Category talk:History by city

Naming

Hi SimonP. I was just going to go ahead and put this on Cfr, but I thought I'd discuss it here first. I feel the name of this category is erroneous as most of its contents do not in fact cover municipal history; rather, they cover metropolitan area history. I think it should be renamed History by city - for ambiguity. Alternatively, this category could be kept for actual municipal history.--Cyberjunkie | Talk 03:43, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

By my definition a "municipality" is any local political unit, and those listed here all meet this definition. Dividing histories by political unit is standard on Wikipedia. History by country, history by state or province, is the norm. City also has its own problems. Tokyo, for instance, is not a city, it is a group of prefectures under a metropolitan government. This would also exclude any towns or smaller entities that could be placed in the more general municipal category. Could you give an example of what you would expect in an article on "municipal history?" I would expect the same as one would find in an article on a history of country: full coverage of political, social and economic history, which is what the articles here listed already are. - SimonP 04:35, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

(After edit conflict) Sorry, I went ahead with the Cfr. I define municipality as a political entity as well, and whilst those listed do have corresponding municipalities, their categories are used for history pertaining to the whole metropolitan area - ie, the city at large. This I can be certain of with regard to Australian cities, and believe it to be true for most others. To answer the question posed in your subsequent posting, I would expect in an article on a municipality the same as you. The point here is that these categories are used as a "catch all", and do not necessarily pertain to the "father" or "city proper". I suggested above that I was fine with this category remaining so long as it covers municipal history only. I suggested "city" as an alternative precisely because it has ambiguity; we can expect to find within listed categories articles related to, but no solely limited to, the municipality.--Cyberjunkie | Talk 04:46, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Could you point out some items in the subcats that would be part of city histories but not municipal histories? Country history categories are fine with including events that occurred outside their borders, e.g. the Battle of the Bulge is in the American history tree. They also normally contain events that occurred in the region before the modern political entity was created or controlled that area, such as many of the articles in Category:History of Germany. This might be a national difference. In Canada city has a very specific meaning, while municipality refers very generally to any sub-provincial level of government. - SimonP 05:09, 21 September 2005 (UTC)