Wikivoyage talk:Geographical hierarchy

Archived discussions Wikivoyage talk:Geographical hierarchy/Archive 2004-2013 Wikivoyage talk:Geographical hierarchy/Archive 2014-2015

one large or many small articles

Swept in from the pub

I would like some input on recommendations regarding whether it is best to have a number of small location articles or have a single good sized one? This is not a policy discussion but more aesthetics and usefulness to the reader. Take for example Beer, Branscombe and Seaton, all close to one another, is enough attractions to make each a usable article but there is never going to be more than a couple of listings per section. Or Grantchester, is this far enough outside Cambridge (England) and enough information to be its own article? No debate all these settlement are in their own right valid destinations but it is useful to the traveller to click through lots of small articles? --Traveler100 (talk) 12:23, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

I think it's hard to tell if you don't know the place... Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:59, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

One thing to consider is if you sleep in one place would you have dinner in the other. Beer is 1.5 miles from Seaton so walking to have dinner in the other is quite possible. Branscombe is 4 miles away, and some buses between the two go via Sidmouth, which is about 5 miles from Branscombe. So my thought is that Beer could be merged into Seaton. With the name Beer, it may be worth considering how many readers would be looking for an article about the drink, and would they be confused reading about Seaton? I think that I would leave Branscombe as it is, mainly because it is midway between two places it could be merged with, and the distance is probably a little too big to merge in a place with multiple listings. AlasdairW (talk) 22:37, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

I've been struggling with this with Australian articles recently. I guess the question what would you find more useful when visiting? My preference is for a large article covering many smaller places, but not precluding splitting off a smaller location if the quantity of material is large enough. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:26, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

I like the idea of where you would go for diner from where you are staying, useful concept/guideline. On the specific of the example I was thinking of making Beer a disambiguation page. --Traveler100 (talk) 08:04, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

On that topic, I can't find any policy guidance on how to disambiguate between places and topics that share the same name. All of our guidelines assume that naming conflicts are only for one place against another place. Powers ^(talk) 15:40, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Breadcrumbs (isPartOf) for destinations covering two regions

Swept in from the pub

I recently created a park article for the Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch UNESCO area. This site lies on the border of the Valais and the Bernese Highlands regions and has significant parts in both regions, therefore I marked it as part of Switzerland. This was then changed by AndreCarrotflower to be in only one region (Valais in this case). A discussion arose to which way is the correct way.

The problem is that both methods are used on WV. Examples:

• Articles which put a shared article into only one region: Yellowstone, Texarkana, Lloydminster, Death Valley National Park, Russia (most examples from above discussion)

• Articles which put an article in the next biggest shared region: Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Zion National Park, Aral Sea, Thousand Islands.

The problem is that there doesn't seem to be any official policy on this (or at least I couldn't find any). The only reference to this problem I could find is at Wikivoyage:Breadcrumb navigation#Under the covers, but this does not describe very well how this should be handled for new articles. (And it's not up to date, as Russia is now marked as part of Europe). How should this be handled? Drat70 (talk) 00:46, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

The problem with at least a few of the articles in the second list is that they're mischaracterized. As it doesn't fall anywhere within the regional division scheme of either New York (state) or Ontario, Thousand Islands should be an extrahierarchical region (taking Template:Extraregion rather than Template:Guideregion; extraregions also have null article statuses - they can't be Guides, Usable, etc. - though I don't necessarily agree with that policy). As well, Aral Sea, which is currently inexplicably characterized as a park, should also be an extraregion. Unlike bottom-level destinations (i.e. cities, Huge City districts, and parks), extraregions pretty consistently follow the rule of being placed in the next biggest shared region as far as the breadcrumb hierarchy goes. However, Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch, as a bona fide Park article and therefore a bottom-level destination, IMO needs to be treated differently. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 00:59, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I see what you mean. I specifically looked for park articles which were put into the next biggest shared region: Curonian Spit, La Amistad International Park and Mount Nimba Strict Nature Reserve as well as above mentioned Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Zion National Park. It seems to me that those parks who are put into only one region either have the majority of their area in one region or are big enough to be split up into two articles. For destinations which are more or less equally shared among two territories, I think it makes sense to put it into the next biggest shared entity. Whichever way it is done however, I think there should be some better defined rules on this. Drat70 (talk) 02:48, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Anyone else has inputs on this? I think this is still not very consistent. Drat70 (talk) 01:17, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Niagara Falls and Nogales are {{extraregion}} as they are containers which hold two cities each. Thousand Islands is a bit more awkward as there are no cities under it, so it can't be a region. The only villages on the islands are tiny places like Marysville (Wolfe Island ON K0H 2Y0) and Fineview (Wellesley Island NY 13640) with fewer than a thousand people each. That makes 1000 Islands a bottom-level destination, like Prince Edward County (one municipality) or Rural Montgomery County. It's not a region, so it can't be an extraregion. The same would be true of Jellystone Park as a park article.

There's also the not-so-minor detail that extraregions exist outside our main hierarchy - which is fine if they're Niagara-sized, but awkward for something Russia-sized which needs to be in the hierarchy as it's a whole country. An extraregion works well for certain applications - something like Sioux City] or the Quad Cities where there are a few clearly-defined twin cities-like entities which can be grouped as a highly-local region across a boundary. It just works poorly for Glenrio-sized entities as there are no individual cities under them. K7L (talk) 12:53, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

I think it is fairly simple for extra-hierarchical regions; just use the smallest in-hierarchy region that includes the whole thing. I've done that with several — Bactria, Ferghana Valley, Lake Tai, Panay, Negros, ...

Where there's a problem is if in-hierarchy regions need to span others. Also are Russia, Turkey or the Caucasus in Europe or Asia, Iran in the Middle East or Central Asia, etc.? Pashley (talk) 14:11, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Okay, I see from the discussion how it works for extra-hierarchical regions and that if a region spans more than one region it should be made into one of those. That doesn't work however for bottom-level articles such as Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch, which is a park article and can't be a region because there's no real towns inside. So what is the proper way of attributing it to a region? I still don't think it makes sense to choose one of them in cases where it's split in more or less equal parts. Drat70 (talk) 14:22, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

There is another case of this that just popped up. Standing Rock is a bottom level article which has been created and which straddles two regions. It has thus been declared as part of Great Plains which is quite high up in the geographical hierarchy. How is this case different from the one that started this discussion (Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch) and how should that be treated? Drat70 (talk) 07:35, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Russia / Europe

Swept in from the pub

Hi there,

The Kiwix team has released a European version of Offline Wikivoyage, but then realised that Russian cities are not included. This is weird since Russia appears to be in category:Europe as a page... but not as a country category. I've seen this change happen in 2014, but I do find rather suprising that Turkey would only have {{|isPartOf|Europe}} while Russia only has {{IsPartOf|Asia}}. So here is my question:

• Can a country belong to two continents (and therefore have two {{IsPartOf}} (I would think of Israel and Cyprus as other countries with a double location)?
• If not, then shouldn't Russia be in Europe and Turkey in Asia?

Thanks, Popo le Chien (talk) 14:01, 15 August 2016 (UTC) 

Unfortunately - as far as I know - any child region can only belong to one parent region. So Russia can only be in either Europe or Asia. Extraregions (regions that otherwise don't fit into the regional hierarchy) are usually formally child regions of the regional element to which they fully belong without any overlap into other regions. So "Harz" would be a child of "Germany" in that logic as it crosses state boundaries. Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:44, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Maybe better if there was a new top level region for Eastern-Europe/(Western)Central-Asia, consisting of Russia, Turkey and the Caucasus. Although there is a risk of being dragged into an argument over Ukraine. --Traveler100 (talk) 18:18, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Ok, that's far from ideal - there's a Eurasia region, but that does not really solve the issue, does it? Would it make more sense at least to "move" Russia to Europe then? Popo le Chien (talk) 06:14, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Agree not ideal, just a though for others to consider. For now have fixed the category. --Traveler100 (talk) 07:41, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Can't we manually add Category:Russia to Category:Asia? Powers ^(talk) 13:37, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't think there's a perfect solution -

1. Category:Eurasia would create a new top-level geographic category, which isn't ideal.
2. Adding Category:Russia to Category:Asia wouldn't fix the issue where the breadcrumb for Siberia shows it as part of Europe.
3. There was a past effort to create sub-regions solely for breadcrumb purposes, but while that approach would fix Russian sub-regions, we would still have to pick either Asia or Europe for the breadcrumb on the Russia article. The idea was that "Russia (Europe)" and "Russia (Asia)" would be created as redirects to Russia, but would be either {{isPartOf}} Europe or Asia (not Russia), so breadcrumb trails would look like "Europe > Russia (Europe) > Central Russia" or "Europe > Russia (Asia) > Siberia". It looks like that effort was aborted (see Talk:Russia (Asia)), but it might be worth revisiting.

-- Ryan • (talk) • 04:18, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't aiming to fix the breadcrumb issue, but rather the issue User:Popo le Chien identified. Powers ^(talk) 01:32, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

{{IsPartOf}} is designed to be hierarchical. I suggest you use the latitude/longitude of each article to decide whether you want it or not. Just choose a few segments and do basic math (see http://gis.stackexchange.com/a/80408/1013 for an example). God luck :-) Syced (talk) 07:53, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Places straddling (open) borders

Swept in from the pub

So we have had an issue with places that are to be found on both sides of an open border. Should two separate articles be created for towns the size of Rheinfelden even if the border has little to no effect on travelers or should the smaller be redirected to the larger part? What about breadcrumbs? Hobbitschuster (talk) 13:55, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

The same question is already open at Talk:Laufenburg (Germany). If the place is really tiny, one Glenrio-sized article could cover both sides. K7L (talk) 14:44, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

If the border has no discernible effect on the travel experience, there's no reason to have two articles when one would suffice (unless both sides of the border has a metropolis that just happens to share a name, though I don't know of any examples). The breadcrumb trail could be via the country with more of the town's territory; e.g. the Netherlands seem to have slightly more of the frankly ridiculous Baarle than Belgium. But there's no reason why the region articles on both side of the border can't link to the towns in question. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:50, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Kansas City (Kansas) and Kansas City, Missouri have the same name. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:35, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

So they do. I quite like the Mexicali / Calexico approach, even though it's such a New World approach. Maybe Kansas City, KS should be called Missouri City. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:09, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

I think the breadcrumbs issue needs to be addressed properly. It has been handled very inconsistently and there seems to be no clear consensus on what to do about it. See for instance this discussion I tried to start a while ago: Geographical_hierarchy#Breadcrumbs_.28isPartOf.29_for_destinations_covering_two_regions Drat70 (talk) 01:08, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

What sort of breadcrumbs go well with Thousand Islands dressing? I've been using croutons. :) K7L (talk) 01:41, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

National Park covering two different countries

Iguaçu_Falls is a national park on both sides of the Brazil-Argentinian border, and the article covers both in high detail. Since the detail given to Brazil is not applicable to Argentina and vice-versa, should it not better be a disambiguation page and content merged to Iguaçu_National_Park on the Brazilian side and a new article on the Argentina side? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 22:20, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

I think we potentially want individual answers for individual parks here. Sometimes the park is really different from country to country or even sub-national entities really matter, but sometimes there is an open border within the park and the administrative line in the whatever does no really correspond to what the visitor experiences... Hobbitschuster (talk) 22:38, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

It's not a disambiguation as that infers multiple unrelated entities with the same name. The {{extraregion}} model might apply (as was used for Niagara Falls) but it's a judgement call... how much information is there and how much is duplicated across both sides? If there isn't enough here for two articles worth of text, it may be best to leave it together. I think Waterton Glacier International Peace Park is taking this too far – everything is split out and duplicated, including the climate and the wildlife? K7L (talk) 23:12, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Probably Niagara_Falls works best. The border is not as open as (say) Germany-Poland, but not incredibly tight either. Andrewssi2 (talk) 00:49, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Greenland

Greenland is geographically part of America but politically of Europe, as part of the Nordic countries and the kingdom of Denmark. Normally geography is more relevant for the traveller, but in this case, as there seems to be no easy way to get to Greenland from the rest of America, I think it would make sense to have Greenland PartOf Nordic countries. North America does not say much about the island.

I raised the issue at Talk:Greenland#PartOf: North America or Nordic countries, where I suppose those interested in Greenland will most easily find it.

--LPfi (talk) 10:11, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Airport information in district articles

Swept in from the pub

So this edit removed information about how to get from SXF ^IATA to Berlin/Tempelhof and Neukölln and as keen eyes might notice, the information provided there differed in wording and detail from the one still provided in Berlin and there was notably no mention of TXL ^IATA, because its location with regards to that district is beyond awkward. I think airports should be listed in district articles if they are a)contained within said district or b)if their access is particularly notable to/from that district. The information should be there if it serves our readers and particularly in multi airport cities. We should of course tailor our information. If there is a "stupid rich people with more money than time shuttle" that costs 40€ and makes no stops other than downtown and the airport and a local train, we should list only the local train in the district article through which the shuttle passes without stopping. What do you think? Is there a policy on this issue, should there be? And if so what should it be? Hobbitschuster (talk) 03:31, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree with you. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:11, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

A similar edit also occurred here removing info on SXF from Berlin/Treptow Köpenick. Hobbitschuster (talk) 04:22, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Well, I'm not sure there needs to be a full listing in every district article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:02, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

I don't think we should mention details about airports on each district page. This will be hard to maintain because people will forget to adjust details on every district page, and readers will be left with confusing and inconsistent information. By the way, I didn't remove all of the information how to get from the airport to the district. However, I'm not sure to what degree it is useful to mention each public transport line that will bring you from the airport to the district (and whether it should be in a "By plane" or "By tram/..." section). Maybe this should only be listed if there is a special bus/... that a traveler new to the city won't find right away.

Regarding the removed information in particular, I don't think it is important to the traveler to be reminded on each district page that the BER airport is not yet open, and that certain tunnels are not yet built or planned for.

Also relevant for this discussion is Berlin/Reinickendorf and Spandau, where I would remove the airport details just in the same way as in the previously mentioned districts. Xsobev (talk) 13:53, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Tegel is literally inside the district of Reinickendorf. If it isn't listed there, where should it be listed? I mean we list the former THF airport in Berlin/Tempelhof and Neukölln and we should sure do the same for TXL once it shuts down. And the two mentioned articles are with regards to SXF the one it is physically closest to (hence why mentioning U7 there is germane) and the one to which it is best connected (hence why the S-Bahn should be dealt with in more detail there). Neither airport is mentioned or should be mentioned in any of the other district articles Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:52, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Tegel Airport - as part of Berlin's infrastructure - is covered in detail on the main Berlin#Tegel_International_Airport page, and I think that's the only appropriate location. The former THF airport in Berlin/Tempelhof and Neukölln is no longer part of the infrastructure, but became a sight/park itself (that's why it's listed as a "see" listing). Once Tegel is shut down and proves to be a sight relevant for the traveler, then of course it can be mentioned as a "see" listing (but then certainly not as part of "Get in"). Xsobev (talk) 17:24, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘You'll perhaps notice that Berlin#Get in also mentions a bunch of train stations and the likes that are mentioned again in the district articles wherein they are contained. Should we remove them too? TXL certainly is a way to get into Reinickendorf, just the same as Spandau station is a way to get into Spandau. And SXF is a way to get into the two districts we have covering the Southeast of Berlin. Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:35, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

My understanding of the "Get in" section in district pages is that they provide information of the sort: "I'm in Berlin, how do I get to Reinickendorf", but not "I'm in Paris, how do I get to Reinickendorf". Therefore, airports should be covered in the main city page, and not on the district pages. I'm not sure about train stations, but no matter how they are handled, details should only be at one location (either at the main city page or at the appropriate district page) in the same way that detailed listings are only on the district pages, and on the main city page there are only pointers to the most important ones. My reason for that is maintainability and consistent information for the traveler as pointed out earlier. No matter how this issue is resolved, a good place to document it would be in Wikivoyage:District_article_template#Get_in I guess. Xsobev (talk) 19:35, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree. A district's "Get in" section is taken in the context of its city, and explains how to get into that district given that you're already in the city. It would be fine for Manhattan/Financial District and Manhattan/Midtown East to mention that there's helicopter service between helipads in those districts to/from JFK. But an airport that serves the whole city belongs in the city's article. --Bigpeteb (talk) 19:55, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Some Berliners are petty and provincial enough to say SXF and the future BER don't serve the entire city. As evidenced by some of the 2017 referendum results. Anyway I think there is different information about the same place that can go into district and city articles. Like in the city article I'd focus in the ICE to Hauptbahnhof in the district article I'd mention the S-Bahn and U-Bahn in greater detail. Having however the airport not show up on the map of a district even if it is contained therein seems to me to not help the traveler. And as I said airports can have unwieldy access if there is one local line that gets you right to adjacent district (s) but doesn't reach downtown either at all or fast enough that one clearly is more relevant to the visitors of one part of the city. In addition some airports are architectural or cultural or shopping attractions that visitors might want to go to even if not flying. And furthermore the sight and noise are potential concerns in choosing accommodation. Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:29, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

[edit conflict] (Detailed) Airport information belongs in the main city article, the same goes for other stations that serve as a main entry points to the city as a whole.

That said, I very much agree such airports/stations can also be mentioned in the Get in section of the districts they're located in, especially if getting from the airport to hotels etc. in that district (e.g. 10 minutes walk or a few stops by local bus) differs from getting from the airport to elsewhere in the city (e.g. half an hour to downtown by shuttle bus/train or taxi, and from there onwards by some other transportation). ϒpsilon (talk) 20:34, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Airports absolutely should be mentioned in districts where they're located. Full listings may not be necessary, but not mentioning the airport would be weird and unhelpful. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:28, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

@Hobbitschuster: I'm not quite convinced by some of your reasons, or perhaps by the conclusions.

"Airports can have unwieldy access if there is one local line that gets you right to adjacent district (s) but doesn't reach downtown either at all or fast enough that one clearly is more relevant to the visitors of one part of the city." That may be true in some cases, but it doesn't seem to apply in the edit you linked. (The district's Get in section is quite clear that you should use U7, and the airport's description in the city article explains how to use bus X7 to connect to U7. Why should this district article merit an explanation of how to make a simple public transit connection, and not the 3 other districts that also mention U7?)

"Some airports are architectural or cultural or shopping attractions that visitors might want to go to even if not flying." I question whether any of this is true. But if it were, then the appropriate place to mention it in a district article would be under See or Buy.

"And furthermore the sight and noise are potential concerns in choosing accommodation." The appropriate place to mention this in a district article would be under Sleep. --Bigpeteb (talk) 18:36, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Bigpeteb, that's exactly how I would do it as well. Regarding the other issues, I still don't have a good idea: a) Should airports near or in a district get a (geo) marker so that it shows up on the dynamic map; b) should airport-related public transport that fits into the districts "Get in" section according to your mentioned scenario be under "By plane" or "By metro/subway/..."; c) how do we handle train stations. @Hobbitschuster, did I miss any of your objections? Xsobev (talk) 10:01, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘I also think each and every WV guide should - at least to some extent - work on its own. And thus not mentioning an airport contained in a district makes no sense. Furthermore, some airports are also transportation hubs for local transport (though that's more common for train stations). Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:44, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Airports and stations should definitely be mentioned in the district in which they are in. However this can just be one or two lines, focussing on the local transport to the airport, and leaving another (linked) article to describe the flights. In the unlikely event that the airport has no public access from the district it is still worth mentioning. AlasdairW (talk) 15:23, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

That's fine with me (and I believe that I made the edit(s) that triggered the whole discussion along those lines). I just didn't want to have duplicate information in both the district page and the main page, which will quickly get out of sync (links and details change, airports close).Xsobev (talk) 17:59, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Listings: Low Tatras (national park) or Liptov (higher-level region)?

Currently there is a huge overlap of listings in most sections between Low Tatras (national park) and Liptov (higher-level region). Where each of them they should placed, do we have any clear rule on situations like that?

Specifically I am about to add listings and prose on alpine skiing and related activities (like major spa centers nearby), and it's not entirely clear where to stick each of them (and how to resolve pre-existing overlap between listings of the two articles). --DenisYurkin (talk) 21:20, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Overall, I'd say listings should be placed as low as possible in the hierarchy. ϒψιλον (talk) 22:01, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Sure. But for Liptov vs Low Tatras, looks like they are overlapping; neither is contained in another. However, it's difficult to judge as boundaries for each are not clearly defined. --DenisYurkin (talk) 08:37, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

It would probably better to put the content in the park article, as regions are never bottom level articles.

Also, what says User:Andree.sk (Slovakian user who largely remodelled the regions a while ago)? -- ϒψιλον (talk) 07:52, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

I don't see any overlap between those two, actually...? Which ones do you have in mind? In any case, Liptov should contain (IMO) the highlights, and the other sub-articles should contain details. E.g. I'd probably add Liptov village museum to Liptovský Hrádok (#vicinity), because currently it's only mentioned in Liptov. I guess that's a general problem of more Slovakia regions that I created/extended - that I only added the region-specific highlights into the higher-level regions, and didn't bother adding some bottom-level articles or putting them into the right cities nearby. Maybe one day I'll fix it, if I have time... -- andree.sk(talk) 12:03, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

In any case, I'd probably stick the activities in the park into Low Tatras, and the rest of the stuff either to the cities (you can also create a city article for Liptovsky Jan or whichever spa area you have in mind) and/or Central Liptov/Horehronie/... (or create further region(s) if needed). I don't really have a strong opinion here, but I'd like if we could keep Low Tatras as a comprehensive self-contained guide to the mountain range (including lodging, hiking trails, skiing etc.). It's not that big that it needs multiple articles, IMO. But do as you see fit, in worst case there will be reverts :)))... -- andree.sk(talk) 12:16, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

User:Andree.sk, I just posted an invitation to join us without first checking updates to this thread.

I've fixed some overlap in a quite ad-hoc manner, see my recent edits.

The only question currently open is where to stick Bešeňová and Tatralandia. Several conflicting thoughts:

• both are most detailed currently in Central Liptov which is region article and should not have listings at all
• Tatralandia is also listed in Liptovský Mikuláš--which is also part of its official address
• both are closest to their respective towns (Besenova and Liptovský Trnovec), which fit the "can you sleep there?" criteria: both water centers are part of their respective hotels
• subjectively, majority of readers looking for either will come from Low Tatras (or, if it is separated at a later point, from Jasna (ski resort)). --DenisYurkin (talk) 12:25, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Oh, so you fixed it... ok... :-) Anyway, regarding Besenova, check 'go next' section in Low Tatras (-> Central Liptov, using the small city template). I'd leave it that way (because there's not really any big city between Ruzomberok and Liptovsky Mikulas; e.g. Tatralandia should be in a 'go next'/vicinity section of Liptovsky Mikulas, IMO). -- andree.sk(talk) 14:32, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Added all I know about Besenova into the Central Liptov. --15:21, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Island article status

Swept in from the pub

Fairly recently the rural area article status type was created, and it was discussed whether or not there should be a new "island" article status separate from rural area status. At the time I argued in favor of a separate status, but as I have added rural area status to articles, I've noticed that there is definitely some overlap between the two. The problem is that there are islands that truly operate as rural areas: Fehmarn is a good example. But others, examples including Guadalupe Island and Sable Island, really aren't rural areas, because they're small and, most importantly from the traveler's perspective, remote. Perhaps these should be park articles while the less remote islands become "rural areas"?

Policy clarifying article status would be helpful, as none of these remote/rural islands should be "city articles," since almost none of them function as cities; yet many, at least until recently, were given that status. I would propose that any islands that are nature reserves of any sort should be classified as park articles, those with small settlements scattered around without their own articles should be classified as rural areas, and those dominated by a large city should remain city articles.

(Of course islands that are themselves regions, such as Greenland, should remain region articles.) --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 13:15, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:28, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Sometimes island or archipelago article hierarchies get complicated. See Talk:Visayas#Radical_change_proposal for one example. Pashley (talk) 00:19, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Dividing metropolitan areas

According to Wikivoyage,

“ Wikivoyage's definition of a "city" is flexible: they may be literal incorporated cities, but they can also be larger metropolitan areas with suburbs and satellite cities, like Los Angeles or Paris.. ”

However, I have a question on whether we should keep a clear division between city proper and the suburbs while dividing metropolitan areas, like in Los Angeles or Rome. --Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 09:48, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

I had a similar question when reorganising Brisbane. Eventually, I decided to go with a Greater Brisbane article that covers both the City of Brisbane and the suburbs; point is, I think Sbb makes a good point and our policy should be clarified. My 2c is that it depends on a case-by-case basis as this radically differs by country or region. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 10:34, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Goal/non-goal?

Swept in from the pub

I think my memory is failing, but I recall at some point, on some page, there was some language, having some effect like: "WV is a travel guide with the goal of covering the entire world with no gaps." Was something at all like that ever written on any policy or template page? Maybe it was just all just some half-remembered reverie? The "coverage with no gaps" thing is really sticking out to me for some reason. I'm not seeing it on the wikivoyage namespace pages or the talk pages, but I haven't checked them all. Thanks! ButteBag (talk) 15:22, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Are you looking for Wikivoyage:Geographical hierarchy#Gaps? A long way down the page, but the wording seems to match your memory. –LPfi (talk) 15:42, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

This must be it, thank you so much! I guess I just didn't scroll far enough. ButteBag (talk) 16:13, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Suburbs of a huge city

Swept in from the pub

Wikivoyage:Geographical hierarchy says, "Wikivoyage's definition of a "city" is flexible: they may be literal incorporated cities, but they can also be larger metropolitan areas with suburbs and satellite cities, like Los Angeles or Paris, [...] Whether particular suburbs, satellite cities, and villages deserve their own Wikivoyage entries is a matter of judgement – usually depending on the amount of information about those places." However, I have a question for suburbs of a huge city. Should the suburbs with sufficient content be separate cities or districts of the huge city? Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 07:42, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

I don't have a universal opinion (i.e. one that works for all cities), but it would be good to have some clarification of Special:Diff/4557065. I think exurbs that are a fair distance away from its CBD and don't fall into any other district (e.g. Sydney/Brooklyn) can have their own articles, though. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 07:52, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

[edit conflict] Mostly attractions in suburbs are visited during a visit to the main city, and they are thought of as parts of it by most travellers. Would people travel to the suburb, sleep there, eat there and visit its attractions without travelling to the main city other than possibly en route to and from the suburb? In the latter case having an independent article might make more sense.

Large metropolitan areas, where distances are so long that sleeping in one part of it and visiting attractions in another isn't practical, may be better treated as regions, with only the central part a "huge city". Whether individual suburbs and satellite cities have identities of their own and enough to list ("information" above) also should be weighted in.

–LPfi (talk) 08:01, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

(And, of course, how the partitioning works with the hierarchy of the enclosing region. Would the suburb warrant a listing among the cities on the region page, side by side with the metropolis? Are similar suburbs treated as districts? Would breaking out several of them break the structure?) –LPfi (talk) 08:06, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

I have seen several suburbs that can be visited without visiting the core city, especially if the suburbs are separated by a waterbody and/or are more than 20 km (12 mi) from the city centre. Such suburbs can be treated as separate cities IMO. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 09:19, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes. Whatever best serves the travellers; we are not bound by any formal criteria. Where most or some travellers would perceive the suburb as a separate city but we choose to have it as a district, we can use a redirect (and mention them in the city one-liner on the region page). If we treat it as a separate city, we can still mention it (or all of them collectively) in the Districts section, in Understand or in Go next. –LPfi (talk) 09:49, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, thank you for clarification. I was curious on whether we should include all the suburbs of a city despite some of them are perceived to be separate cities. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 12:55, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

A lot of that really depends on how well they are integrated into the city. In New York City, we think of the suburbs as all very distinct from the city, whereas in some other cities like Washington, D.C., parts of neighboring states are very commonly called Washington, and then there's the case of L.A. that was mentioned above. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:59, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Wikivoyage:The traveller comes first applies. One important factor is the mode of transportation. In old towns and other urban districts, it make sense to include places which are within reach on foot. Our limits for a city could possibly include places within reach of a metro, tram or other public transport network. For local residents, the limit for work commuting might create the identity of a city. But in the end, we should decide case-by-case where to draw borders. /Yvwv (talk) 14:27, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

"Huge cities" that are actually rural areas

Bumping up a discussion on Talk:Miyoshi (Tokushima): Japan has many administrative "cities" like this one that were recently created by agglomerating a number of rural towns into one. However, from the traveller's POV, the various places within city boundaries (Iya Valley, Ikeda, Oboke and Koboke) are still standalone destinations and should be templated as such, not made into districts of the administering city (which, with a total population of 20k, is barely even a city, much less a huge one).Jpatokal (talk) 04:13, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

The issue here at hand seems to be the name, which I can't find a suitable alternative for. Just like how we call a tiny village of 30 a "city" on Wikivoyage, we're going to have to live with calling 20k districtified cities as "huge cities". So other than name, this is really a non-issue. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 12:24, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Uhh, no, we aren't? Iya Valley, Ikeda, Oboke and Koboke are three distinct places that happily used small city/rural area templates for years before some Japanese bureaucrat decided to increase their budget by relabeling their podunk 郡 (rural district) as a 市 (city). The three simply do not function as districts of a single city from the traveller's point of view: you can't stay in Ikeda and commute to Iya on a lark, it would take hours each way on public transport.

If we want to geographically bundle them under Miyoshi, that's fine (if still IMHO unnecessary, everything worthwhile in Tokushima (prefecture) fits neatly into 7+2 destinations), but having to type out Miyoshi (Tokushima)/Oboke and Koboke etc every time you want to link to one is completely pointless. And to add insult to injury the breadcrumbs don't even work right, I'm currently seeing "... > Miyoshi (Tokushima) > Miyoshi (Tokushima)/Iya Valley". Jpatokal (talk) 12:43, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

If travellers will see Miyoshi as a city, then it is a city. SHB2000 (t | c | m) 12:48, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

That's what I'm saying: they won't. "Miyoshi" is not a destination, it's a container.

I also draw your attention to Wikivoyage:Geographical hierarchy, which states that "As a general principle, a city with over a million inhabitants could be considered for districtification". Miyoshi has 0.02M (23,000 in 2020, probably under 20,000 by now). Jpatokal (talk) 12:55, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Worst case scenario, categorise the three districts directly under Tokushima and make Miyoshi an extraregion. I say that not because of Miyoshi's population, but how empty the article is. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 13:01, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

This would actually be my preferred option. Jpatokal (talk) 00:48, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Shall we opt for that option then? SHB2000 (t | c | m) 02:58, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

• When it comes to districtifying, I don't see any metric being better than content. If there is enough for 3+ districts, I don't see why population should prevent districtifying or require us to deny the existence of the city. Many people visit 2 or all of these districts during their visit to the area. In particular, Oboke/Koboke and the Iya Valley are very commonly visited together. It's not odd at all. The current "Miyoshi" article is sparse because it's new and undeveloped, but it could be useful for those visiting more than one of these areas. As I stated in the other thread, there are pamphlets and travel brochures for "Miyoshi" that cover all of the area. There are also some for specific areas, but that's common.

Since it was brought up: When I look at the Miyoshi (Tokushima)/Ikeda article, it just says "Ikeda" at the top, but when I look at Miyoshi (Tokushima)/Iya Valley, I see the entire "Miyoshi (Tokushima)/Iya Valley" at the top. Aren't they all supposed to look like Ikeda's? All of Osaka's districts and most of Tokyo's are like that. Is there something that can be done to make them all look like Ikeda? Why do some districts have the full name with the / and others just have what's after the /? ChubbyWimbus (talk) 13:09, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Because |pgname= was left empty. I've fixed these. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 13:33, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! The pages look much better! ChubbyWimbus (talk) 14:10, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

• Why not make Miyoshi a region article? The fact that it's officially labeled as a city in the Japanese administrative system doesn't imply that Wikivoyage should try to fit it into our city article structure. From User:Jpatokal's comments, it sounds like it's a place that feels more like a region than a big city. There are cases in China where we've done something similar – for instance Jiangmen is a Wikivoyage region article, even though it's officially administered as a city. Is there any reason "huge city" makes more sense than "region" in this case? —Granger (talk · contribs) 13:30, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Jiangmen states that it also has 4 real cities in the region, so it seems a bit different. In this case, we have 3 articles from the same city. I just don't see why we should treat it differently just because we have prejudices against the city. Ikeda and Oboke/Koboke are 20-30 minutes away by train, so you can definitely use Ikeda as a base for exploring the other 2. Travelers use Takamatsu and Kochi as bases, which are much further away. Regardless of how famous Miyoshi is, what exactly is the "harm" in having the Miyoshi article? What is the benefit in trying to hide Miyoshi from the travelers? Even if the perceived benefit to having the Miyoshi article is believed to be low, there are still benefits whereas not having the Miyoshi article doesn't really appear to have any benefits. It seems to be about the term "huge city", which is more of a behind-the-scenes WV thing that doesn't matter to the traveler. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 14:09, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

I know nothing about this place, so I take no view on whether it should be a region with x-number of cities or a districted city with x-number of districts, and I think that discussion is probably better continued at Talk:Miyoshi (Tokushima), or possibly at Talk:Japan if there are several similar cases to consider.

I suggest we take up the question of whether to use some terminology other than "huge city" for cities that are districted on Wikivoyage in a separate thread. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:02, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

@ChubbyWimbus: It sounds like you haven't understood my comment. My suggestion is converting the article to a region article. I'm not suggesting that we delete it or try to hide it from travelers, I haven't said anything about how famous it is, and I haven't said that the value of the article is low. I'm not sure what makes you think I have "prejudices against the city". Like Ikan Kekek, I don't know anything about Miyoshi, so I can only offer suggestions based on this discussion, based on how other places are organized on Wikivoyage, and based on the article itself. You also haven't answered my question: Is there any reason "huge city" makes more sense than "region" in this case? —Granger (talk · contribs) 16:05, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

As I said, I have no idea which designation makes more sense in this instance. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:29, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

(undent) I would like to reach agreement on when districted huge cities are necessary. Here's a few more cases that (IMHO) should be regions, not huge cities:

• Inari municipality (no article), population 7000, area 17,333.65 km2. Destinations include Ivalo, Inari (village), Saariselkä, and Sevettijärvi.
• Chongqing (municipality) (yup, same 市 as Miyoshi), population 32M, area 82,403 km2. Chongqing is a huge city, other destinations within the municipality: Dazu, Qijiang
• Tokyo (prefecture) (都, "metropolis"). Central Tokyo is a huge city as it should be, the outlying suburbs/mountains/islands stretching 1000 km into the Pacific are separate.

Strawman: A huge city should be a single cohesive whole from the traveller's point of view. Administrative "cities" spanning thousands of square kilometers, with multiple disconnected urban areas, are better off as regions. Jpatokal (talk) 01:03, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

How big in area is Los Angeles? I doubt we can make a universal definition of districted cities, other than that they are districted on Wikivoyage for the benefit of travelers. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:49, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Los Angeles is an unusual place, and as the saying goes, "hard cases make bad law". I just looked and found that we have, for example, Los Angeles/Northwest (district) breadcrumbed to Los Angeles (huge city), but we also have Santa Monica (city) breadcrumbed to Westside (Los Angeles County) (region) breadcrumbed to Los Angeles. Regardless of what standards we apply, LA will probably stay an unusual case.

In my mind an important question is "Does it feel like a city?" (or as User:Jpatokal puts it, "a single cohesive whole from the traveller's point of view"). Shenzhen and Dongguan (officially "prefecture-level cities") are broadly comparable in area and population, but to me Shenzhen mostly feels like one huge city whereas Dongguan feels more like a collection of towns, so I have argued in favor of districtifying Shenzhen as a huge city but turning Dongguan into a region article. —Granger (talk · contribs) 04:20, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Los Angeles is in the same bucket as Tokyo (prefecture) and Chongqing (municipality): a districted huge city core, and a region rural/suburban hinterland. Jpatokal (talk) 09:18, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

I would oppose changing L.A. County to a region. If we did that, how would we define cities within it for the benefit of travelers, given that the City of L.A. is an oddly serpentine place that excludes independent cities like Culver City and Santa Monica that ordinary people think of as part of L.A.? My feeling is that case-by-case discussions are best had on individual cities'/areas' talk pages. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:59, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

This was covered ably by User:Yvwv at the end of the thread immediately above this one. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:01, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

For avoidance of doubt, I'm not proposing any changes to LA here, if anything I think the current structure is perfect: huge city with districts for the central core and regions for the outlying regions. IMHO this structure is probably better than splitting these in two like Chongqing and Tokyo do. Jpatokal (talk) 23:57, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

(undent) Regarding this idea of making cities into regions, in what way(s) is this difference meant to manifest compared to listing cities as cities? It still seems to be all about avoiding the "huge city" label, which I am surprised is given so much thought and weight. "Huge city" should just be any city that can support more than 2 districts. There is no reason to give it any more thought beyond that. It seems pointless to make cities into regions just to avoid calling certain places "huge cities" on the backend. We have lots of "city" articles that aren't cities. What is so special about the "huge city" template/label that we need to be so puritanical about it? "Exceptions that prove the rule" is always a thing, but I don't see why we can't just districtify anyplace that can hold 3 or more districts. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 11:23, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Huge cities are different from all other cities because they have districts. Districts break our neat geographical hierarchy and impose an ongoing overhead because every single reference to them has to use awkward long names of the form [[Somecity/Randomdistrict|Randomdistrict]]. This is tolerable and the least bad option when the district is clearly tied to its containing city (Canberra/Civic); it serves no useful purpose when the "district" is actually a standalone destination (Miyoshi (Tokushima)/Oboke and Koboke).

In addition, if you have a "huge city" that's actually not a cohesive city, there's next to nothing useful you can put in it. Miyoshi (Tokushima) is an excellent showcase of this going wrong, since the Get in and Get around sections just say, and I quote, "For proper access information, it is best to check the pages for the individual districts listed above". Jpatokal (talk) 23:52, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't know that part of the world, but I am with Jpatokal here on the general level. Only when readers expect something to be treated as a city, or they should be told that something is a city, should we create a huge city article. When a region (or rural area) article works, what's the point in creating a huge city? What an area is called administratively bears close to no weight. –LPfi (talk) 05:46, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

On the other hand, in this case, the question is whether the "districts" should be kept together in a group or not. We don't want to have one subregion along with a bunch of cities (but we can make the Miyoshi article an extraregion – or split up all the prefecture in subregions). The current content of Miyoshi suggests that using Get in and Go next to refer to the other "districts" is enough (with the administrative region mentioned in Understand, with a link to the extraregion article). –LPfi (talk) 05:57, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

It seems rather dishonest to say that the Miyoshi (Tokushima) article, which was just created a couple weeks ago and has not yet been converted into a proper article, is indicative of something. Saying "refer to the districts" is a filler to avoid an empty section. Note that it also states there are buses connecting the areas. It just doesn't give specifics, because it's a new article and the content is there to be expanded upon.

Maybe making places regions might make sense when there ARE regions, like in the Chinese city example above, but in the case of Miyoshi, it seems a bit silly to fabricate other regions just because we have personal animosity towards a merger that happened quite a long time ago. When the merger occurred, "Miyoshi" was purely administrative, but as I stated above, time has passed. There are now travel brochures and pamphlets of the city, and they ARE useful, because people do visit and are interested in visiting more than one of the districts of Miyoshi. This whole discussion reads like a solution in search of a problem. It began under the heading "Districts considered harmful". No examples of "harm" have been provided while I have stated some benefits. The article is doing no harm and has the potential to do good. Making it a singular "region" among cities messes up the hierarchy unnecssarily as does creating other regions to accommodate this unnecessary change. If we leave it as a city, we don't have to do anything weird. It works well as a city in the hierarchy and it is a city. It's a win-win. The traveler does not "lose" in any way. Even aesthetically, it now says "Iya Valley", "Ikeda", and "Oboke and Koboke" on the district articles, so those who are bothered by the merger or want to view Oboke as an isolated place, don't have to see "Miyoshi" in the article. It's a win-win-win. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 11:24, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm not dishonest in saying that the current content suggests something, as that's the information I have. I don't see why the area has to be treated as one city – it is common that the main city in a region is a travel hub that can be used as base for exploring a region, without the region being one city. I'm afraid that too much weight is placed on the administrative status and travel brochures, but I don't know this area. –LPfi (talk) 14:27, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Where are you getting "personal animosity" from? Japan has been merging villages into cities since the 1800s, and this is a perfectly sensible thing to do because depopulation is rapidly hollowing out the countryside: Miyoshi's population is a quarter of what it used to be in the 1950s. The mistake you are making is assuming that mere use of the character 市 (which actually means "market") to describe this swathe of deep countryside makes this an actual city.

In any case, I have spelled out the downsides earlier, and I will do so again:

• Districts break our neat geographical hierarchy
• They impose an ongoing editing overhead because every single reference to them has to use awkward long names of the form [[Somecity/Randomdistrict|Randomdistrict]]
• Districts serve no useful purpose when the "district" is actually a standalone destination
• If you have a "huge city" that's actually not a cohesive city, there's next to nothing useful you can put in it

And your stated benefits are, what, that some printed pamphlets published by city hall use the name? Seriously?

To attempt to move this discussion in a more productive direction, there are three ways we can go from there:

1. Keep the huge city structure, so hierarchy is Tokushima > Miyoshi > Miyoshi/Oboke and Koboke.
2. Keep Miyoshi as a region but un-districtify its parts: hierarchy is Tokushima > Miyoshi > Oboke and Koboke
3. Make Miyoshi an extraregion and return to pre-April status quo: Tokushima > Oboke and Koboke, with Tokushima > Miyoshi kept as a lightweight extraregion pointing to its three parts

I think we're aligning on #3 here, and Wikivoyage:Extraregion helpfully even confirms that extraregions are meant for "administrative regions that may be important to officials but do not matter much to travellers". Jpatokal (talk) 03:27, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

To address the concerns:

• Districts break our neat geographical hierarchy - No, they do not. Districts are part of the "neat geographical hierarchy". Extraregions, which you are proposing, break the hierarchy. By definition, extraregions are regions that do NOT fit into the actual hierarchy. If the hierarchy is a concern, the districts hold it together while extraregions break it apart. This is a point in favor of the districts not the extraregion.
• They impose an ongoing editing overhead because every single reference to them has to use awkward long names of the form [[Somecity/Randomdistrict|Randomdistrict]] - Redirects are in place for editors who don't want to type the name (except for Ikeda), but more importantly, we should not avoid districtification on the basis of editor convenience.
• Districts serve no useful purpose when the "district" is actually a standalone destination - Many districts are or can be "standalone destinations".
• If you have a "huge city" that's actually not a cohesive city, there's next to nothing useful you can put in it - The districts of Miyoshi are not urban sprawl, but that doesn't mean it's not "cohesive". The areas are close, you can travel between them, you can stay in one area and travel to another, you can do things in at least 2 of the areas in a single day. A traveler with an interest in 2 or more of the districts could be aided by the city article. If a traveler only knows about the Iya Valley, it can also introduce them to other nearby destinations/things to do/places to stay/etc.

And your stated benefits are, what, that some printed pamphlets published by city hall use the name? Seriously? - Yes, "seriously". Travel information about a city seems relevant to travel to me. I don't think it matters where they are printed; they appear in tourist information centers around the prefecture, so Miyoshi has actual visibility to Shikoku/Tokushima travelers. When it comes to this city and these districts, the Iya Valley is the only one that might be known, and even then, most people just say they went to "The vine bridge in Tokushima" not the Iya Valley. Saying "Miyoshi is not well-known to travelers" is ignorning the broader truth that very few people know ANY cities in Tokushima aside from Naruto (Tokushima). Miyoshi isn't less known than Itano or Mima. They're all nice places that deserve articles, but none are well-known. It's a moot point to me in a prefecture where no one knows anyplace very well. If it's a city and it appears in travel information centers as such, it seems sensible to use it and give the districts their names, as was done. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 11:45, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

You're making arguments for what I described as option 2 above. Why do you insist on option 3 then? How does having "Miyoshi (Tokushima)/" tacked in front of the article name and every link to it help either the traveller or the editor here?

I'd also like to hear your opinion about the other three cases I mentioned, namely Chongqing, Tokyo and Inari. Jpatokal (talk) 22:20, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

No, my argument is leaving it as a city, which I think is your "Option 1". If you believe "city/district" is a problem for travelers and editors, that's not specific to Miyoshi.

I don't know enough about Chongqing or Inari to comment. Regarding Tokyo (prefecture), I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with it. If you're arguing about prefectures (都道府県), I can't see them being treated as anything other than regions. They contain actual cities and towns. Ome (青梅市) is a city in Tokyo Prefecture, and there are many more. It seems irrelevant to Miyoshi. Miyoshi is neither a prefecture nor a region. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 12:02, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

You dodged my question there: why option 1 instead of 2? How does having "Miyoshi (Tokushima)/" tacked in front of the article name and every link to it help either the traveller or the editor here?

And here's a Japanese example you may be more familiar with: the islands of (deep breath) Iriomote, Yubu, Taketomi, Kohama, Kuroshima, Hateruma and Hatoma are all administered by Taketomi Town (竹富町). Should we move them to Taketomi/Iriomote, Taketomi/Kuroshima, and my personal favorite, Taketomi/Taketomi?

Jpatokal (talk) 01:12, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

You said I was "insisting on option 3". I merely corrected you. It wasn't a "dodge", but maybe that was a mistype on your part.

Again: If you don't think "city/district" is useful or too exhausting to type for editors, that affects more than just Miyoshi. I already went over the usefulness of calling Miyoshi what it is and keeping the districts with the city (it matches the real-world situation, the districts are visited in conjunction with one another like other cities, they appear together in travel guides at travel information centers like other cities, etc), as well as the awkwardness and breaking of the hierarchy in creating a singular region that is not a region just to avoid calling a city a city. I also already stated that editor convenience is not a valid reason to refuse districtification. If an editor has a self-imposed character limit, they can avoid editing content about any city over their limit. Your dismissal of my responses doesn't mean I didn't address them.

You insisted I address Tokyo Prefecture and when I did, it turned out to be without any purpose or point. Now you want me to talk about islands. It's getting a bit much, but here: An island that can't hold its own article should be put in the article of the city that owns the island. If they can hold an article, they typically work best on their own. None of Miyoshi's districts are islands; it's completely landlocked. This is irrelevant just like Tokyo Prefecture. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 11:56, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Exactly, this affects more than Miyoshi, and that's we're having this discussion on the talk page of Wikivoyage:Geographical hierarchy: we, as a community, need to come to an agreement on what exactly is a "huge city" and what is not, because we clearly don't have one now. Here's the strawman I proposed earlier:

A huge city should be a single cohesive whole from the traveller's point of view. Administrative "cities" spanning thousands of square kilometers, with multiple disconnected urban areas, are better off as regions.

I'm delighted to hear you agree with me that islands should not be districts, even if they are in the same administrative city. Can you humor me and expand a little on why you think so? Is it because water provides a clear "disconnection", but the mountain ranges, forests, and twisty mountain roads of Miyoshi (satellite image) do not? Jpatokal (talk) 02:22, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I suppose it is the water surrounding islands. Concerning Miyoshi, while it is an expansive city (which is another way to look at "huge city"), I don't find the districts to be particularly isolated from one another. Oboke/Koboke and Ikeda are 20-30 minutes away by train. There are places within Nagoya that take longer to reach from Nagoya Station. The same is true for Osaka and other cities, so I don't see Ikeda and Oboke/Koboke as being "disconnected" at all. The Iya Valley doesn't have train access, but using the Vine Bridge as the destination, it takes about 30 minutes to get there by bus from Oboke/Koboke. That sort of bus length is not uncommon in other cities either. Ikeda and the Iya Valley are the most "disconnected" with the bus taking about an hour. That is breaching the longer end of bus travel but it's a direct bus, so no trains or transfers, and I've taken buses like that before, as well. Buses in Pittsburgh can take that long, depending on where you are and where you're going and likely WILL require transfers, so here, too, I don't find it to be particularly special or unusual. For me, it is travel WITHIN the Iya Valley that can be tricky to navigate, not travel between the Iya Valley and the other 2 regions and it's really just a bus schedule issue rather than geographical inaccessibility.

I just don't see the city as actually being "incohesive" and definitely not incohesive from a traveler's perspective. The proximity of the districts and their destinations are actually encouraging for travel between one another rather than discouraging, so I don't see the roads/mountains/forests as actually being isolating factors. You could see some highlights from each district in 1 day by public transport. That's more than could be said for many cities, and with 2 days you could see most of the major AND minor sites in each district. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 13:32, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

In a Huge City, I would generally expect to walk from one district to the next. If I am sleeping in one district, I would look at having dinner in any of the neighbouring districts, but in a regular city I would normally have dinner in the same city. AlasdairW (talk) 22:56, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that wouldn't necessarily apply to car-centric cities like Los Angeles or Austin. You might often need a car. So I don't think we can use that as a determining factor. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:04, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

In fact, a lot of cities in North America/Oceania were unfortunately bulldozed for the car, so definitely shouldn't be a determining factor. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 02:40, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

RFC: When should we use Huge city templates?

Swept in from the pub

Over at Wikivoyage talk:Geographical hierarchy#"Huge cities" that are actually rural areas, ChubbyWimbus and I have been having an extended debate on when "huge city" templates should be applied. To mildly caricature, CW's opinion is that we should use them for anything called a city even when it looks like this, whereas I'm of the equally firm opinion that if it's not a big gray blob on a satellite image, it's not an actual Huge City.

I have proposed the following strawman as a Wikivoyage guideline: A huge city should be a single cohesive whole from the traveller's point of view. Administrative "cities" spanning thousands of square kilometers, with multiple disconnected urban areas, are better off as regions. If you have thoughts either way, please chime in: → Wikivoyage talk:Geographical hierarchy#"Huge cities" that are actually rural areas Jpatokal (talk) 00:46, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree with the general sentiment, but then again, there are also areas with multiple cities forming a contiguous urban area. Malaysia's Klang Valley is an example, where the capital Kuala Lumpur is located, is an example. And you can argue that Tokyo-Osaka is one single urban area. The dog2 (talk) 02:08, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

True, and these contiguous urban areas are not necessarily large. For instance, the county seat of Yulong forms a contiguous urban area with Lijiang's Gucheng District. Hence I have argued against having a separate article for Yulong (See Talk:Yulong). STW932 (talk) 06:57, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

This reminds me of some of the discussions that have been had in relation to China's prefecture-level cities (most of which are what you call 'administrative cities'). See especially Talk:Fuzhou and Talk:Suzhou. Personally I prefer the Jiangmen model whereby all the administrative divisions of the city are kept together in a single region (and are not put together with the administrative divisions of other prefecture-level cities). User: Pashley, however, has strongly argued in favour of the status quo for both Fuzhou and Suzhou. STW932 (talk) 04:26, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

That discussion died a month a go – some revival would be good. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 12:04, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

See also Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub#When should the "Huge city" template be used? above. It appears that using the word city in the template name is distracting editors. I still believe that renaming these would help resolve these disputes. Perhaps city becomes destination? And huge becomes high-content (because huge is meant to be a measure of how much content we have, not how many people live at the destination or how many square kilometers the destination claims)?

I wonder whether the problem here is not whether Template:Hugecity skeleton or Template:Ruralarea skeleton was chosen. The difference between the two is just whether you need ==Districts==, ==Learn==, ==Work==, or ==Cope==, and any article can have those added or removed as needed. I wonder if the issue might more specifically sound like "I don't want the article title to be Miyoshi (Tokushima)/Ikeda. I want the article title to be Ikeda (Tokushima) instead." WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:07, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm getting similar feelings too. The latter title is better for SEO purposes, but that delves into a whole new question of how we want to name our city districts. (FWIW, frwikivoyage and itwikivoyage abandoned this naming structure a long time ago) --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 22:01, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

I think "high-content destination" sounds reasonable. That's the point of having districts. While all current "huge cities" are cities, I don't see there being any major problems in rural areas, parks or dive sites getting districts if an active editor wants to create (useful) such sub-articles – the probability of which I feel is mostly low.

Such a naming change would solve one out of three issues, the others being the mentioned district article titles and the text created by the templates (where "high-content destination" also fits). I think the three are mostly independent.

–LPfi (talk) 07:01, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

(SHB2000, do we really care whether anything in the Template: namespace has favorable SEO qualities?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:05, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: When I was referring to SEO, I'm talking about how a title like, say East Amsterdam would be favorable over Amsterdam/East. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 21:34, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

I understand now. I agree with you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:48, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Glad we're on the same page. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 04:01, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

(undent) I've never been a fan of the City/District naming convention and in my earlier poking around was unable to find a convincing justification for why we needed them in the first place. Any thoughts? If none can be found, I'd be up for following fr/it's lead and abandoning them entirely. Jpatokal (talk) 22:32, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

The format enables some automatic features (as the software can see them as sub-articles), but I assume any needed functionality can be had through normal links and templates. The format may affect statistics, but that is hardly important.

One thing is common names: "Somecity/North" may get a less elegant name also without the dash, such as "Somecity's north" or "North (Somecity)". In the search box, you get all the districts when looking for Somecity/, while for other name forms you don't, but that should mean just one click and a few seconds more.

–LPfi (talk) 06:28, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

I support changing this convention. In some cases even fairly generic names would become more elegant (I'd be happy renaming Shenzhen/West to Western Shenzhen). Even when we still need a parenthetical disambiguator, I think "District (City)" is easier to understand for most readers than "City/District". For instance I'd guess SoHo (Manhattan) and Soho (London) would be more intuitive for most readers than the current Manhattan/SoHo and London/Soho.

For "Somecity/North" type districts, some care is needed to choose the most idiomatic title with the new convention – "North Somecity", "Northern Somecity", "North (Somecity)", etc. For Boston/Downtown, Downtown Boston is probably a better title than Downtown (Boston). If we do make this change, we should keep redirects from the old titles, to avoid breaking incoming links from other websites. —Granger (talk · contribs) 03:06, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm positively surprised to see the level of support here: do we have anybody opposed? Regarding naming, I don't think the X/North problem is a big deal in practice, most of those can be turned into simply "North X" and we've already got a lot of belt-and-suspenders redundant names like Canberra/North Canberra. IMHO parentheses should be avoided unless absolutely necessary, eg. for the Sohos there's probably no way out since "London Soho" sounds terrible. Jpatokal (talk) 03:29, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm not a fan. It's a lot of work for very little (if any) benefit. And it might break things we aren't thinking of right now. And the proposal is buried in a thread that started off about a different proposal. Powers ^(talk) 22:47, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

As mentioned above, the huge city/high-content destination article template is chosen based on the amount of content and not on the basis of the physical size of the city/destination. It seems to me therefore that the region template may be ideal for cities/destinations that cover a very large geographical space but do not have enough content to be considered huge cities or high-content destinations. STW932 (talk) 06:12, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

On a side note, I find it somewhat curious that Wikivoyage:Geographical hierarchy cites Lubbock as an example of a city that is geographically large but lacking sufficient content to be considered a huge city (or high-content destination). Lubbock only has an area of 324 km². There are many ‘low-content’ cities that are much larger than that, for example Hulunbuir (in Eastern Inner Mongolia) covers an area of approximately 253,000 km² and Ordos City has a an area of about 87,000 km². Interestingly, Hulunbuir is treated as a region whereas Ordos is treated as a city. STW932 (talk) 06:12, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

It is common on Wikivoyage to include the surrounding countryside in the scope of a city article. Ordos City is oddly named, but a region article would require splitting the article up, and with population centres with 100,000+ inhabitants, this is hardly well handled as a "rural area". –LPfi (talk) 10:41, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I support renaming City/District articles to "District (City)" "North City" or whatever is more appropriate and used by the rest of the world apart from Wikivoyage currently. The unintuitive things we do here, such as having our own district naming system not used anywhere else, hamper our growth for the purposes of SEO and acquiring new editors and readers who can get confused by our quirks and intricacies. Gizza ^(roam) 00:00, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that works well if you're searching for an article. If you want North London and you put "London" in the search box, you'll see London but not the page that is currently titled (and appearing in that search as) London/North. If we make this change, and you put "North" in the search box, you'll get a list that includes North Baltimore, North Beach (Miami Beach), North Canberra, North Central Rome, North Dallas, North East Leeds, North-East Brussels, North Edmonton, North Jakarta, North Hyderabad, North Lincoln (Chicago), and more, and you'll have no idea whether you can't find North London in the list because we don't have a separate article for it, or if you just haven't found it in the list yet. There are 500+ pages with "North" in the name, and almost a hundred of them are subpages titled "North" that could be affected by this.

I don't mind the subpage style, but if we change it, we should keep the "big endian" style. That means that everything in London needs to have London as the first word, and the qualifiers come second. At the moment, that means London/North, but if we want to copy Wikipedia's love for parenthetical disambiguation, then we could try London (North). North London is just impractical for readers and editors who are looking for articles about a high-content destination. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:27, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I oppose the switch. Subpage style makes it easier to expand and add more pages in a city or region the future (and we know some huge cities have gaps that need to be filled in in the future). OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 19:40, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: I don't understand what you mean. How does using a title like "London/North" as opposed to "North London" make it easier to add more pages in the future? —Granger (talk · contribs) 13:23, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

For the record, the French and Italian Wikivoyages abolished the style we use years ago and have had no issues with adding new districts – if anything I think it's better for the sake of search engine optimization. SHB2000 (t | c | m) 12:50, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Basically, I agree with @Jpatokal:. If it is not actually a huge city (to me, a cohesive urban area with population over 10 million), then we should not call it one. Should we rename the template to "City with districts" or some such. e.g. I would not call Toronto "huge" (6 million or so) but it has districts & certainly needs them. Pashley (talk) 16:13, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

The only problem with "City with districts" is that the same thought process that leads to "the city itself is not really huge, so we can't use the huge city template – that's only for places like Tokyo and Delhi" will, if we rename to "City with districts" reappear as "that destination has districts, but it's not really a city, so we can't use the city with districts template".

I suggest preventing all such future discussions by calling it a destination instead of a city. This could be "destination with districts" or a "high-content destination". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:25, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

I was going to agree with you then, but then I realized that technically parks are also "destinations" (though then again, how many parks with districts do we have?). --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 22:39, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

We're really spending all of this time arguing about Wikivoyage nomenclature? Why does it matter what we call it? Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:43, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

It matters because contributors (not readers) are finding the nomenclature confusing, and then incorrectly believe that other contributors are making mistakes because they have used the "wrong" format. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:29, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes. And I think "high-content destination" makes obvious what kinds of articles we are talking about. The question about what text to use at the top of the page (the content of the template) and what destinations should have districts and what destinations should be regions are separate from this. For the text, I don't think we should mention the template name or indeed say anything about why the place has districts, just say that it is divided into district articles (and that listings are to be found there). For the region vs. huge city/high-content destination, we haven't had that discussion yet, but we might need to have it. –LPfi (talk) 06:52, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

"High-content destination" is a wishy-washy term that sounds like bureaucrat-ese. At least "huge city" is UNDERSTANDABLE to casual readers. It is a '''MUCH''' better phrase than the pompous sounding, nebulous "high-content destination". Mrkstvns (talk) 18:08, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Whatever we call the template, the name should never be seen by casual readers. And calling some of our "huge cities" huge is simply a lie, which we shouldn't tell up front in the article. –LPfi (talk) 18:36, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Something that seems understandable but actually means something else is no good. It is better to have a wishy-washy term than a misleading one. If the suggested one is too bureaucratese-sounding, then we should of course try to find a better one, but not one that perpetuates the problem. –LPfi (talk) 18:43, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Getting rid of the huge city language

Swept in from the pub

I think this is what it would take to get rid of the confusing "huge city" language.

• Page moves
  • Rename Template:Hugecity skeleton to Template:High-content destination and update language in it (from "PAGENAME is a huge city with several district articles" to "PAGENAME is a destination with several district articles").
  • Rename Wikivoyage:Huge city article template to Wikivoyage:High-content destination template and update language in it.
  • Rename Wikivoyage:Quick huge city article template to Wikivoyage:Quick high-content destination article template
  • Rename Category:Huge city articles to Category:High-content destination articles
  • Rename Category:Huge cities with multi-tier district hierarchy to Category:High-content destinations with multi-tier district hierarchy
  • Rename Category:Huge cities with more than 10 districts to Category:High-content destinations with more than 10 districts
  • Change the cats in Template:PrintDistricts to the new names
• Simple copyediting (mostly, you just replace the words "huge city" with "high-content destination" or "article divided into districts" or the equivalent)
  • Update language in Wikivoyage:Where you can stick it
  • Update language and links in Wikivoyage:Article skeleton templates, especially Wikivoyage:Article skeleton templates#What's the difference between a small, big and huge city?
  • Update language and links in Wikivoyage:What is an article?
  • Update language and links in Wikivoyage:District article template
  • Update language and link in Wikivoyage:Plunge forward
  • Update language and links in Wikivoyage:Template index
  • Update language and links in Wikivoyage:Geographical hierarchy
  • Update language in Wikivoyage:Article skeleton templates/Sections
  • Update language and links in Wikivoyage:Policies#Structure of travel guide articles
  • Update language in Category:Move listings to districts
  • Update language in Category:Articles needing the Geo zoom defined
• Templates
  • Update language and link in Template:Movetodistrict
  • Update language and documentation for Template:PrintDistricts

• More complicated editing
  • Update Wikivoyage:District Expedition, including the PetScan links
  • Update language, link, and PetScan link in Category:Cities with categories

This all sounds feasible to me. Shall we do this? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:21, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

No. Mrkstvns (talk) 18:08, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I think it's not worth the trouble, either. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:18, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't love the fact that "high-content destination" sounds unidiomatic and a bit of a mouthful to say. It's still feasible, though. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 04:36, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Agree, high-content destination sounds even more confusing than huge city. Gizza ^(roam) 04:44, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

"Districted article" is purely descriptive, so shouldn't garner the sense of protection that the current naming has, and is easy to understand. "Districted city" was a suggestion I previously made. Regardless of the name, we at least need to specify that any destination can have districts if it has enough "See" content. The size of the city, population, etc are irrelevant in districtification. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 11:22, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

That would also work. The list of changes that need to be made are the same no matter what the eventual name is. I'm not sure what's involved in moving the cats, but everything else is something I could do. It'd probably take about an hour. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:38, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

"Districted article" is OK, but when you say "any destination can have districts if it has enough 'See' content": yes, if by "destination" we are referring only to bottom-level articles in the breadcrumb structure. We don't want to use districts for region articles, state/province articles, etc. I guess that would just be made clear in the longer writeup about the template, as is the case now. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:40, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Template:Districtedcity skeleton would seem to be the simplest, clearest solution. Then it won't be used accidentally for regions. Ground Zero (talk) 21:41, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

That name is OK for me too (not only for the skeleton though). However, the problem on when to use a region and when a districted city remains, and the associated conflict about whether something that isn't strictly a city, or doesn't look like one, can still use districts. –LPfi (talk) 07:46, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Would Multidistrictcity be slightly clearer? Martinvl (talk) 17:30, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

I like "multi-district", but if we use the word "city" in here, we are going to have more discussions over whether _____ is a True™ City. Please look right up at the top of the page, where the question isn't whether the area has districts; the dispute is specifically over whether the destination is actually a city.

If you say, "Sure, WhatamIdoing, I know that, and in the future, I actually want to should have lots of discussions about whether it's okay to use this format for places that benefit from having districts but are not legally or practically considered 'cities', because I just love it when people worry about whether this is the right invisible thing to say", then that's fine, but I personally don't want to have any more of these conversations. I'd like to solve both the "Buffalo isn't huge, even though we have a huge amount of content for it" and the "This collection of small towns isn't technically 'a city', even though we've split it into districts" problems. Do you really want to preserve the latter problem? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:08, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

How about Conurbation or Metropolitan Area? Martinvl (talk) 21:10, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Far too broad. The Buffalo-Niagara Falls metro area (as just one example) comprises Niagara County, Northtowns, Buffalo, and Southtowns. Powers ^(talk) 23:29, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

I assume moving the categories (without redirect) like any page and changing the categorisation in the templates would be enough for moving the categories. Can somebody confirm? The cache updates might take some time. –LPfi (talk) 20:29, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

I believe so, but I may be wrong. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 23:31, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's my understanding, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:55, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Just want to remind you that there doesn't seem to be consensus for doing this at all, so how much work it would take or how it should be done is a moot point. Mrkstvns (talk) 18:11, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Doesn't matter if there's consensus or not, we need to know it's technically feasible to do so. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 21:32, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Yep, it's good to know that bad ideas can be easily implemented. Mrkstvns (talk) 21:40, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Which part do you think is the bad idea? Your comment above suggests that you are concerned that a reader will stumble into the Template: namespace and be confused if {{hugecity skeleton}} has a different name. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:12, 25 July 2024 (UTC)