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Talk:Lhasa/Archive 3

< Talk:Lhasa
Latest comment: 9 years ago by Wbm1058 in topic Proposed move

Proposed move

Latest comment: 9 years ago153 comments15 people in discussion
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
The result of this discussion is:

This result does not violate WP:NC-ZH regarding primary topics, as sourcing establishes significant notability of the smaller region where the world-famous historical structures are located, and this region is within Chengguan. There is a strong consensus that the combined content about all parts of prefecture-level city cannot be contained in a single article, and for reorganizing content to an article covering the small world-famous city and another covering the large area outside that city. This closure allows that reorganization to proceed. There is a much weaker consensus around the titles of these articles, which on weighted strength of policy-based arguments is weaker than the numerical count of !votes indicates. This has been an unconventional move request in that it actually is a combined move and merge request. Editors wishing to appeal the decision on article titles are asked to allow the merge portion of the request to proceed to completion, and then appeal the titles of either or both of the resulting articles by submitting a more conventional Requested move. This decision also allows the possibility of later splitting Lhasa from the Chengguan District as the "city" expands, if better sourcing allows for a better definition of the primary-topic urban area. Wbm1058 (talk) 18:36, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

  Moved from User talk:Aymatth2/Lhasa (prefecture-level city)

The present version of the article on Lhasa purports to describe the 29,274 square kilometres (11,303 sq mi) Lhasa prefectural-level city, but in fact is almost entirely about the small city that lies in Chengguan District, Lhasa. This is reasonable, since Google News and Books searches show that readers searching for "Lhasa" will almost always be looking for the small city. The draft article at User:Aymatth2/Lhasa (prefecture-level city) tries to cover the broader region, the prefecture-level city formerly known as Lhasa Prefecture, in a separate article. if the proposal is rejected, the prefecture-level content can be merged into the Lhasa article. If it is accepted, this article will move to mainspace and the Lhasa article will be refocused on the small city, a simple task since it is almost entirely about the small city anyway, and Chengguan District, Lhasa will be merged into Lhasa. The lead can start:

Lhasa (officially Lhasa Chengguan District, Chinese: 拉萨市城关区; pinyin: Lāsà shì Chéngguān qū) is a small city in Lhasa prefecture-level city, formerly Lhasa Prefecture...

The proposal has been discussed at some length at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject China#Category:Lhasa Prefecture and at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Likely POV-forking of Lhasa. Objections on the basis that the refocused Lhasa article would create a fork, describe an area without an official definition or violate the project naming conventions have been addressed. All contributors to those discussions are invited to comment here, and to invite anyone else who may be interested to comment. I propose the target title of Lhasa (prefecture-level city), but recognize that others are possible, such as "Lhasa prefecture-level city", "Lhasa Municipality" and so on. I ask that editors state whether they are in favor of Merge or Move, the main question, and leave the choice of the perfect title to subsequent move requests.

Thanks, Aymatth2 (talk) 23:42, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Opinions

  • Oppose move of prefecture-level city article (i.e., believing that the status quo is proper and merger of content that Aymatth2 has written), close to no opinion as to naming of "small city article" (although I do have a preference, to be further stated below). At the risk of potentially rehashing - so I'll try to be brief - WP:NC-ZH calls for the use of the prefecture-level city name as the proper title for the prefecture-level city name article. (The only exception that I am aware of is Jilin City, which is necessitated by the city's having the same name as the province Jilin.) There is no good reason to unnecessarily deviate from this naming, the argument that "Lhasa" would evoke the image of just the urban area notwithstanding. That is a situation that's true for virtually all prefecture-level cities in China (as well as special municipalities Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai - and, most strongly, Chongqing), and I believe unnecessarily deviating from WP:NC-ZH merely creates confusion and invitation to fracture from the current naming convention, potentially leading to the unworkable situation of 273 naming schemes. (The only possible exceptions are the "new cities" on the coast such as Zhuhai and Zhongshan.) The fact that the Lhasa article currently refers to the prefecture-level city rather than the "small city" can be adequately addressed within the article itself (and, I believe, the article already abundantly makes clear). I do not oppose a "small city" article, but believe that it can be done in the context of expanding the current Chengguan District, Lhasa article rather than to rename that article or to create yet a separate article. During the course of the discussion on this subject, it appears that we have reached a consensus that the geographical scope of the "small city" article would be Chengguan District to avoid WP:OR and WP:V problems. If that is still what is agreed to, I do not have a strong feeling as to whether the "small city" article should remain named "Chengguan District, Lhasa" (which I prefer) or something like "Lhasa (urban area)" or "Lhasa (traditional city)." --Nlu (talk) 00:21, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
  • The title "Lhasa" will mean the small city to almost all readers. The Wikipedia:Article titles policy says titles should be natural, so the Lhasa article should be about the small city, the primary topic. To merge this content into the Lhasa article would be a disservice to our readers, who will be hit be a mass of geography when they want to find out about the city. Naming conventions surely do not dictate article scope, and in this case the naming conventions allow for the situation. However, I will merge if that is the consensus. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:45, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Closing. See WP:CONLIMITED; no consensus reached here may overturn or conflict the naming convention. If you wish to see things changed, your only recourse is attempting to have the naming convention changed. Nyttend (talk) 02:44, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
Reopened. Inappropriate closing of a user talk page discussion. Let the user moderate their own talk page. Wbm1058 (talk) 01:33, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Support You'll find that officially the PRC does designate the main urban centre of Lhasa (the city itself) as just 53 square kilometres, then there's the 拉萨市城关区; Lāsà shì Chéngguān qū (Lhasa city urban district) at 525 km2 and then it calls the overall prefecture level city area 拉萨市; Lāsà shì (Lhasa city), which covers over 29,000km2. So technically we'd not be doing anything wrong in covering both, and as I say, as China develops on wikipedia you'd expect some of the larger cities and prefecture-level areas to have articles concentrating on both the urban centres, the wider regional prefecture unit and the settlements within those units. Aymatth2 has created some very good content here which wikipedia's readers would greatly benefit from. To bloat the main lhasa article with all of this info about rural farming practices and all that, I can assure you most readers searching for "Lhasa" will be looking for info about the urban city itself not the wider regional area. No naming guidelines will be broken as (prefecture-level city) appears to be the official naming now in English. China badly needs development work on wikipedia, I'd encourage this sort of development all across China on here. Content is most important here, are we really going to reject this good article?♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:15, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
    • This is the kind of rationalization that caused me to oppose this fracturing in the first place - "it's too much good content to go to waste." If this is the kind of rationale that we're going to be involved in, then all that discussion was nothing but a subterfuge. Plus, this argument applies to all Chinese cities and a lot of other cities worldwide. Are we really going to destroy not only WP:NC-ZH but also many other naming conventions throughout Wikipedia on the excuse that readers are too stupid to distinguish between the urban and the rural areas? --Nlu (talk) 18:05, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
I'd argue that putting all this content in the main Lhasa article would be more likely to confuse (western/non Chinese) readers than it would have two different articles with very clear hatnotes Nlu. And its not as if I only support this for Lhasa or Tibet, I encourage it in every area of China where they is a large prefecture level area and notable city. We should have two different focuses on both. Obviously this isn't about Tibet-PRC politics, as I'm urging this to be done all across China, and I'm certain as we develop it will become more practical to do so. Zanhe in particular should know that I'm generally very interested in development on China on here across the website and am always happy to see work being done in any area. This will make Chinese topics much better in the long term.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:09, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
      • @Nlu: As I thought you had agreed, this proposal is fully consistent with the project naming conventions: "those settlements ranked higher administratively ... are primary topic over those ranked lower, unless sourcing exists to establish significant notability of a lower-ranked division." Sourcing (e.g. Google News and Books searches) exists to establish significant notability of Lhasa urban district over Lhasa prefectural-level city. Incoming wikilinks show the same. The urban district is what readers are most likely to be looking for. Do you reject the project naming conventions? The proposal is also fully consistent with the broader policy that if a term has a primary topic, users searching on that term should be taken to an article about the primary topic. Do you also reject the article naming policy? Aymatth2 (talk) 20:05, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
        • What I am referring to is Dr. Blofeld's argument, "It's been written already. Therefore, that's what it should be so that the content doesn't go to waste." That is the exact argument that was (I thought) agreed to not be made. As I said, I see the two positions that we discussed as reasonable positions that editors should discuss as to which one is the preferred position. But bringing in an argument that was (again, I thought) agreed not to be argued is what I'd consider a bait-and-switch. In any case, I believe I've made my argument. Hopefully other editors can jump in and see what they think. --Nlu (talk) 22:00, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
From what I see, there is significant coverage of both the city and the wider rural area and it would be unfeasible to cram it all into one article for the sake of a naming convention. Also, the convention explicitly states that if "sourcing exists to establish significant notability of a lower-ranked division" then there is definite reason to split. As such, Ayamatth's proposal is sound, his work excellent, and I see no reason to argue against this. I support the split. Cheers! -- KRIMUK90 ✉ 09:16, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Nlu. Colipon+(Talk) 02:13, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Support. I was directed here form the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Requested moves#Move from Userspace. This article Lhasa is about the city proper, not the much larger prefecture of which the city is part. The fact that the "city" authorities extend to the prefecture boundary is irrelevant. See Leeds and City of Leeds for an example of this, the first is about the city itself, while the second is about the much larger administrative unit, which happens to be called the "City of Leeds" as well. I would even question whether this talk page has the authority to prevent the new article being created - it is regarding a different topic than the current one. I say cretaea it, and if the prefecture is really not notable, then let that be decided at WP:AfD.  — Amakuru (talk) 10:10, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I commend Aymatth2 for his excellent effort at expanding Tibet-related articles, but do not agree with his vision of reorganizing the articles. There is only one entity officially known as Lhasa, which is the prefectural-level city. Redefining the city based on a few editors' personal perception of what the city "should" be is not appropriate. I think a better way to organize the content is to have Lhasa focus on the central district, while having details about its outer counties in a separate article such as Administrative divisions of Lhasa. This is how the situation is handled for other major Chinese cities facing the similar issue. See List of administrative divisions of Chongqing, List of administrative divisions of Shanghai, for example. -Zanhe (talk) 00:25, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
Zanhe The wider goal on wikipedia. and this goes for every country is to provide an effective overview for any region, province, state, county, municipality, village area or whatever on the planet. Having an effective summary there without having to click the sub articles is what wikipedia is about, and something which we should be striving to achieve. There should quite rightly be summaries of the sub areas and areas of different focus in the mother article on divisions. We'd not prefer to have a stub and just have sub articles. Many of the African provinces are undeveloped and do that and they look pathetic. So this content is very relevant and valuable on wikipedia, we should have this sort of overview for every area of the planet. The problem as I say below is that we could add it all in the main Lhasa article but it will really start to confuse readers if not annoy people who will want to learn about the city and all this on rural geology and farming. I just think you have to look at what is more digestible to readers and what people will be searching for. And it's not as if this would be going against the majority, the vast majority of sources, even PRC ones when talking about Lhasa mean the city itself, not the prefecture area. When referring to a village in Lhunzub County they usually name it, they don't say "Farmers in Lhasa today went on strike..." So it is clear that is it effectively thought of as a sort of province in reliable sources. In most countries you're not going to cover a notable city and wider regional area in one, I don't see why this is any different. There is no break in official naming convention anyway as it would be called Lhasa (prefecture-level city) and Lhasa, like Damxung or Lhunzub would simply be one of the settlements within it, but the article would very clearly illustrate that it forms part of a wider prefecture area, also called Lhasa.♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:57, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
I understand that. In an ideal world, there would be a well-defined "small city of Lhasa" which would be the primary topic for "Lhasa". However, as far as I know, such a definition does not exist, and different sources have different definitions. Creating a "small city" ourselves in the absence of a widely accepted definition is original research, IMO. And a lot of the information in the "small city" article would need to be duplicated in the prefectural-city article anyways. I think the current setup, while not perfect, is the least bad solution. -Zanhe (talk) 10:46, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
The PRC officially indicates that Lhasa covers 53km2, so I'd think it evident that they have an official scope of what is the actual urban area and city and what is rural. Not the mention the hundreds of sources written about Lhasa, long before the PRC came along which have a very clear idea of what Lhasa is and write in great deal about it. Do you think they worried back then where the actual city limits of Lhasa were?♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:31, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
Zanhe I think we both agree that Aymatth's content is encyclopedic and is welcome on wikipedia in some shape or form. His article is 96 kb, the current Lhasa one 62 kb. I guess it is possible to merge it all in, but if we did so, would it really be a good idea to merge in info about the geology and farming practices in rural areas etc all into the information about the city? I think it's more likely to frustrate and confuse our readers, We could in the main Lhasa article, in order to avoid that, cover the prefecture in general and then the city or vice versa, but it will start to look awfully long. We're not paper. I don't see this as a disruption of the convention, I just see it as an extension, to distribute the material we have it on a way which will be easier for the reader to follow. Every prefecture-level area in all of China really should have general info on it like overall terrain and economy, but can't you see that although the convention exists on here to merge all, once you really start to develop it it starts to conflict with the actual info on the main city itself, because there is conflict between the fact that it's over 99% a rural area, yet is being called a city. I think each prefecture should be treated on a development basis. If an editor is willing to write about all of its general rural practices and features to this extent, then we should split the content. If not, then keep them all in one. While it is true that officially the PRC call the whole thing Lhasa City, in principal it's not functioning as one city, and this is reflected in the sources about it. And it doesn't make much sense from a development viewpoint once you really begin to research each prefecture level city area for those settlements which are really notable and highly documented in their own right, like Lhasa.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:55, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
There is no official entity called Lhasa. There are two related administrative entities in Tibet. 拉萨市 Lāsà shì is the prefecture-level city, and 拉萨市城关区 Lāsà shì Chéngguān qū is the urban district. The article leads will give these official names. The important question is what readers are most likely looking for when they enter the search term "Lhasa". The city? The dog? The singer? The former prefecture? Aymatth2 (talk) 01:51, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
That's simply wrong. Lāsà shì = Lhasa City = Lhasa. Lāsà shì Chéngguān qū = Chengguan District of Lhasa City. -Zanhe (talk) 10:12, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
  • That's simply right. Lāsà shì = Lhasa City. Lāsà shì Chéngguān qū = Lhasa City Urban District = Lhasa. But if the government decided to split the TAR in two, with a line through the middle of the Lhasa urban district, putting one half into "East Xizang" and one half into "West Xizang", that would not stop us having an article on the city commonly called "Lhasa" in English. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:47, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
  • That's still wrong. Chengguan literally means "city pass", not urban district (although it's a common name for urban districts, as in Chengguan District, Lanzhou). And in any case it's used here as a proper noun, not an adjective. The urban area of Lhasa actually also includes the center of Doilungdêqên County, which may soon become the second district of Lhasa. -Zanhe (talk) 15:29, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
    • wikt:chengguan: (chéngguǎn), composed of 城 (chéng) ("city") and 管 (guǎn) ("management"). So the "city management district" (Chengguan District) of "Lhasa City" (the prefecture-level city)? Wbm1058 (talk) 02:50, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Wbm1058, that's a different word which is written and pronounced differently in Chinese. Note that 管 guǎn means management but 关 guān means pass (as in mountain pass). -Zanhe (talk) 08:20, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
@Zanhe: I see, thanks. The Chengguan District, Lhasa and Chengguan District, Lanzhou infoboxes say 城关区 ≡ city (mountain) pass district. Chengguan District is not such a common term, per the two-item disambiguation. The Chengguan District, Lanzhou infobox picture shows that it too is located in a mountain pass. Wbm1058 (talk) 13:37, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
See also Chengguan Town. There are almost 200 of them. 城 chéng means "city" or "town". 关 guān as a verb usually means "shut" or "close", and as a noun means "barrier". The sense, to me, is "city gates", often used as a term for an urban area and its immediate surroundings within a larger region. Lhasa Chengguanqu has that sense. Lhasa is in a flat river floodplain, not a mountain pass. This is really irrelevant to the English wiki. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:21, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
My education continues: wikt:关 confirms your interpretation – frontier pass, not mountain pass. And the Chengguan dab shows that such a "frontier pass" may mark the border of a District (wikt:区), Subdistrict (wikt:道), Town (wikt:镇) or Township (wikt:乡). Such common usage suggests a possible disambiguator: Lhasa (chengguan). This could clarify that the urban ("chengguan") area and the official Chengguan District don't necessary fully overlap. Wbm1058 (talk) 19:26, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
@Wbm1058: In this case, the meaning of "Chengguan" needs not, and should not, be overanalyzed. "Chengguan Town" (城關鎮) is a very, very typical PRC nomenclature for the town that serves as the seat of a county that, prior to the "liberation," had the same name as the name of the county itself, to distinguish between the town and the county administratively. The two Chengguan Districts (in Lhasa and Lanzhou) are somewhat special cases because they apply to prefecture-level city rather than a county, but the principle is the same. --Nlu (talk) 20:24, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
I suppose the analogy would be to propose that the article on New York (the state) should focus on New York City, the central district, while having details about its outer counties in a separate article such as List of administrative divisions of New York. I am not going to propose that. Aymatth2 (talk) 03:04, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
As I explained before, New York State and New York City are two different entities sharing the same name. On the other hand, there is only one entity called Lhasa, which is the prefectural-level city. -Zanhe (talk) 10:12, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Support. This is a rational and sensible step, in line with COMMONNAME and other policies. - SchroCat (talk) 09:38, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Support. I totally agree with Amakuru and Dr. Blofeld that there should be two articles. There are many reasons why Lhasa, the city itself, should have a separate article. For one thing, Lhasa has a very long history prior to the arrival of Chinese rule and this deserves recognition - and, even today, there are many subjects which relate specifically to the city which are not particularly relevant to the prefectural region in which it now sits. That is why it is important to have separate articles for New York City and New York State, Mexico City and the nation of Mexico, the city of London and Greater London, and so on. I hope we can end this dispute now and just get on with producing the best, most accurate and informative articles possible. Sincerely, John Hill (talk) 11:43, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Support I support this per Dr. Blofeld and WP:COMMONNAME. China needs work on its own internet coverage, and it looks like that these are two seperate things, a city and a district. I don't how things are run in the People's Republic, but Wikipedia has more freedom. ☯ Jaguar ☯ 13:36, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

This sounds like a WP:POINT rather than an argument. --Nlu (talk) 14:21, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
I agree with everything everyone has said when they supported above. I felt that copying what they said here was a bit needless. I created over 8000 Chinese townships in 2012 and I'll do anything to help Chinese expansion on Wikipedia ☯ Jaguar ☯ 19:19, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Support Blofeld makes good points, and provided the two articles have sufficient reliable source coverage (and I think they do) there's no reason we should not have split articles (eg: per London, City of London, Greater London, South London). Aymatth2's draft for the prefecture doesn't look too far off a GA if I'm honest. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 20:45, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Recap

To recap, User:Aymatth2/Lhasa (prefecture-level city) has a lot of information about the large and mostly rural prefecture-level division, and Lhasa has a lot of information about the mainly urban district-level division. No objection has been raised to having two articles. The alternatives are:

  1. Move: "Lhasa" continues to describe the urban district-level division and a new "Lhasa (prefecture-level city)" describes the larger prefecture-level division
  2. Merge: "Chengguan District, Lhasa" describes the urban district-level division, and "Lhasa" describes the larger prefecture-level division.

Maybe some wise editor will clarify the way forward. If no clear consensus emerges, presumably it is a flip of the coin which approach is taken. Sometimes the most passionately argued questions are ones where the pros and cons are evenly balanced, and the decision is not very important. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:47, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

I think there may be a viable third option. The key problem is that while I see a majority in favor of the urban core as the primary topic, there is a sufficiently significant minority insisting on following the rules that favor the higher-level division as the PT, so as to say we don't have an undisputed primary. So, the solution, following the WP:summary style guideline is to have a WP:broad concept article. Note the Common examples section has a subsection on Overlapping geographic designations. So the article at the title Lhasa gives a broad lay-of-the-land, covering both the urban and rural areas and highlighting the most significant features of each. From there, we link to the {{main}} articles Chengguan District, Lhasa about the urban core, and Lhasa (prefecture-level city) about the rest. Each of the subarticles explains their relationship to the other. The best map for the infobox at the top of the broad-concept article I've found is this, as it gives a top-to-bottom view from China → Tibet → the prefecture-level city (yellow) → the urban core (pink). I'd say we need to move some of the content of Lhasa to Chengguan District, Lhasa to balance it out. Wbm1058 (talk) 22:14, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

  • A summary-style disambiguation article on Lhasa would require constant policing to address forking. Hatnotes linking two articles will take the reader to the topic they want quicker and avoid the forking issue. The way to determine the primary topic is to glance at Google News: Lhasa and Google Books: Lhasa. Results are indisputable. The minority is arguing that project naming conventions matter more than primary topic, and also dispute that the proposal is consistent with project naming conventions. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:06, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
Yes, and they're also arguing that project naming conventions are more important than our readers. The fact is most of our readers will not be looking for this information in the Lhasa article, but if they see "in Lhasa-prefecture level city, if they want to learn about that they can click the link and see this article. It makes absolutely no sense to have all this in with the stuff on the city itself for the sake of worrying that we must only have one article on the Lhasa area. We should reflect reliable sources, almost all of which refer to Lhasa as the city and cover that, not the prefecture area.♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:50, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
Dr. Blofeld, you are both 1) misrepresenting the opposers' position (by claiming that we want "only one article" - nobody is taking that position) and 2) wrongly arguing that "reliable sources ... refer to Lhasa as the city ... not the prefecture area." The easy - and I think the fatal - retort is, "How big is that city?" No reliable source defines how big that "city" is (both in terms of area and population), which is a major problem. --Nlu (talk) 03:44, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

More opinions

  • Between those two choices, I definitely say move. WP:PRIMARYTOPIC has two criteria, primary by "common usage", and primary by "long term significance". In both cases, the term Lhasa is what most people would think of as the city, i.e. the urban area, where the main history and culture of the city is based, not some much larger and somewhat arbitrary and recently designated administrative construct that isn't of huge interest unless you're really analysing the politics of the area or involved in some other administrative function. Again, Leeds and City of Leeds offer a perfect example of exactly that. Incidentally there is also no need to merge Chengguan District, Lhasa with Lhasa either - they also describe slightly different things.  — Amakuru (talk) 19:10, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
    • I would also be inclined to leave Chengguan District, Lhasa and Lhasa separate in the move scenario. But in the merge scenario (which I also dislike since the small city is clearly the primary topic) the mass of material about the history, economy, architecture, etc. of the small city would be out of place in the article on the prefecture-level division. Rather than invent a new title it seems easier to merge most of Lhasa into Chengguan District, Lhasa, then merge User:Aymatth2/Lhasa (prefecture-level city) into what is left of Lhasa. "Chengguanqu" does imply an urban division, and it is not unusual for a city to have a fairly large rural hinterland. Just not as large as the prefecture. Aymatth2 (talk) 19:30, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
    • @Amakuru: I don't think your Leeds example is a good example of what to do. Perhaps it's a good example of what not to do. Leeds and City of Leeds both share the same map File:Leeds UK locator map.svg in their respective infoboxes. In 2011, Leeds had an estimated population of 757,700 while City of Leeds has a population of 750,700 (2011 est.). Whatever the material distinction between the two is eludes me, and I would need to study the articles harder to figure it out. Wbm1058 (talk) 20:59, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
      @Wbm1058: actually the 757,700 figure is inaccurate, that is essentially the population figure for the City of Leeds, which is the wider administrative area. List of localities in England by population gives a more accurate figure of 443,247 for the area that is generally known as Leeds. For more clarity on this, take a look at this map: [1]. The white dotted line shows the "City of Leeds" boundary, which includes Leeds (the main city) plus quite a bit of rural area, and several villages and small towns, such as Wetherby, which is in the north east corner of the administrative area, and quite separate from Leeds itself. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 22:18, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
      I've just found another good example, in the U.S. this time: Honolulu and Honolulu County. Administratively, the latter is actually the city article. The city has authority over the entire island and county of Oahu. But in common usage, Honolulu just refers to the city, which is in the south eastern corner of the consolidated city-county area. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 22:26, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
Other examples would be New York and New York City, Kano State and Kano, São Paulo (state) and São Paulo, Brandenburg and Brandenburg an der Havel, Hamburg Metropolitan Region and Hamburg. Sometimes the larger unit gets a qualified name and sometimes the smaller one does. It depends on what people are most likely to be looking for. We try to make it as easy as possible for readers, to focus on our "customers" rather than our internal conventions. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:11, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
These are not good examples. New York and New York City, etc. are different levels of administrative divisions sharing the same name, but in the present case, there is only one entity called Lhasa, which is the large prefectural-level city. The examples you listed are more analogous to Jilin and Jilin City. -Zanhe (talk) 00:29, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
The problem though Zanhe is that Aymatth's content is perfectly encyclopedic and has some relevance somewhere on wikipedia. We could say, OK, put it all in the Lhasa article itself, but will it really be what the readers are looking for? It is quite possible to add it to the main Lhasa article and also write about the city. It would get very long, but it is really what our readers will be expecting? Will they find it annoying reading so much about geology in rural Tibet or do they want to learn about the "Forbidden city" itself? I'm pretty sure the rural coverage would be for those who want further info on the area rather than it being primary. So splitting them makes sense from a developmental point of view.♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:08, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
There is no official entity called Lhasa. There are two related administrative entities. 拉萨市 Lāsà shì is the prefecture-level city, and 拉萨市城关区, Lāsà shì Chéngguān qū is the urban district. The article leads will give these official names. The question is what the primary topic is for "Lhasa". Aymatth2 (talk) 01:16, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
Sorry, but that's just plain wrong. There IS one and only one official entity called Lhasa (shi simply means city), which in China's administrative hierarchy is a city with the status of a prefecture. Chengguan is the official name of the central district of Lhasa, with the status of a county. "Lāsà shì Chéngguān qū" means Chengguan District of Lhasa City. -Zanhe (talk) 10:05, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
Officially then it is Lhasa City, not simply Lhasa, if it was officially Lhasa it would be called just Lāsà. Wikipedia should reflect what reliable sources say about the topic. What percentage exactly when talking about Lhasa mean the prefecture area? How feasible is it from an encyclopedia development viewpoint to write articles about very notable cities and big 30,000 km2 areas all in one for the sake of being anal about it being officially one entity? Mexico is a good example. On maps and in sources I believe the municipalities, much like Lhasa are given the plain names, which include the cities within them. I began developing it on wikipedia with a focus on municipality and city all in one for official purposes and some other editors thought there was room for scope in development and split a lot of the main towns from the municipalities in separate articles. It doesn't look good in parts, as they're usually just stubs, makes more sense to merge as it is more official to do so too, but in this case we have full articles on both the city and wider area so it is practical to split.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:23, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
Exactly. We don't go by official boundaries, we go by what people talk about in reliable sources. Sometimes when people talk about a city they pretty much mean the same thing as the administrative area, so we combine the articles. Gloucester, Coventry, Orlando. Other times, when people talk about the city they mean only the urban core, and are not referring to the official city boundaries. Leeds, Rotherham, Honolulu, Carlisle. You can't make one single rule that covers these differing cases, you just have to go by what reliable sources do.  — Amakuru (talk) 10:45, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
I know what you mean, but we do try to general follow the official boundaries in terms of what is existing at the moment in terms of provinces/counties municipalities and draw maps to highlight them and organize articles by territory and cover them in that way on wikipedia, but Aymatth's proposal to create an article on the prefecture area is not conflicting with that, he's creating an article on what the PRC officially defines as this territory. He's just splitting the focus of Lhasa into one on the wider region and one on the city, largely because we're not paper and the information would be best presented to readers separately, aside from reliable sources generally referring to Lhasa as the city of course.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:50, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
Certainly, I'm not saying we should not have articles on the administrative units, or that the map on the Lhasa page should not show the Lhasa consolidated city/province (perhaps with a dot to locate where the city itself is?). People interested in Chinese local authority areas will drill down to Aymatth's new article, while those interested in the city, with its culture, history etc. will go to the existing article. For the other cities I mention, where those two areas are almost the same, the local authority buffs and the city buffs will both end up on the same page.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:06, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
Ah, that somewhat unusual US creation, the "Consolidated city-county". Honolulu is a useful one to look at for our purposes. First note that the infobox maps clearly show the different territories covered by each: the urban part and the whole island. The interesting part is that the city and county, like the Leeds articles perhaps erroneously claim, actually cover the identical territory and population, i.e. the whole island. While the Honolulu, that our "customers" are looking for (so it is correctly on the primary topic), would more precisely be titled Honolulu census county division. Notice that's so obscure it's a red link, as most of our customers would need to look up census county division to see what the heck that is. Likewise Chengguan District, Lhasa may be an equally obscure title for our primary topic, which most of our readers would simply call "Lhasa" (what the heck is a "Chengguan District"?) Wbm1058 (talk) 00:53, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
Chengguan District is the official name of the central district, and one of the constituent county-level divisions of Lhasa City. -Zanhe (talk) 10:07, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
You can quite easily deal with the difference in territory by hat notes and common sense. It is easily doable. Lhasa should cover the main city, and the Lhasa Prefecture-level city should cover the overall region. I'd encourage this development across China. Anybody who really objects to the addition of this excellent content to wikipedia I really wonder their true reason. There's nothing which challenges PRC authority or whatever some really object to here. Few would have a problem if I created articles on History of Lhasa, Economy of Lhasa, Geography of Lhasa or really assume it was a content fork and break in convention. They'd just assume it has a more defined scope with more detail on the topic, and this is how this should be treated.. We're not paper, and you could quite easily create half a dozen article concentrating on different areas of Lhasa. One big overview of the big wider context and one centering on the small city itself is hardly an issue and we'd be insane not to accept this excellent work which is superior to 99% of our other articles on Chinese geography. Aymatth should be applauded not rejected. You're lucky he had enough to respect to ask for this, he need;t have IMO.♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:00, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
London is a particularly interesting case, because the base article London actually refers to the same geographical area as the Greater London article, yet we still have them separate. The latter talks much more about governance and citywide authorities though, while the former is about the culture and history of the city. But of course we also have City of London, which in this case is a vastly smaller entity than the city we generally think of as London, hence why it does not reside at the base article. Similarly with City of Sydney being a small part of the area generally known as Sydney. Each case is different, and we have to be sensible and go with reliable and common usage.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:48, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
  • I agree largely with Zanhe on this issue, and I'd like to raise a point on precedent and classifications. I think we are all aware that splitting off Lhasa to its 'natural' city and greater prefecture region creates a somewhat uneasy precedent for the some 300 other prefecture level cities. Even if we accept that most of these places will not have have disputes in the same fashion, we have to admit that this opens a pandora's box with regards to articles such as Urumqi, Hohhot, Hulunbuir, Hotan, Kashgar, Shigatse, and various Tibetan areas of Sichuan which conflate urban areas with greater prefectures, or town centres with townships. The point is, the fact that Lhasa has a history that has nothing to do with PRC rule is well recognized, but then so do almost all other ethnic minority areas who received their administrative classifications by the PRC. If we are going to re-organize Lhasa, we will need to re-organize everything else, too. I am also wondering what we would do the infoboxes. Presumably, Chengguan District will still require a separate infobox, whether it is its own separate article or 'merged' into the bigger article, if only to maintain census consistency. To me, the goal of everyone here is to describe Lhasa the subject and not Lhasa the artifical administrative area. The administrative area is a sub-set of the subject; i.e., we can be deliberately vague about defining whether the article is about the city proper or the prefecture. The reader who comes to this article will be able to find all the information they need, but we cannot discount the fact, however unlikely, that the reader may seek information on the greater region.
    Zanhe also raises a great point that neighbouring counties may soon become part of the urban area of Lhasa, making it undesirable to define the urban area as Chengguan District alone. Colipon+(Talk) 17:40, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Reader convenience trumps precedent and consistency. The decision to focus the "Lhasa" article on the 1,300-year-old city and have a separate article cover the former prefecture may create a new precedent, but is not a reason to hold back. If similar situations exist elsewhere, they can be handled on a case-by-case basis. If there is a broad class of situations like this, we can define that class and enhance the project naming conventions to provide guidance. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:05, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
    • I disagree that "reader convenience trumps precedent and consistency" - but let's assume for a moment that that statement is true. How is it "convenient" for a reader to have to deal with 293 inconsistent schemes as to which article is the prefecture-level city and which article is the "smaller" city? That's what your proposal has the potential of turning what we currently have into. A major reason for consistency is convenience - avoiding having the reader having to navigate a labyrinth of inconsistent schemes, and avoiding having the editors have to dig into these kind of explanations in every single article. Having all prefecture-level cities' articles be named by the prefecture-level city name leads to the "convenience" of not having to confuse readers and editors alike on that issue. Assuming that your naming scheme is more "convenient" for the single case of Lhasa, it creates great "inconvenience" with regard to every other case. For the Nth time - Lhasa is not unique in this regard. (Dr. Blofeld recognizes that fact - and proposes to blow up the entire scheme based on his position here on Lhasa. I say that is an extremely dangerous path to go down to and would greatly reduce the usefulness of all Chinese geographic articles by throwing them into a puddle where no one can figure exactly what article refers to what geographic area. It is also completely inconsistent with the naming conventions we have, not only for China, but pretty much for any other country - not to mention that, if we accept Dr. Blofeld's premise, WP:OR and not WP:V, which are even greater problems.) --Nlu (talk) 03:37, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
  • The article naming conventions (Chinese) say that generally a higher-level division is considered primary topic over a lower-level division, unless sourcing exists to establish significant notability of a lower-ranked division. This results in four schemes:
  1. Prefecture and city combined in one article, the most common approach today, reasonable if they have similar extent or there is not a lot of material
  2. Prefecture is primary topic, city has qualified title
  3. City is primary topic, prefecture has qualified title
  4. Disambiguation page points to qualified titles for city, prefecture and other topics
For an editor uncertain which scheme to use, quick searches in Google News and Google books will show which, if any, is the primary topic. It boils down to one scheme: the reader is taken direct to the article they most likely expect, the primary topic, with hatnotes that let them easily navigate to other articles with similar names. That is the way it is done for every other country. There is nothing unusual about China. The project naming conventions are reasonable and should be followed. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:34, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

You seem to see me as an enemy here Nlu. It's crazy, it really is. I'm fond of Tibet, but I'm, also highly interested in all of China, and fully support anybody who develops area of China on here. What is "extremely dangerous" to me is when people bring politics and their own agenda to wikipedia. I think it's clear here that you bizarrely see this as some sort of obstruction to PRC authority and that we're trying to reject their authority over the prefecture or something like that. Why you think that I have no idea, it's not as if we're trying to declare Lhasa independent or that the prefecture level city area isn't missing. I cannot see any other way you'd be as concerned about this. People who feel as strongly as this with saying things like "extremely dangerous" are typically POV pushers bringing their political affiliations to wikipedia. And I sour at remarks which denounce high quality work like this as "throwing [articles] into a puddle". That they'd be OR is utter bullshit. I've made myself quite clear to Zanhe my reasons for supporting this. And I'd urge the same thing to be done across China. We could put all the info on the wider prefecture into the main Lhasa article but it'll look hideously bloated with all the info about the city.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:49, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree. I just don't see the basis for arguing against this. Aymatth2 has written lots of useful prose on a subject that clearly meets the WP:GNG (i.e. the prefecture of Lhasa, as a whole unit separate from the urban area at its heart), and we want to throw it away just to prove a WP:POINT. Yes, there's some consistency issue there, but for the record I agree that all Chinese cities, and indeed cities across the world, should be treated this way if it's clear that the administrative area covers a much larger (or indeed much smaller, as with City of London and City of Sydney) region than the urban city itself, and if someone is prepared to sit down and write an article about it.  — Amakuru (talk) 12:57, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
@Amakuru: This was the argument that Aymatth2 himself promised not to make (and I know you are not he) before he wrote the material over my objection. If this is considered "throwing good prose away," every good writing POV-pusher can use that argument to add inappropriately-POVed articles and then claim that they shouldn't be thrown away. Aymatth2 himself indicated that he would merge the material if the move proposal fails. --Nlu (talk) 15:41, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Question: If we do indeed move this page to the scheme proposed by Aymatth2, how would we interwiki link this to other wikis, particularly the Chinese Wikipedia? Colipon+(Talk) 13:48, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Good point. This happens sometimes: two articles on one wiki and one on another. I would use common sense. The "city" meaning of Lhasa is presumably primary topic in other wikis, so leave those links alone. But if there is an article on the prefecture on another wiki, or the Lhasa article on the other wiki is mostly about the prefecture, link that to the prefecture article here. In Commons, there should be a category for the prefecture containing the Commons:Category:Lhasa, since Commons generally aligns with the English wiki. Some of the sub-categories of Lhasa properly belong in Commons category Lhasa (prefecture-level city). Aymatth2 (talk) 14:00, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
The Chinese version is titled "Lhasa City" rather than plain "Lhasa". It has the same confusion as the English version, saying Lhasa city covers almost 30,000 square kilometers, Lhasa is in a small basin surrounded by mountains, in flat terrain. At least it does not place Lhasa in the Himalayas! But the Chinese version says more about the prefecture, less about the city than the English one, so the interwiki link could point to the English prefecture-level city article. I think it would be better pointing to the English small city article though, since that is the primary meaning for Chinese too. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:13, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
 
Sketch map by Aymatth2 of Chengguan district
  • The urban area is starting to spill beyond the six urban neighborhoods into Doilungdêqên County – west into Donggar and south into Niu New Area. Growth of a city beyond its earlier boundaries is common enough. I doubt if the sprawl will go very far, because of the physical constraints. I would just follow what the sources say. They will cover the growth from the small old city of the 1940s to the east of Potala Palace to a large sprawl of new buildings lapping round the palace and further west, and will mention the development in Donggar and Niu New Area. For now, I would tend to define Lhasa as the urban part of Chengguan District, but mention the sprawl. As long as we stick to the sources, there is no OR. This does not seem to be an area where POV applies. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:45, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
  • zh:Category:拉萨市城关区行政区划 (Lhasa Chengguan District administrative divisions) has some interesting members. zh:街道 (British) "street" is an "administrative type"? Or is Google doing a poor job of translating? Wbm1058 (talk) 15:39, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
    • "Jiedao" in Taiwan/Hong Kong/pretty much everywhere else in the Chinese-speaking world (other than PRC) would, in fact, be commonly understood as "street." (I have no idea whether in the PRC that would also be a prevalent usage as well.) The PRC's use of it as an administrative division (translated as "subdistrict" (which Wikipedia uses, and which I do actually think is official translation as well)) (see Subdistricts of the People's Republic of China) was, for a while, something I couldn't wrap my mind around as being a rather awkward way of referring to an area. However, apparently it is not completely a PRC-"communism with Chinese characteristics" invention," as, apparently during the Qing Dynasty era, Taiwan (I do not know if any part of mainland under Qing rule did) used 街 (jie) for "urban area," which was then carried over by the Japanese colonial administration for the entire Japanese rule period. (I am seeing no sign that the use of 街 for "urban area" was adopted for any part of Japan proper - I don't really read Japanese, but I am seeing no sign under ja:街 that there was any sign of Japan-proper use of the term.) In Taiwan, when the ROC took over the island after World War II, the 街 were converted to "urban townships" (see Township (Taiwan)) and in some cases, county-controlled cities. --Nlu (talk) 15:55, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Even more opinions

I think it's bizarre that Dr. Blofeld is casting me as an advocate for PRC policies - and I would argue that that kind of argument is one potential reason to disregard his argument altogether as it truly does descend to the level of improper argument as ethnically-tinged. It truly is that bizarre. What I am an advocate for is for preventing original research in the guise of reader "convenience" or "common usage." We have to have definable, non-OR, non-POV, boundaries here. As I've argued and as I am seeing no real response to other than, "That's not really Lhasa" (which is a non-response), there really hasn't been one. (Both Aymatth2 and I have mentioned the possibility of using Chengguan District borders, which neither of us likes like that much, actually, and which no one else appears to like.) I am no more arguing for PRC policies than I would be arguing for DPRK policies if I oppose an OR-redefinition of the borders of what the scope of the Pyongyang article is. --Nlu (talk) 15:25, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Quoting from Dr. Blofeld in the ANI discussion:

Your excessive concern about territory here just looks to me as if you're thinking "Oh no, tremble tremble, what are PRC going to think, I might be shot for allowing this, this is terrible".

I'd like it be seen for what it is: a thinly-veiled ethnic attack. In the heat of the moment, perhaps, but still highly inappropriate. He didn't respond subsequently to my calling him out on it, but I'm calling him out on it again here given the revival of that rhetoric. WP:OR is no small matter. WP:CIV is no small matter. Denigrating a fellow editor's viewpoints by claiming that he/she is simply upholding the policies of an oppressive government is highly offensive, and needs to be seen for what it is. (See [2] for the archive containing that discussion.) --Nlu (talk) 15:37, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
Trout-slap to Blofeld. Definitely inappropriate. Whether it's a thinly-veiled ethnic attack, I'm not sure it's intended as that. Let's move on. Can we agree that the Chinese government just has a "different" way of organizing its subdivisions than most Westerners are accustomed to. City-states is what comes to my mind. But unlike Athens, which was independent of any larger entity, these "city-states" are ultimately under control of the national government. I've become aware of the concept of the "County-level city" and the idea that these come under control of a prefecture-level city. The idea that a smaller city would be under the control of a larger city takes some getting used to. Wbm1058 (talk) 16:00, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
No, no trout slap to Blofeld. Has this troublemaker been accusing me of bringing ethnicity or race into it at ANI? There is some very serious opposition to Aymatth's content here from this individual in particular. Nlu is even passionate about it. I find it very difficult to believe he'd care this strongly if it was purely about a simple naming convention (when Aymatth has made it clear he'd be using the official title for it anyway). I cannot believe how anybody would seriously think that the content Aymatth has created is unsuitable to wikipedia. there is a place for it here somewhere, clearly. What rational minded encyclopedist would genuinely think that we should just trash User:Aymatth2/Lhasa (prefecture-level city) and block an attempt at adding it to wikipedia? The problem is that having it all in the Lhasa article will bloat it unreasonably and most of our readers will be looking for content on the city itself, not the wider prefecture. It's common sense to distribute the content according the area and scope, much like New York State and New York City. So the PRC formally recognizes all of the Lhasa prefecture area as Lhasa City. It still doesn't change the fact that there are hundreds of individual settlements within it, including the main city of Lhasa itself, which even the PRC considers to cover 53km2 roughly. Nlu has repeatedly referred to me here (rather than the actual proposer) and clearly considers me as an enemy of some kind. I cannot see why he'd be so unreasonable over this other than some warped idea that the we're challenging PRC authority. That's why I said it's almost as if he's in fear of breaking a convention. Ethnicity has nothing to do with it, rather it looks like he's afraid of accepting this content as if it challenges authority and he'll be punished for it, that was what I meant a while back. When people feel this strongly in opposition, there's usually some agenda at play. Aymatth wouldn't even be breaking naming convention anyway. So don't you dare say I'm talking about ethnicity.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:31, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
For the record, New York actually isn't the best example, as they really are separate entities that share a name. Mexico City / Mexico State / Mexico (country) are separate entities too. But Honolulu County, City of Leeds, City of Carlisle are good examples. Conversely, Chongqing is an example where we have one article and it just makes no sense to me at all. The administrative "city" of Chongqing has an area of 82,403 km2, which would place it larger than 9 of the US states, about the same size as South Carolina, much larger than West Virginia and Maryland, and larger than Scotland as well. That is not what people think of as a city by any stretch of the imagination, and it does not serve our readership to have the city and the province combined into one article.  — Amakuru (talk) 21:40, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
@Amakuru: The issue isn't whether Lhasa (and, for that matter, Chongqing) should be split. There is no dispute about that, despite the (intended?) confusing arguments by some here that that is what the dispute is about. The issue is what the split article(s) should be named. The "small city" article for Chongqing, if and when it is written, should certainly not be named "Chongqing" - that would be undue confusion. On Chinese Wikipedia, there is in fact such an article - zh:重慶主城區 - roughly translatable to "Main urban center of Chongqing." --Nlu (talk) 15:33, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
@Nlu: Oh well, at least we're not in such a disagreement then :) I thought your position was that the articles on the whole provinces should not exist separately from the urban core at all. Where I do still disagree with you is that the urban core article "should certainly not be named "Chongqing"". I don't know how people think about these things in China, but in the English speaking world I believe most people would think of Chongqing as a city first and foremost, and would be quite surprised to find on its article that it has a population of 29 million, the same area as South Carolina, and covers "a large area crisscrossed by rivers and mountains". That's not what one thinks of when one thinks of the city. But anyway, I think both our views are now known!  — Amakuru (talk) 16:54, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
The link you gave redirects to to the article zh:重庆主城区, by some technical means I don't understand, and there is a redirect zh:重庆主城九区 that translates to "Nine districts of Chongqing City", but I concur with your assessment of the fundamental issue: What to name the "urban center" articles. Putting aside the question of whether they are ever the primary topic, what is the naming convention to use when they are not the primary topic, and thus need some form of disambiguation. Google translates that article title to Chongqing City, and the lead to "Chongqing City, also known as the central city of Chongqing, is a Chinese Chongqing administrative divisions within the earlier build, located in the city center, a more developed urban informal title. Range of Chongqing city, including the main city of six districts (Yuzhong, Jiulongpo District, Jiangbei District, Shapingba District, South Bank area, Dadukou) plus three districts on the outskirts of (Yubei, Beibei District, Banan District), the whole gamut of Chongqing within the highest rate of urbanization, the most economically developed urban infrastructure the most perfect of the core area, the main city of Chongqing, the title is widely used in the planning, construction, and economic statistics. This range also since 1937 to become the Republic of China's temporary capital cities and the central hospital since, until 1997 People's Republic of China during the recovery municipalities formed the city's administrative region in 60 years time and gradually formed in Chongqing range, which refers to the sociological and economic significance from the city, the Chongqing as a city has a range of urban and rural regions constitute the body sense." Maybe you can improve the translation. There is a hatnote on the main "City" article, which says This article is about the whole territory of the Chongqing municipality. About Chongqing city, see the "Chongqing city." So there seems to be a distinciton between "municipality" which means x-level city, and "city" which really means central urban area. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:24, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
@Wbm1058: See my response to Aymatth2 below with regard to the grammatical necessity in the Chinese language. That grammatical necessity does not exist in English. In any case, "Nine districts of Chongqing City" is wrong. "城" much more literally means "fort" or "castle" or, at most, "walled city." It's not "city" - that is clearly just 市 ever since the early 20th century, at least. (Such a term did not exist as such, I admit, prior to the 20th century.) And I think relying on Google Translate for an argument as to proper naming is simply surreal, to be frank. --Nlu (talk) 17:31, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
I am not relying on Google to "make my argument", but rather as a tool for research and understanding of the issues, and as a means for suggesting possible solutions. If I'm understanding correctly the point below that you referred me to, "Chinese, being an ideogrammatic language, has inherent ambiguity problems if the administrative division titles are not included." So you are saying that English does not have inherent ambiguity problems, and the the English word "City" is well understood by all with regard to Chinese topics, and thus the unambiguous word "city" does not require disambigution?!? What do we call these urban centers in English – forts, castles, walled gardens, gated cities, what?? We can't just simply call them "cities" can we? Yet that is just what Google translate tells me that the Chinese language calls them. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:53, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
  • I also wonder about this passionate hostility to separating the rural prefecture and the urban area into different articles, which seems a very ordinary thing to do. In earlier discussions I asked more than once, but got no clear answer, apart perhaps from "It's arrogant for outsiders, who mainly see faraway places from a tourist's point of view, to demand that the reality be changed to fit their own vague idea of what a city "should" be." I admit that I am not Tibetan, but do not think I am particularly arrogant. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:03, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
I think a lot about the work that Zanhe does on here, and often thank him for his work on Chinese topics. I am also aware that he does a lot of work on Chinese areas and has a methodological approach towards naming, I think he's done a few Tibetan township articles unless I'm mistaken. His arguments to me at least come through as reasonable from his own way of thinking on the matter that we should be very strongly consistent across wikipedia. I understand and respect that, but I draw the line at "Creating a "small city" ourselves in the absence of a widely accepted definition is original research, IMO. ", - the exact boundaries of most cities on the planet are not always crystal clear yet are widely discussed in sources, and I'm baffled at how he thinks we can effectively summarise a 30,000 km area and very notable city in one article for the sake of keeping the system 100% like that. But Nlu is coming across to me as hostile, on a personal level I detect some sort of resentment of me, I've noticed he's often addressed things to me when I've not even spoken. I don't know his previous history on here, perhaps he is genuine and is concerned about naming. It doesn't come across that way. His approach to this has been entirely irrational, and I can't see why he'd be so passionate about it other than politics or concern that somehow a split would jeopardise the PRC's authority in the area or it somehow equate to a Tibetan vs Han Chinese conflict or something. It's not as if the article on the main city is declaring its independence or something. OK I think most of here would agree that Aymatth's content is perfectly encyclopedic. Well let's see how it would look with all the (also encyclopedic) content on the city of Lhasa in terms of size. User:Dr. Blofeld/Lhasa Does that look ridiculous or what? So why then is it unreasonable to have one overviewing the whole area and one with a special focus on the settlement itself (which is dominated in source coverage anyway). How the hell is that OR or breaking convention? It's just distributing info on it in the most sensible way. Nlu is so into politics that he can't see beyond official PRC territory.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:56, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
How is not having a definable, verifiable border not original research? And again, this is inappropriate argument to argue that I'm an advocate for PRC policy. I am arguing for verifiability. If there is a verifiable manner to define the small city of Lhasa (other than "it's not the big city"), I'm all ears. You haven't proposed one, as far as I can see. As I've said before, I'd oppose it just as strongly if you began to define Cupertino, California as "Apple headquarters and its surroundings," on the same grounds (OR and V). When someone begins to attribute political motives when there is none, I would say that that person's arguments should be discarded. Particularly when you keep mischaracterizing my position - I don't oppose a split. I oppose the vague and convention-breaking naming and vague geographic scope. (I am well-aware that both you and Aymatth2, perhaps reasonably, argue that it doesn't break convention. I disagree, and I think the evidence shows otherwise.)
And I refer to you rather than Aymatth2 because he had not used the same kind of inappropriate rhetoric in argument. You have. --Nlu (talk) 17:37, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
  • @Nlu: We can define the small city as Chengguan District, which I think is simplest. There is very little to say about the rural townships in Chengguan District, so almost all the content would be about the urban area. We could also define the small city as the urban subdistricts of Chengguan District, which can also be backed up by reliable sources and which you have said you would accept. For almost all of Lhasa's long history there was no Chengguan District or prefectural-level city, and the city was much smaller than its current extent. For the earlier periods, we just record what the sources say about the city and its buildings, history and so on. As long as we stick to the sources and present a balanced view of what they say, there is no original research. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:56, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
@Aymatth2: I have said that I would accept either defining it as Chengguan or the six urban subdistricts. It doesn't sound like that Dr. Blofeld will, based on his statements below. And his position simply cannot be consistently applied to other cities in China or elsewhere in the world; applying his view would be utter chaos and completely OR. --Nlu (talk) 18:07, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Tell me then, why shouldn't wikipedia have the content which Aymatth2 has created? What logical reason is there? Because any developed overview of a province or area on here will look just like that. Do you think it is really reasonable to cover a massive area of nearly 30,000 km2 and a notable city all in the one for the sake of a naming convention?♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:43, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Aymatth2 himself said that he will merge the content if the proposal fails. That was the position he agreed to before he set out to write this content. That's the position that I trust he will continue to hold. We're not going to lose any content at all. And the content is manageable if properly merged to/split between Lhasa and Chengguan District, Lhasa (as well as a potential - but verifiable and non-originally-researched, "small city" article - perhaps analogous to Hong Kong Island). --Nlu (talk) 17:44, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
  • See the Recap section above for the way I propose to merge. Most of Lhasa merges into Chengguan District, Lhasa, leaving behind the small amount of content that describes the prefecture, and then User:Aymatth2/Lhasa (prefecture-level city) merges into Lhasa. The result is a Lhasa article very similar to the draft in my userspace, describing the prefecture-level city, and a Chengguan District, Lhasa very similar to the present Lhasa article, describing the urban area. I worry about cleaning up all the inbound links, which will now point to the prefecture-level article while the intent will almost always be the urban area article. I will do it if that is the decision, but reluctantly. Aymatth2 (talk) 18:11, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
You say you don't oppose a split, but you do effectively oppose it by saying that you "oppose the vague and convention-breaking naming and vague geographic scope". You're using that as your excuse. The Lhasa prefecture-level city article should quite rightly overview the area, that's the official name for the region so there is no break in naming convention. You're basically arguing that because the PRC now only calls the city and the large surrounding region as Lhasa City then somehow the actual existence of the settlement of Lhasa no longer exists and that 99% rural area is now part of the actual city. It makes absolutely no sense from an encyclopedia developing viewpoint. We don't merge all those articles on townships and villages into Lhasa purely because the whole thing is under Lhasa City. We recognise that they're all legitimate settlements within the territorym and we don't worry about where the exact boundary of each is. All we know is that reliable sources discuss it as a township. Well it's the same with the city of Lhasa itself, it's a settlement with a given region which happens to be called the same name, but it's clear there's two different areas of focus. And it's not as if the vast majority of sources don't talk about Lhasa as a settlement or refrain from writing about it in worry that the PRC officially incorporates it into the wider region. I really think common sense is more important here. One issue perhaps is that Tibet and Lhasa is a politically sensitive area, I do wonder if you'd have responded like this if Aymatth was doing a city in Anhui or something. If this was on a Province in Burkina Faso nobody would give it the light of day. I really think you have to look at how feasible it actually is when you really start to develop areas of China on wikipedia to really provide an effective article summarising a massive territory and a major city all in one. I really think you'd find when you start developing other areas of China you'll encounter the same problems in scope. And I really hope that eventually we cover every township of China and have proper overviews on the prefectures and cities in all of them. That's why I began drawing up the lists across China. You seem to think I'm only interested in Tibet.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:53, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
There are ways to define it in a non-vague manner. Defining it as the same area as Chengguan District would avoid the vagueness. That's what Aymatth2 and I have contemplated. Not many others have agreed that is a workable way to define it, however.
And as you say, "One issue perhaps is that Tibet and Lhasa is a politically sensitive area, I do wonder if you'd have responded like this if Aymatth was doing a city in Anhui or something." Aymatth2 wouldn't do this for a city in Anhui, nor would you be arguing in this way for a city in Anhui - because such positions would be so absurd and so clearly unreasonable. It's when it gets to Tibet (or other not-densely-populated area) that it is, as I acknowledge and previously acknowledged, neither absurd nor clearly unreasonable. But something can be non-absurd and reasonable and still be a bad idea. This is one of those.
As I've had to say many times, I'd be opposing this kind of actions you are arguing for if it had been Cupertino or Palo Alto, California involved in this discussion. (As I've noted before, Stanford University is typically, in the common view, considered part of Palo Alto even though it actually isn't - and I don't think it would be a reasonable argument to argue that because of that popular, but erroneous, perception, to incorporate Stanford into the Palo Alto article.) What you are doing is akin to, effectively, calling someone a Nazi and expecting him to simply acquiesce to your ethnically-tinted arguments. I'm not going to do that.
Oh, and one more thing - again, Lhasa is not unique. As a particularly salient example, Chongqing is more than twice as large in surface area (82,403 km2), and if we create an "urban Chongqing" on the same grounds as well - which I actually wouldn't oppose but would argue that the Chongqing article should stay where it is and that any "small city" article should be called something like Urban area of Chongqing - but call it "Chongqing" and move the current municipality article, it's going to degrade to utter chaos that is of no benefit to readers or editors. Again, if you have a proposal for a consistent restructuring of WP:NC-ZH - which, I submit, you will not get a consensus to restructure - at least let us hear it. It's sounding like, "I don't like this naming convention as applied to Lhasa so I don't care about what this naming convention says." That's not a logical position. You may think it's a good idea. I think it's a terrible idea, and calling me names isn't going to make me think that it's a good idea. Frankly, I am horrified at your idea of "drawing up the lists across China." That's OR. China, and the world, do not exist according to Dr. Blofeld's world view. Nor should they. --Nlu (talk) 18:04, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Let me also add that while this is not a court of law, there still have to be some generalized adherence to specificity. I would urge a skimming of, for example, Wilson v. Eu, 1 Cal. 4th 707, 823 P.2d 545, 4 Cal. Rptr. 2d 379 (1992). See [3]. It's a lengthy legal opinion defining the borders of all the legislative districts in California (as defined at that time). Such definitions may be considered, "oh, that's way too specific for what we need to do here at Wikipedia," and obviously I am not advocating for that kind of strict definition because, again, this is not a court of law. But vagueness and original research should not reign here, because then we descend into confusions that are of no benefit to readers or editors. It shouldn't be "I feel this isn't Lhasa and therefore I'm going to not call it Lhasa." Deliberative specificity is beneficial and should not simply discarded because one feels certain areas are "not Lhasa." --Nlu (talk) 18:18, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

An addition point (which doesn't necessarily support my own position, but a position to note) from earlier when Aymatth2 noted that the Chinese Wikipedia article includes "City" (zh:拉薩市); the general Chinese Wikipedia naming scheme for Chinese cities appeared to have been realigned a couple years ago (although I cannot find the original discussion on it, but I've seen it) after the mainland-oriented editors noted that the Taiwanese city/township naming scheme (which includes the level of the administrative division in the article title (see, e.g., zh:彰化市, zh:南投縣, &c.)) is consistent and should be adopted for PRC cities as well; it was after that that there was realignment to the previously-inconsistent naming scheme for mainland geographic articles. It makes good Chinese grammatical sense, I think, to include the administrative division titles, because Chinese, being an ideogrammatic language, has inherent ambiguity problems if the administrative division titles are not included - zh:花壇鄉, for example, without the "township" (鄉) inclusion, would tend to suggest a setting for flowers rather than the township. That position, however, has not been adopted for English Wikipedia (nor is it necessary for English grammar/style in general - although in specific cases, such as Intercourse, Pennsylvania, it may be necessary), and whether it should be is beyond the scope of this discussion. I am explaining it for historical/clarification purposes, and do not argue that that history supports (or detracts from) my position. --Nlu (talk) 18:29, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

See, that's where you're completely wrong Nlu. You just let slip your true feelings that you think Aymatth and myself are Tibetan POV pushers. You said "Aymatth2 wouldn't do this for a city in Anhui, nor would you be arguing in this way for a city in Anhui ". That's blatantly false. As I said to Zanhe I would argue in exactly the same way that content of this sort should be arranged in this way across China, in fact I would urge it as eventually we'll be far better off as a resource. This really is about content for us anyway. It's obvious it's not for you.. If Aymatth created an article on a Anhui prefectrue level city and a focus on a city in itself, if there was enough info I'd be arguing exactly the same thing in exactly the same way. I'd say any city in China which is pretty notable, if in part of a prefecture level territory, should have overviews on the prefecture and city in different articles. It's just not feasible once you really do the research to overview a big region and a notable city all in the same article. You can't cover it all as it should be covered without bloating it or making the info in places irrelevant. Aymatth to my knowledge had never edited a Tibetan article prior to this and likely views the territory in the same way he does any other. I myself have said in numerous places I support even coverage around the world, and this is a part of it.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:23, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

He himself has indicated how he plans to merge the content if the proposal fails. That is a reasonable way to go about it. And it certainly doesn't create the kind of evils that you're suggesting. In any case, this kind of "I'm going to go in and teach these uncivilized people how to name their articles right" attitude is frightening, and is disrespectful of other editors here on Wikipedia. I can't imagine how you would mangle Los Angeles if you got your hands on it and get to get away with whatever you wanted. I don't want you, or any other person, to unilaterally decide what parts of Los Angeles are really "Los Angeles" and what parts are not really "Los Angeles." (After all, we Americans are really just uncultured versions of the British, isn't that right?) --Nlu (talk) 20:19, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm British, speak for yourself :-) If you think I discriminate try looking at User:Dr. Blofeld/DYK A-Z country challenge, and note the entries for China... Ideally we'd have an article on every township and village in China, and decent overviews on both prefecture territory and main settlement. Eventually I'm sure we will, maybe in 100 years.♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:49, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I think you missed the (intended) irony in the sentence starting with "After all ... ." (I knew that you are British, and I think you missed that I am American - which, of course, goes to the issue of common perception of Asian Americans as "not really Americans" - which, of course, may be a double irony given the issues that we have been raising and given what you have been arguing as to my motives.) Regardless, I am going to try to hold my tongue at this point unless any further opinions wade in. --Nlu (talk) 15:08, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
Support - From the perspective of the reader, I think it's reasonable to have the two separate articles. --Rosiestep (talk) 14:42, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
That is a non-opinion: both proposals contemplates two articles, so if the only reason is to "have two articles," that does not argue for move. --Nlu (talk) 17:44, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
She supports the content on wikipedia Nlu, so obvioulsly she supports the move and creation of Lhasa prefecture level city and an article on Lhasa the main city.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:07, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
That's a different view than Aymatth2 himself expressed; he said - in fact, he assured - that content would not be lost. Are you calling Aymatth2 a liar? --Nlu (talk) 19:18, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
What are you on about? Enough of the hostility and get on with something constructive will you?♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:31, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
Let's see. You're the one who effectively called me a PRC puppet. You are the one who misrepresented what the proposal about. And somehow, I'm the one who's negative and not contributing? --Nlu (talk) 22:48, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Restatement. Given the last two editors' comments (@Rosiestep:, @Jaguar:), I think it is important to reclarify, as @Aymatth2: did in the beginning (but somehow appeared to have been lost in the discussion): this proposal is not about whether the contents of Lhasa should be expanded and split into two articles; the question is what these articles should be called. One of the articles will cover the prefecture-level city; one of the articles will cover the "small city" (the area that is considered the prefecture-level city's urban area, traditionally considered to be "the city"):
    • Under Aymatth2's proposal, these articles will be named:
    • If the proposal is rejected, these articles will be named:
    • This move proposal is not about whether the article's contents should be split, and should not be misunderstood or miscast in that manner.
    • I would also ask the editors to scroll all the way back to the top of this discussion page and look at the upper right corner, which I quote:
      • Article policies
        • No original research
        • Neutral point of view
        • Verifiability
    • I recognize that people may have genuinely reasonable and different views than myself about what those main Wikipedia article policies say, but they cannot, and should not, be ignored or brushed out of the way without thought. --Nlu (talk) 17:48, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
I think they've both made it very clear that they believe this content has a place on wikipedia and that it is appropriate to have an overview on the Lhasa prefecture level city and another focusing on the small city itself. And I'm sure if you left a request for wider input on Jimmy Wales's talk page or the village pump you'd find that most people would think Aymattjh's content perfectly appropriate for wikipedia.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:04, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
As do I, as far as the content is concerned. Don't misrepresent about what the proposal is about. The proposal is not about keeping or deleting content. The proposal is about proper naming and scope. For you to misrepresent what the proposal is about is misadvertisement. (It's ironic that for someone who's accusing me of advocating for PRC policy, you are taking on the same type of tactics that Xinhua would be proud of.) --Nlu (talk) 19:24, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
Ooo we are getting ratty this evening. I wonder why that is :-)♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:33, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
I find the status quo to be perfectly ok - I find it perfectly fine to build the core city article at the "Lhasa" while retaining the Chengguan District article, despite some opinions here that Chengguan district is what is commonly understood as the urban core of Lhasa. In my opinion "Chengguan District" article should mostly consist of the administrative statistics and other such minutiae. Colipon+(Talk) 21:41, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

@Dr. Blofeld: Regarding the statement "You'll find that officially the PRC does designate the main urban centre of Lhasa (the city itself) as just 53 square kilometres", which you're repeated here three times, can you provide a link for verification of that? Can we get a map defining the boundaries of this 53 km2 area? Noting that Chengguan District, Lhasa is 525 km2. Thanks, Wbm1058 (talk) 14:25, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

The Internet encyclopedia Baidu Baike, which is used as a reference for Chengguan District, Lhasa, but probably shouldn't be, says the urban built-up area is 60 km2, which is off from your figure by 7 km2. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:14, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
And, FWIW, China's biggest Internet encyclopedia baike.com says in its Chengguan District, Lhasa article "urban area of ​​54 square kilometers". What I'm not finding is any official PRC designation of the size or boundaries. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:37, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
Those Baike articles are written using PRC sources I believe. I don't speak Chinese. I assumed that the urban area of 53-54 km2 was official. What I'm saying is that the PRC appears to recognize what roughly forms the urban area of Lhasa. Even if they didn't, reliable sources make it appropriate to cover the city in that way.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:16, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Closure request

  • Note. I have asked user:DGG to close this discussion when he feels fit and give a ruling, and I think he has agreed. This note is not to cut off discussion, which may run for a few more days, but to ask that we all respect the decision. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:15, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Before I close, I want to check something:

Proposed close

I'm wording it this way, because I want to suggest 2 slightly different wording than any of those specifically given:

The main thing which is really clear is that almost all people looking for it will be looking for the smaller region where the world-famous historical structures are located.

From the discussion above, I understand that it has been our general custom to use a naming scheme in which we would use Lhasa for the central region of the city, and Lhasa (prefecture) for the larger region. We normally aim for clarity rather than ythe usually more cumbersome official name. I see those who wish to follow the general approach have instead specified Lhasa (Prefecture-level city) which seem an extremely awkward way of putting it. Is there any objection to the simpler formulation?

There is one alternative that is consistent with some instances ("New York" refers to New York State, not New York City) : Lhasa (city) and Lhasa (Prefecture) with Lhasa redirecting to Lhasa (city) with an appropriate hatnote. This makes sense for NY because "New York City" is an actual name in general use, but I'm not sure that anyone would actually say "Lhasa City."

Opinions? DGG ( talk ) 05:11, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

  • It is more confusing than that. After the PRC took over Tibet they renamed "Lhasa Prefecture" to "Lhasa City". This covers 29,274 square kilometres (11,303 sq mi) of mountains and steppes with more yaks than people, but it is the official title for the former prefecture. What most people would think of as the city of Lhasa, the urban area with 1,300 years of history, is contained within the Chengguan District, a subdivision of the former prefecture. The general custom for places in China has been to give the unqualified title to the larger region, and a qualified title to the smaller. In this case "Lhasa" would refer to the former prefecture, and "Chengguan District, Lhasa" would refer to the small city. But people entering the search term "Lhasa" would be confused if they got an article on the geology, geography etc, of the former prefecture. The proposed solution is to focus "Lhasa" on the small city, and put the geology, geography etc. of the prefecture into an article titled "Lhasa (prefecture-level city)"', which readers will reach through links from other articles. It is probably best to avoid "Lhasa City" or "Lhasa (city)" because of the gap between the official meaning and the popular meaning – although those titles could be used for disambiguation. Clear as mud? Aymatth2 (talk) 11:38, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
  • I have no problem with calling it Lhasa (prefecture), even though the prefecture is technically the city council boundary as well. This is more WP:CONCISE than "prefecture-level city" and would match the naming at Honolulu County, Hawaii, which also doesn't mention the fact that it is coterminous with the city boundary. Although if it comes down to it, I also have no problems with the "prefecture-level city" disambiguator. Like Aymatth2 I'm not so keen on the idea of having both terms disambiguated but with a redirect from Lhasa to Lhasa (city); this does seem to accentuate the confusion regarding the term "city" and also runs counter to WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, which suggests that where there is a primary topic, that resides at the base title, not at a disambiguated name. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 11:51, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
There is some bureaucratic distinction between a prefecture, which it was, and a prefecture-level city, which it is now. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:15, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Regarding "it has been our general custom to use a naming scheme in which we would use Lhasa for the central region of the city, and Lhasa (prefecture) for the larger region", no, the general custom has been the opposite: to give the primary topic title Lhasa to the larger region. This has been the custom on both the English- and Chinese-language Wikipedia, as well as the two major Chinese-language encyclopedias Baike.com and Baidu Baike. So make no mistake, this proposal is to deviate from the established conventions for China and establish a new convention that gives primary topic status to "the smaller region where the world-famous historical structures are located". I believe that proposal has significant merit, and it may well be what a plurality of editors want to do. There are issues with defining the boundaries of that smaller region. Honolulu is an interesting example for comparison. I'm still researching this, so recommend that there should be no rush to close this. We are hindered by difficulty in researching official Chinese government sources; in that regard Honolulu is relatively easier, but even with that major American city I've found getting to the best sources has been real work. I'll be back later with more on this. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:12, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
A look at the talk page for Honolulu shows some of the issues that may arise when making a weakly-defined central urban area the primary topic for a city name, when the official city boundaries are a larger area. The area covered by the Honolulu article is the Honolulu census county division, which is one of the 44 CCDs of Hawaii. Hawaii is one of the states which does not have lower-level administrative divisions such as townships, so to fill that void, the national Census Bureau, in cooperation with the local governments, creates CCDs for statistical purposes. So what we have here, is common usage of a city name that doesn't coincide with official usage, but rather with an official artificial construct for statistical purposes. Resulting in:
So using Honolulu as a model for what to do here may not be a good idea, given how muddled the distinction between CCD and City and County of Honolulu is in readers and editors' minds. Wbm1058 (talk) 18:45, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
There is less agreement than I thought there was. I've decided I cannot appropriately close this. --- DGG ( talk ) 18:54, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Summary of Positions

It may be helpful at this stage to summarize the positions expressed above (and below) on how to deal with the scope of the Lhasa article and the new material on the prefecture-level city at User:Aymatth2/Lhasa (prefecture-level city): Aymatth2 (talk) 19:44, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Alt Description # Supporters
A Reduce the scope of Lhasa to the urban area, merge Chengguan District, Lhasa into Lhasa, and put the new material into Lhasa (prefecture-level city) 10 Aymatth2 (talk · contribs), Dr. Blofeld (talk · contribs), Krimuk90 (talk · contribs), Amakuru (talk · contribs), SchroCat (talk · contribs), John Hill (talk · contribs), Jaguar (talk · contribs), Rosiestep (talk · contribs), DGG (talk · contribs), Ritchie333 (talk · contribs)
B First change the naming conventions, then promote the content 1 Nyttend (talk · contribs)
C Create a combo article for the prefecture and urban area 1 Colipon (talk · contribs)
D Status quo, but put the new material into List of administrative divisions of Lhasa 1 Zanhe (talk · contribs)
E Merge information about the urban area into Chengguan District, Lhasa, then merge the new material into what little is left in Lhasa 1 Nlu (talk · contribs)
F Undecided 0 Wbm1058 (talk · contribs)
  • The basic arguments for A are that most people searching for "Lhasa" will be looking for information on the small city. It is reasonable and convenient for them if the article is not cluttered up with a mass of information about the prefecture. It is fully consistent with standards to have "Lhasa" focus on the small city.
  • The basic arguments against A are that the PRC uses the term "Lhasa City" for the prefecture, and we usually align with government definitions of administrative areas. Chengguan District, Lhasa is close, but there is no official definition that exactly matches the urban area of Lhasa.

Decisions are not made by vote, obviously, but there must be some way forward that avoids scrapping the new material. Aymatth2 (talk) 19:44, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

I do not necessarily like the status quo - my position is that we can be the best of both worlds by merging the materials in Chengguan District to "Lhasa" and redirecting that article to Lhasa. This way no matter what the reader is trying to look for (the urban area or the administrative divisions of the prefecture), they can just go to the article on Lhasa. I for one do not even think there is enough content for two separate articles to begin with. Imho, what is being referred to as "clutter" is simply one more section on the administrative divisions. If all other cities under the PRC can suffice with this "clutter" without anyone raising a fuss, I don't see a strong enough reason for Lhasa to be the sole exception. Colipon+(Talk) 20:54, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
You seriously think that there's not enough content in User:Dr. Blofeld/Lhasa for two articles? There's enough for four articles in there, jeez.. Lhasa isn't meant to be the exception, eventually I'd expect most large prefecture level city entries to have such overviews and separate articles on the urban cores. And once you really start researching a lot of them you'll realise it is feasible to do so.♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:32, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
Firstly, the page is impressive and I am glad to see so much enthusiasm on the subject. But after 'combining' and consolidation of the two articles, I don't think the article size will be greater than "Boston" or "Dallas", for instance, so my preference is still to have a "one stop shop" on all things Lhasa. Colipon+(Talk) 21:46, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
You misrepresent my position; there's no reason to delete good material. Have I misunderstood the naming convention? If not, has the naming convention changed? If not, policy requires the city to be at Lhasa and the core area at Chengguan District. Nyttend (talk) 21:55, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
  • @Nyttend: The naming conventions have not changed. The WP:China project naming conventions say: "those settlements ranked higher administratively ... are primary topic over those ranked lower, unless sourcing exists to establish significant notability of a lower-ranked division." Sourcing (e.g. Google News and Books searches) exists to establish significant notability of Lhasa urban district over Lhasa prefectural-level city. Incoming wikilinks show the same. Wikipedia:Article titles makes this principle clear. When almost all readers will expect "Lhasa" to be about the small city, that is what it should be about. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:07, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
Though I am not closing this, my own preference is very strongly for the first choice. The basic principle is to give the unqualified name to the place where people would naturally look, rather than following logic. Sometimes this is unclear, and then we can have an insoluble problem. In this case I think it is completely clear that 99% of the users will be looking for the central city area and not even be aware there is another meaning. (just as I was not aware of that before coming here) . Wikipedia is written for the general reader. In conflict between principles, the basic principle controls in the absence of a really compelling reason. If its debatable to this extent there's no really compelling reason. In ambiguous solution, policy requires a solution, but not any particular solution, and claiming so is a misunderstanding of how we make decisions. DGG ( talk ) 22:31, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
  • It is pointless to rehash the arguments for the different positions. My question is whether anyone has any suggestion for a procedure that could be followed to break the deadlock on what the material should be called and where should be placed, so the content at User:Aymatth2/Lhasa (prefecture-level city) does not have to be trashed. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:07, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
  • The WP:China project naming conventions explicitly allow for a situation like this, where sourcing exists to establish significant notability of a lower-ranked division, and the tweak to refocus Lhasa eliminates forking concerns, so there are no policy-based objections, just a few suggestions for alternative ways to arrange the content. The majority favor the proposed arrangement. There is no need for formal approval to move an article into mainspace... Aymatth2 (talk) 10:20, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
    • I don't agree that 99% of the users will be looking for the central city area and not even be aware there is another meaning. That may be more true of western readers, but I think this article will have a lot of Asian readers who are more aware of the distinctions. Our job is to correct misconceptions, not perpetuate them. But I do feel that the vast majority of readers and editors want your content to be part of the encyclopedia. We need to find a good way to do that. There is a problem with the sourcing for establishing significant notability of a lower-ranked division... While there is a lot of sourcing that talks about Lhasa as a small city, there isn't a lot that defines precisely what the limits of that small city are. Unfortunately if we have a weak definition of the scope of an article, it will inevitably have forking concerns – Honolulu is a good example of that. The infoboxes of both Honolulu and Honolulu County, Hawaii define their scopes (the blue bar at the top of the infobox) as "Consolidated city-county". Only one article can have this scope, and that is the latter. The scope of Honolulu is actually "Census county division", and should be changed to reflect that. I intend to do that, and see whether there are objections. We can't have two Lhasa articles which both define their scope as "Prefecture-level city". I've been searching for a good scope definition, and haven't found one yet. Maybe one of our Chinese editors can find a PRC equivalent of a Census county division, i.e. some statistical definition of their central urban areas. Lacking that, we may have to settle for a somewhat ambiguous definition such as "Central urban area", defining its scope as generally understood to cover an area ranging from 50 to 60 square kilometres. It would be nice to have some references for that size besides other wikis. – Wbm1058 (talk) 15:29, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
  • The proposal is to take Chengguan District as the scope, and merge the Chengguan District article into Lhasa. That is unambiguous, with no risk of forking. The built-up area does not exactly match the administrative boundaries, but that is true of all cities. There is no need to be over-complicated. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:55, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
Lhasa
城关区 · ཁྲིན་ཀོན་ཆུས
District
Chengguan, Lhasa
OK. I don't think I've seen sources for "Chenguan District of Lhasa, commonly called simply Lhasa", but I'm not sure we need sources if there is common agreement about that (what's implied is that sources don't need to say that specifically, because, as it's commonly understood, it isn't necessary). So, to be clear, would the top of the infobox of the merged article look like this (to the right)? Wbm1058 (talk) 18:26, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
  • I came across various sources that discuss the difference between the prefecture-level city, Chengguan district and the urban part. This should be laid out (with sources) so readers know exactly what the article is talking about: the district, including the urban and rural parts. The lead would start:
Lhasa (officially Lhasa Chengguan District, Chinese: 拉萨市城关区; pinyin: Lāsà shì Chéngguān qū) is ...
I am not sure about the infobox. Something like
|name = Lhasa
|native name= 拉萨 · ལྷ་ས
|official name=Lhasa Chengguan District; 拉萨市城关区; ཁྲིན་ཀོན་ཆུས
It would take a bit of playing around to get something that looked clean, but should give both the short and long forms. I find non-Latin text and alternative transliterations distracting, but would go with the project standard. Aymatth2 (talk) 19:51, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
I'm not so concerned about the non-latin text. Those who read Chinese can come to a consensus over that. What is important is to have |settlement_type = [[District (China)|District]] establishing that the scope of the article titled Lhasa is a district and not a (prefecture-level) city. Also that Chengguan in some form is the official name. Wbm1058 (talk) 21:56, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
  • I absolutely agree with both those points. It must be completely clear that the article titled "Lhasa" describes the administrative division called "Lhasa Chengguan District", |settlement_type = District. The article would point readers who are interested in the broader area to Lhasa (prefecture-level city). Aymatth2 (talk) 00:21, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
  • I just want to put it out there that "Chengguan District" is not necessarily analogous to "Lhasa" as it is commonly understood, and there is nothing to say that the urban buildup or the 'city' is not, or will not go beyond the borders of this district, in which case saying "Lhasa Chengguan District, commonly known as Lhasa" is entirely incorrect or at least amounts to WP:OR. Are there any people native from Lhasa that we can consult? Colipon+(Talk) 13:38, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
  • That is true of all cities everywhere. The urban build-up may not fill the whole area within the administrative boundary, and may also spill over the boundary. To avoid original research we identify the city with the administrative area that most closely corresponds to it. As discussed above, in this case that is "Lhasa Chengguan District", which may be roughly translated as "Lhasa urban district". The text can explain the historical growth of the built-up area. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:07, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
    Actually, in an ideal world, we would not use an administrative area at all, because as you say, any adminsitrative area will not necessarily match the urban boundaries of the city. Ideally we use some well defined entity representing the city itself. For example, in the case of Leeds, the UK Office for National Statistics has identified distinct sub-divisions of the West Yorkshire urban area, which pretty much correspond to our idea of where Leeds, Bradford etc. should exist: File:WestYorkshireUrbanArea.svg. Note that these are not in any sense administrative areas. Honolulu follows a similar pattern - the US census service has designated the main urban part of the city as a "census designated place", which we can use for our definition. The problem for Lhasa is that as far as we know, the Chinese authorities (or any other reliable source come to that) has not defined an "urban Lhasa" concept that we can leverage off. Thus the administrative Chegguan district, which is the urban area plus a small rural hinterland, is our best bet. It's not ideal, but satisfies the balance between readers wanting to see info on the core city, and a need to be rigorous on the scope of the article.  — Amakuru (talk) 14:21, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Agreed. Not perfect, but good enough. I do not think anyone wants to go the same way as many US cities with "Lhasa", "Downtown Lhasa", "Metropolitan Lhasa", "Greater Lhasa" etc. - a mass of forks. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:50, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
  • We are making no progress on resolving how to move forward. I doubt that any uninvolved editor is going to want to attempt to summarize the huge rambling discussion above. There is strong support for the proposal, and no policy-based arguments against it, just some minority-of-one opinions on different ways to arrange the material. I am tempted to just close it myself and start implementing. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:50, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Ok, but it's still not Wikipedia's job to say "Chengguan District is commonly known as Lhasa". The better approach, whatever the title of the article ends up being, is to say, "Lhasa is a city in Tibet[... etc.] the core urban area is roughly corresponds to the jurisdiction of Chengguan District." Colipon+(Talk) 16:16, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
    Yes, I also agree with you there. "Chengguan District is commonly known as Lhasa" is not a true or sourceable statement. Rather, we are using Chengguan District as a sort of definable proxy for the more woolly concept generally known in reliable sources as "Lhasa".  — Amakuru (talk) 16:52, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
    • Oh, but I think we are making progress, and can see the path forward. I'm not keen on the need to pull in yet another non-involved party, but, having learned of this issue from a notice at WT:RM, as I've been acting as a kind of moderator of the discussion, feel up to the task of making a non-administrative close. Which of course anyone can appeal, but I hope that doesn't happen, as a lot of time has already been spent on discussion. I'll wrap this up soon. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:34, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
  • @Wbm1058: Thank you for that. I am sure nobody will dispute your closure. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:50, 11 March 2015 (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.
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