Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities/Assessment

Priority Ranking

Proposing ranking as follows, please comment. Alan.ca 23:24, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

• Top: National Capital

• High: State or territorial capital

• Mid: A population greater than or equal to 100,000, but not a capital. International event or disaster.

• Low: Not a capital, population less than 100,000. No international disaster or event.

Does that mean cities, which aren't capitals, but are well known, like New York and Hong Kong don't recieve top priority? Jentile 19:00, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

The issue with well known is that we are biasing our coverage to North America. It is my opinion that a small national capitol should have a higher priority than New York, Detroit, Toronto or Vancouver. How do you propose we define the High criteria? Alan.ca 21:00, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

One concern I have is that a town of 2000 people with no notability can be in the same group as a city with 180,000, under the current scheme. This new proposed rankings is better in that way. Casey14 02:00, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Territorial capital can be unclear in an international setting. I tagged "Stavanger" High, but I am uncertain.

• It is the 4th largest city in Norway overall.
• It is the administrative center of "Rogaland". (dunno if that makes it a "territorial capital"
• It is reasonably internationally well-known. European Capital of Culture in 2008 for example.

It doesn't though, have more than aprox 110.000 people, population as indication of importance does however suffer from overemphasizing densily populated areas. --Eivind Kjørstad 10:03, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

There was some good discussion on the New York city talk page regarding this issue. Specifically, Shakescene's numerous examples as copied below:

I don't know what the guideline means, or how it got there (maybe just to avoid quarrels), but it makes no sense to me. Sydney & Melbourne, though not Canberra, can compete as to which is top in Australia (which is why Canberra, in-between, got chosen as capital). Similarly with Toronto & Montréal (but not Ottawa) in Canada, Rio de Janeiro & São Paulo (but not Brasilia) in Brazil, Karachi in Pakistan and Istanbul in Turkey. There are too many exceptions to make this a good rule. Many political capitals like London, Lisbon, Rome, Dublin, Mexico City, Moscow and Paris are the "top" cities of their countries, but others are clearly not while yet others can be debated (Edinburgh vs Glasgow, Madrid vs Barcelona, Beijing vs Shanghai, New Delhi vs Bombay vs Calcutta). See the brief comparison I added to liven up New York City#Sister cities. —— Shakescene (talk) 05:33, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Dredging it up here for discussion. I (clearly) think that designating only capitals as "top", while attempting to avoid a North American bias, is more likely to misrepresent some cities. Not as important an issue for NYC, as an FA article, but for others such as above it could make a difference. ~ Amory (talk) 14:39, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

The Top category should be changed from "National capital" to "National capital or global city" (idea based on Amory's comment at NYC talk page). This would add roughly 26 major cities that are not capitals. Station1 (talk) 17:15, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Questions and suggestions re article assessment

class = Dab/Template/Cat/Stub/Start/B/GA/A/FA
priority = Low/Mid/High/Top
needs-infobox = Yes
needs-photo = Yes
peer-review = Yes
old-peer-review = Yes
collaboration-candidate = Yes
small = Yes

Class and priority are well described. needs-infobox and needs-photo are pretty self-explainatory. What of the others though? What exactly is meant by the variable peer-review. Is this yes if it has had one, or yes if it needs one? collaboration-candidate - is that where more than one WikiProject have tagged any given article?

The small function doesn't seem to work.

A question about the city infobox. Is its layout handy for towns and cities which are not located in the United States? See York, Dublin, Eindhoven etc for examples.

• York: customised infobox
• Strabane: Infobox Irish place or Infobox Town Northern Ireland
• Dublin: Infobox Irish Place
• Eindhoven: Infobox Dutch municipality 2
• The Hague: Infobox Dutch municipality 4
• Rotterdam & Amsterdam: Customised townBox template
• Bangor, Maine: Infobox City
• Bangor, Gwynedd: infobox Wales place
• Arthur's Pass & Adamstown, Maryland: infobox Town
• Just look at Category:City infobox templates

Frankly, its a mess. It works, but its a mess. I'd say we should identify all the variables needed for the differing countries and regions, and then make a generic template that all towns, cities and villages etc use. Articles on areas that include more than one settlement (counties for example) are presumably outside the scope of this project, and should therefore use a different infobox. It needs standardised. People using the encyclopedia for research about cities or whatever, shouldn't have to work hard to get the info they need. They should be able to very quickly ascertain info from an infobox that looks quite similar throughout Wikipedia.

So who's good at coding.. whatever 'language' this 'pedia uses..? --Mal 05:55, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

• Please provide an example where the small feature did not work. As for the peer review and other unused fields, I just haven't coded them in yet. I placed them on the definition page because I intend to implement them soon. They could be moved to the talk page for the template. Discussion about {{Infobox City}} should probably take place on that template's talk page. Alan.ca 19:36, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Expert Template {{expert}}

I ran across this template tag in Palmersville, Tennessee. This is apparently a tiny unincorporated community that the Census Bureau does not treat as a CDP. Two templates dominate the short article. It's not clear to me why this article (or any similar article about such a tiny community) was flagged as requiring expert attention from this project. Any way to figure that out? (The tag was added by an unregistered user.)--orlady 18:31, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

• No idea why it was tagged this way. Do you have a date from which it was tagged and by which editor? I personally don't use that template. Alan.ca 19:28, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

The tag was added 23 July 2006 by unregistered user Special:Contributions/69.55.132.61 (who I suspect is a registered user who was not logged in)--orlady 19:55, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

There are only 5 pages worldwide flagged with that template ( in Category:Pages needing expert attention from Cities experts). I'll just delete it from Palmersville.--orlady 20:07, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

• Sounds good, if you're interested in helping with the WikiProject let me know. Alan.ca 20:25, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Self-Contradiction

The sections Requesting an assessment and the assessment log seem to contradict each other. Could someone clarify for it (not only for me but on the page as well)? akuyume^T_C 21:25, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

• The assessment log, is a list of articles where the bot has detected a rating change has occurred. The section to request an assessment is for editors to request an assessment from the team. Feel free to propose wording here that you think might help visitors to better understand this difference. Alan.ca 21:38, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Request an assessment below those words, but above the assessment log :) -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 21:39, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, that makes sense. To think after all this time here I still confuse the various levels of heading emphasis. akuyume^T_C 03:27, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

How the Hell Is That Wikipedia Works

I Dont Understand Wikipedia anymore..i Feel Really Mad because i posted A City to Assessment and it's already a week and no job has been Done yet..Can any body to re-assest Santo Domingo EdwinCasadoBaez 07:14, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Assessments

As I noted in the edit summary to Talk:Bellefontaine, Ohio, I am of the opinion that assessments are a truly dumb idea, and one that takes editors away from the primary mission of furnishing this encyclopedia with knowledge and even important secondary missions of maintaining the encyclopedia and guarding against abuse. That said, assessments simply will not work-- and thus, are a complete waste of our time-- if those assessing the articles do not leave comments explaining how they arrived at the assessments. Not every article can be a Good Article Candidate (GAC). Not every editor uses the GAC process, for whatever reasons. These editors' works, then, should not be penalized by some random editor who, seeing only that the article has not been through GAC, decides to effectively deface the article by leaving what amounts to an unsourced assessment. We don't allow unsourced claims to remain in the main article space. Why should we allow it in our assessments, especially while they are in a prominent spot at the top of the talk page? -- SwissCelt 11:37, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Priority scale issue again

What about population less than 200,000 but DOES HAVE international news coverage by media agencies? Small towns and cities with school shootings would be a good example.. Pearl, Mississippi (21,000+ pop.) or Columbine in unincorporated Jefferson County, Colorado. -- ALLSTAR ECHO 21:37, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Importance ranking

So, i've been thinking about the importance ranking a bit. The current situation is that "State/Provincial/Regional capitals" should be rated as High importance. This led to me rating Yellowknife, Northwest Territories as High importance, because it is the capital the Northwest Territories, even though it's only got a population of approximately 19,000.

Norway is divided into 19 counties: Hordaland, Nordland, Vestfold, etc, each with its own administration centre or capital, such as Stavanger in Rogaland, Moss in Østfold and Bergen in Hordaland. As Norway is a thinly populated country, none of the county capitals except Oslo (which is both a county and a city, and also the national capital, which gives it a Top importance ranking anyway) have a population of above 240,000, and in fact most of them have a population of less than 50,000. This leads to most of them being ranked as Low importance. The same seems to be the case in England, where the county towns are also not rated High (unless of course they have a high population or international recognition). Also, it seems capitals of country subdivisions named "province", "region", or "state" are getting special treatment just because they are named that and not "county" or similar, and it also doesn't make sense that in country subdivisions where the largest city isn't the capital the largest city could potentially be rated Low while the capital could be rated High.

However, i'm not going to ask for the Norwegian or English county capitals to be rated as High importance just because they're county capitals, rather, i'm going to ask for every city with a Wikipedia article to be treated the same no matter if it's the county capital or not; they should be rated purely based on their urban area population (important, as some cities, especially US ones, seem to have incredibly small city municipalities (or similar) while the urban area population could be up to 5 times larger) and/or international recognition/news coverage.

Now, this is of course not a big issue but i was just a little annoyed when rating Yellowknife, Northwest Territories as the only thing that makes it High importance is it being the capital of an insignificant Canadian territory, thus giving it the same rating as Toronto, which has a population of 261 times Yellowknife's population in its urban area and is overall a far, far more important city. Anyone agree? --Aqwis 16:23, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Slight tweak to Top-priority

Meta has a list of 1,000 vital articles. 44 of them are cities The following Meta are capitals and therefore high-priority here:

• Amsterdam
• Athens
• Bagdad
• Bangkok
• Beijing
• Berlin
• Bogota
• Brussels
• Buenos Aires
• Cairo
• Damascus

• Delhi
• Dhaka
• Jakarta
• Jerusalem
• Karachi
• Kinshasa
• London
• Madrid
• Mexico City

• Moscow
• Nairobi
• Paris
• Rome
• Seoul
• Singapore
• Tehran
• Tokyo
• Vienna
• Washington, D.C.

But these Meta aren't capitals, and therefore aren't high priority:

• Cape Town, RSA (former capital)
• Hong Kong
• Istanbul, TUR
• Kolkata, IND
• Lagos, NIG (former capital)
• Los Angeles, USA (Pop=4 million, 17 million in metro)
• Mecca, SAU (center of Island)
• Mumbai, IND
• New York City, USA (Pop=8 million, 18-20 million in metro)
• Rio de Janeiro, BRA
• Saint Petersburg, RUS
• São Paulo, BRA
• Shanghai, CHN (the largest city in the largest country in the world)
• Sydney, AUS (largest city on Oceanian continent)

I propose that any city article, capital or not, that cracks the Meta 1,000 be top-priority no matter what. As you can see, the non-capitals list includes cities from all over the world, mostly with populations of several million. Thoughts? Purplebackpack89 (talk) 19:11, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Based on no comments, plus the consensus from April, I'm implementing those changes Purplebackpack89 (talk) 22:40, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I strongly oppose this proposal, and you should revert any changes that you have made. I am not familiar with "Meta 1000", and it seems like an arbitrary rating system that isn't established. Dr. Cash (talk) 19:43, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

All changes to the aforementioned city's importance ratings have now been reverted. Dr. Cash (talk) 19:56, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

For what it is worth, I would support the proposed change. I find it bewildering that a general knowledge encyclopedia that wishes to be taken seriously would consider Funafuti to be more important a topic than Hong Kong. It defies reason. I understand the desire to have objective criteria to determine an article's importance, but the selection of status as a national captial is merely an arbitrary - if convenient - cutoff point. If using the cities on the Meta 1000 list is "too subjective" for us, then the criteria should be refined, perhaps to state that cities above, say, 3,000,000 population also qualify for top importance. Shereth 20:16, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Agree in principle with Shereth. We need to add more world cities. Also, just because you haven't heard of Meta 1000 doesn't mean it's arbitrary. I continue to support Meta 1000 as a criteria as it offers a hollistic approach (figuring in population, capitals, and cultural significance), but failing that I support Metro of seven million. Purplebackpack89 (talk) 20:24, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

That is a reasonable sounding criterion, as well. I personally have no issues with the user of the Meta 1000 list (in spite of the assertion here and on the main project talk page, it is not just "random editors" at "some meta wiki" but respected editors on the Wikimedia meta project). I would be okay with some other bar for inclusion, such as being a Beta World City or higher on the GaWC's list of world cities. The bar for inclusion with "top importance" is negotiable, but one that fails to include Hong Kong and New York City, among others, is absurd. Shereth 20:45, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Clearly not everyone is aware of Meta 1000. Before it's cited as a trump argument, we should be convinced that it carries weight, whose it is and how it's derived. Folks at 137 (talk) 13:35, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I also oppose such a rating, in this context some random meta list which someone has dreamed up has absolutely nothing to do with things! Jeni ^(talk) 12:26, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Meta isn't random. It's the root of WP:VITAL. It wasn't the work of some random editor, it was the work of many editors over several years. Purplebackpack89 (talk) 16:08, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Oppose. At present the criteria are clear: "top" is a special rating reserved for capitals - and doesn't rely upon subjective criteria or arguments over the validity of some external criteria. I've said elsewhere: in terms of international importance, it's debatable whether Sydney (for example) qualifies as "top" importance, whereas Riyadh might be "top" given Saudi's oil clout. These are only a taster; let's keep criteria as objective and clear as possible. Folks at 137 (talk) 13:28, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Just a note -- Riyadh is not a good example here, as it is the capital of Saudi Arabia, so it should be top-importance based on the current criteria. Dr. Cash (talk) 15:41, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that the capital of a small podunk country doesn't deserve to have a higher rating than non-capital cities of 5-10 million. We should not sacrifice fairness for clarity Purplebackpack89 (talk) 16:08, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

A capital is a capital - as I've said, so far we've used importance as a way of separating national capitals. I don't argue that Tallinn has more clout than, say, St Petersburg, just that it has a specific status. BTW, some "podunk" capitals (and cities) have other rationale (cultural, historic, etc) for higher status Folks at 137 (talk) 17:31, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

A better example might be a city like Pittsburgh -- only a relatively small city population of about 300,000 (though the metro is more like 2.5-3 million). But with the recent G-20 summit in September, a Super Bowl and a Stanley Cup victory in the same year, there could be some arguing for an increase in the importance scale (not that I'm suggesting this, and not that anyone is suggesting this, for that matter; this is just an example). Dr. Cash (talk) 17:26, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

A G-20 summit location might count briefly in international profile, but definitely not locations of local sports competitions. Unless every location of the European Cup and UEFA Europa League qualifies. BTW, Riyadh as a small capital of an influential nation, was a deliberate choice. Folks at 137 (talk) 17:31, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Top-importance and the multiple capitals of South Africa

The Cape Town article has been flip-flopping between High-importance and Top-importance, because it may or may not be considered a national capital. South Africa's current constitution doesn't actually specify a capital, but the general wisdom (as taught in South African schools, etc.) is that there are three capitals: Pretoria for the executive branch, Cape Town for the legislative, and Bloemfontein for the judicial. But if one is absolutely forced to name a single capital, Pretoria is it. So I'd like to find out what the community's opinion is: is it unfair, so to speak, for South Africa to have multiple Top-importance cities (in which case Pretoria must be Top and Cape Town and Bloemfontein High, since they are both also provincial capitals) or should all three be Top? (The historical basis, by the way, is that the South Africa Act 1909 made Pretoria the "seat of government", Cape Town the "seat of Parliament", and Bloemfontein the "seat of the Appellate Division" [the highest appeals court]). By the way, I note with a little amusement that Cape Town is currently listed as an example of a Top-importance city on the priority scale - I'm going to remove it for now while this discussion goes on. - htonl (talk) 21:35, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Reverted. It's not the national capital. "There can be only one." Dr. Cash (talk) 22:29, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I'm afraid that Cash is wrong on this point, especially considering an ongoing discussion of non-capital cities having top importance. If you want Cape Town to be top, I wouldn't stop you. It's a Meta 1000 article. Purplebackpack89 (talk) 23:11, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't mind that much one way or the other. I'd just like to figure out some kind of community consensus so that we don't end up with a candidate for Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars on our hands. ;-) Recognising, of course, that if the criteria for Top-importance change then the whole question might become moot. - htonl (talk) 01:57, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Why does Mr. Purple here just want to keep proving me "wrong". It's not like I pissed in his Cheerios this morning or anything. Maybe he really does have a small you-know-what and he's compensating for something? Jeebus! Dr. Cash (talk) 15:39, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

If the consensus is Cape Town is a capital, you have to respect that. And it's likely bigger than yours Purplebackpack89 (talk) 16:10, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Yours is bigger than Cape Town? Wow! You must have serious problems pulling out! You should probably see a Doctor about that,... ;-) Dr. Cash (talk) 17:22, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Odd Canadian reassessments

Have alook at the change lists. There's a small group of minor Canadian settlements in Saskatchewan that are repeatedly reassessed, flip-flopping class and importance ratings. One I've checked has no change history ... ! Anyone know what's going on? Is someone showing compulsive behaviour or is there a mad bot? Folks at 137 (talk) 23:16, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Pune Cantonment

This appears to be a military base and not really a city. Though it appears to have some characteristics of cities. Does this article really belong in this wikiproject? WTF? (talk) 18:51, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

List assessment

There does not seem to be a consistent way of assessment for lists. Nor does the assessment scale for the normal article provide real guidance. I would suggest a guideline along these lines, please let me know what you think. CRwikiCA (talk) 08:30, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

• Top: World wide lists, entry to the list is not restricted
• High: Continental lists, entry to the list is restricted to cities on the named continent(s)
• Mid: National lists, entry to the list is restricted to cities in the named nation(s)
• Low: Subdivisional list, entry to the list is restricted to cities in the named country subdivision(s).

These would however not properly classify lists about sister cities of a city, which I would then categorize within the scope of the "home" cities. CRwikiCA (talk) 12:29, 10 February 2013 (UTC)