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Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of municipalities in Colorado/archive2

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was archived by Giants2008 via FACBot (talk) 00:25, 16 January 2023 (UTC) [1].[reply]

List of municipalities in Colorado edit

List of municipalities in Colorado (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s):  Buaidh  talk e-mail 06:31, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured list because this list has been extensively reworked to comply with featured list criteria. This list is an important source of information about the U.S. State of Colorado. I would appreciate any suggestions for further improvement.  Buaidh  talk e-mail 06:31, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Mattximus

Hello, I did the peer review a while back, it's significantly improved from where it was a few months ago for sure but there are still a few changes that I would like to suggest

  • It's best to include a symbol/colour coded box for the county seat. The way it's written now looks like it's part of the county name. Like List of municipalities in California
  • All images need alt-text for accessibility.
  • For the first column, I would just include the city name, not the formal long form (Denver instead of "City and County of Denver", because the next column gives this information, right now it's redundant)
  • Personally I would not have the rank column, the population column is sortable already and I'm not sure how much meaning "city number 196" is to the general public)
  • I would not have a map column, a link to a technical pdf map is far less useful than someone simply googling it in google maps. The next column also has a coordinate link to maps. That's too many map columns.
  • Is it possible to switch the 2010 population column and the % change? It seems weird that the change precedes the number it changed from!

That's my first pass! Mattximus (talk) 17:46, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • The changes you made are excellent, it's in much better shape now. A few more changes left, but great work on the other changes, only some minor quibbles left:
  • the Population estimates section really has no place in this article and is redundant with the lead, recommend just removing it, it's already quite a large article as is.
  • The notes for Denver are on the trivial and redundant side (for example, saying it is the capital is also indicated by the symbol and colour of the box, no need to say it a third way), suggest removing all four notes.
  • The Municipalities in multiple counties section uses outdated language such as "The following table contains" which needs to be changed. In fact this list is quite long already and I don't think this section needs to be there at all.
These suggestions are still outstanding, and I believe the first change was suggested by another user below and is very important. The section stands out like a sore thumb.
I did make some of the above changes myself, but there is quite a bit more needed to become featured list outlined in other reviewers below. I will have to oppose for now.

This would be important before I can support. Mattximus (talk) 01:30, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Mattximus: Thanks for your suggestions. I've made all of your suggested changes:
  1. I've color-coded the county seats and the state capital and added symbols. I've added notes for the three county seats that extend into adjacent counties.
  2. I've added alt-text for all images.
  3. I've shortened the municipal title to the place name.
  4. I've eliminated the population rank column.
  5. I've eliminated the the map column.
  6. I've moved the population change column after the 2010 population column.
Does anyone else have any suggestions?
  • Quick comment – Per the Manual of Style, the bold links in the opening sentence shouldn't be there. You can either move the links to appear later in the lead or just de-bold the intro. While I'm here, you should probably have the peer review closed, since I noticed it is still open. Giants2008 (Talk) 21:41, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Hwy43 edit

Here are my opening observations:

  1. Change the "The 20 most populous Colorado municipalities" heading to "List of municipalities" or simply "List". Regardless, we don't need to include "Colorado" as the article title already indicates where we are.
  2. In lieu of the above change, add |caption= as a parameter to the gallery template and populate as "Twenty most populous municipalities". Again, we don't need to include "Colorado".
  3. There is a WP:SYNTH infraction to support WP:TRIVIA in the Denver photo caption. Simply remove the trivia component (i.e., most populous within X miles).
  2. Remove the adjective "important" in the Fort Collins caption. This is subjective WP:POV. We will let our readers form their own opinions.
  3. Remove the adjective "extensive" in the Westminster caption for the same reason.
  4. Remove the adjective "historic" in the Pueblo caption for the same reason.
  5. Remove the adjective "important" in the Boulder caption for the same reason.
  6. Remove the adjective "burgeoning" in the Castle Rock caption for the same reason. This adjective is bordering on WP:SOAPBOX.
  7. Remove the adjective "historic" in the Littleton caption for the same reason.
  8. There is an MOS:OVERLINK infraction in the Pueblo caption (i.e., unlink "Spain").
  9. Another two overlink infractions are in the Castle Rock caption (i.e., unlink "Denver" and "Colorado Springs" as they are already linked in their own captions).
  10. Another two overlink infractions are in the Broomfield caption (i.e., unlink "Denver" and "Boulder" for same reason).
  11. Another two overlink infractions are in the Parker and Littleton captions (i.e., unlink both instances of "Denver" for same reason).
  12. Double-check every reference associated with each photo caption. If content on the webpage associated with the reference does not explicitly verify the content in the caption, then the reference does not belong. I spot-checked one (Pueblo) and the landing webpage does not verify that it is "on the Arkansas River, the former boundary between the United States and Spain".
  13. Remove the "Colorado municipalities" heading as a result of the first change in this list and move the see also template to follow the revised heading before the gallery template.
  14. Remove the single sentence as it is redundant with the text in the geogroup template.
  15. Apply sentence case to all 272 entries in the "Type of government" column.
  16. Never been a fan of "Coordinates" columns as the contents are never readily understandable to the reader. However, guessing that the geogroup template needs such to work so I will not kick up a fuss. However, at minimum, remove the ability to sort that column. Sorting based on this column results in ordering that is not meaningful or understood by the reader.
  2. For the final row, use the sortbottom approach. See it in action at List of municipalities in Arkansas#List of municipalities.
  2. Also, in that final row, simply state "Total municipalities" in the first cell instead of its current contents.

I will return with comments on the lead and other prose in a bit. Cheers, Hwy43 (talk) 22:20, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The following are my comments on the lead. Hwy43 (talk) 04:23, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  2. Remove bold from first sentence per MOS:FIRST and MOS:BOLDLEAD.
  3. Reword first sentence because it redundantly says "The [United States'] State of Colorado…".
  2. Why "active incorporated" municipalities? Are there inactive municipalities in Colorado? Are there unincorporated municipalities in Colorado? Municipalities are incorporated by definition. No such thing as unincorporated municipalities AFAIK, so no need to distinguish from non-existent "unincorporated municipalities". Further, if there are no inactive municipalities then no need to distinguish these as active municipalities. Please fix in lead and throughout balance of article.
  • "incorporated municipalities" done by Hwy43; see below discussion re: "active municipalities" Hwy43 (talk) 07:50, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Second sentence reads as if percentage of people living in municipalities in comparison to Colorado’s population grew by 17.13% to 74.47%. This is not the case. Apples and oranges going on here. Easiest thing to do is remove everything after the comma.
  3. Third sentence repeats Colorado. Can remove second instance.
  4. Two commas are missing in the lengthy first sentence of second paragraph.
  5. In the second sentence of the second paragraph the reader is firmly of the understanding that we are in Colorado by now. Remove both mentions of the state in this sentence.
  6. In the first sentence of the third paragraph, replace "occupied" with "covered" as the former has a military occupation feel to it. Also delete second instance of the state’s name.
  7. In the second sentence, do you mean "expansive" instead of "extensive"? see below discussion re: "extensive"
  8. In the third sentence, change "least densely populated of the populated municipalities" to simply "least densely populated municipality after Carbonate" to avoid a fifth instance of "populat–" in the sentence.

I will return with comments on the Municipal government section. In the meantime:

  2. delete the entire Population history section. It is redundant from the information in the table above and the only value-added new content within is in the final sentence. The final sentence can be laced into the lead. Meanwhile, Population history of Colorado municipalities can be moved to either the See also section below or included in the See also template in the previous section (joining the three other articles in that template). Hwy43 (talk) 04:44, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I am going to be dark all week due to work, so I am going to provide two more comments for now, and upon my return I will circle back to go through the Municipal government section in detail.

  2. *Please review MOS:OVERLINK and then go through all prose sections with a fine-toothed comb to remove all duplicate wikilinks. I have already apprised of the overlink infractions within the captions in the gallery template. Overlink doesn't apply to tables. So focus only on the paragraphs. I see numerous instances of overlinking throughout the Municipal government section. Fortunately, there are no overlink instances found in the lead.
  3. Please review MOS:SEEALSO and MOS:NOTSEEALSO. Specifically, the See also section should "enable readers to explore tangentially related topics", "should be relevant and limited to a reasonable number", and "should not repeat links that appear in the article's body." The See also section currently has 24 entries (not a reasonable number), many of which are already linked in the article's body (e.g., Colorado, Population history of Colorado municipalities, etc.) and/or not tangential or relevant (e.g., bibliography, index, outline, geography, history, places [in general], mountain-related, rivers, protected areas, etc.). The scope of this list is municipalities. Municipalities are types of communities. The See also section should be limited to other community-related lists that are tangential and relevant (i.e., counties, census-designated places, county seats, ghost towns, populated places by county, and statistical areas) if not previously introduced in the prose of the article or in earlier see also templates. At the end of the day, many of the non-tangential/non-relevant lists are already wikilinked in the uncollapsed Template:Colorado at the bottom of the article anyway.

Looking forward to seeing the improvements to the article when I return this weekend. Cheers, Hwy43 (talk) 06:29, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • @Hwy43: This is a very substantial list, but I agree with almost all of your suggestions. I made the following changes:
  • 1. I changed the section title "The 20 most populous Colorado municipalities" to "Gallery".
  • 2-17 Done.
  • 18. I kept the "Coordinates" column. I've requested that Template:Coord be updated to include conversion to 4 decimal degree places to compact coordinates.
  • 19-22 Done.
  • 23. There are scores of inactive incorporated municipalities in Colorado. They are called ghost towns.
  • 24-28 Done.
  • 29. The proper word is "extensive".
  • 30. Done.
  • 31. I deleted the "Population history" section and replaced it with a "Population estimates" section which includes 2021 and future population estimates from the Census Bureau.
  • 32-33 Done.
Thank you very much for these suggestions. Yours aye,  Buaidh  talk e-mail 01:46, 28 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Re: 23, are you suggesting that all ~1,500 ghost towns in Colorado were once municipalities? In my experience, the majority of ghost towns in a state/province were never incorporated as municipalities. They were simply unincorporated communities, just as Colorado today has unincorporated communities. Meanwhile, a minority of ghost towns in a state/province were actually previously incorporated municipalities. I am going to need some evidence that 100% of Colorado’s ghost towns were previously incorporated as municipalities. I would also like to see a reliable source that existing municipalities in Colorado are commonly referred to as "active incorporated municipalities" as a means to disambiguate from former municipalities and/or ghost towns. Hwy43 (talk) 07:59, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Re: 31, replacement of the "Population history" section with a "Population estimates" section is unnecessary. No need to supply a population estimate for Denver and Carbonate for the year following the 2020 census. Such details can be presented at their individual articles. Hwy43 (talk) 08:07, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Hwy43: I said scores not all. Several ghost towns have had their inactive incoporation reactivated, including Montezuma and Carbonate. Watkins went the other way and had its incorporation deactivated in 2006.
I missed the scores in my review. Based on this link, I can accept "active municipalities". Drop the "incorporated" for the reasons previously stated. It goes without saying, is redundant, and the link I just provided excludes such. Hwy43 (talk) 03:33, 2 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Methinks you're being a bit picknitty. Yours aye,  Buaidh  talk e-mail 18:28, 3 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My suggestion is based on experience in these FLC reviews. If something sticks out, it begs a question. In this case, if we state "incorporated municipalities", a reader can question "what about the unincorporated municipalities" then? In a previous "List of municipalities in Foo" FLC nomination, there was a statement in the article that 'Foo's X municipalities cover Y% of the province's land mass and are home to Z% of its population.' Reviewers asked what about the remainders of population and land mass? The solution was an associated note with reference stating 'The remaining A% of Foo's population resides on B and C, which occupy the remaining D% of the province's land mass.' In making the picknitty situation, I am trying to avoid a much more picknitty request. Hwy43 (talk) 05:56, 12 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The "Population estimates" section links to the location of the July 1, 2021 estimates for all Colorado municipalities. The estimates are located in the Population history of Colorado municipalities article rather than the List of municipalities in Colorado article because, unlike the Census figures, they are not "official" figures. The reference to Denver and Carbonate is the range of population after 15 months. (Neither increased.) Yours aye,  Buaidh  talk e-mail 20:59, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My concern remains. It is all or none and I recommend none because of the very reason you provided - they are not official figures. The alternative is to embed two notes in the table – one for Denver and one for Carbonate – to indicate their subsequent 2021 population estimates, or alternately embed a single note covering both at the end of the first sentence in the second paragraph of the lead. Hwy43 (talk) 03:33, 2 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
These comments provide the relevance of this section. If a reader is interested in the 2021 estimates, they can go to that article. Yours aye,  Buaidh  talk e-mail 18:20, 3 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. You are one of the few users with a username shorter than mine.  Buaidh  talk e-mail 21:03, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone have any additional suggestions or can this article be elevated to featured list? Yours aye,  Buaidh  talk e-mail 00:04, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I received a dismissive reply to my last request; a request that is beyond reasonable and the entrenchment to not process it, which the exact same had been promptly addressed without question at another FL nomination, is very strange.

This list was not ready for nomination. I've never had to make well over two dozen suggestions before to bring it close to the standard that I and partner collaborators, such as Mattximus, have had to meet in the past for this type of list. And I still have the "Municipal government" section to review still as previously mentioned.

Anyway, I have had a difficult month both career-wise and family-wise, and little free time to keep my favourite hobby moving forward. Notwithstanding that difficulty and the concern above, I still intend to return, when stressful work commitments dissolve in as early as mid-November, to pass through the remaining section as I want to see this promoted. You’ll have to continue to be patient.

But in the meantime, my experience is that you are going to need more than two editors to support this nomination anyway, so neither busy Mattximus or I are standing in your way at this point. IIRC, four supports are required. The slow crawl on this nomination isn’t limited to you however. I nominated a list myself two months ago before I went mostly dark and not one editor has done a review yet, aside from the accessibility review done promptly. I am shocked two others haven’t piped up at yours yet and further shocked that zero have popped up at mine. I have never seen it like this in the past 10 years. You aren’t alone. Hwy43 (talk) 05:51, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Hwy43 and Mattximus: I did not mean to be dismissive, however your comments are suggestions, and as a significant contributor to Wikipedia myself, I do have the right to either accept or reject them. If you wish to alter this list to make it conform with your own lists, you are most welcome to do so.
I'm sorry you are having personal problems. As someone with a fatal disease, I can relate to your situation. Best of luck to you,  Buaidh  talk e-mail 04:28, 10 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would better characterize as stresses/priorities but thanks and equally thanks for being candid yourself. I was most concerned with providing assurances that I will return. If you have no objection to me removing "incorporated" from "incorporated municipalities" I gladly will, but note it is not a conformance thing as asserted. It is rather precisely what I stated originally in #23 above. Hwy43 (talk) 06:12, 12 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Given the backlog of featured list candidates, perhaps I should devote some time to reviewing lists myself. I much prefer writing articles to reviewing articles, but I've created over 100 lists, so I do have some expertise. I'm not as anal-retentive as some reviewers, but I could help out. Yours aye,  Buaidh  talk e-mail 19:40, 10 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose: I have returned after a hiatus. Cross-referencing my comments with revisions implemented, I discovered comment #14 above was not addressed at all. For all 20 captions, references were simply the landing pages of the official city websites, most of which, if not all, did not explicitly verify the claims made within the captions. I reviewed the "Municipal government" section to find that the majority of sentences were not supported by references while other sentences were referenced to other Wikipedia articles, which is improper. Further, numerous sentences throughout the section may not be referenceable to reliable, secondary sources anyway. Rather, they appear to be personal observations/research statements instead. I have since removed over 20 improper references and replaced them "citation needed" tags and applied the same to unsourced sentences. While both Mattximus and I have made some improvements to address previous comments that remained unaddressed, the sourcing issue coupled with possible personal observations/research is too vast to support at this time. I do want to see this list to obtain FL status in future. I will address some of the citation needed tags that can easily be replaced with duplications of other previously added references. Cheers, Hwy43 (talk) 07:55, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I was just doing a source check for this, all the sources look good, but I have a small concern on 2 of them. These 2

Not so sure on the reliability of Sporcle Blog, tried to do some research on it but couldn't find anything on it, and the pdf. The pdf doesn't show where it came from, and honestly looks like some random person made a google doc on it and turned it in to a pdf. Thanks! MasterMatt12(talk) 17:36, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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