Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of cities and towns in Tennessee

List of cities and towns in Tennessee[edit]

The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page. No further edits should be made to this page. The closing editor's comments were: 11 days, 6 support, 0 oppose. Promote. Scorpion⁰⁴²² 03:48, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Self-nomination (list was originally created and previously expanded by others, including Kaldari, but was recently expanded by me).

This list meets all of the criteria at Wikipedia:Featured list criteria. It is a comprehensive list of incorporated municipalities in the U.S. state of Tennessee, with several well-sourced items of information about each municipality. It is formatted as a sortable list, so list elements can be ordered by name, county, population, date of incorporation, and type of charter. The article includes a lead section; encyclopedic text discussing and explaining some of the list items; one interesting and relevant image; and a table of contents. Although the information is available from other sources in a list format, this particular compilation is unique in combining all of these elements in a single list.

Active discussion of this list has occurred recently at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tennessee#List of cities and towns in Tennessee.
--Orlady (talk) 15:36, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

weak oppose I have a few things I'd like to see straightened out or at least justified.

Original comments by Circeus and discussion

The "Population" section is too small to warrant an independant section. Consider merging it into your lead sentence
Year links in "municipal charters" need to go.
Putting the current requirement for incorporation first would make sense, and you would mention that title six covers that before listing the paragraphs involved.
Given that the article itself state that the town/city distinction is meaningless, maybe "List of incorporated municipalities in Tennessee" would make more sense as a name.
Maybe make the "primary county" and "deincorporated" marks into notes, so that there is only one symbol needed in the table.
- Optionally, consider supplementing the marks with color.

Circeus (talk) 19:20, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

1. Your first two bulleted suggestions make sense. I edited the article to incorporate them.

2. Your suggestion about putting the current legal requirement for incorporation first in the municipal charter section is an interesting one; I see the logic you are using. However, I don't think it makes sense to put the current legal requirement for incorporation first. No new municipalities have been incorporated since the current requirements were enacted (in fact, I think a major purpose of the current requirements is to prevent new municipalities from being formed). Thus, the information about the current requirements is essentially an afterthought in the context of this article.

3. I agree with your suggestion regarding the name of the list. That name predates my involvement with Wikipedia; other users had taken great pains to distinguish between cities and towns. I think it needs to be discussed with other Tennessee contributors.

4. Currently the list-table includes three different types of "notes" that are indicated by asterisks, and the references cited in the article and table are indicated by standard Wikipedia reference notes. I don't see your reasoning for wanting to change two of the three asterisked items (the "primary county" note and the note about rescission of incorporation) to "notes" -- am I overlooking some WP stylistic guidance here?

We've had lots of cases where the <ref> mixed content and reference notes, but it's not exactly difficult to use {{ref}} and {{note}} instead to separate them (several discographies do it, for example).

I figured the single asterisks should be an actual note instead of taking room (easier to separate single from double asterisks than double from triple). Given that you have something like 5 instance of the no longer incorporated note, I thought it could also easily be converted.

WHile I,m on the notes, I forgot to mention that: the "primary county" thing makes no sense to me. Maybe spell out it's (I assume) for cities located in several counties at once?Circeus (talk) 20:25, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've converted the asterisks to notes, after looking at examples in discographies. (Thanks for your list-making expertise. I've never bothered to study discographies!) I tried to retain the asterisk symbols, but the single asterisk would not display as a callout in the table header, so I converted it to a dagger. ~~Unfortunately, that creates inconsistency among the notes, at least until the others are converted to daggers...~~ --Orlady (talk) 21:56, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

All of the note symbols are now daggers. --Orlady (talk) 22:50, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I forgot to say, I also expanded the note about "primary county". Thanks for pointing out the potential for befuddlement! --Orlady (talk) 21:57, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

5. What do you mean about "supplementing the marks with color"?

--Orlady (talk) 19:58, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Adding a color background to make them more visible. e.g. Like the colors added to draft lists and NFL players lists. Circeus (talk) 20:25, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm... Color can be pretty, but I think some of those NFL lists are almost garish... --Orlady (talk) 21:56, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'll make a conversion from what you did to something like I had in mind. It'll be simpler than trying to explain. Circeus (talk) 22:56, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. --Orlady (talk) 23:25, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Using both color and daggers is redundant. We need to choose one or the other. Kaldari (talk) 15:50, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support my concerns were either dealt with or made irrelevant by consensus. Circeus 00:21, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Weak support - I'd love a map, but I can see that effort being better spent on "list of communities in X county", like the recently-featured Lycoming County, PA, list. I would also like a page that lists the unincorporated areas, I suppose that would be done by CDP? But that would probably belong in a separate list... --Golbez (talk) 01:11, 28 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To have all the unincorporated areas in the list would be perfect. I do not think that is managable or even possible. There are unincorporated places in TN that just slip through the net. Some too small to be a Census designated area, just boiled down to a current voting district, still, they have a name or had a name. Too many old and current unincorporated places (That would include Ghost towns as well, wouldn't it?). A list of unincorporated places can never be really complete, unlike the List of cities and towns. For a featured list I'd prefer something that can be complete, that has all known elements of the list in it. A link to a list of unincorporated places in the List of cities and towns would be nice, so who wants to can look that up. As you said, the unincorporated places would probably be better represented in a separate list. Take care, doxTxob \ ^talk 07:45, 28 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Creating a comprehensive listing of unincorporated communities would be a mindboggling challenge. For every incorporated municipality in Tennessee (a total of about 350), I estimate that there are probably at least 25 unofficial towns, villages, hamlets, communities, inhabited hollows, ghost towns, large farms, neighborhoods defined by the name of the road they are on or the church they are near, and wide places on the highway that could make a case for being "unincorporated communities." There is no standard for identifying an unincorporated community, and it is in fact sometimes difficult to distinguish between real communities and "things made up one day." There are relatively few Census-defined places in Tennessee (and the Census Bureau's definitions is not always very clear; for example, I believe I've driven through Eagleton Village, Tennessee CDP on many occasions, but I have never seen a sign identifying Eagleton Village and I have not figured out what "place" the Census is referring to), so a statewide listing of them would not be exceptionally useful. A list of named post office locations could be another fruitful basis for crafting a useful list of unincorporated places, although that also has limitations (many "real" places do not have post offices or zip codes, including many of the incorporated municipalities and many significant unincorporated places such as Tellico Village, Tennessee). Regardless, it would not be possible for a list to present the same attributes for unincorporated places that are listed for incorporated municipalities (except for CDPs there are no official population data; there is no municipal charter; there is no incorporation date; and except for CDPs there is not even a basis for defining a community's boundaries, so there can be contention over which counties a community is in). Thus, the list of unincorporated places needs to be kept separate from the incorporated list. It would be nice to work towards more comprehensive coverage of Tennessee's "places," but first I chose to concentrate on the achievable goal of a comprehensive and useful list of officially constituted municipalities. --Orlady (talk) 16:09, 28 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Which is why I didn't demand a listing of unincorporated areas (though a compromise would be to list the non-incorporated CDPs), though such information would be very good on a per-county list, like the aforementioned Lycoming County FL. --Golbez (talk) 00:41, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support for the featured list status. It is a comprehensive compilation of TN cities and towns and it delivers a lot of information. The list is well referenced and structured. The introductory content explains the scope of the list and introduces key facts and words to the casual reader. An image, representing the topic very well, accompanies the introduction. Expert advice can make the product even better but featured list status is deserved in my opinion. Take care, doxTxob \ ^talk 07:45, 28 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Wow, this list has come a long way since I built the initial table back in 2005! Orlady has done a magnificent job making this list more "article-like" and giving it the polish it needs to be a featured list. I whole-heartedly support it being promoted to a featured list. Kaldari (talk) 15:46, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I've started an "area" column to make the list even more comprehensive. Obviously this is going to take a day or two to fill in, so please be patient. Kaldari (talk) 19:26, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- It was pretty tedious, but I added the areas for all 351 municipalities. And it sorts correctly by area (thanks to the nts template)! Kaldari (talk) 01:49, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support per doxTxob. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 03:22, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I'm not knowledgeable about this subject, but I found this list very similar to the recent FL List of municipalities in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, since they both list US incorporated municipalities. Could someone explain why the titles are different? Thank you. CG 19:52, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keeping the name simple is a matter that was discussed on the talkpage of the list Talk:List_of_cities_and_towns_in_Tennessee#Title_of_article. doxTxob \ ^talk 19:59, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also note that nomenclature differs from state to state. Under Tennessee law, incorporated places are officially called either "city" or "town"; they are seldom referred to as "incorporated municipalities" (although that's a more straightforward description of what they are, IMHO). In contrast, Pennsylvania provides for three distinct kinds of incorporated municipalities (city, borough and township) and apparently often uses the word "municipalities" as a collective term for most or all kinds (see, for example, Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code Pennsylvania League of Cities and Municipalities, pamunicipalitiesinfo.com, and Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities Association). Thus, what makes sense in PA might not make sense in TN (or vice versa). --Orlady 21:02, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]