Canadaman1121

Population of Toronto

Just for clarification, Wikipedia has a verifiability requirement, so we have to cite actual published reliable sources for population figures. If you want to change the population figure from the number published by Statistics Canada in the Canada 2006 Census, you need to provide an exact source for it — and even then, we need to maintain the 2006 census number in the article and then add the new number as a supplementary estimate, not as a replacement for census data. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 01:23, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Read what I said, please. I didn't say that you can't add updated population figures to the article at all or that the population hasn't grown at all; I just said that we need an actual source for the number.

And we need to keep the 2006 census numbers available in Wikipedia alongside any updates until the 2011 census comes along, because it's the last official (as opposed to interim estimates) data that's available from an authoritative statistical agency that actually attempted to manually count every individual person in every city nationwide — we can't do a meaningful comparison from one city to another if we have a 2010 figure for City #1, a 2009 figure for City #2, a 2008 figure for City #3 and a 2006 figure for City #4. There has to be a consistent "same time, same agency, same counting method" number available across all cities (which is also why the "list of cities" articles are not adjusted between censuses; they're comparison lists whose data has to be precisely consistent to the same time and the same source right across the board.) An updated number can be provided in the city's article if there's a valid source for it, but it's a supplement to, not a replacement for, official census data.

The core requirement on Wikipedia is that our information is verifiable. Population figures don't necessarily have to be kept precisely accurate to the exact population at the very minute that an individual is reading the article; what they do have to be is reliably sourced to a reference that explicitly states where and when and how the number was determined (which is why a number on the city's webpage isn't good enough, if there isn't a footnote explaining the where and when and how.) Notice the very first sentence of the verifiability policy: The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true. Bearcat (talk) 19:06, 28 November 2010 (UTC)