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Political boundary data

Where is information on political boundary data collected and entered into the Wikipedia? I'm interested by the fact that gerrymandering seems to be an accepted part of the US political process [1] [2] Are district boundaries the same as county boundaries? Is there an article that explains this? Mr. Jones 17:14, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

County boundaries, in the U.S., are far, far more stable than boundaries for congressional districts. (Of course, the boundaries for U.S. Senators are the states themselves, with two senators per state.) But since many elective offices are required to represent districts of roughly equal population, districts for these elective offices generally change their boundaries with each new census. --Onyourside 22:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Tiny maps of the US with counties, cities, etc

About 95% of people don't come from the US. Although a far smaller fraction of WP users aren't, I think it's useful to include a small map of the US as a whole to illustrate the location of the state in question. See Denver, Colorado for an example. Bot-builders, please note. Mr. Jones 17:22, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Each article already has (or should already have) a wiki-link to the respective article about the state in which the county is located, and those state articles show the state's location relative to the U.S. as a whole. Onyourside 11:36, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Main articles

Btw, are y'all serious about "History of county X" seperate articles? Sounds ambitious - I wonder whether the structure will be supported by the content. - Martin 12:27, 16 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I think links to such "Main articles" like "History of county X" are not needed until the article exists. - Patrick 12:55, 16 Sep 2003 (UTC)
And of course the link is only needed if the history is extensive (more that just a few paragraphs). Mike 23:45, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Predecessor counties

Few counties were created from nothing with their present boundaries. For example, all counties in West Virginia and Virginia were carved out of Virginia counties. It would be useful to know what the predecessor counties were. The book, How Justice Grew: Virginia counties by Martha Hiden describes the evolution of counties in Virginia. There are other books which describe the lineage of counties in various states

I would like to see some sort of standard treatment for that subject. Maybe a combination of text and a table would work. I have in mind something like this:

County XYZ was created on March 28, 1888, from parts of ABC and BCD counties. The area included in XYZ county had been part of several counties previous to that:

  • 1774-1785 Kentucky County [extinct], Virginia
  • 1785-1799 Fayette County, Virginia
  • 1799-1805 Fayette county, Kentucky
  • 1805-1823 AAAAAA County, Kentucky
  • 1823-1888 ABC and BCD Counties, Kentucky

Adjacent Counties

I placed a sample layout in the Project page, replacing the narrative one by User:Rfc1394. It seeems to me that a list of highways and list of counties this way fits nicely on the left of the page. If we begin using the proposed infobox, that can go the the right side, and they both look pretty good. There hasn't been any discussion that I know of, but the list form (IMHO) also makes it easier read and link to info. Any other comments? Lou I 13:50, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I prefer the bullet list over narrative format.

Status

I'd like help adding "Adjacent Counties" sections. This is probably automatable...I've done most of the work already -- the data is here -- RobLa

Beware: The automated list is not 100% correct! There was at least one mistake in the Fulton County, Georgia adjacent counties list. I'm using Microsoft Streets & Trips to verify as I work on adding these lists to more counties. For the most part though, the lists are correct. Thanks RobLa. --Onyourside 22:15, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
What was the mistake in Fulton County? It looks fine to me. -- RobLa 02:42, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Strikethrough on this statement added by me. It causes me to do a double-take each time. While there may be errors, I think the big bolded "beware" statement isn't appropriate. -- RobLa 03:10, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Should Hawaii counties be listed as bordering each other over ocean boundaries? That seems (to me) the best choice, but not sure of others' opinions. Nyttend 15:21, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
That seems logical to me - borders across Lake Erie for Ohio and Pennsylvania Counties do something similar, mentioning Ontario. See Erie County, Pennsylvania for example. Ruhrfisch 15:54, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Partial:

To do: Alaska, Virginia

Counties bordering the most other counties?

Does anyone know which county borders the most other counties? If not, perhaps those of us working on this could keep an eye out for counties that border ten or more other counties. So far I have found Fulton County, Georgia and Hamilton County, Tennessee, each bordering 10 counties, but I haven't nearly looked at all the counties in the U.S. If anyone notices others, please post here. --Onyourside 22:44, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

My analysis of the file (a quick count in a spreadsheet) gives the following stats:
10 counties - Polk County, Florida, Fulton County, Georgia, Taylor County, Georgia, Worcester County, Massachusetts, Quay County, New Mexico, Lyman County, South Dakota, Hamilton County, Tennessee, Fairfax County, Virginia, Whitman County, Washington.
11 counties - Emanuel County, Georgia, Cherry County, Nebraska, Oconee County, South Carolina.
12 counties - Chesterfield County, Virginia.
13 counties - Washoe County, Nevada.
14 counties - Denver County, Colorado, San Juan County, Utah.
--Spiffy sperry 14:36, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Denver County only borders THREE Mercer5089 01:55, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

It depends on how you define "borders". I can verify that Washoe County actually borders 13 other counties. As far as San Juan County "bordering" 14 counties, well, it only adds up to 14 if you count those that only touch at the corners (i.e., a border length of zero. Ask yourself if Arizona "borders" Colorado, or if Utah "borders" New Mexico. You will find people who say yes and others who say no.) San Juan County has unquestionable borders with 11 counties and touches 3 counties at its corners (Emery County, Utah, Mesa County, Colorado, and San Juan County, New Mexico). Also, I think that Mercer5089 is correct regarding Denver. There are only 3 counties around Denver: Adams County, Colorado, Arapahoe County, Colorado, and Jefferson County, Colorado. I don't know where that figure of 14 came from; there might be 14 cities around Denver, but not counties. In Virginia, Chesterfield County only comes up to 12 if you include Goochland County, Virginia, which only touches Chesterfield at a corner; otherwise, it's only 11 bordering counties. Backspace (talk) 01:53, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions

Regarding for articles on counties, you could probably get the government to do a lot of the work for you. This stuff is already done and there are bureaucrats being paid to advertise their counties. They'd probably send you their standard stuff that's been in development for years. The state tourism boards would know who to contact.

To Be Filed

I don't know where this should go but I assembled a list of all states with the number of counties in each state (I omitted non-functioning cities and counties) Data compiled (but not copied) from http://www.infoplease.com/states.html I individually went through each one and put it in an excel spreadsheet.


State Number of Counties Alabama 67 Alaska 27 Arizona 15 Arkansas 75 California 58 Colorado 63 Connecticut 8 Delaware 3 Florida 67 Georgia 159 Hawaii 4 Idaho 44 Illinois 102 Indiana 92 Iowa 99 Kansas 105 Kentucky 120 Louisiana 64 Maine 16 Maryland 23 Massachusets 14 Michigan 83 Minnesota 87 Mississippi 82 Missouri 114 Montana 56 Nebraska 93 Nevada 16 New Hampshire 10 New Jersey 21 New Mexico 33 New York 62 North Carolina 100 North Dakota 53 Ohio 88 Oklahoma 77 Oregon 36 Pennsylvania 67 Rhode Island 5 South Carolina 46 South Dakota 64 Tennessee 95 Texas 254 Utah 29 Vermont 14 Virginia 95 Washington 39 West Virginia 55 Wisconsin 72 Wyoming 23 Total Counties 3094

-- TMLutas

Just a quick note - I've been cleaning up a U.S. Census Bureau PDF map showing the U.S., all states and county outlines; it's been converted to SVG. The file is about 3MB, but it's fairly detailed, and could be used for any purpose that calls for showing the whole U.S. with county-level detail. The Census Bureau uses maps like this for showing population density, race or ethnicity, etc. There's already a PNG version of a map like this (Image:Map of USA with county outlines.png), but a SVG version has the advantage of much greater resolution and detail. If anyone needs such a map, let me know and I'll provide a copy of it. -- Wapcaplet 04:01, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Township Question

There are a few township articles in Wikipedia. If we ever complete them we'll have serious linkage and disambiguation questions. I've wrestled with this for some time. I'm relatively content with the subdivision section of Hamilton County, Ohio, but still have naming and disambiguation concerns. To see the extent of the problem, just check out the list at List of Ohio townships. One style of disambiguation can be seen on Washington (disambiguation), and I've tried another format on the Concord page. My own choice would be a format something like Concord, but I'd like to see it be cleaner. What do you think? Lou I 00:07, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Wow. I think Washington Township is probably an extreme. I'll suggest changes to both. For Washington, I'd break the list out for each state. Maybe use subheading or maybe not. For lists not quite as long as Washington, I think I'd like your Concord example. I would include the word County in the list following the Township though. I had to scan all the way to the end of the line to figure out what the list was -- I think including the word County would make the list easier to scan, even if it does make it take up more space.
Also, from what I have seen in Michigan, it seems like there were generic articles created for all the townships there from census data. I wonder why that didn't happen for townships elsewhere. Bkonrad | Talk 00:57, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)
For disambiguation matters, it probably depends on how many we must distinguish between. For just a handful (like on Concord), an in-line list like what you have seems fine; for Washington, it's clearly better to have a bulleted list. I don't think there's any question that we should stick with the article naming format of (Township name), (County name), (State name), and avoid article-name ambiguity problems from the outset, though. It may also be necessary to have intermediary disambiguation pages such as Concord Township, Pennsylvania, or even Concord Township, Champaign County if such a need exists. Another thing that might be good is townships by county; somewhat like List of Ohio townships, only organized by county instead of township name. But most of this probably won't be much of an issue until a decent number of township articles actually exist. And (off-subject, but having been involved with the creation of county highlight maps) I'd hate to even imagine the possibility of township locator maps; if Ohio has 1340 townships, the U.S. must have on the order of 50,000 townships. At any rate, I wouldn't worry too much about it at this point. -- Wapcaplet 01:04, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I didn't even notice the the Concord Township, Pennsylvania intermediate page, even though I had run across something similar. I think I like that approach best of all, even if it does result in a lot of stubby articles. That way you can also search for "township name, state name", just as you would for an unambiguous township in that state. I'm not sure if I'm reading Wapcaplet correctly or not. But I would want to name articles using (Township name), (County name), (State name) ONLY if there is ambiguity. If there is no ambiguity, then it should be (Township name), (State name).
Does anyone know how many generic township articles have already been created from census data? Or even how they were created? It seems that all the ones I have come across so far use (Township name), (State name) unless there is ambiguity. Whatever naming system we use should probably take into account what is already done.
Also, on a tangential note, if you are creating or editing township articles, there is a civil township article that explains what they are. Might be worth linking to. Bkonrad | Talk 01:22, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Most of the township articles I've seen are named according to the (Township, County, State) scheme rather than (Township, State), though there are some that use the latter. I don't know which is more prevalent. Just to have some stats: a quick count of the township names in Ohio indicates that of 611 unique township names, 442 of them are only used once within the state; the other 169 are used more than once. It just seems easier to avoid ambiguity if possible, since we know there will be a lot of it. I know it's sort of against the naming policy, but we can of course have (Township, State)-named articles that redirect to the appropriate (Township, County, State) article if the township's name is unique within that state. -- Wapcaplet 05:43, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

My preference is for naming them AAA Township, BBB County, Statename. There are differencs by state, but my rational is based on my own OIhio experience. As a unit of governnment, the township is sort of 'subordinate' to the county. When (it has happened) a township goes out of business as agovernment, it still exists as an area and itds records are transferred to the county courthouse. To me, the long name form is a sort of a full proper name. The exustence of Rambot entries for some eastern states with censu data was mostly because they are called 'Towns' in those states. Lou I 11:51, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I agree. AAA Township, BBB County, Statename is the way to go. I think Michigan is similar to Ohio and to probably all the states using the Public Land Survey System. Townships in this system are very minor civil divisions of government. However, there in Michigan there is a thing called Charter Townships, in which a township is promoted to have more or less the same status as a city. In such a case, I think it would make sense to have a redirect at Township, Statename with the original named consistent with other townships. I think towns or townships in eastern states that were surveyed before the PLSS may have different statuses. It may be necessary to use a different standard in such cases (though it should be consistent within that state). Bkonrad | Talk 12:24, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Maps

Wouldn't it be a good idea to have county maps showing the location of townships? For some counties, like Washtenaw County, Michigan, which is rectangular, it wouldn't be too hard to get a map showing the twenty square townships, if one ignored the city boundaries. Maybe someone with better graphic abilities could even get the city boundaries in?--Bhuck 09:08, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Except that it would be misleading to ignore city boundaries as cities are independent of townships. What you'd have would show survey township boundaries, but even these do not always correspond to civil township boundaries (which sometimes follow natural features rather than the survey lines). older ≠ wiser 15:46, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Categories

The use of categories for County articles just kind of dropped into the project, and we are growing them whether we intend to or not. There are two usages here the (IMHO) merit discussion before broad application.

  1. Creating and populating a category for each state, (e.g. Alabama). I generally agree with and endorse this idea.
  2. Creating a category for each county (e.g. Butler County). This use (again IMHO) is overkill. I think we should try to restrain this use. My reasoning is as follows:
  • The list of Cities and towns in the article has the same data. Even skipped things can be picked up with what links here.
  • Adding things like Stone Arch Bridge or universities seems like more overkill. These are usualy associated with a city anyway, not the county.

I'd appreciate any additional comments, and the some help trying to reason with the Wikipedians trying to create universal Category structures. Thanks for your consideration, Lou I 18:56, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I agree that 1 is fine. I'm inclined to use (or at least allow) categories like 2. The county articles are crowded with a lot of other (mostly demographic data) which can make it somewhat more difficult to scan (and using What Links Here is a bit unintuitive to expect for all users), whereas the categories are a simple (even if not an exactly attractively formatted) list. In some cases it would be more appropriate to have a separate category for sizable municipalities, and then include that as a subcategory of the county, but in many cases, there is so little of significance in the county that it makes more sense to leave everything in the county category. Besides, in rural counties, there often is not any municipality to associate features with. older≠wiser 19:35, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  • I think older/wiser is pretty much right about the value of county categories. I may have been the first to start making them, and I have since spread the beginnings of them to every (?) state category. First of all, it's a useful way to subdivide communities in states, aside from humungous categories that just list all the cities or villages. With the categories, at a glance you can see all the places that are located within the same county, which is really how they are not only geographically but politically organized (counties have governments too), so its a substantial relationship. Yes, county articles typically list these, but probably most of the information that categories give us is in text form on wikipedia somewhere (we also could merely list everything associated with each city in its own article rather than putting it in the city category) and there's certainly no harm in also having it in a clearer visual form than it would be at the bottom of a data page. County categories also create another, easier way to navigate within the county relationship; if you're at the bottom of a city article and see that it's categorized under its parent county, you can go straight to that category grouping instead of having to find and read through the county article. Older/wiser stated perhaps an even stronger reason for county categories—most cities won't merit their own categories, and most counties don't even have large municipalities, and so many features won't have anywhere else to be grouped other than at the very generic state-level. Though an unusual case, still an illustration—I live in Arlington County, Virginia, which doesn't even have any incorporated municipalities at all—all of the cities in Virginia are independent cities outside of counties. And for those of who live in the States, county relationships are often very integral to how people perceive where things are, even in the presence of large cities.
In sum, county categories are good because they represent a substantial geographic and political relationship among the subjects grouped within them, a relationship that in many places can't really be categorized in any other way. At a bare minimum, even if there ends up being only a mere handful of entries in a particular category, county categories certainly do no harm—they add a single category tag to the bottom of their communities' articles that genuinely says something important about those subjects.
Some limiting principles:
1. If there is a city category that an article easily fits under (such as the example above, Stone Arch Bridge), I don't think it should also be grouped under the county category; it finds itself in that relationship by its parent city category being placed within that county category. If Stone Arch Bridge were outside the city limits of Minneapolis, however, then Category:Hennepin County, Minnesota may be the best place for it.
2. The boundaries of some cities and counties are completely coterminous or they are consolidated such as San Francisco; in those cases, there of course doesn't need to be a separate category for the county from the city, but the single Category:San Francisco would then be listed under both Category:Cities in California and Category:California counties. Postdlf 20:21, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

After some consideration, I'm inclined to support Postdlf's position, but suggest one alteration. I've changed Beltrami County, Minnesota so that it links directly back to the category page, and appears first in the list. This way the Category:Minnesota counties would list Beltrami as a subcategory only, not as an article.

The alternative would be to put some narrative at the head of the BC,M category that links directly to the county article. I discarded that since the blank index technique would allow additional articles (e.g. History of XX County, State) to also link upward to the category, and noit need two edits.

What do you think? Lou I 17:15, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I think it's good to have both "[state] counties" and "[county name], [state]" categories tagged on each county, (and in general, the principle of having the main article for a subcategory tagged by both its topic category as well as its parent). Beltrami County is one county among many in Minnesota, so with a Category:Minnesota counties tag at the bottom, you can navigate directly from there to every other article that constitutes the series of which Beltrami is one; or with Category:Beltrami County, Minnesota, you can navigate to any article that has to do only with Beltrami. I think both should be kept. I admit, it doesn't look so pretty to have a seemingly redundant listing of all the counties as categories at the top of the state county category and then another listing of the counties as articles at the bottom, but the increased navigational capacity from the point of view of the article makes it worthwhile. Postdlf 18:01, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It doesn't look like this has been discussed before, but has anyone considered the "[State] counties" vs. "Counties in [State]" question. The categories in each state tend to be divided between "[Topic] in/of [State]" and "[State] [topic]". But I think the former tends to be the more generally preferred. I realize you might not change the categories until they implement the move feature for categories. Mike 02:36, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I'm kind of indifferent when it comes to naming conventions, but the reason why I've been doing "[State] counties" is that it just seemed to sound better—"Counties in Virginia" just sounds awkward vs. "Virginia counties", especially because counties are just subdivisions of the state and therefore not as much in them in the same way that cities are. Kind of arbitrary, I know, but that was my feeling on it. I won't argue if people really feel strongly about changing it to "Counties of [State]." Postdlf 23:23, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

See http://www.itl.nist.gov/fipspubs/fip6-4.htm : "Thus, the following entities are considered to be equivalent to counties for legal and/or statistical purposes: The parishes of Louisiana; the boroughs and census areas of Alaska; the District of Columbia; the independent cities of Maryland, Missouri, Nevada, and Virginia; that part of Yellowstone National Park in Montana; and various entities in the possessions and associated areas."

Question

The Wikiproject page says that county maps for Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia still remain to be uploaded. I think that is finished -if someones knows, could they remove that line from the page. Rmhermen 15:35, Jul 25, 2004 (UTC)

"Hispanic", "Asian" in Rambot data

Please have a look at Wikipedia_talk:Bots#Disambiguation_Bot_.2F_Rambot_data. -- User:Docu

"Cities and towns" header

I think this should be changed to "municipalities" or "municipalities and census-designated places" (where appropriate)—the kinds of municipality vary from state to state. Postdlf 23:03, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • I think this template needs to be updated in general. Looking at well written and content rich county articles I have found some using "Subdivisions" as the title. This is the style I have elected to use with the Kansas county articles:
==Subdivisions==
===Cities and towns===
(though I suppose this could be divided into "Cities" and "Towns" if one is so compelled)
===Unincorporated communities===
===Townships===
—Mike 07:35, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
"Subdivisions" is not technically accurate, since in most states cities are largely independent of the county they are within. If you look at the Census' American Factfinder, cities are not listed among the entities under county subdivisions. I had changed the headings in Michigan to "Cities, villages, and townships", but I think I am starting to like the more concise "Municipalities" better, even though it is debatable whether all townships are actually municipalities. I.e., many townships are not organized in such a way as to fulfill any governmental function other than as a survey division of land. I am not certain, but I believe this is the case in Kansas--the survey townships were drawn up (and are used by the Census), but are not really used for governmental purposes. In Illinois and possibly Indiana--it was optional on a county-by-county basis whether to utilize a township form of governance or to leave governmental functions centralized within the county. So while the townships may exist in terms of the Census and for survey and some land use purposes, most residents of counties that have not organized the townships might not even be aware of their existence. older≠wiser 10:56, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If we change the template header my choice would be Communities. For those counties that I've reworked, I've tried to arrange this section into a table with separate columns for Cities, Towns, and/or Townships as appropriate. See Hamilton County, Ohio for an example. Lou I 22:58, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Communities is better than Subdivisions, although just as with municipalities, it is arguable whether many townships would constitute a community in any meaningful sense. In the Hamilton County, Ohio example (which despite the following critique is actually pretty nice), I think the list under villages is a bit of a hodge-podge. I'm not sure whether a dagger note explaining some are an "Unincorporated or annexed village" really clarifies anything. Isn't "unincorporated village" a bit of a self-contradictory neologism? And what is "annexed village"? Annexed to what? I mean, I know CDPs are sometimes a real pain to decipher--but if they truly were annexed to another entity, wouldn't they be included in the annexing entity's Census data? I am finding that CDPs are often used to describe urban areas which are adjacent to but have NOT been annexed by the neighboring entity. They are usually an unincorporated subset of a township (or sometimes multiple townships). older≠wiser 23:31, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
How about "Municipalities and townships"? Or just split them into two separate sections. But I don't see any problem including unincorporated communities into a section titled "Cities and towns" because places not technically a city or town may be commonly referred to as such. (And the unincorporated locations will be properly labeled as such within the section.) Most users aren't going to care, and I'm not worried about it being that technically accurate as long as people can find what they are looking for. —Mike 06:07, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

Since this issue has just been sitting out there undecided, let's change the "Cities and towns" header to "Communities", and add a "Townships" header (at the same level, not a subheader) either above or below it. Along with the previous debate, my reasoning is as follows:

  • Municipalities technically only refers to incorporated towns or cities.
  • Subdivisions may not be technically correct and is perhaps a bit ambiguous anyways. Plus cities aren't really a subdivision of the county.
  • Populated places assumes the places are populated and gives no lee-way to including former towns and cities.
  • Cities or Cities and towns may be a bit restrictive.
  • Community (as defined in the dictionary) is a "group of people living in the same locality and under the same government" and also "the district or locality in which such a group lives". This seems to be the best fit for the range of incorporated and unincorporated towns and cities.
  • Townships should remain a separate section because they are distinctly different than cities and have different purposes from state to state.

—Mike 00:24, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)

Not to toot my own horn (Toot! Tooot!), but I think I did a fairly good job with Westchester County, New York. Cities have their own section, while towns and villages are listed in another. Villages, along with CDPs and hamlets, are listed under their respective towns. (BTW, in New York, cities are part of the county. Villages, which can cross town and county lines, do belong to the town(s) they are in. Not all residents of a given village are necessarily in the same town.) See Political subdivisions of New York State for an explanation of this mess. Nelson Ricardo 00:44, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)

A note here - some of the listed localities are parts of incorporated areas - see Seminole County, Florida for an example. - User:SPUI

Actually, if you look at the Census Bureau maps, Forest City, Florida, is part of the urban area of Altamonte Springs, Florida, but is outside of the incoporated city limits (that is unless the city has incorporated that area since the 2000 Census). The situation is the same for Heathrow, Florida and Lake Mary, Florida. Both are census-designated places created by the census bureau for statistical puposes. older≠wiser 14:05, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)
We seem to have a problem then, since the point that has always been known as Forest City, at the intersection of SR 434 (Forest City Rd) and Orange Ave (just south of SR 436/Semoran Blvd), is no longer in the Forest City CDP. This point was the old railroad station, and all the roads named after Forest City have gone to or near that point. I think the Forest City article should be about that point, which is now part of Altamonte Springs. Maybe the Seminole County page should say that part of Forest City is in Altamonte Springs, and the Forest City page should say a similar thing and that the data is only for the unincorporated part. I'm not as sure about Heathrow/Lake Mary, since Heathrow is a fairly new designation, but maps showing Heathrow as a point show it along Lake Mary Blvd, in Lake Mary. -User:SPUI
Yes, welcome to the wonderful world of confusion surrounding CDPs. It should be clearly understood that CDPs (and the Rambot articles based on them) do not have any legal status as a municipality (at least not as of the 2000 Census). Unfortunately, the Census Bureau sometimes uses familiar names for CDPs in ways that do not precisely correspond to local usage. The Rambot articles only present statistical data from the Census--not local usage. It *might* help clarify things if the CDP articles were renamed, something like Forest City (CDP), Florida. That is only if there is a substantial amount to write about Forest City, Florida, apart from either the CDP or Altamonte Springs, Florida. Otherwise, it may be easier to just leave the Rambot article with the present name and explain the distinction within the article. older≠wiser 16:03, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)
OK I'm a Little confused about something. are both CDPs and populated places being listed? because There are several areas in most counties that are nothing more than Crossroads that are identifiable even if they aren't CDPs. for example Take Homeworth, Ohio. It's by No means a CDP but It is a community that is recognized locally. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Captainkang (talk • contribs) . 04:18, September 13, 2006
Only CDPs articles were generated by Rambot. There are numerous other localities that have been manually added. Homeworth, Ohio is just one such example. Where the articles exist (or where there is intent to create them), these places should be listed in the county article -- I tend to refer to them as "unincorporated communities" -- but I suppose "populated places" works as well, although that usage should probably be consistent throughout each state. You might want to check at Wikipedia:WikiProject Ohio to see how similar places in other Ohio counties are handled. older ≠ wiser 12:53, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Agreed that each state will and should have a different kind of "cities and towns" header. The two states' county pages I work on are Pennsylvania and Ohio. In PA legally incorporated areas can be cities, boroughs, townships, and in 1 (or possibly 2) cases only, towns. In Ohio there are cities (over 5000 population) and villages (under 5000) as the incorporated areas, then civil townships, some of which are urban townships. Both states have CDPs and various unincorporated places. In PA I usually write "unincorporated village", but I do not in Ohio as 'village' has a definite legal meaning there.

I think it would be a good idea for this project, in conjunction with the various state projects, to come up with standard headers and suheaders for each state and list them here and at the state project pages. Then each county's list could be sorted accordingly (for example, all PA county pages have been sorted into cities, boroughs, townships, CDPs and other unincorporated areas).

I also think it would be good to have a little bit of explanatory text for each section (or at the top of all sections), again different for each state. For Ohio, I like what is at Montgomery County, Ohio very much. Header: Cities and Villages, then "Under Ohio law, there are two types of incorporated municipal jurisdictions, cities and villages. The following cities and villages are located in Montgomery County." Header: Townships, then "Under Ohio law, any territory within a county that is not part of an incorporated municipality (city or village), is part of a township. Townships have limited local government and services." Header: Unincorporated census-designated places, then "The following geographical areas have been designated by the U.S. Census Bureau for the purposes of compiling demographic data. They are not actual jurisdictions under state law." If Other unincorporated communities are listed, I would separate them and have a header for them as well. I intend to add something similar to the PA county pages and rest of the OH county pages (but will bring it up at the PA and OH WIkiprojects Discussions first - this just jump started me). What do you think? Ruhrfisch 16:10, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I also like that section of Montgomery County, Ohio, especially the map. It's helpful to have a concise description of the what the different types of places are. This reminds me that I had started to standardize these headings for Michigan, but got bogged down in creating/editing/verifying/merging articles for the unincorporated places. older ≠ wiser 17:06, 13 September 2006 (UTC)


So Perhaps: 

==Unincorporated Communities and CDPs==
===Census-designated places===
*Random CDP1
*Random CPD2

===Unincorporated Communities===
*Unincorporated Community1
*Unincorporated Community2

Captainkang 17:43, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm not quite used to Wiki Markup Captainkang 03:51, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Since Kansas only has cities as legal entities, I use the "Cities and towns" header more genericly and include both the cities and unincorporated places in subheaders within that section. Since there are only a couple of CDPs, you can see how I handled them at Riley County, Kansas#Cities and towns. —Mike 08:13, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

A page devoted to computer-assisted categorization of articles has been created at Wikipedia:Auto-categorization. The first target is counties and municipalities in the United States. -- Beland 10:16, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Conversion of maps to unified color scheme?

Should articles that currently use the gold and grey California and Nevada maps be converted to the standard red and black ones? The requisite images apparently already exist (see Wikipedia:WikiProject_U.S._Counties/checklist) and it might be nice to be consistent. Also, the red and black color scheme is higher-contrast. -- Beland 02:37, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hello

Hi. The information on this page helps. Thanks.

"United States"?

One thing I've noticed (as a British Wikipedian) is that articles about places in the USA rarely mention the fact that they are in the USA. This seems to be an overwhelmingly American thing - I certainly would never write an article about a British place (whether county, town or anywhere else) without stating explicitly in the text which country it was in. As an example, the only mention of the US in the St. Joseph County, Indiana article is as part of the phrase "U.S. Census Bureau". Is this omission a deliberate policy, and if so, why? Making the first sentence of the article something like this:

St. Joseph County is a county located in the state of Indiana, United States

would be much clearer to non-Americans, especially those who were unfamiliar with US geography and didn't have a good idea of what plain "Indiana" meant. Loganberry | Talk 15:40, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Many articles about places in the U.S. were generated by a bot, Rambot, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau. I agree the phrasing could have been better (among other aspects of the articles which could have been better). But that is hindsight. The articles are what they are. I have semi-systematically been going through the places in Michigan to explicitly make reference that the place is an {county, township, city, village, other} in the U.S. state of Michigan. There are tens of thousands of these place name articles though, so it will be some time before they are all updated. But I might note that U.S. articles are NOT alone in this regard -- I've come across many articles about places in other countries that give little or no indication as to what country it is in. And unlike the bot-generated articles, these are manually created entries so they don't even have that excuse. older≠wiser 15:51, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the useful answer. You're right in that this isn't only a US problem (as it happens I've just edited an English one that didn't mention the country), but I've seen it on US placenames much more than on those of any other nation. This is, of course, a subjective view and probably has a lot to do with the fact that there are a lot more US placenames listed on Wikipedia than those of anywhere else. Loganberry | Talk 16:10, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Good to see the diplomacy in the talk above,over the overwhelming number of usa place names

in wiki with no identiication in the first two lines as being in the u.s.a, as if maine or washington are as clear to us english speakers from other countries. it would be excellent if some process in wiki could insist that ALL place names for whatever country had a country code in a header in some way. any suggestions as to which part of wiki to sound this out?

Location of blank state images?

I am looking for versions of state maps used on counties pages that DO NOT have any counties highlit. Where can I find them? Right now I am looking for Maryland and Virginia. The proposed use is to locate state parks in a protected areas infobox. — Eoghanacht talk 13:46, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Can you download one with the highlighted area and erase it? I did this to create maps for unincorporated communities in Missouri. It might be easier for what you're wanting to do with a state map with a city. Erase the dot. I did it with Microsoft Paint.Rt66lt 19:05, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Opening line alteration proposal.

A lot of the counties in the US have the opening line of "in the state of Ohio" for example. You have on this project that U.S. counties should contain "_ is a county in the U.S. state of [[_]]." I would like to propose that this is changed to " _ is a county in the state of [[_]], United States." This puts forward, in the same pattern as in most other locations on Wikipedia, the location in order from smallest locale to country. I don't think having U.S. state of [[_]] is sufficient for non US wikipedians who may not always know what U.S. means. I know there are a lot of them in here and we cannot easily change every one, but they can be changed as things continue. Having an acronym for the country in the opening sentence I don't feel is enough and the country should really be spelled by its accepted name, which for the USA on Wikipedia is United States. Comments? Ben W Bell 09:34, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

non US wikipedians who may not always know what U.S. means huh? Who in the English-speaking world would not recognize U.S. as United States? This is a non-issue as far as I'm concerned and support the current phrasing. older ≠ wiser 13:25, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I think you'll find that for many U.S. can be confusing and also not every person who reads Wikipedia is necessarily a native English speaker. Also, there should be for every location a proper country name so people can click directly to the country, this gives the reader (who you cannot presume to be American) full access to all the levels of information they may wish to access while perusing the article. Ben W Bell 14:21, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
for many U.S. can be confusing Sorry, but that is precisely what I very much doubt. I find it very very very difficult to believe that there is any significant number of English-language readers (native or otherwise) who would not recognize "U.S.". The suggested formulation has a link to U.S. state, which IMO is more than adequate to meet the needs of any readers who might not know or who are curious to learn more. While this is my preferred formulation for places, some editors will add ", USA" after the state name instead of preceding it with "U.S. state of" or preceding it with a piped version as in "state of X, USA". That is OK, though when it gets to three or more levels of comma-separated place names (as sometimes happens), it is a little too much. But I think many editors would not want to see a link to the fully expanded name United States appended to the state name. older ≠ wiser 17:30, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
OKay that's for the editors, but what about the readers? The term U.S. doesn't find much use outside of the United States, it is referred to as USA, United States or America, but rarely if ever as U.S. It may not be that way inside the United States, but this is supposed to be an internationally neutral encyclopaedia not an American centric one. Ben W Bell 18:33, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, but I do not accept the proposition that the term U.S. doesn't find much use outside of the United States Rather, I'd argue it is easily recognizable by the vast majority of English speakers, especically in the context of a combination form such as U.S. state. A quick check of a several English-language international media show liberal usage of U.S. (or US). I simply do not see this as a problem. older ≠ wiser 23:19, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

County Infobox Proposals

Note: I have consolidated these proposals into one discussion section. Please add any corresponding comments to the discussion subsection (below). JonathanFreed | Talk | 20:52, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

County Infobox Proposal #1 (17 July 2004)

Since it didn't exist, I created a new Template:Infobox Counties that you might find useful. It might need a few changes, but it has most of what you would see in the similar State Infobox. (See the example at right.) Moverton 02:44, 17 July 2004 (UTC)

Note: Please do not add a comment here. Instead, add it to the discussion subsection (below).


County Infobox Proposal #3 (18 September 2005)

Template:Infobox U.S. County

Dorchester County
County
Map of Maryland highlighting Dorchester County
Location within the U.S. state of Maryland
Map of the United States highlighting Maryland
Maryland's location within the U.S.
Country United States
State Maryland
Founded1773
SeatCambridge
Population
 (2000)
 • Total
30,674
Websitewww.commissioners.net

A while ago, i took up creating an infobox for counties in the united states and started adding it to numerous county articles, over 500 i believe have the infobox. The box is pretty simple to implement and use and changes based on a couple of variables. I would think it would be nice to be consider for the guidelines, but if not i do not plan to "step on" any present box on that is on a page already, as long as i am given the same consideration as well. A test of the box is at the right, as well information can be found at Template:US County infobox where the box coding is at. I would as that any changes are put on the tale page before being added to the template, as changes are universal, and any questions be directed to the same talk page. --Boothy443 | comhrá 04:11, 18 September 2005 (UTC

Note: The template for this infobox was moved from Template:US County infobox to Template:Infobox U.S. County at 12:23, 24 December 2005 (UTC).

Note: Please do not add a comment here. Instead, add it to the discussion subsection (below).



Discussion regarding the County Infobox Proposals

I favor elements found in each one. Overall, the #3 looks the cleanest to me, and also includes "US" in its name. Can we get some consensus on one of the infoboxes? JonathanFreed | Talk | 21:34, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree that #3 looks best, and in the future will probably switch the Kansas counties to that template. But I will probably think about adding one or more optional parameters. —Mike 19:47, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Eventually, every county article should have at least two maps: a locator map for the county within the state, and a detailed map of the county. Of course, most county articles don't have detailed maps yet, because maps are hard to make. My concern is simply that for the articles that do have maps, the infobox shouldn't push the map too far down. I like the fact that the Utah example shows the map at the top. Eagle County, Colorado would benefit from that style of infobox. dbenbenn | talk 23:36, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Eagle County, Colorado suffers from poor map placement. The second map should appear in the Geography section of the article. I would expect that a normal detail map would appear within the Cities and towns section well below the infobox (for example, see Doniphan County, Kansas). —Mike 07:00, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Infobox 3, Template:Infobox U.S. County, appears to be the clear WINNER, especially when you consider how many pages link to it. Therefore, I am modifying the template on this article's page to include it. JonathanFreed 22:38, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps there should be an addition to the infobox allowing the input of a county executive or county mayor.Nf utvol 14:55, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

This would be quite beneficial for counties in Kentucky, where county judge-executives are of significant importance. Allow me to suggest fields for "leader_name" (Judge-Executive, etc.) and "leader" (the name of the office holder). Acdixon 15:28, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
That definitely would be useful in many US states, but there are some states without that type of county government. It should be structured as an optional element. --orlady 15:45, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

New SVG county locator maps

I have uploaded new county locator maps to Commons:Category:United States county locator maps, in SVG format. They are named "Image:Map of STATE highlighting FOO COUNTY.svg". I think these maps should replace the old PNG maps. If you agree, please help by updating links in articles!

Also, if you find a map that has errors or needs to be improved, please let me know at User talk:Dbenbenn.

Thanks, dbenbenn | talk 13:02, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I think you actually mean Commons:Category:United States county locator maps. —Mike 19:53, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Er, yes. Thanks. dbenbenn | talk 23:30, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team cooperation

Hello. I'm a member of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing articles using these criteria, and we are are asking for your help. As you are most aware of the issues surrounding your focus area, we are wondering if you could provide us with a list of the articles that fall within the scope of your WikiProject, and that are either featured, A-class, B-class, or Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Do you have any recommendations? If you do, please post your suggestions at the listing of all active Places WikiProjects, and if you have any questions, ask me in the Work Via WikiProjects talk page or directly in my talk page. Thanks a lot! Titoxd(?!? - help us) 18:49, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Request for Missouri counties

I would like to change the section "Cities and towns" to "Populated places" as Missouri does not (legally) recognize towns, and many now include unincorporated communities. I realize this may seem like nitpicking, but I've run into problems over legal definitions of "cities" before a time or two. I will leave the decision up to the project. Rt66lt 01:24, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Except this would exclude ghost towns. I don't think there is anything wrong with keeping the existing "Cities and towns" with the understanding that this is a topical heading and not a legal definition. —Mike 01:56, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I always thought these headings were suggestions, not rules. I don't see any reason not to use heading text that is appropriate for the state. older ≠ wiser 02:02, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Table format for list of counties

I have been reformatting the pages for each "List of 'state name' counties" to make the listings uniform, and to add FIPS county codes. I think this change makes the state information more readable. When there is a map present I have broken the table to flow around the map. I've done all the states that have only flat listings (which were formattable automatically via a program), and I have gone back to manually processed the states where the standard table would not work. I am also including a link to the following template box on each state's page:

I believe this makes each state's list more readable, and by adding additional information, more useful. In the case where there is additional information I've manually processed the table. For an example of the ordinary table, see Wyoming; for an example of adding the information to an existing county information table, see Delaware; Kansas has a special case where the state (for license tags) has assigned each state a two-letter code. These do provide some interesting features. Paul Robinson 21:02, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Use of County Templates AND Municipality Headings?

Isn't the use of a giant bulleted list section of all of Municipalities, Cities, Boroughs, Townships, Census-designated places &c. redundant when a County Template is used? I repeats all of the same information twice. Dddstone 02:57, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

This query came about as a result of an edit to Northumberland County, Pennsylvania deleting the bulleted list and information in the article duplicated in the Infobox U.S. County (the edit has been reverted for now). I have added county maps to all 67 PA county articles to help locate the cities, boroughs, townships, and CDPs. These maps are beside the bulleted lists, which seems better to me for reference purposes (so I do not want to delete the lists). User:VerruckteDan has made "county templates" (nav boxes) for all 67 PA counties and put them on every applicable page. They do duplicate all the information in the bulleted list for the county articles, but for consistency it seems to me that they should be there when they are also on every other city, borough, township, and CDP article for that county. If the articles have more content, this redundancy is not so glaringly apparent. One example of more content is Lycoming County, Pennsylvania where I have added the unincorporated villages and the one CDP to each township in the bulleted list. My $0.02 worth Ruhrfisch 11:57, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Geographic features?

It's occurred to me that it might be useful to show by categorization which borough/census area (since I mainly work on Alaska articles) various geographic features (rivers, lakes, mountains, etc.) are in. I have no idea what the accepted way of doing this is, though, if there is one, so I figured if anyone would know, it would be you guys.

  • Is this kind of thing considered evil and I shouldn't do it at all? (most county articles seem to go this way, at least by default)
  • Should I just put the articles straight into the existing categories? (Category:San Bernardino County, California does this, as well as a couple other random counties I checked)
  • Should I make separate "Geography of Wherever" subcategories? (Category:King County, Washington does this)
  • Does nobody actually care and I should just do whatever feels right as long as it's consistent?

Figured it would be a good idea to check here first before accidentally ruining any plans... —Zero Gravitas 01:56, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

My own feeling is that it just depends. In a state like Kansas with 105 counties and at most a dozen articles in most of them, it doesn't make sense to subcategorize below the county level. But that might not be true for other areas of the country. And just because they do it doesn't mean you have to. —Mike 03:45, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Nominate articles for Portal:United States

I've worked for the past month to update Portal:United States and keep it better maintained. Though, I think the portal would be even better with broader participation. One way to do that is instead of choosing the "selected article" myself each week, if others would nominate articles and help make decisions. (same goes for pictures, though these are stocked up through July 29) If you would like to nominate or weigh in on what should be featured, please visit the portal. Thanks. -Aude (talk contribs) 21:32, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

County Navigation boxes

There seem to be two styles for county navigation boxes. On the one hand, for example:

And on the other hand:

Personally, I rather prefer the former. But the latter is done using NavigationBox, which probably makes it easier to construct and standardize versus the former, which is mildly complicated customized table. Any thoughts on whether the project should recommend standardization? older ≠ wiser 22:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I also prefer the former style. A new trend in some Ohio counties is to have Navigation boxes that list only Townships. I would suggest / argue strongly in favor of Nav Boxes for the whole county (i.e. all cities, villages, townships, and census-designated places) and not just townships, especially when so few Ohio townships already have their own article. As an example, Wayne County, Ohio has such a Twp nav box, however all of the townships are red links and they are not listed separately in the article itself (beneath cities and villages). Ruhrfisch 14:34, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I also prefer the former's layout. However, the divisions (i.e. cities, boroughs) probably need to be specific to each state. Still, the last division could almost always be "CDPs not listed above". JonathanFreed 15:35, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

DRAT! Too bad one couldn't put in a clickable state / county map...Edit Centric 02:07, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Erie County, New York municipalities

I'm not sure if anyone here is dealing with Erie County, NY, but I just created location maps for all the cities, towns, villages, and reservations of Erie County, and added them to the articles. Hope someone finds them useful. OzLawyer 17:12, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I've also now created a template for Erie County (although I haven't yet put it on any pages):


Okay, same done for Niagara County, New York. OzLawyer 15:09, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
And templates (no maps) for Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Orleans, Genesee and Wyoming. OzLawyer 19:03, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Source of PD State Maps

The NY templates and locator maps above look nice - thanks.

If you are interested in PD maps with labels, these New York maps [3] are from the US Census (so they are PD) and can be edited to make single county maps fairly easily.

The URL http://www2.census.gov/geo/maps/general_ref/cousub_outline/cen2k_pgsz/ny_cosub.pdf can be edited to get maps of any state as far as I know. Just replace XX in the last section ".../cen2k_pgsz/XX_cosub.pdf" with the lower case postal abbreviation.

If you want to see examples, I made maps for all 67 PA counties and colored the cities and boroughs red and CDPs blue: Image:Map of York County Pennsylvania With Municipal and Township Labels.png. I also made maps of all 88 Ohio counties and just left the maps uncolored (much faster): Image:Map of Franklin County Ohio With Municipal and Township Labels.PNG. I put the maps on Commons so they can be used in other language WP articles. Ask here or on my talk page if you have questions about this.Ruhrfisch 02:00, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I have seen the census maps, and was actually using them to confirm CDPs, since the Wikipedia pages on New York counties don't always distinguish between CDPs and 'plain' hamlets, but I kind of find them a little too busy. I was trying to make the maps like those found on some Ontario municipality pages (see Halton Hills, Ontario and Richmond Hill, Ontario). I may end up just ripping those maps out of the census documents anyway, though, since it is a bit of work creating the maps, and I'm kinda lazy. OzLawyer 12:53, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
Agreed they are busy. What I did is made busy maps just for the county page from the above source, but for the few counties where I also made locator maps I used the http://factfinder.census.gov maps and turned off all the labels. An example of the locator maps would be Lycoming Township, Pennsylvania. Ruhrfisch 15:59, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Protectionism rears its ugly head

Would it make sense to semi-protect just the demographics sections on all of the US state, county and municipality articles (if it is even possible to protect just a section of an article)? I just fixed the Pennsylvania page demographics "Race and ancestry" section (and if Ram Man or someone else would like to check it, please do so). It had been vandalized several times, but the changed figures were not very different so it was not obvious (and since it is a page that is edited a lot, I had not seen the changes on my watchlist until today). If someone puts in obvious nonsense, that is easy to see, but more subtle vandlaism is hard to detect unless it is a little edited page (which I also catch a fair amount of as I watch all the OH and PA county pages). My thought is that the Census data has not changed since 2000, so there is not much reason to edit it. If it is semi-protected it can still be edited if needed. Would this work? My guess is no, but it can't hurt to suggest it. Frustratedly yours, Ruhrfisch 02:08, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Demographics Question / Guideline sought

Is there a standard style and standard source for the data on demographics? Most pages' demographics seem to be based on the 2000 Census results (thanks to Ram-Man), which seems reasonable to me (since it was an actual count). In the Pennsylvania and Ohio county articles (these are what I work on and watch) some of these have been 'updated' to more recent Census population estimates. These usually get reverted back to the 2000 figures, but sometimes both are given (2000 data and the 2004 (or whatever) estimates, which also seems OK to me). Also, as noted above in my more stressed out posting, when checked against actual Census figures these figures have often been changed slightly. Thanks in advance for any help / guidance on this, Ruhrfisch 16:40, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm more concerned that the demographic data is so generic and similarly worded for so many articles, it wouldn't be better off in a table. Kisch 00:51, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

  • A table would be fine, but the same concerns about how to presnt the data arise however the data is presented (not to mention detecting subtle changes in the data). Ruhrfisch 04:55, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Cities and Towns under Geography

In the suggested structure of a county article, why isn't the Cities and Towns heading under the Geography heading instead of being a heading unto itself? Few things are more geographic than cities. I'm sure there must be a good reason; I'm just curious what it is. Thanks. Acdixon 17:52, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Good question. I see more than one reason for this.
  1. Geography is the study of the earth's surface. It looks at physical stuff. Cities and towns are political entities, rather than being physical.
  2. Cities and towns is considered significant enough to justify its own heading. In some cases, you will see pages where the cities and towns section is broken down further, with subheads for each type of political entity, such as cities, towns, boroughs, and school districts. Having two levels to the headings is confusing enough for users; you don't want three if you can avoid it.
There may be other reasons that aren't popping out at me, at the moment. It's important to note that the suggested structure is a suggested structure, not a mandate.
Don't you imagine that in the New Orleans area, articles might have an extra section on dealing with the aftermath of a hurricane, and that Somerset County, Pennsylvania might want an extra section dealing with the aftermath of 9/11, even though no locals (to the best of my knowledge) were on the plane that crashed? Should there perhaps be a section on barbecue in the article that includes Memphis, a section on gaming in the article that includes Las Vegas? County articles are especially difficult to do well, because they cover such a breadth of topics, and because there are always plenty of kibitzers wanting to add in their own non-notable content. We're trying to help editors create a Good Article, not hamstring them. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 20:54, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

You know, I've given this question a bit of thought, and from all that I have learned, from Kindergarten through college, Geography has always included locales and locations on this big blue ball, cities and towns definitely fall inside that category. As far as major highways, THOSE don't really fall under geography, but read and feel better under a separate Transportation header... I've been doing some cleanup and realignments on counties in California, for an example, please see Fresno County article. Edit Centric 02:05, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 18:39, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Contra Costa County, California - Mount Diablo subsection

Okay, I've run into a conundrum. Would everyone please, when you get a chance, take a look at Contra Costa County, California, and scroll down to the subsection on Mount Diablo. Wouldn't this float under Geography? Now don't get me wrong, Mount Diablo IS a great place to visit, and a nice location for Amateur Radio repeaters. However, trying to adhere to the template for this project, more or less, what do y'all think? Edit Centric 04:54, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Google Earth as Highway and Info Resource

I have just sent a "Nasty-Gram" to Google, regarding their Google Earth program. Seems that lately, there are highway markers showing up for highways that DO NOT EXIST! As I have been using them as a reference point for highways in California Counties, I will now have to go through and check every single frapping entry that I have already made, for EACH county, to verify that these roads actually exist. I would recommend to everyone using GE as a resource that you double-check with other official state and local resources to ensure the accuracy of the info before commiting it here... Edit Centric 16:57, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Another question about the content suggestions list

I liked seeing this list, it gives a lot of concrete suggestions in a nice 2 level hierarchy. But it seemed odd to find "Notable Festivals and Parades, with dates" listed under "Geography". What's the logic behind that? Thanks! Pfly 06:26, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I am starting a comversation about what are valid external links for US County articles at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pennsylvania. Official web sites are fine, but what about newspapers? Chambers of commerce? Other kinds of sites? Official state maps of each county? What do you revert on sight? What do you add? If you are interested, please respond here. Thanks in advance for your input, Ruhrfisch 03:19, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 22:03, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Parallels to adjacent counties?

You may remember that I helped somewhat with adding lists of adjacent counties (look above) back in August. Over the last couple of days, I've been doing somewhat the same with provinces, regions, etc. of certain countries (all analogous to states here), so far just a few in sub-Saharan Africa. My question is this: do any of you know of a wikiproject under which such an effort would fit? Nyttend 03:47, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

wp:county

I was having a hard time finding this wikiproject, so I was bold and created the wp:county redirect. Anyone have any qualms about this? Brien Clark 04:40, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Enormous map

I'm now sure how or why, but the SVG map used to indicate the location of Indiana counties now displays at an enormous size, regardless of the dimension defined in the Infobox. (Warren County, Indiana is an example.) Does anyone know a fix for this? Thanks! Huwmanbeing 19:59, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Recent policy changes limiting primary sources

There have been recent changes in the merging of WP:V, WP:NOR and WP:RS into WP:ATT, along with related changes at WP:N. One thing that may affect geographic projects is the tightening of the requirement for multiple secondary sources for all articles. Many geographic articles are created from a single primary source like census data or topo maps. Technically, this would subject these articles to deletion. If you have not checked these policies lately, you should. And be sure to check the supporting discussions. Remember WP policies and guidelines are supposed to incorporate a broad consensus. Dhaluza 20:16, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't see anything at Wikipedia:Attribution that prevents an article from referencing only primary sources. Anyway, it is trivial to find a commercial map that shows the place (most location articles already have several such maps linked in the external links), so the "threat" has no teeth. --NE2 21:35, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Also look at WT:ATT and WT:N and check the edit histories to see what people are trying to include, particularly the recent WP:N edit war prior to protection.. Dhaluza 21:51, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm not looking at notability, since that's not a policy, but attribution explicitly allows "descriptive claims that can be checked by anyone without specialist knowledge" from primary sources. --NE2 22:07, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

New York County history

It seems as if every county article in New York has the same basic history of the New York counties being split up, tailored slightly for the specific county. Perhaps each article should contain a short bit about how that county was created, with a "See also" link to an article specifically about the formation of New York counties.

What do you think? Jesuschex 05:11, 7 March 2007 (UTC)


County histories and state histories

It seems Wikipedia contributors could add something valuable if they went beyond simply the political history of when counties were established, and dealt with the social history of settlement, migrations of populations, and those kinds of changes. Perhaps there could be agreement to show census data from 1800, 1860, 1900, 1920, for instance, as those would be snapshots of change. (or come to agreement on other year intervals.)

The University of Virginia (UVA) has its Historical Census Browser available for free access, which enables looking at and analyzing available census data. Then readers/people would at least know who was there in particular counties and states. In the years before the Civil War, especially in the South, you would need county data to have an idea of what was going on in an area, as it was largely agricultural. I've come across a number of counties in VA or GA, for instance, that were majority enslaved African American in 1860, but the only demographics shown are current ones, in which the African American population is much smaller. So readers would have no idea of the earlier economy of a county, nor of African American contributions to building the wealth and culture of that county.

Also lacking is a sense of different European immigrants to areas. Looking back, people now say they were all WASP, but as these different groups were settling, even those from the British Isles, they had more differences than similarities in culture. For instance, Scots-Irish were the largest group of immigrants from the British Isles before the Revolution, and they tended to settle mostly in the backcountry of the South, down the Appalachian Trail and in the Piedmont. David Hackett Fischer's "Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America" synthesizes much research in that area.

Political scientists were able to see broad traditions of voting and politics into the 1960's, from the westward movement of different cultural groups: Greater New England in the northern tier, the Mid-Atlantic

I think this issue of how to treat history has to be discussed at a level above New York State, obviously. In looking at histories of a major city such as Atlanta, for instance, I found a lack of connection between city and county history in earlier years. That disconnect distorts understanding of what was going on. Even if Atlanta was built mostly on railroads and trade, it didn't exist independently. Part of its growth was fueled by freedpeople moving to Atlanta and Fulton County after the Civil War and comprising 46% of the county in 1870. (Of course some African Americans were there before the war, but their proportion in the county more than doubled by 1870.) Without basic census data, you would never know that from the current narrative history.

I've been looking at (and doing some work on) history sections in GA, NY, VA, KY and TN, places where I'm familiar with the some of the early histories. The weakness or blanks of history sections on wikipedia leave you with little sense of African American or other ethnic contributions. For instance it's not enough to say "there was slavery", "there were immigrants". So much of American history is made up of huge waves of immigration, both from "pull" and "push" forces. The origins of the groups have changed, but immigration and internal migration have been constants.

Wikipedia contributors use links to early (late 19th c.) county histories which have been transcribed for online publication. This gives some sense of how people used to look at the history of an area. An overreliance on these sources, however, simply repeats late 19th or early 20th c. biases. It leaves out much of the last three decades' emphasis on broader social history which reveals the agency and contributions of all groups.

Internal migrations were often the way new groups rose to power, too. The migrations also reveal religious history and battles for religious freedom. For instance, hundreds of Baptists migrated from colonial VA to KY before the Revolution, to get away from the established Anglican Church. Their numbers were large for the times.

Basically, I think the history sections need a different and broader approach.

County lists

As various "list of counties in XX" (state) have become Featured Lists, and a couple more are heading that way, I've created a sub-page at Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. counties/county lists to keep track. (Potentially, this could end up a Featured Topic). Tompw (talk) (review) 15:13, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

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