Talk:Boston Common

Unnecessary move?
This article has been renamed from Boston Common (park) to Boston Common as the result of a move request. - restore to original name as primary topic. Keith D (talk) 17:11, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Why was this page moved from Boston Common to Boston Common (park)? The park is very clearly the primary meaning of "Boston Common"; the disambiguation page should be at Boston Common (disambiguation). Compare Central Park and Central Park (disambiguation). Does anybody disagree with me? AJD (talk) 16:13, 22 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Not in the least. The current title is a redundancy, on a similar level to saying "Broadway (street)". I support a return to the previous title.  Best wishes, Hertz1888 (talk) 16:42, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Other meanings are clearly secondary to this one. This move should be reversed. --Polaron | Talk 23:00, 22 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Support move back to Boston Common. Clearly the primary meaning. Andrewa (talk) 00:17, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Support. While we use primary for "overwhelmingly most common", this is also true. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:04, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Support, unquestionably the primary topic for this title. older ≠ wiser 18:35, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Brimmer & May?
What about the annual brimmer and may frog pond skating event? shouldt that at least be noted, so that people wont come on the day and be like "aw man! it got reserved for a school!? we drve 2 and a half hours just to come tonight, and i can only make it tonight!"?Igglybuff63 (talk) 23:13, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

hectare
The land area given as 200,000 m2 reads very oddly to non-US readers. The usual unit of measurement for land area in metric countries is the hectare, which is 104 m2, or an area equivalent to 100m by 100m. (See p 124 in the English "brochure" downloaded from http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/general.html.) The hectare is easy to visualize (as 100m is an easily-walked distance) and is commonly used in real estate, media reports of wildfires etc. I did go looking in the Wikipedia style guide on this point, but found nothing. 118.209.201.36 (talk) 04:28, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅ Easily fixed—and it is. Suggestion appreciated. Hertz1888 (talk) 04:53, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Picture of Ann Hibbens
I would like to remove the picture of Ann Hibbens from this article. Despite what the title of the picture says, she was almost certainly NOT hanged on Boston Common. In early colonial Boston, the common was a public place where elections and other events took place. It was not a place of execution. Hangings took place on Boston Neck, about a mile south of the Common. This is where the Quaker martyrs were hanged, and certainly where Hibbens and criminals were hanged. The area south of the Boston Neck gallows was known as "common land" and this may have been what confused many writers as to the location of the gallows. See the article here. Sarnold17 (talk) 01:10, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Tragedy of the Commons
The Tragedy of the Commons implies that commons, which have worked since the dawn of civilization, cannot possibly work. In this article I read:

"During the 1630s, it was used by many families as a cow pasture. However, this only lasted for a few years, as affluent families bought additional cows, which led to overgrazing, a real-life example of the Tragedy of the commons.[8] After grazing was limited in 1646 to 70 cows at a time,[9] the Boston Common continued to host cows until they were formally banned from it in 1830 by Mayor Harrison Gray Otis.[10]"

So there was a problem in the first 6-15 years, and after that 184 years of successful cattle grazing. Yet that proves an article saying it should be a failure?

One of the main objections to the Tragedy of the Commons is that it ignores local control. Local control is exactly what allowed 2 centuries of successful grazing on the common, yet this is an example of the essay being correct?--Skintigh (talk) 16:33, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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Navigation template
I've created Template:Boston Common and invite others to improve. Thanks! --- Another Believer ( Talk ) 04:10, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Lede
In listing the streets by which the Common is bound, Tremont St is followed by a parenthetical ‘139 Tremont St’. That is the address of the visitor center. Its relevance to the list of bounding streets is lost on me. I’m deleting the parenthetical. Irish Melkite (talk) 07:21, 26 December 2023 (UTC)