Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Cities in the United States

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Cities in the United States[edit]

Most follow the format Category:Minneapolis, Minnesota, i.e. City Name, State Name, I have found the following exceptions (and suggest renamings):

  • Category:Philadelphia, PA -> Category: Philadelphia
    • Oppose - 0, Support - 1
  • Category:Seattle, WA -> Category:Seattle
    • Oppose - 0, Support - 1

I believe these should be corrected for consistency, so that editors will be able to categorize things into US cities without worrying about whether the state name belongs, whether the postal abbreviation is used, or whether it is dropped. dml 15:41, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Unofficial voting summary: See the list above for votes that apply to each individual example; blanket votes are included above. In all there were 4 blanket Oppose and 2 blanket Support. Two votes were for alternatives not shown and those have been added to the list. All this supports Sarah's statements at the bottom of this listing. Courtland 20:53, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC) disclosure - I voted on this

For future reference, there's a Template:Cfru that you should use to label changes like this. I'm tagging all except Category:Washington, DC, because I can't imagine what you would change it to. Washington, DC is the full name.
If we can have a Category:London, I don't know why we can't have a Category:New York City (which is very seldom referred to as "New York, New York"). I would recommend going with whatever the article is titled. (We should definitely change those that use abbreviations, though.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 23:41, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Thanks, I knew it was some template. The Washington DC article is actually Washington, D.C., with the periods, so the category should probaly match, the articles of US cities always are supposed to always be city, state (except apparently New York City) according to the Manual of Style dml 01:25, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The full name is, of course, Washington, District of Columbia. The D.C. is the traditional abbreviation like Mass. for Massachusetts. The DC is the modern two-letter (no punctuation) postal code abbreviation like MA for Massachusetts. That's not so difficult, is it? Let's proceed from there, not all the nonsense we've had so far. Gene Nygaard 04:03, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • ISTR that when working on the cities of another country the consensus was keep the non-qualified name if the place was by far the best known example worldwide and unlikely to be ambiguous, and add the qualification if the name was not that well known or was likely to cause confusion. If that is the case I'd say Keep: Jacksonville, Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, Baltimore, Las Vegas, New York City, and Nashville; Fix Up the correct state/district name for Philadelphia, Seattle, and Washington D.C.; and add the state name to Orlando*, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Laughlin. (*may be the best known place, but it's also a first name). Arguably San Francisco and Atlanta could do without, but I'm pretty sure there are also moderately sizeable places with those names outside the US. As for Laughlin, I doubt it's well enough known to do without its state moniker. Grutness|hello? 02:57, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • I don't care either way on this, but hope that whoever is voting to change this plans to do the voluminious work themselves instead of expecting others to follow up. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:29, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)
    • I was hoping that someone had a bot that could do this (or we could wait until mediawiki was updated) dml 20:37, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • There's absolutely no need to change the category names of cities that don't need their states listed to be properly identified. At a minimum, this absolutely applies to L.A., San Fran, Chicago, Las Vegas, and New York City. Postdlf 09:10, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • That'll come as a big surprise to the residents of San Francisco, Texas, and the residents of San Francisco and Las Vegas, New Mexico. --Calton 02:01, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
      • Not to mention Atlanta, Illinois or Atlanta, Texas. Support for at least Atlanta, Georgia since the additional clarification certainly does more good than harm. -- uberpenguin 14:08, 2005 Mar 8 (UTC)
      • OpposeWell, in that case, you might as well start citing the mass lists of cities named after other cities-- London, Ontario, London, Kentucky, etc. There's only one famous San Francisco, and one famous Las Vegas. Las Vegas, New Mexico can have a category with the state name included... if it ever garners enough articles about it to merit that.siafu 01:18, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • As an alternative to changing the category names, should the articles be renamed to match the categories? Susvolans (pigs can fly) 17:27, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • The problem (aside from now having to rename the things that link to cities) is that it breaks the convention. It is much easier to link if you don't have to think about whether or not the state is in the name. dml 20:37, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • I do support renaming the categories that have state abbreviations in them, btw: Seattle, WA and Philadelphia, PA (I believe both were my mistake originally, I'm afraid). Neither needs the state name included to clarify it. Postdlf 05:32, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Support for the reason that otherwise one has to remember which ones are 'special' enough to lack the state name. --SPUI (talk) 10:42, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • The state name, or the state name and the country name? Honestly, the special argument seems a little stretched to me at least; there are really only a handful of cities where this could really be an issue at all (e.g., Portland, Oregon, Springfield, Salem), not a whole horde. Most of the time it's pretty obvious.siafu 00:01, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Category:Laughlin should even exist, as it has only one item within it. Looks like someone wants Laughlin to be more popular than it really is. -- Riffsyphon1024 05:49, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • oppose - I think that cities that are significant enough should be findable with just their name. While there are many Nashville's in the world, there is only one that is large enough to warrant a category. Best plan though is to do what we're doing at Category:New Orleans, Louisiana. Kevin Rector 15:19, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)
  • The New York City category should be left as is; the current name at New York City was that favored after considerable debate.--Pharos 07:53, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Many of these cities are universally recognizable without the state name. There's no reason to add the state for cities such as Chicago, Baltimore, Nashville, etc, unless we're going to enact some kind of formal policy about it. Otherwise, it seems like a waste of effort. Kaldari 06:25, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I don't mean to sound rude, but this discussion of forcing something like "Chicago" to "Chicago, Illinois" is a bit ridiculous. If that is enforced then there is a broad swath to cut through Wikipedia in order to enforce policy ... New Delhi ... Cancun ... Geneva ... ad infinitum. I would suggest not opening that particular door by forcing policy where convention and convenience point in the opposite direction. That door leads to "should we call it Chicago, United States like we might Geneva, Switzerland?" and other monstrous places. Courtland 02:19, 2005 Mar 3 (UTC) P.S. I do realize that of the examples I gave, there is only a category for New Delhi
  • Support, except for Washington, DC, which was moved from DC to D.C. with only about 60% consensus, leaving undetectable double-redirs, so I believe should be moved back. The WA and PA are especially bad and should certainly be changed. New York, New York was moved arbitrarily to New York City with NO consensus, so I think that is an erroneous arguement. I believe Cats should follow the same rules as articles, so the state names should be included. That also prevents the problem of remembering which cities are 'special' enuf to stand without their states. And, yes, I am willing to help with the re-categorization. Niteowlneils 19:04, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. While I favor consistency in category names, I also favor conciseness. The Category:New Orleans, Louisiana example can be used by those who want to have it both ways. -Willmcw 22:28, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support except for Category:New York City. People should be able to deduce the category name for anywhere in the world from the article name. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 15:23, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There seems generally to be vague consensus to avoid making these moves. I recommend that we keep most of them as they are due to lack of clear agreement to change. (People seem to generally be in favor of retaining simple category names where they are fairly unambiguous.) In cases where duplicate categories exist, I recommend that we renominate them for individual discussion. I'll go ahead with this if no one objects within the next couple of days. -Aranel ("Sarah") 19:32, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Renomination of duplicates is certainly necessary, as well as those with abbreviations in the name. Personally, I find both ways to be useful. I say we keep the status quo and kludge a redirect from the alternate. (And perhaps lobby some more about getting category redirects to work properly in the software.) Pearle is back to health and ready and willing to move large numbers of articles. -- Beland 03:44, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I just realise I didn't comment on Boston, above. The reason is I instantly thought "Boston - that's Lincolnshire - everyone knows that..." Never even occurred to me to ask myself what it was doing in a list of American cities! Grutness|hello? 04:41, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Comment: No matter the decisions are, should the ones voted down be redirects to the ones kept? — Instantnood 08:28, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)
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