Talk:Administrative divisions of Wisconsin

Other named places
I've set the "other named places" in its own category, since these places do not necessary sit only within towns. Freistadt, Wisconsin is within the city of Mequon, for example. (Hmm... that's a redlink. Guess I've got to write the article now.)  Cheers --BaronLarf 16:23, 28 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I have expanded this section somewhat as I felt that the short paragraph there did not adequately explain why these place names existed if they had no governmental function. I stopped short of getting into the discussion of confusion of duplicated names again.  The example I had in mind is the named place of Leeds located in southern Columbia county at intersection of State Road 51 and County Road K.  It is located the town of Leeds.Nyth83 (talk) 00:09, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

I restored this text that removed by an unknown user that was clasified as original research. It is relevant summary that contains numerous article links. Nyth83 (talk) 12:33, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Two Questions
What are the differences between the "classes" of cities? (And why would/would not Madison want to change to a first class city?

Under "School districts," the term "hamlet" is used somewhat off-handedly. Do we really want to throw around unspecified terms like that, given the subject of the article? -- 19:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Cities of higher classes have different powers, but may also have greater restrictions placed on them. For details, see this analysis by the League of Wisconsin Municipalities. If Madison changed to first-class, it would be subject to certain restrictions passed during the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries by that element of the Wisconsin Legislature which particularly and peculiarly hates Milwaukee and seeks to curb Milwaukee's supposed arrogance, cosmopolitan population and general "foreignness". -- Orange Mike &#124;  Talk  22:57, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Revert changes
I had to revert some changes that an anon editor had made. The changes removed some citations and change the wording and the accuracy of the article. I suggested to the anon editor to post concerns about the article on this talk page but this has not been done. I hope the anon editor will do so. Thank you-RFD (talk) 12:28, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

County government in the United States
Hello, Wisconsin! To defuse the edit war that has started at Category:County government in the United States, I'd appreciate some additional input on the topic of whether U.S. counties are (1) a level of local government or (2) an arm of state government. Discussion thus far is on my User talk page at User_talk:Orlady, but we could move it to a content-oriented talk page if desired. --Orlady (talk) 00:20, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Hello WI. I am the other side of the edit war. My claim is that although county officials may be elected or appointed locally (i.e. not statewide), the actual county government itself is an arm of the state government. This is consistent with the powers they exercise (elections, law enforcement, etc.). If we could have some academically informed input, I would appreciate it, because the general impression and intuition that people have is that county government is "local government," but to those who actually study political science formally, the difference is known. The compromise that I propose is the persons should be categorized under "local politicians" while the offices should be categorized under "state government." Greg Bard (talk) 00:36, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

'''I have posted this issue to WikiProject United States, and WikiProject Politics. Please take your input to one or the other so I don't have to have 50 discussions.''' Greg Bard (talk) 01:28, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * User:Gregbard started discussion of this matter at User_talk:Orlady. Please don't start a whole new discussion at some WikiProject page. If there is a desire to move the discussion, let's copy the pre-existing discussion to the new location. --Orlady (talk) 02:25, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Status of counties in Wisconsin
A statement was added to this article indicating that Wisconsin counties are arms of state government. This was based on a statement by a county executive in Manitowoc County in a 2003 primary-source document about state mandates affecting counties. It was a mistake to interpret the county executive's gripe about mandates as a profoundly significant statement about the legal situation of counties in the state. I reverted the edit. --Orlady (talk) 20:25, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Recent edits-
The lead sentence of this article should had been kept in. Several Wisconsin town articles had been redirected to Wisconsin cities and villages articles-cities&villages having the same name as the town. It took lots work and paatient to revert the redirects. The lead sentence added a word of caution to the article because of this and it should had been kept in. Thanks-RFD (talk) 14:40, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
 * The sentence in question, which I removed, said "The definitions of the political subdivisions of the U.S. state of Wisconsin differ from those in some other countries or even other U.S. states, leading to misunderstandings regarding the governmental nature of an area." That statement is doubtless true, but it's effectively original research -- namely, your observation that people from other states (apparently specifically referring to Wikipedians from other states) don't understand Wisconsin. Furthermore, I didn't think that the sentence conformed with Wikipedia's standards for a lead paragraph or lead sentence, as elucidated at WP:MOSBEGIN and subsequent paragraphs. In particular, the guidance I cite says "The first paragraph should define the topic with a neutral point of view... The first sentence should tell the nonspecialist reader what (or who) the subject is... If its subject is definable, then the first sentence should give a concise definition." The first sentence under discussion didn't do any of these things, IMO. The current first sentence ("The political subdivisions of the U.S. state of Wisconsin include counties, cities, villages and towns") does meet the requirements of a first sentence, though, and together with the subsequent sentence ("In Wisconsin, all of these are units of general-purpose local government") it should fulfill your purpose of informing the reader that conceptions derived from other states might not be valid in Wisconsin.
 * In any event, I think it's likely that the users who have been inappropriately redirecting Wisconsin town articles probably aren't reading this article at all... --Orlady (talk) 15:18, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
 * When users mistakenly redirect town articles to articles for cities and villages, are you contacting them about the error? I've looked (superficially) in your edit history to see what issues of this nature you have confronted recently. I did find that you recently reverted an anon's mistaken edits to Brodhead, Wisconsin, and earlier another anon's mistaken edits to Eleva, Wisconsin. Neither of these was a redirection. You might be able to get the Brodhead anon's attention with a user talk page post. --Orlady (talk) 15:32, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Many thanks Orlady for the advice. I should had contacted the anon editors to tell them why I reverted them. RFD (talk) 15:47, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

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Villages
Maybe it's because I'm coming from my state's perspective, but is a village administratively independent of a town in Wisconsin? Where I'm from a village is still administratively a part of the township(s) is lies in, much like a city is still administratively part of the county(ies) it belongs to. --Criticalthinker (talk) 19:17, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yep. Villages are slightly less powerful than cities, but like cities are carved out of towns (what you'd call a township). Once a city or village is created, it is no longer part of the town(s) from which it was removed. You can end up with fragmentary towns like the Town of Madison (dating back to before statehood), which are the discontinuous unclaimed remnants of a town which have not (yet) been carved up into villages and cities. -- Orange Mike &#124;  Talk  22:47, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I guess this is really one of the only major differences with Michigan where I live, and our system is based on New York state's, which I imagine Wisconsin's is based on, too. --Criticalthinker (talk) 10:06, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
 * BTW, can this thought be expanded in the city section?

"There are exceptions to these classes, however; in order for a city to move from one class to the next, certain governmental changes need to take place and the mayor must publish a proclamation."


 * "certain governmental changes" such as? Maybe listing one or two would be great. --Criticalthinker (talk) 00:59, 9 October 2017 (UTC)