Talk:List of cities and unincorporated communities in Oregon/Archive 1

Cities that were deleted

Applegate, Oregon was removed from the list for not being a real place where people live, but it was indeed a post office about 50 years ago. (I know this because I am entering some 50-year-old data, which includes addresses, at work.) I haven't had the time to research the town, so I don't know if it is worthy of reinclusion, but I thought I would mention it. Katr67 17:39, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I wrote an article and put it back on the list. Katr67 20:02, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

In reference to this diff, from January of '05, there were many communities that had post offices and were named after a better-known natural feature. For example Mount Hood, Oregon. So they may or may not be worthy of inclusion in this list for other reasons, but "non-existence" isn't one of them. Katr67 17:37, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Incorporated / Unincorporated

I see value in drawing a distinction between incorporated cities and incorporated communities - readers with governance issues on the mind would want to know. Is there a specific reason no such distinction has been drawn to date? Ipoellet 16:25, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind something unobtrusive (like an asterisk). A city is a town is a community—I don't think I've ever needed to know the difference. I once heard that London's city limits are a bit fuzzy in places, but no one really cares about defining them. No idea if it's true, but if the protocol-driven Brits don't care—that's pretty funny. —EncMstr 17:13, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I spent a few weeks last year travelling Southern Africa with a fella who is a social worker for a local authority in London. Great guy. But he could have explained until he was blue and I would still never have understood how local government in that place fits together. You would have to be protocol-driven to successfully navigate that labyrinth. -Ipoellet 21:17, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe this list has its orgins in the early days of the wiki, before anybody was worrying about categorization so much. I just tweaked the intro, linking to the categories, does that help? Personally, I think a list is a list is a list and that the categories serve a much better purpose for drawing the distinction between the incorporated/unincorporated places. (If someone wants to just go "Whoa, look at all the funny little places in Oregon", the list is sufficient, and if s/he interested in the governance stuff, s/he can check out the categories.) I think adding asterisks would look messy, but I could get behind using italics to designate the incorporated places, with an appropriate note in the intro. I looked at some of the other state's lists and they seem over-complicated to me. I like our clean little list. Katr67 17:28, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Why is Corbett italicized? Katr67 17:36, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Corbett was italicized because newbie-me was still learning wiki-etiquette. I've undone it for now.

I agree with you about the different roles of lists and categories. However, that principle would lead me to a different conclusion in this case. I would have pared the list back to only incorporated communities, because there is encyclopedic information in such a list (i.e. the existence of municipal government and how the locality fits into the overall constitutional structure of Oregon) and I can identify citable external sources to support all inclusions and exclusions in such a list (e.g. the Oregon Blue Book). All very much clearer than in London. However, if a reader wanted to simply browse a catchall bucket of communities of various shapes in Oregon, a category would be the place to do it.

The article title also lead me in this direction, since from a constitutional/statutory standpoint, a city in Oregon is by definition incorporated. I also don't share the concern about over-complicating the list; the ability to add context is one of the advantages of lists over categories, which was one of the ideas that informed the discussion about the Oregon state parks list.

My compromise recommendation, recognizing that not everybody thinks of "cities" legalistically like me, and kind of along the lines of what EncMstr suggested, is to go through the list and italicize all of the unincorporated places (hence what I had done with Corbett), add an explanatory sentence at the top, and include a formal Blue Book citation in a references section. If this works for everybody, then I'll be happy to take the tedious task on. -Ipoellet 21:17, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

It's funny because I've definitely been a champion of making the distinction between cities in Oregon and everything else, even going so far as to change references from "town" to "city" and "city" to "community" where appropriate (see Category:Towns in Oregon and its talk page), but the title of this page never bothered me. Perhaps we should move the article to List of settlements in Oregon? (Category:Settlements in Oregon being the parent level category for every inhabited place.)

I'd suggest the page move, and gratefully accept Ipoellet's offer to help italicize the list and his (?) other suggestions, knowing all too well the tedium involved in dealing with this little area of the wiki. :) Katr67 21:32, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Sigmund Freud had a phrase for people like me. Today, the anatomical reference sounds kind of rude - but it's spot on for me nevertheless. -Ipoellet 21:40, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I'll launch the italicization effort, and do the page move at the end. Cheers! -Ipoellet 21:43, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

As in "Does insert rude anatomical reference here have a hyphen?" :) I'm still searching for a t-shirt that says that. :) Have fun! Katr67 22:35, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm cool with the page move, but I'm reluctant to lose the word "cities" in the title, because (a) it's more intuitive than "settlements" and (b) it keeps to the form generally followed by other states. As in Category:Lists of cities in the United States. Instead of List of settlements in Oregon, would List of cities and unincorporated communities in Oregon be acceptable? -Ipoellet 16:29, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

You're right about the word "settlements". I like word "communities" better but maybe that's because I'm sort of a hippie. Anyway yes, I think the latter option is better. Good idea adding pics, BTW. As an aside, there was a discussion a while back about adding images to the state parks list too--I think New York's list came up as an example of a really nice state parks list with images...

P.S. One of my goals is to get all the redlinks on this done--it's what drew me to Wikipedia in the first place (see also Wikipedia:U.S. cities without articles (note that none of the Oregon ones are actually cities). I managed to get all the "A"s done and recently I started in on the places with the most links to them, or else I just do whichever one strikes my fancy. But I take requests, so if there's anyplace you'd like to see an article on sooner rather than later, let me know. I have in my possession the magic book, so it's usually pretty easy to whip up an article. Katr67 16:58, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Asterisks

I just added an unincorporated area, but couldn't tell if it should be asterisked, italicized, or both. The discussion above seems inconclusive on that point, and certainly the lead doesn't seem to explain it. Maybe it used to be there, but was changed? —EncMstr (talk) 20:19, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

This list is a bit chaotic right now due to the discussion below between me and General Banzai. I've been intending to sit down to some serious maintenance for the last few days, but haven't yet had the opportunity. Anyhow, my understanding is that Canemah would not be italicized (it is not itself an incorporated city), but that it would have an asterisk (it has been subsumed within Oregon City). — Ipoellet (talk) 16:19, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I had it backwards - Canemah is italicized. (My confusion was that I've been privately thinking the italicization scheme should be turned around: incorporated italicized and unincorporated in plain text. But that idea wasn't what was in place.) I've done the core of the maintenance I was referring to in my last comment, and I adjusted some language in the lead to hopefully clarify the formatting issues for cases like Canemah. — Ipoellet (talk) 16:58, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Eugene pic

Katr67 - :-) I'd actually rejected that picture you put in. I was conscious of variety in the selections, and the sweeping aerial views are common. But I'd figured over time people would rotate the pictures a bit, so that's cool. -Ipoellet 18:40, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Aww, but that's such a purdy shot. And I've spent way too much time in that bus station. I'll be in Eugene this weekend, maybe I'll try to get some innaresting pics. Luckily downtown Eugene is pretty ugly, because the view of downtown thing is overrepresented as well. :) Katr67 19:02, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Transit is a good quick visual cue to urban-ness. -Ipoellet 21:54, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Why references to OGN?

Just curious. Katr67 02:55, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm still learning about the best ways to edit without leaving needless holes like that to confuse other Wikipedians. Next time I take on a page like this, I'll handle it a bit differently. The answer is citable sources for unincorporated communities. I'm using the index on ODOT official map to give a list of localities in addition to the incorporated cities from the Blue Book. (It appears to me that whoever drew up the list in the first place used the map.) I'll spell out in the references that "unless otherwise noted" all unincorporated places are referenced from the map. Agate Beach, Alvadore, and Ash are the first 3 I've come across that aren't on the map - I relied on your contributions to the individual articles to know they're in OGN - I haven't looked at OGN myself. Of course, I should have spelled out the thing about the map in the references section before starting to insert the OGN footnotes, but live and learn. 'Course all this just bears out my earlier Freud comment.

Once EncMstr moves the new Oregon state parks list into production, I'm going to go through a similar thing with that. Because the OPRD web site that the list was developed from is not comprehensive. -Ipoellet 15:10, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Very good. Carry on. And you can always create a subpage in your userspace of this page like EncMstr did with the parks list if that would make it any easier. BTW, Ash is on the ODOT map but not in the index. Innaresting... Happy Freudianism! Katr67 16:08, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

It's not comprehensive? Where is a more complete list? I'm happy to fully flesh it out. —EncMstr 18:03, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

No one place, unfortunately. I've found parks in OPRD printed materials, OPRD master planning documents, oblique references on the National Park Service web site, the web site of the Oregon State Parks Trust, and articles from The Oregonian. The single closest-to-complete source I've found (and I think it's pretty close) is a printed booklet guide to OSP that OPRD distributes here and there. The only place I've found that dependably has it is the nature center at Tryon Creek. It's free - I picked up the current edition just the other day - they had a bunch. One example that's in the printed booklet that already has a Wikipedia article is the Pete French Round Barn State Heritage Site. -Ipoellet 20:42, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Cite for CDPs

For Barview and all the other CDPs you can use the 2000 census as a reference. If you check the Barview article, you'll see that there is a standarized reference already in place for all the bot-produced CDP articles. Katr67 04:13, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Rieth/Reith Oregon

Forever spelled both ways —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.14.247.204 (talk) 07:52, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Changing the list

The list of incorporated Oregon cities, as well as their counties and populations, is now complete, making the previous purely alphabetical list obsolete in every regard except that it also includes unincorporated cities in Oregon.

I suggest that we remove the previous, non-sortable list and replace it with a list purely for unincorporated cities at the bottom of the page. General Banzai (talk) 02:47, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Creating a table specifically for incorporated cities is something that needed to be done, so thank you to General Banzai for starting it. However, including it in this same article with the existing list made for a very cumbersome article, so I have split the new table out into a separate article at List of incorporated cities in Oregon. The next question is what to do with this article:

• Should this article (a) focus just on unincorporated communities, CDPs, miscellaneous place names, etc? Or shoud it (b) revert back to including cities alongside the unincorporated communities? (As of the time I write this note, this article does not include incorporated cities.)
• If (a), then a article title change is definitely in order. Probably "List of unincorporated communities in Oregon", but is there another possibility?
• If (b), then should the title change to reduce the emphasis on cities (since they have their own article in which they're highlighted)? Something like "List of settlements in Oregon" or "List of local place names in Oregon"?
• How should the list in this article be formatted? (General Banzai seems to be suggesting reformatting it into a sortable table.)

My personal thought would be (b) to keep cities in this article alongside the incorporated communities, but change the title and lead of the article to de-emphasize them. And keep the unsortable formatting: I can't think of a second table column to sort on other than alphabetical by name. — Ipoellet (talk) 16:38, 4 October 2010 (UTC)