Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities

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Cities This page is within the scope of WikiProject Cities, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of cities, towns and various other settlements on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CitiesWikipedia:WikiProject CitiesTemplate:WikiProject CitiesWikiProject Cities

I've bumped into a number of articles where custom fields are being used in {{Infobox settlement}} to describe positions other than "mayor" (or the equivalent), such as clerk or administrator. Has this been discussed before? What are people's thoughts about this? --Hammersoft (talk) 16:10, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

Not sure if it's been discussed before, but my take is that it is a bad idea and will soon result in unmaintained out-of-date information. Such positions are rarely notable. There perhaps is some justification in larger municipalities that might have some non-standard offices of significance. The articles for larger municipalities will have more eyes on them and are thus more likely to get timely updates after a change and less likely to have random vanity additions stand for very long. older ≠ wiser 16:19, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:List of towns and villages depopulated during the 1947–1949 Palestine war#Requested move 15 January 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. ASUKITE 19:36, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

I have nominated Lethbridge for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Z1720 (talk) 04:31, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Moncton has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 16:10, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

An editor has requested that Trebizond be moved to Trebizond (disambiguation), which may be of interest to this WikiProject. You are invited to participate in the move discussion. TiggerJay (talk) 05:15, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

I have nominated Washington, D.C. for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Hog Farm _Talk 01:27, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

I have nominated Tumbler Ridge for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Z1720 (talk) 21:59, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Hi. I want to suggest the climate table to be changed a little.

For example, look at the climate table of fhe city of Gwangju: Climate table

Here, the record highs and lows for each month are stated. But we don't know when have these record extremes been reported in history. We only know the timeline from the table (here 1991-2020).

So, I want to suggest the times the record highs and lows have been reported be present too in all climate tables. Whether by referencing them or adding notes below the table. Aminabzz (talk) 21:22, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

I've had this question for quite some time. While most online sources consider St. John's the capital, after searching through the laws of Antigua and Barbuda, I have found no mention of the city being the capital. The city is not mentioned once in the Constitution, and no other law gives it such status, including proclamations and parliamentary resolutions. I used what was available on https://laws.gov.ag/ to determine this. To double check the accuracy of the website, I traveled to the Government Printery in St. John's, finding that the website was fully up to date. While pretty much all sources call the city the capital, I have found no legal sources calling it the de jure capital. I also searched through rulings of the high court at https://www.eccourts.org/, with no judicial rulings calling the city the capital. https://ab.gov.ag/, the official government website, also yielded no results.

I feel this may be controversial, so I wanted this to be discussed. I think that St. John's should be referred to as the de facto capital. CROIX^talk 17:14, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

Because some countries do declare their capitals in an official document, I can see how some infer that the concept of "capital city" has existed only since the first time a country did this, and that being a capital city, rather than having any reality-based meaning, is a fiction divorced from practical concerns. It's as though a country decided one day, before anyone had ever heard of a capital city, "Hey, let's invent the concept of a 'capital city', whatever that means and for no particular reason, and formally designate one of our cities to be one" and then, completely unrelated to that, also happened to locate its government there.

In fact, a capital city is, in plain language, the city where a country's government is located. There's no need to declare a capital city to be a de facto one except to spell out the distinction in the case where a country does officially declare one and then perversely places its government in another one (as in the Netherlands: pointlessly official capital Amsterdam, de facto capital The Hague).

The government of Antigua and Barbuda is in St. John's. So that's the country's capital. Just as the capital of Switzerland is Bern. I mean, yes, it is de facto, but stating that gratuitously implies that "capital" needs qualification at all because somehow a de facto one is "less than" an "official" capital. It's a bit like, anywhere some we write about some folk or classical guitarist, insisting on replacing "guitar" with "acoustic guitar". Largoplazo (talk) 18:56, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

I was hoping for some consistency. The articles on Nauru and Switzerland both label the capital as de facto. This case doesn't seem to be any different from theirs. CROIX^talk 22:26, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

I oppose it for Nauru and Switzerland as well, for the same reason. Since this is a general forum about cities, this is a good place to hold a more general discussion about this.

Another analogy: It's like specifying that somebody is my de facto workout partner because I haven't officially designated them as such in a formal document. Largoplazo (talk) 02:15, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

It is an anachronism to expect that capitals are designated as such in specific laws. (It gets slightly complicated as well when there are distinctions between when cities are defined as urban conglomerations or defined as legally specified areas.) Where de facto statuses do matter is when administrative bodies are split, or removed from the designated capital. The UNGEGN list for example, makes notes when there are divided functions, such as in its Bolivia and South Africa entries. CMD (talk) 03:08, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Alright. Should we have a discussion on removing the de facto label from Nauru and Switzerland as well? I'm convinced based on both of your arguments. CROIX^talk 15:08, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Probably. The issue is really the oversimplification to "de facto", rather than explaining it. I doubt it's correct for Switzerland to say "None (de jure)", unless the constitution does say "There is no capital". What happened is that the choice of capital was contentious (they had just fought a civil war), and so was not included in the constitution. Instead, it was chosen by the government. That doesn't mean there isn't a capital, it just means that the designation of a capital is not in the constitution. The explanatory note should be clearer about this. As for Nauru, I am not aware of any historical politics, it's probably just a microstate thing. CMD (talk) 03:06, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I have removed this from the Switzerland and Nauru articles. Reywas92^Talk 01:07, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

Smithfield, London has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 19:27, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

Just by looking at Category:Populated places in Baalbek District, I see:

• Beit Chama - Aaqidiyeh
• Chaat, Lebanon
• El Ain, Baalbek
• Jebaa (Baalbek)
• Qarha, Baalbek District

Nehme₁₄₉₉ 19:56, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Three of those are redirects, not the actual article titles. It is standard to disambiguate to country if needed, and if the country has multiple cities of the same name, then to whatever level of distinction is needed. CMD (talk) 05:56, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Honiara has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 22:26, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Aberfeldie, Victoria#Requested move 31 March 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPath^talk 07:27, 1 April 2025 (UTC)