Talk:City guard

Merger with watchman

A merger with Watchman (law enforcement) was suggested. I currently abstain on this, but would like to raise one important question: city guard is about municipal law enforcement. Are watchman municipal as well? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:02, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

I am not seeing enough proof that the subject is the same, or not notable. If somebody wants to merge it, AfD the article. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 16:57, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

AfDs are never required for a merge, in fact, you aren't supposed to do AfD's to get a merge done, that's what talk pages are for. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 19:34, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

If there is consensus for the merge, yes. If there isn't, a discussion is needed, which often escalates to an AfD. Since this talk page has next to zero visibility, I think an AfD is needed if we want to keep this going (it is likely going to attract more useful comments than an RfC would). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 19:56, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I requested comment at Wikipedia:WikiProject Law Enforcement. This is a much better way to get comment on this. Again, Articles for Deletion should only be used for deletion and not to propose merges. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 02:26, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Assuming this WikiProject is active, sure, let's try it out. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 04:20, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

It is active, just quiet. S.G.^(GH) _ping! 11:31, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

• Don't merge would be my own argument. I personally view a "city guard" in it's formal usage as a term which refers to official "gate watchers" or Vigiles Urbani whereas a "watchman" could be, as someone says below, a guy wandering an industrial estate twirling a key-on-a-chain and a cup of coffee. The terms are somewhat interchangeable in casual usage - informally, both city watch/town guard/etc. and watchman are used to refer to both parties, but in official usage I see the "city watch" as a specific term. However both articles need a bit of a re-write because at the moment they appear to be the same thing, but that is down to article quality rather than reality. IMO. S.G.^(GH) _ping! 11:37, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
• Comment. Was the term "city guard" ever actually used outside fantasy novels? Most English-speaking cities had a watch of some kind, usually highly ineffective, but I'm not aware of any of them having anything called a city guard. Many European cities had something that would probably fall under the definition listed here (Paris, for instance, certainly did), but they didn't use this name for it. This article seems to be an attempt to group together a number of disparate organisations with a number of disparate names (watches, citizen militias, the Parisian Royal Archers etc), many of them in non-English languages. It may be useful as a list page for these organisations, but I don't think it has a great deal of use beyond that. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:17, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
• Don't merge. Perh SGGH, I think that city guard is a historical institution. Vigiles is as good example. Here's a book about military history of Poland which mentions the existence of a town guard: [1]. In some countries, the institution persists till today, City guard (Poland) is a good example. Those have a separate article (Municipal police). Perhaps a merge with that one could be considered, but again I think the historical and modern formations may be distinct enough to warrant separation. The name of this article may not be perfect, and it certainly needs fixing. Nonetheless, the concept of city/town sponsored security force, used both for police and for military operations (defending the walls, etc.) is different from the concept of a guard (watchman). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 16:33, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

No Way

Depend of the country, the city guard is considered a police officer.A Watcher is a private employee, if the individual is a City Guard, payed by the municipal council, is considered a policeman de facto. And, in many jurisdictions, is acepted in the International_Police_Association. So, sir, take easy.

Bryard 23:41, 18 November 2010 (UTC)