts the project-wide notability guideline that explicitly says that "the notability guideline does not determine the content of articles, but only whether the topic may have its own article." This is further clarified in Wikipedia:Notability (people) which says: "Inclusion in lists contained within articles should be determined by WP:SOURCELIST, in that the entries must have the same importance to the subject as would be required for the entry to be included in the text of the article according to Wikipedia policies and guidelines [emphasis in original]."

I encourage you to either develop new language for this guideline that is alignment with the project-wide consensus - I've made a stab at changing the language myself - or launch an RfC or similar discussion to change the project-wide consensus. ElKevbo (talk) 00:52, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

I disagree. The lists you're speaking of are not any embedded lists; they are lists of "notable people". It seems uncontroversial that to be on a list of notable people, the entrants should be notable.
Wikipedia:Notability (people) is not to the contrary. Nothing in WP:SOURCELIST suggests that lists of notable people should contain non-notable people.
I am going to revert the recent edit; if a consensus emerges that it is correct, you can reinstate it. TJRC (talk) 02:46, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
A list included in an article is incontrovertibly an embedded list, no matter what it's labeled. ElKevbo (talk) 12:24, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
Agree with TJRC. The list of notable people who are from a city should only be those who are actually notable and have a bluelink article. If someone is not notable enough for an article, the name could potentially be mentioned in a prose section if actually relevant but not in the list of people. I see this may be related to this edit. Now, that is about alumni of a college and this cities guideline isn't directly relevant, but I would say those people should absolutely not be listed there and the same principle apply. Every college (or city) has countless alumni who have founded some organization, have some prestigous job, or received some award, or received some minor routine coverage that mentions their alma mater or hometown but that would be utterly indiscriminate if any random person who someone thinks is important would be listed. Being Wikipedia notable and having an article is an appropriate bar for inclusion or there's no limit to how big these lists can get or how non-notable who's included can go. Reywas92Talk 04:31, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
You are welcome to advocate for changes to WP:N but until that core guideline is changed this guideline cannot be allowed to contradict it. ElKevbo (talk) 12:24, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
And the edit summary for that particular edit was made in error; I immediately commented about it here. Magnolia677 (talk) 10:45, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
Currently, only stand-alone lists can establish selection criteria. A simple solution would be to permit embedded lists to also include selection criteria, via a central guideline. WP:CCSG already does this, stating "Include only people with a Wikipedia article", while WP:UNIGUIDE more delicately suggests than an embedded list of alumni, "might take the form of a list of people meeting Wikipedia's notability standards". Magnolia677 (talk) 11:33, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
Other project-specific guidelines and advice that contradict WP:N also need to change. Or WP:N needs to be changed. I suspect there would be some support for changing WP:N to specifically accommodate this particular practice of limiting embedded lists of "Notable _" to subjects with existing Wikipedia articles; it's certainly a common practice and it's also explicitly recommended or required by several guidelines, sets of advice, and templates. ElKevbo (talk) 12:24, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
ElKevbo, you have made a claim that this violates WP:N; you have not proven it so. As the other editors above have clearly demonstrated. Simply reasserting your claim of violation does not make it so. I see no conflict between the two articles and see no need to change either. Per Magnolia677's position, a list of notable alumni makes its inclusion criterion known. One cannot simply add a name because a person attended a school, they need probably be an alumnus. Likewise, they need to wp: notable. Dkriegls (talk to me!) 09:00, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
Looking at the edit in question, both Nelly Cheboi and David Walton very like qualify for their own wp:articles, or at least as high level subjects in the articles about their work. This is a non-controversy and we should be spending this time creating their biographies. Dkriegls (talk to me!) 09:07, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Improve Demographics

I think the Demographics section needs a guideline added saying Do NOT add crime statistics to the demographics section. I'll do that, unless someone has a good reason to keep crime stats in demographics. Sativa Inflorescence (talk) 15:40, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

@Sativa Inflorescence: Where should crime stats be added? Should they be added? Magnolia677 (talk) 23:00, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
IF crime stats should be added, they should be in the same section as the police. They're the ones who collect the data, so it makes sense to group them together. WP:CCSG puts the Police and crime subsection under government.
New York City might be a good example to follow. There, crime stats are in Public Safety along with the police. There's a paragraph of trends and statistics with secondary sources (not all FBI UCR). After the numbers, there's a paragraph of context explaining different views of what those trends/statistics means. Grouping data with police, using secondary sources, and adding context all make it much better encyclopedic content.
IMO it's possible crime stats belong only when there's context that goes beyond "line goes up/line goes down" (context to bring it beyond an indiscriminate collection of information). Doing that last bit of context is might be difficult for most smaller or mid size cities.
However, I don't want to add *that much* to the guidelines now. The specific naming and formatting should be experimented with. I think a good start is just getting them out of demographics. Sativa Inflorescence (talk) 15:22, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Neighborhoodscout.com should not be used as a source

This is a real estate tech company that uses proprietary algorithms to rank neighborhoods based on things like crime stats. It's opaque how these numbers are arrived at. It's likely just taking municipal/county data, but it doesn't provide citations (eg what year or years the data is using). IMO that fails the verifiability standard. The same goes for when it's cited for neighborhood bounds and demographics.

It greatly resembles city-data, which is on the spam blacklist. For these reasons, I think it's prudent to remove all citations to neighborhoodscout.com. Sativa Inflorescence (talk) 03:24, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Long lists of mayors

US city articles occasionally contain painfully long lists of former mayors, such as Mount Vernon, New York#Mayor. Do these mayors lists improve articles, or just more cruft? Thanks for your input. Magnolia677 (talk) 20:06, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Tornadoes

When do tornadoes become notable? I see tornadoes listed all the time in geography sections, "In 1924, the roof of Fred Jones' barn was ripped off by an EF2 tornado", and I've had many heated discussions about tornadoes. Is there some criteria, like EF4 or a body count number? I'm eyeing the Monroe, Louisiana#2020 tornado and it looks like a nothingburger. Thanks. Magnolia677 (talk) 20:17, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Though the 2020 Monroe tornado didn't kill anyone, it did damage many buildings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Easter_tornado_outbreak#Monroe,_Louisiana • Sbmeirow • Talk • 23:28, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
Tornadoes and other natural disasters (forest fires / floods / hurricanes) can a have a major impact on communities, and some of the worst can permanently change a community. Even if no one dies, a natural disaster can be one of the most important news events for the community over decades. As for tornadoes, they are extremely scary things at night, more scary than monster movies, even more so in the distant past before internet era / cellphone era / tv era, especially before weather radar. In the modern age, death count isn't enough to be a filter for major natural disaster events, because cellphones / weather radios / tv / radio has provided advanced notice to minimize deaths or prevent deaths from happening, especially during the day time when most people are awake, but night time is another matter. Just because no one dies, it doesn't mean a natural disaster should be removed, because there still could be significant destruction to a community. --- In general, for natural distasters, we should leave these events, even minors ones. My feeling is that small events should be short and in paragraph form as minor part of the history section and not have subsection above it. For major events, where significant damage occurs, even if no one dies, then may deserve a subsection for the event. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 22:51, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
1955 Blackwell-Oklahoma Tornado - 20 died / 200 injured / hundreds of homes destroyed / hundreds of homes damaged
1955 Udall-Kansas Tornado (same storm as above) - 77 died / 270 injured / 192 buildings destroyed
1990 Hesston-Kansas Tornado - 1 died / 59 injured / 247 building destroyed / some houses completed blown away leaving nothing but foundation
1991 Andover-Kansas Tornado - 13 died / 300+ homes destroyed :: in 2022, another tornado hit Andover, but 0 died / 3 minor injuries, lived saved because modern media & cellphones warned everyone
2007 Greensburg-Kansas Tornado - 11 died / 95% of city destroyed
2011 Reading-Kansas Tornado - 1 died / 2 injured / 70 buildings destroyed
• Sbmeirow • Talk • 23:17, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for your input. What I sometimes see is the addition of a notable weather event to communities fairly untouched by its damage, but still officially in its path. I was just wondering if there was some threshold, but its probably just editor discretion. Magnolia677 (talk) 10:00, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
editor discretion, just like everything else in the history section. If a tornado damaged some trees but nothing else, then it isn't notable enough. If a tornado damaged a building outside of the city limits, then it likely isn't notable enough. If a tornado killed anyone, then probably should leave it, so not to be cold-hearted about it. If an article is short, then probably best to leave the tornado text, just to help provide some filler to the article. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 20:13, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Multiple unexplained redirects

User:TillmanJosh has redirected--without explanation--dozens and dozens of notable city articles over the past year. Some have been reverted, but many others remain as redirects. If other experienced US city editors could also have a look at some of these redirects it would be appreciated. --Magnolia677 (talk) 17:38, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps they could provide a better description of what they are doing in the edit summary -- but just looking at the first one I came across Parfreyville, Wisconsin it looks like an almost entirely unreferenced stub. One is to The Romance of Wisconsin Place Names, which if it is like similar books I've seen for other states, it provides little more than a sentence or two about a place. And the other reference is to GNIS for the extremely problematic category of "populate place". It has been discussed many times previously that GNIS is not a reliable source for the category of "populate place" as that often included rail sidings, crossroads, defunct trading posts, etc. In general, I would support merging such permastubs into to corresponding next level of administrative entity. If at some point additional references are found, the stub can easily be re-split. older ≠ wiser 19:04, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
I messaged this editor three years ago to inquire about their redirecting of articles, without response. User:Stewpot has also reverted some redirects. Some article may indeed be found to be not notable enough for a Wikipedia article, but the wholesale redirecting of so many articles is not the way to accomplish a cleanup. Magnolia677 (talk) 19:21, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
So are we supposed to let articles that have at most two-three sentences- some of which have been last edited 10+ years ago and have very little chance of being expanded upon in the near future- flood Wikipedia? My goal at the end of the day after noticing several deleted or otherwise existing articles that have nothing more than the location and a sentence or two of history be redirected into the town that the community was in. As User:Bkonrad pointed out, the GNIS "populate place" source should not just be the only way an article can be made and sourced off of. Like they also mentioned, these can easily be reverted if additional resources (preferably more than just two sentences) are found. Almost all the articles that I merged and redirected were simply where the communities were, and were redirected into their respective towns with the same information. I will say that I could of made some explanations; however, I did put in an explanation as to why I renamed this singular article and there is still only village of Cleveland in Wisconsin. TillmanJosh (talk) 01:27, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
@TillmanJosh: Redirecting should only be used when it is likely not to be controversial, per WP:BLAR. Two editors have left multiple messages for you to stop doing this, which should indicate your redirects are controversial. Instead, at Advance, Wisconsin, you reverted two editors in order to redirect the article. It took me five minutes to locate a reliable source to support that Advance, Wisconsin, had a population of 50 in 2004. If you feel these stub articles should be removed, please conduct a thorough WP:BEFORE, and then nominate them for deletion. Magnolia677 (talk) 11:48, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Updating the infobox example

Should the infobox example on the guideline be updated to reflect the changes made in major cities' articles? The guideline uses New York City as an example, but the infobox in the New York City article has been updated. Xeror (talk) 07:49, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

In general, the infobox in WIKIPEDIA:USCITY should be an example of the goals of this guideline, instead of reflecting a real article that change over time. Technically, the infobox in WIKIPEDIA:USCITY doesn't have to reflect any real city, instead an imaginary city, such as Wikiville, Moosylvania, that fills in the most applicable fields with reasonable data is all that is needed. If a real city is chosen, New York City isn't the best choice, because it is a unicorn compared to ten's of thousands of community articles in USA, thus a more realistic smaller city would probably be a better choice. Though I made up Wikiville for an imaginary city name (but later I discovered "Wikipedia:Wikiville"), and borrowed the silly Moosylvania for an imaginary state name (from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show), we could use Lists of fictional locations for naming ideas to borrow or tweak to create an imaginary city and imaginary state for this article. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 04:19, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
I don't think we even need to make up fictional place for the infobox. All we need are placeholders. For images, we can use icons from Commons Logo SVG cityscapes icons. The only place that needs real data is maplink. My main focus is on the guideline reflecting how the articles of major U.S. cities, not only New York City, have the infobox presented. Xeror (talk) 14:52, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Rankings

I believe the "Rankings" section of this guideline should be removed. The request for comment that this section cites posed a narrow question as to whether or not a specific list from Money magazine should be included on a specific city's page. IMO this does not support the blanket statement that the request for comment concluded that ALL lists of a similar type (subjective) do not belong on a city's Wikipedia page. Each publication and each survey uses varying standards, some of which are more subjective and some more objective and statistically-sound. 76.232.123.103 (talk) 22:08, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I restored the section, then rewrote it how I think long term editors meant it to be (I could be wrong). Though this Chanhassen, Minnesota discussion in 2021 lead to the Ranking subsection being added to the "editor tips" section of this article, it is well known by long term editors that it was established practice farther back in time, even if it wasn't documented in this article. Unfortunately, many subtle practices aren't documented or fully documented in this article. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 08:05, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
I support the original version of this guideline, restored by User:Sbmeirow. The RfC about magazine rankings was overwhelmingly against them. Magnolia677 (talk) 12:40, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Sbmeirow, I reverted to the original version before my edit, using your logic that we should discuss before editing. Here are my thoughts:
1) To say that every single newspaper, magazine, and website ranking has no encyclopedic value is a statement that lacks a supporting source. It is therefore an opinion, and I believe it should be presented as such to avoid confusion.
2) I believe it is best to avoid making hyperbolic and unsubstantiated statements as the one above, which is why I edited the guideline to state that each such ranking should be evaluated on its own merits when being considered for inclusion in a US city article. It is illogical to assume that all rankings appearing in magazines, newspapers, or websites are of the same quality. As an example, many peer-reviewed statistical publications contain rankings, and are republished or reproduced in newspapers, magazines, and of course websites. Peer-reviewed journals have their own websites. If the current guideline stands as worded, editors will need to remove any ranking sourced from any website from all US city articles. This would include population rankings citing the US Census Bureau website, or any journal website.
3) As stated previously, the Chanhassen RfC was specifically focused on whether the specific ranking from Money magazine should be included in that specific city article. The RfC did not in any way conclude that all rankings from websites, magazines, or newspapers should not be included in all US city articles. As such, if we can not reach a consensus here, and if the practice is not well-documented as you allude to, we may need to solicit a new Request for Comment for the purpose of this guideline.
4) I believe that the prior points alone are enough to support my original edit. For the sake of discussion, we can consider another specific example, separate from the US Census Bureau website example noted above: The U.S. News & World Report Best High Schools Rankings.[1] The ranking methodology is developed in partnership with a nonprofit social science research firm, RTI International.[2] The analysis and subsequent rankings are editorially independent of U.S. News & World Report's business operations. All data used in the rankings comes directly from state education departments, the federal Department of Education, along with Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate exam data. These are clearly objective datapoints. A computed score based on objective, uniformly-gathered school performance data is indeed valuable and notable information to a reader and helps digest information more efficiently than scouring through the raw data itself. Amalgamations of information are indeed the very point of encyclopedia articles to begin with.
5) My point in the above example is not to argue for a blanket exemption for a particular source(s), but rather to demonstrate that there are indeed rankings that are of higher quality, and definite encyclopedic value, as compared to others. As such, I believe this guideline should be edited to simply warn against including those of low or no value, with examples given. In the end, whether or not a particular ranking should be included within a particular article will of course be up to consensus therein.
Thanks for reading if you've made it here! Hoping to get some more input. 76.232.123.103 (talk) 06:22, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
I support the original version of this guideline, restored by User:Sbmeirow. These ranking articles are pumped out every year because they are popular. Wikipedia does not include every fact and editors need this guidance since they are included in reputable publications. Of course, if one is actually useful in an article, it can be used. Filling space with "city Y ranked number one in some ranking" does not improve the articles though. 〜 Adflatuss • talk 16:37, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
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