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"Huge cities" that are actually rural areas

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Latest comment: 1 year ago40 comments7 people in discussion

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)Reply

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)Reply
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)Reply
If travellers will see Miyoshi as a city, then it is a city. SHB2000 (t | c | m) 12:48, 13 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
This would actually be my preferred option. Jpatokal (talk) 00:48, 14 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
Shall we opt for that option then? SHB2000 (t | c | m) 02:58, 14 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • 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)Reply
Because |pgname= was left empty. I've fixed these. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 13:33, 13 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
Thanks! The pages look much better! ChubbyWimbus (talk) 14:10, 13 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • 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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
@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)Reply
As I said, I have no idea which designation makes more sense in this instance. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:29, 13 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

(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:

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)Reply

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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply

(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)Reply

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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply

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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply

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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply

RFC: When should we use Huge city templates?

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Latest comment: 1 year ago34 comments13 people in discussion
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)Reply

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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
That discussion died a month a go – some revival would be good. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 12:04, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
(SHB2000, do we really care whether anything in the Template: namespace has favorable SEO qualities?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:05, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
@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)Reply
I understand now. I agree with you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:48, 27 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Glad we're on the same page. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 04:01, 27 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

(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)Reply

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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply

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)Reply

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)Reply

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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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). OhanaUnitedTalk page 19:40, 15 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
@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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
"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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply

Getting rid of the huge city language

[edit]
Latest comment: 1 year ago21 comments10 people in discussion
Swept in from the pub

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

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

No. Mrkstvns (talk) 18:08, 22 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, I think it's not worth the trouble, either. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:18, 22 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
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)Reply
Agree, high-content destination sounds even more confusing than huge city. Gizza (roam) 04:44, 23 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
"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)Reply
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)Reply
"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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
Would Multidistrictcity be slightly clearer? Martinvl (talk) 17:30, 24 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
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)Reply
How about Conurbation or Metropolitan Area? Martinvl (talk) 21:10, 24 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
I believe so, but I may be wrong. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 23:31, 23 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Yes, that's my understanding, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:55, 24 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
Yep, it's good to know that bad ideas can be easily implemented. Mrkstvns (talk) 21:40, 24 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
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)Reply

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