Wikipedia:Requests for comment/City population templates

RfC: Does a largest cities/city population template add anything to an article?

1. Should articles (esp. featured ones) about nations contain a largest cities template/city population template in demographics section?
2. If your answer is "yes" to the question above, should such a template contain images of top 2-4 cities in them? Mrt3366^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 08:49, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Note: It would be preferable (but by no means mandatory) if the commenters, for now, focused on top 125 countries by total area. This is not a discussion about any particular country/article. It's about such templates in general. Please do not change/modify the original form/structure of the RfC.

Although it's not mandatory, try to back your claims with credible rationales that can help reach a consensus. If your comment falls entirely in the lines of I don’t like it or I like it without any reason to back your assertions, it may be ignored entirely.

Relevant policies: WP:Other Stuff Exists, WP:Assume good faith, WP:IDON'TLIKEIT, WP:ILIKEIT and WP:NOTVOTE.

• Users are requested to use hash (#) before comments to make it easier to count.

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Yes, and it should contain images

1. Yes — It may help foreigners (who don't know the locations of the cities or the exact topography of a nation) understand the largest agglomerations better. Many other articles currently use such a template: Vereinigte Staaten, Vereinigtes Königreich, and many developing countries such as Brasilien, China, Südafrika, Russland, Vereinigte Arabische Emirate, Thailand and Kolumbien. There are a number of FAs (e.g. Australien, Japan, Deutschland, Kanada, etc) that contain such templates, it helps me understand their city population.
   IMO, as long as any of the facts and images added to the template would be verifiable and relevant respectively, they should contain such templates. I support 4 images because I believe some people (e.g. people with learning disabilities) may learn from the images what they couldn't learn from texts only. Hence the more number of images, the better. Yes, we can use tables and charts to display the image but these are also a form table/charts. We serve a global audience, so we should not cater to just one set of the viewers and ignore the needs of others. Mrt3366^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 08:49, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
2. The short answer is "yes", but the long answer is a bit more complicated.

   Does it add value? Yes. Such a template is one way -- one way of several -- that a reader who is unfamiliar with a country can begin to get a picture of it. One of the first things you might want to know about a country is what its principal cities are. Yes, those will be noted elsewhere in the article, but the template might catch your eye first. Or, a reader might be specifically interested in one city, but not remember its name, in which case going first to the article for the country containing that city, and looking around for a familiar name, is an excellent search strategy. (Since most of the world's reference materials are organized by name, trying to find information about something you don't know the name of can be a challenging problem.)

   With that said, it's also worth pointing out a few things such a template does not do. Does it add unique value? No, most/all of the information in it can be found elsewhere. Does it add value for all readers? No, some will already know the largest cities, or will prefer to find that information elsewhere. But neither of these are objections to including the template -- much of the information in any article can also be found elsewhere, and all of the information in any article is already known to at least one reader. The real question is whether some information (in this case, the template) adds enough value, for enough readers, to justify its inclusion, and that's a sort of a slippery, subjective question. But I believe the answer here is yes.

   Finally, I have been answering the question posed in the section header, "Does a largest cities template add anything to an article?". There are two different questions posed in the first section, "Should articles contain a largest cities template?" and "Should featured articles contain a largest cities template?". Those are a bit different. Ultimately -- and this is another very important answer for this whole thread -- I think such questions should be answered by WikiProject Countries, who are the ones trying to define and encourage a standard "look and feel" for country articles across Wikipedia. —Steve Summit (talk) 12:33, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

None of the above

1. Can't see the point of a one size fits all rule, here. National articles are huge as it is, but perhaps on something like on Urbanisation in India it would be a better fit. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:23, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
2. This should be left to the people who maintain the article on a regular basis to decide. If there isn't a commitment of those who are dedicated to the article to maintain it, then the boxes will get out of date and the content of the text and boxes will drift apart.--Peter cohen (talk) 18:35, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
3. As this discussion is to support an other stuff exists argument that failed to gain consensus at Indien it clear that it is not compulsory for a featured article and in some instances clearly does not add to the article. Not all country articles need the template and in some like India it was not needed, only the talk page of individual countries can take a view on the weight of such a template and if it would add to the article.MilborneOne (talk) 11:52, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

   Just to note I originally added my comment under No not always but was moved by another user under a misleading header, if we cant add our own unbiased headers then i will move it here. MilborneOne (talk) 18:46, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

4. A general rule requiring city population templates in country articles doesn't make sense - too many dependent variables. --regentspark (comment) 18:57, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
5. Agree with RegentsPark. The US, which has the template, is 81% urban; India which doesn't have it, is 30% urban. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:51, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
6. Agree with others. This doesn't need a rule. Let the regular editors of the article decide. Kaldari (talk) 02:36, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
7. No need for a rule about when to use such a template or when to add pictures to it. But I support a standard layout and I support lean templates. Finally: the call for the RfC is very selectively spread, hampering a valuable discussion. The Banner _talk 12:39, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Additional discussion

This is a bit potty. For me, the answer is:

Yes, for some and no for others and in any case without images

I'll explain why:
Yes: for some countries, it's a useful navigation tool. Ruling it out dogmatically seems silly.
No: some countries self-evidently don't need it. If someone ever takes Palau, Vatican City or Tuvalu to FA quality, the template will be far less useful than in Ukraine, China or Brazil.
Images: Either they'll be tiny, so as not to disrupt the template, or they'll be massive, in which case the template is incongruously large.
There's my opinion. --Dweller (talk) 12:26, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Good opinion. I have clarified the question above. Mrt3366^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 12:35, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. The trouble is that you've introduced a huge lump of subjectivity. Furthermore, by saying that it's essential for country X that's one side of the arbitrary line you wish to draw and inappropriate for country Y that's one place lower in the hierarchy, it'd be open to ridicule.

Don't you think we have enough hurdles to jump at FAC without the need for prescribing or proscribing this particular template? Someone willing to work on (say) Argentina to get it to FA already has enough on their hands without needing to worry about creating this template. Or deliberately not. --Dweller (talk) 12:41, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

• Agree with Dweller. There are other issues here as well. The RfC has been improperly framed. Not only is the statement a thinly disguised and over-conditioned allusion to India, but the potential answers also are slotted into different subsections that have all the makings of a poll. Mrt3366 has been unsuccessful in having his way with inserting a template in the India page, he has been unsuccessful in having his way in the DRN he initiated soon thereafter. Now he is attempting, a third time, to have his way by posting to what he hopes is a larger forum. In this endeavor, he has been busily advertising the RfC across Wikipedia, from Jimbo's talk page to those of presumably mortal editors. If "India" is what is meant, then the statement should clearly say India. If other countries are implied, then where is the evidence that Mrt3366 has attempted to gauge opinion on their talk pages in the weeks before he initiated the RfC. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:26, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

PS It doesn't help that the initiator, Mrt3366, has been changing the statement of the RfC after people, such as I, have responded. If some of you are scratching your heads about my post above, it is because the statement that I responded to has now been changed! Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:54, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Just to note, prior to Fowler&fowler's comment for the most part, two questions were the way they are now, just after it was changed to what Fowler refers to as "over-conditioned allusion to India", fowler commented and then after a brief moment of pause it was reverted to what it was before with an added line in the "note". Mrt3366^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 07:27, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Prefer alternative with additional content

• I prefer templates such as {{Illinois cities and mayors of 100,000 population}} or {{Mayors of the largest 50 US cities}} that present this information along with additional encyclopedic content.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 13:28, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

• Neither of those templates serve any purpose other than linkspam. Certainly they are not appropriate on an article with national scope. Resolute 14:10, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

• They are helpful for the mayors and the cities.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 16:07, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

• We're going off-topic here, but that may be okay since this RFC seems stillborn, but I fail to see how it is useful to link the mayor of El Paso to the City of Los Angeles. Or hell, even to the mayor of Los Angeles. Resolute 01:10, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

• Agree with fowler. If you want to talk about including something in the India article, talk about that. Approaching the issue tangentially is sneaky at best. --regentspark (comment) 13:58, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't wish to talk about India here, don't you get that? I wish to first determine whether or not these templates are useful in general for countries that may have at least 10-20 different urban settlements. Because you and I both know very well that Palau, Vatican City oder Tuvalu aren't exactly the first three names that come to mind every-time we utter the word "nations". You cannot say something is useful only when it comes to USA, UK, China, Canada but its usefulness magically disappears when it comes to Indien. Mrt3366^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 07:53, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I'll take your statement at face value that this is not about your desire to see the template in India (but only because I'm a nice guy!). --regentspark (comment) 16:37, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

• Agree that this is to support an other stuff exist argument on what is so far a failure to gain consensus on the India page. I did comment in good faith and added a new header to match my reply but as this didnt match the required responses it was moved perhaps to give a wrong impression of my comment. This is clearly not the way to request commments works, I would suggest this request is closed and that users respect the consensus on the India talk page not to include it rather than continuing to use numerous boards and talk pages to undermine the talk page consensus, this is getting close to disruptive. MilborneOne (talk) 18:58, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

• I'd only say, like an editor wrote on another page, it is unpersuasive to suggest that if a country is mostly rural or has slums, then pictures of major cities juxtaposed with stats about population may be misleading. We can state how much of a nation is urbanized and how much is not, can't we? Does it really invalidate the city-templates altogether? I was told that “Slums exist in Brasilien (where they are called favelas), China and 125+ other countries; slums everywhere have the same issues.” Mrt3366^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 07:39, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

My reply to Peter Cohen's comment
Leaving it to the "regulars" will allow for opposition of change to an article based on an individual's preference which is a recipe for petrifying content and preventing improvement (essentially turning an article into a monolith). To others I would say, "aesthetics" is not a free pass for the it-just-doesn't-look-cool-to-me crowd. The issue of whether such a template improves an article is not so clear-cut that a rule will work 100% of the time, but I can see sufficient benefit in general (which I have listed in my comment and don't want to repeat them ad nauseam) that the presence of a city population template may be assumed to be the default. Mrt3366^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 08:15, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

• I agree with Dweller. It all depends on the context. A city population template makes sense for some articles, but not for others. Inclusion of the template must be based on a case by case basis. It's not necessary to have a rule that requires it or restricts it.--SGCM (talk) 11:05, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
• I agree with Dweller too. In general, I support having our articles being as far as possible made up of well-referenced and well-written prose, supported by well-judged, occasional, pictures. Pretty tables, schmalzy presentation, and decorative images and icons all make our encyclopaedia look cheap and tacky, and directly cause unproductive disagreements like this. I do agree it is good to have a co-ordinated approach to the aesthetics of our articles, but I feel this line should be quite a conservative and text-based one. With the greatest of respect to the original poster, I really hate these boxes and would prefer never to see them again. They do not belong on what is essentially a text-based project. --John (talk) 16:32, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
• I also agree that "it depends". And would go further to say the very concept of "largest cities" is problematic. Methods for the delineation of cities differ from place to place. I don't know exactly how it works in India, but in the US and elsewhere you often find some cities defined to include vast, often non-urban areas, while others are defined as very small areas surrounded by vast urban metropolitan areas. Classic examples in the US include Jacksonville, Florida, whose city limits include huge rural areas, and Boston, which is fairly small but surrounded by the much more populous and very urban Greater Boston. An even more blatant example of the City of London vs. London (metro). It is natural to want to compare city sizes, and sometimes useful, but all too often it ends up being fairly arbitrary or misleading. Add to this the often arbitrary way metropolitan areas are defined—in the US they are usually (but not always!) defined by whole counties, thus often including huge non-urban areas—the Seattle metropolitan area for example includes large areas in the Cascade Range, including national forests and officially defined wilderness areas. I'm not sure how cities and metro areas are defined in India, but as far as the use of a "largest city" template for articles about nations in general, I would have to say not only does it depend on the nation, but in many cases it probably should be avoided altogether. And if such a template it used, it really really should link to sources that not only verify the populations but also explain what exactly is being compared, how the delineated areas were arrived at, and whether the comparisons are more "apples to apples" or "apples to oranges", if that makes sense (ie, Boston vs. Jacksonville). (PS, the headers in this RfC are confusing and my comments don't seem to fit under any of them, so I am adding them here at the very end). Pfly (talk) 19:23, 14 September 2012 (UTC)