Talk:New York City/Archive 5

Adjusting history section
I changed the wording of the history summary slightly regarding Native Americans. I thought the existing wording could be read to imply that we only know about Native American inhabitants because of the archaeological evidence, which is obviously not true. I linked explicity to Lenape, and I also threw in a mention of Giovanni da Verrazano and Henry Hudson, since it seemed to be that even summary of NYC history would be lacking without a mention of them. -- Decumanus 03:29, 2005 Mar 22 (UTC)


 * Also, it some of it could be to History of New York City. Considering that NYC is a big topic, it seems that the history article should have the main content and the section be an overview. --Jason McHuff 01:22, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Skyline pic
I'd like to restore the picture that had been in the "Skyline" section, and remove the pic of Columbia University (which I had added myself last week). In terms of relevance to the article, I think this is a better way of prioritizing. It's also a nice picture to close the article with. --Jleon 14:00, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I like the idea of a skyline photo, but maybe we could find a more recent one? The skyline looks kinda different now. Páll 02:34, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * How the hell can you have an article on NYC without a photo of the Trade Centers both standing and collapsed! That attack made such a major impact to life in the city, and the nation in general.  ALKIVAR ™Radioactivity symbol.png 02:45, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Manhattan-centric photos

 * the reason all the pics are of Manhattan is because the tourists who are going on vaccation, then posting these pics are afraid to leave manhattan

--I think JimWae made a very good point in the earlier discussion about how all of the photos here are of Manhattan. I think a big part of the problem is that there are hardly any photos even in the boroughs' respective articles. Does anyone have any good pics of the other boroughs that they can share? If not, perhaps I'll take some myself in the coming weeks. --Jleon 16:36, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I just looked through all of the photos that I have in iPhoto, and I don't have any from outside of Manhattan. I'm actually really surprised about that. I have a couple of AirTrain, but I don't think those would help the New York City article. I can go out and take some tomorrow, but I think its supposed to snow. Maybe one of Grand Army Plaza? Williamsburg Bridge? Páll 02:34, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Some ideas from --JimWae 03:07, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC) :
 * Photos: Brooklyn Bridge, Coney Island, Rockaway, JFK airport, Unisphere, Bronx Zoo, Archie Bunker's neighborhood (shows there are residential areas), Whitestone Bridge, commuters on Staten Island Ferry, Verrazano Narrows, Bronx blight, people fishing from a pier (somewhere?), some industry, a traffic jam on LIE - one or 2 that show NYC is a place where people live & do not immediately scream "NYC is unique".
 * How about NewYearsEve@TimesSquare, Rockefeller Xmas tree, neighborhood celebrations, kids playing stickball, sightseeing tours, parades
 * for lists- how about movies & TV shows shot in NYC? Famous NYC artists
 * Article will likely still focus a lot on Manhattan - but link to that article should be prominent at top.
 * Manhattan article photo suggestions: Washington Square Arch, Wall Street (indoors), people jogging on seawall.

-- I live on University Place, so I will try to walk the two blocks (how horrible!) to Washington Square to get some photos fo the arch tomorrow. Páll 03:25, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Some alternatives:

Brooklyn
 * Image:DSCN3630 brooklynskyline e.JPG
 * Image:Coney-Island-Boardwalk.jpg
 * Image:Green-Market-Grand-Army-Plaza-Large.jpg
 * Image:Grand-Army-Plaza-Arch.jpg

Staten Island Queens
 * Image:Verrazano-Narrows-Bridge.jpg (also Brooklyn)
 * Image:Statenisland.JPG
 * Image:Unisphere.jpg
 * Image:JamaicaBay.jpeg (also Brooklyn)

General --Pharos 03:21, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Image:MARTHACOOPERsubwayart.jpg (nice book cover)
 * Image:New York area.PNG (yes, I know it's Hudson County, trouble uploading revised version)
 * Image:DSCN3629 earphonesboy e.JPG (trans-borough)


 * I have many, many photos of Staten Island, some of which I get around to uploading in the near future, and also many of Brooklyn street festivals. There are probably at least a few decent ones in the bunch. -- Decumanus 03:52, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)

I've got some neat photos I took from the air of Central Park (with Christo's Gates) that I'd be happy to upload, but I'm afraid I'm not sure how that works. Can somebody point me in the right direction for instructions to upload pix? --RoySmith 02:25, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * OK, I figured it out on my own :-) I've downloaded Image:CentralParkWithGatesFrom2000feet.jpg.  I'm open to suggestions as to where it would best be used.  Could work for New York City, Central Park, or even The Gates.  My personal preference would be New York City RoySmith 04:12, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * There's no reason an image can't be used on multiple articles. This a a great and rather illustrative shot of Central Park and definitely belongs on that page, and probably on The Gates as well.  I'm not sure though if there's a section it would fit in for New York City and certainly the Midtown skyscrapers also in the image are not underrepresented here.--Pharos 04:27, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Culture of New Yorkers

 * How exactly is the culture section complete?? It says rude, self centered, and then goes on to talk about upstate new york?????

I mostly finished my condensing here and I think trimmed it by 50%. The only thing I didn't keep was the ref to Robert Moses. It really fits better under history or infrastructure or somewhere else anyway, so let's get it in there. Kaisershatner 16:55, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

--OK, I added a mention of him in the history section. I'm surprised I had overlooked his absence before, altough he is found in the main history article. --Jleon 17:10, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

New York City related topics box
I appreciate the effort to summarize, but isn't this just duplicating the purpose of Category:New York City, and then in a non-hierarchical, limited, and arbitrary way? All of these topics, and many more, are already categorized in an broader organized structure.--Pharos 03:28, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Not really. This gives a fairly clear idea of some of the major topics that are available about NYC, and tables like this are used all over the place on other country and city articles. Páll 03:47, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

We should list a few major topics like at Template:Life in the United States, (History of, Geography of, Culture of, Economy of etc.) but it doesn't make much sense to replicate a somewhat random portion of topics in the categories, like including the International Center of Photography, but not say, the Brooklyn Museum. There are hundreds of these specific topics, and listing just a few will always be arbitrary.--Pharos 04:16, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image Clean Up Vote
I propose we take a vote about how to either clean up or replace the images on this page. I'm going to list all the current images on the NYC article below, and then I think we should discuss whether or not they should stay on the page or if we should find better quality images of the same thing to replace them, or replace them entirely. Or, alternatively, move then to other parts of the article. This is to help us make room for more non-Manhattan images, and to streamline the images on the page to make sure they're exactly what we want.

Image:Midtownnyc4.jpg
I quite like this image, the only issue is that it seems very similar to Image:Midtownsouthnyc.jpg, so perhaps we might want to decide which one to use and replace one? Páll 04:28, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image:Uss_los_angeles_airship.jpg
I like this one, but I also think that there should be some images of earlier NEw York. Maybe some paintings? Páll 04:28, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image:Constructempire.gif
I'm not sure this image is necessary, it seems more appropriate for the Empire State Building Wiki. I think that we should have some other 1930's-1960's images of New York, perhaps some from another borough? Páll 04:28, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

--I think the one problem with the two history photos is that they are from the same time period. Although I like both of them, maybe we could replace one of them with a painting of the city from the 1700s or 1800s. That would provide a much better contrast with the modern-day photos. --Jleon 14:17, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image:Midtownsouthnyc.jpg
This is a really nice image, but my only concern is that it is very similar to Midtownnyc4.jpg. Páll 04:28, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

--I really like the fact that we use both because it provides something of a panorama of the city. Only including one of them would be excluding a lot of valuable visual info about the layout of the city. --Jleon 14:02, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image:Usgs_photo_five_boroughs.jpg
This is helpful to explain the geography of the boroughs, but maybe it should be more detailed and larger? Páll 04:28, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * I spent a lot of time making these series of images for the New York articles. They are already 300px, the standard size we tend use for inline maps in Wikipedia, and which is pretty much the upper limit for width in an article (note I generally make maps for viewing in line, not as thumbnails to be enlarged and viewed on the image page itself). I don't think any more detail should appear in the wording, since it would become quite crowded, and harder to read. I experimented quite a bit optimal size of text, amount, etc., to remain uncluttered and found, for my purposes, that this worked best, to emphasize the boroughs and the contrast between land and waterways. I would not be adverse to a more detailed image in addition to this, for parts of the city, but anything on a finer grained scale is going to wind up not taking in the five boroughs. -- Decumanus 05:10, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)

Image:City_Hall_2.jpg
This is one GREAT image! Páll 04:28, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image:Ny.terra.600pix.jpg
I like this, but maybe we should have a few photos of the geographic features of New York (Colisters, the seashore, Palisades) instead of this? Páll 04:28, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

--A lot of people who come across this article may know nothing about NY's geography, and while the map above it shows the political and basic geographical boundaries, this picture shows the extent of urban development, as well as the location of major parks. It's also the best satellite image of the city I've personally ever seen. --Jleon 21:13, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image:Newyorkstreetscene.JPG
I'm really not sure that this is the best image that to be here. I think maybe we should get some photos of Flushing, or maybe Chinatown or Little India. But that street scene isn't particularly diverse in my opinoin. Páll 04:28, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

--The resolution of the pic is a little too low, but I think it is very diverse. A pic from Flushing or Chinatown would likely be predominately asians, not a true image of a melting pot like this one. --Jleon 13:46, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * How would a photo from Chinatown or Flushing be diverse?? They'd all be from the same race. The point of this photo is that New York is a melting pot in which people of all races interact with and are surrounded by each other. The photo is pretty diverse, in my opinion, and pretty typical of a Manhattan street scene.  It's good to have photos of people on a page with lots of photos of things.  Moncrief 21:38, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

Image:New_York_Stock_Exchange_Flags.jpg
Great image, but maybe some images of Wall Street would be better? Páll 04:28, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

--An image of the exchange that included some of the street probably would be better. --Jleon 13:49, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image:OrchardandRivington.JPG
I really dislike this image. I think there are some instances in the Lower East Side of more traditonal housing stock so that you can really see the architectural detail. The building on the corner is a new building. Maybe we should try and get some other images from the Lower East Side, or maybe some of "SoHo"-style buildings? Páll 04:28, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * An encyclopedia is meant to reflect what is. If there are new buildings in the LES, and there are, then why not include new buildings in a photo of the neighborhood?  That being said, it's not a particularly remarkable image so why not take a better one of your own?  Moncrief 21:38, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

--To be honest, I can tell you that isn't even a new building anyway. Its exterior certainly looks refurbished, but new residential buildings in NYC never have fire escapes, and you can tell by the window insets that very think masonry was used in its construction. Personally, I think the photo is just fine, but one of SoHo could be just as good. --Jleon 01:55, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image:Libertyskyline.PNG
This is a great image, I'm not too concerned about the "brownness" at the end. Maybe this is the one that should go in the introparagraph? Páll 04:28, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

--The two things that take up the majority of space on this photo are water and sky and it is somewhat misleading for it to be placed as a "skyline" photo since it is only of Lower Manhattan. --Jleon 13:55, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image:HarlemBrownstones.JPG
I like the idea of this image, but I think we could try to get some photos that aren't at sunset, because this one is very dark. Páll 04:28, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image:Empirestatebldg.jpg
A great image, but I think it could be made smaller. Páll 04:28, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image:MET_NYC.jpg
This is a fantastic image, I love it. Páll 04:28, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image:Timessquare.jpg
Hmm.... I'm not too sure about this one. Maybe a photograph of that crazy corner with the Washington Mutual ad with the giant beanstock on 42nd and 8th would be better, because its much brighter. Páll 04:28, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

--I think we should have another pic of Times Square, but I think its essential for it to be of the Crossroads, not of 8th avenue. I think it'd be nicer to have a daytime photo too. --Jleon 14:27, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image:Yankee_stadium.jpg
I like this, maybe we could try to find an image of the outside of a stadium during the day time? Páll 04:28, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

--I was thinking the exact same thing myself. --Jleon 13:58, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image:Grand_central_terminal_exterior.jpg
I like this one too, but I also think it would be really helpful to have a photograph of the interior of the station itself. Páll 04:28, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

--A nice interior shot probably would be better, since that is what most people see when they think of Grand Central. --Jleon 15:53, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Good luck with that. If you can take a beautiful one, then you are a true master. From my experience, the light inside is quite dim with those dull yellow walls, and photography that captures the essence of the interior space is very tricky. There's a reason the classic high-contrast light streaming through the windows shot from the New York Times you see in posters are so enduring in their appeal (BTW taken 1935, so under copyright). -- Decumanus 02:23, 2005 Mar 25 (UTC)

Image:South_ferry.jpg
I really like the idea of this image, but I think perhaps we could do something like have an image of Union Square at rush hour, because you can look down from the mezzanine and see all the people. Or, if we want to concentrate on "outer borough images", maybe one of Boro Hall station?

--I agree. The chain-link barriers in this photo are not at all represenative of the subway system and you can't even see any people on the platform. It's definetly not an informative image for people who have never been to NYC. --Jleon 13:41, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A few possible views (larger versions available, or someone could go get a photo):
 * 23rd Street on the Lexington Avenue Line (clearly shows wide track area - I rather like this one)
 * 72nd Street on the Broadway-Seventh Avenue Line
 * 181st Street on the Broadway-Seventh Avenue Line (cool-looking but not really representative)

A view of an island platform (between parallel tracks) might be good. --SPUI (talk) 07:21, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image:Taxis_NYC.jpg
I'll try to take an image of taxi's going down Fifth Avenue to try to hit two birds with oen stone, an image of 5th Ave (big landmark) as well as the taxis. Páll 04:28, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image:Midtown.jpg
I think this image is just too old. The skyline has changed quite a bit since then. Páll 04:28, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

--It's true this pic is very old. From this particular vantage point what's notably missing is the Time Warner Center, Worldwide Plaza, and the Conde Nast HQ. I think once the NY Times building is completed it will be impossible to use this pic. I've scoured the NYC-related articles in the other major languages of wiki and couldn't find any Midtown river-view pics better than this one. An East-river view would probably be even better than this too. --Jleon 13:37, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Article Length
After several rounds of editing (and just now moving huge sections of Talk to an archive) I see no sig. change in article size. I'm no expert on this, but I'm guessing it's because of the images. Is that true? Is the best way to cut the article size for us to resolve the picture-related discussion as above? Just wondering. Kaisershatner 15:32, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

--My understanding of wiki (and I could be wrong about this), is that the photos don't add anything to the number of kilobytes taken up by the article other than the simple coding in the edit box that puts them there. This would be on account of the pictures already being saved on wiki's servers, and therefore the article merely contains the instructions to display pics that are saved elsewhere. I think what takes up the memeory is only the number of characters within the edit box. Anyway, your condensing did put the article under 60k, so I think that's a good start. --Jleon 15:44, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Revert it!
I think I accidentally doubled the page size and I can't revert due to access problems. Help! Kaisershatner 15:04, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

--After a couple of tries I think I got it fixed now, I've had this happen before where it just inexplicably duplicates portions of the article. You may want to go in though and make sure all of the recent changes you were making are still there. --Jleon 15:32, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Photos (again)
I LOVE the new history photo, JLeon - very evocative and a nice addition, imo.

Can anyone take some photos of sights and scenes in the outer boroughs and put them on this site? Someone mentioned well above that the photos on this page are Manhattan-centric and that is completely true. This is a page about the whole city, not just Manhattan. I'd say crib them from the Brooklyn, Queens etc pages but they are not very rich with photos either. It's fun to have photos you've taken on Wikipedia! I'd do it myself but I'm 3000 miles away. Just a thought -- because this page really needs outer-borough photographic representation (as do the individual outer borough pages for that matter). Moncrief 21:30, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

I've brought this up on the various photo request pages, but no luck. This shouldn't be too hard; can someone get a photo of a subway sign with a bunch of services, possibly at the Times Square mess? A rollsign on a car might also be nice; I'm thinking about photos to add to New York City Subway line, route and station nomenclature. --SPUI (talk) 15:09, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Reiterating my wish that someone would take some Outer Borough photos for this page. Help!  It's really embarassingly Manhattan-centric.  Moncrief 06:51, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

--I think I'll go and take some photos of Jackson Heights this weekend. Thats the best possible locale I can think of for this. --Jleon 12:32, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Yay! Thanks.  Moncrief 18:54, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

--Ok, I have the pics of Jackson Heights. I want to give them a quick run-through on Photoshop first, so I should be posting them sometime in the next few days. I'll put one each on the Queens and Jackson Heights articles too. --Jleon 13:20, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Taxi rates
The article states:

>As of May 2004, fares begin at $2.50 ($3.00 after 8 pm, and $3.50 during peak, weekday hours). Prices increase based on time elapsed and distance traveled.

Is this still the correct fare scale? If so, "May 2004" should be replaced with "March 2005" or "early 2005." If not, the date should be changed and the fare scale corrected. It's no good having a reference to "May 2004" in there today. It's from the "Taxis" section of the article. Moncrief 03:00, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

"Largest" vs. "most populous"
--When talking about American cities (or even international ones for that matter) the terms "largest," "biggest," etc. are used universally in place of "most populous." It's just inconceivable to think that someone would become confused by us using "largest" in this article, so I truly believe we should change it back. --Jleon 23:23, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * It's far from inconceivable, though not as likely as when saying "Russia is the largest country". "Most populous" is unambiguous & "largest" is not. --JimWae 01:33, 2005 Mar 26 (UTC)

--Well cities are thought of as population centers, not as vast areas of land like a country. Also, when the metropolitan area is considered, NYC is certainly the largest geographic urbanized area in the country (with LA being a close but definite second). Anyone misinformed enough to be confused about "largest" probably wouldn't even understand the word "populous" anyway. --Jleon 03:34, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

For a bit of international flavour, I can report that in Australia "largest" when talking about cities refers to population, not the geographic spread of the city. - Mark 06:19, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Juneau, Alaska is the largest city in area in the USA. Juneau includes a 3081 square miles (composed of 2,593.6 mi2 of land and 487.6 mi2 of water.) The city is larger than the state of Delaware. Non-US people cannot be expected to know what US people know. Changing it to "most populated" would be OK with me. --JimWae 04:36, 2005 Mar 26 (UTC)
 * As I see it, there's no good reason not to use the most accurate word. Let's go with "most populous".--Pharos 04:40, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Agreed. "Most populous" is unambiguous and clear. "Most populated" sounds bad. &mdash;Lowellian (talk) 01:32, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

Current Issues, Getting ready to resub yet?
I exported large sections of Talk to Archive 4. In almost all cases they were issues that were 100% resolved and not ongoing. I moved out one section pertaining to pictures since it duplicated the greater debate about pictures which I left on this active talk page. Recently, I think we've been drifting up in size. Maybe we should focus on final cleaning? Remove the red links, add more footnotes. Resolve the photo debate. Also, I think whomever pointed out that we should have a 9/11 picture, or a pre-9/11 pic of the WTC, is correct. It's one of the single most important moments in the history of the city. The stock market crash might be the only other with the same importance (IMO). Kaisershatner 20:03, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Official name?
The article starts out with "New York City (officially named the  City of New York)", but I'm thinking it would be more correct to have The City of New York. That's the way the NYC official web page seems to do it (see, for example, the copyright notice at the bottom of that page). RoySmith 02:54, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Most Skyscrapers
I was wondering if anyone can check the facts on the statement that NYC has the largest collection of skyscrapers in the world. I think Shanghai might have surpassed us in the past few years.

A BBC article from 9/13/03 says of Shanghai that "at least 3,000 high-rise buildings have gone up; another 2,000 are on the drawing-boards".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3105948.stm

I don't think we have anything approaching 5,000 high-rises in NYC, but I haven't counted. "High rise" probably includes buildings shorter than skyscrapers, anyway. The Wikipedia article on skyscrapers suggests 152 meters as the minimum height to be a skyscraper.

Sources seem to use all different kinds of criteria. Skyscraperpage.com lists only 246 "buildings" for Shanghai (less than one tenth the number cited by BBC), and of these only 56 exceed the 152-meter minimum. (New York is listed as number 1 with 683 "buildings", of which 186 exceed the 152-meter minimum.)

http://www.skyscraperpage.com/cities/

Emporis' list of the 200 tallest buildings includes 27 NYC buildings and only 12 in Shanghai:

http://www.emporis.com/en/bu/sk/st/tp/wo/

But I don't know how to explain the above data in light of the BBC article, unless the study cited by the BBC includes much shorter buildings (like 2 stories). If anyone can resolve these discrepancies and confirm/correct the statement about NYC's collection of skyscrapers, I'd be interested.

--Nomenclaturist 02:34, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

-- It really is amazing to see the huge differences in how these lists can be made. It's hard to believe that the SkyscraperPage would say that LA and Toronto have more high-rises that Shanghai. The number from the BBC article also seems somewhat incredible; if they're talking about buildings over a height of 60 feet or so, then Tokyo and Sao Paolo would probably be contenders as well. I've also seen some counts that place Hong Kong as having the most number of high-rises but it appeared to be from a very convoluted definition of "high rise." My feeling is that the higher the threshold of what you consider to be a "skyscraper" is, the more NYC would come out on top. Shanghai is probably the only place that could surpass NYC in the near future, but it doesn't look to me like it has happened just yet. --Jleon 13:44, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Once again the press is reporting apparently inflated numbers for the skyscrapers of Shanghai:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/18/business/worldbusiness/18bubble.html?hp

Does anyone know source for these numbers? 3,000, 4,000 skyscrapers? --38.112.184.20 15:30, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Demographics, Jewish Community
I reverted the changes by 62.161.27.52; first of all, thanks for providing an updated reference estimate of the Jewish population. Second, I'd encourage you to get a user ID, makes editing and conflict resolution much easier. With respect to your change, while the detail about the declining Jewish population is correct, I think it belongs in an article about the history of the Jews of New York. Kaisershatner 18:20, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi,

I agree that it belongs also to an article about the history of the Jews of New York. But it also belongs to New York demographics, because the plumeting of the number of jews in NYC, and the white flight in general, is a key to understand NYC demographics.

62.161.27.52 (I've got some problems with User ID (my conexion is very slow), that's why I don't it anymore.

Ps : Sorry for my English, I'm not a native speaker

--But how can we put historical demographic trends for one ethnic group without having to include all major groups? This has come up before when someone was trying to write about the suburbanization of Italians in the "Demographics" section. Historical trends are too large a topic to even be touched on in a small section like that. Besides, what evidence is there to support your numbers? I'm sure the number of Jews declined in the 1970s and 80s, but one of the largest immigrant groups during the 90s were Russian Jews who now make up nearly half a million people in Brooklyn & Queens. There has also been a surge in the Hasidic population in Williamsburg, and an influx of Uzbek Jews in Kew Gardens. I really doubt the number is half it was in the 1950s. --Jleon 13:50, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

---But we don't have any article about Ethnics groups in New York City, so my idea was to put informations about them in the Demographics section of the article, before somebody tries to create a real article. But maybe you're right, and I'll try this afternoon to create an article "Ethnics groups in New York City".

62.161.27.52

---Etnic groups in NYC? There may not be enough disk space to cover them all :-) --RoySmith 14:25, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

---The article "New York demographics" is not done yet. Can we put informations about NYC ethnic groups in that article ? Because NYC demographics are nothing but the demographics of its different communities.

62.161.27.52 14:42, 12 April 2005 (UTC)


 * 62.161.27.52, thanks again for your contribution. I expanded the Demographics of New York City article, so if you want to work on that, it is probably a good home for the information you had put into the main article.  Kaisershatner 18:47, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Redirect verbiage
Do we really need all of:

NYC redirects here. For other uses, see NYC (disambiguation). New York, New York redirects here. For other uses, see New York, New York (disambiguation). This article refers to the city of New York in the state of New York in the United States. For other uses see New York (disambiguation).

At the beginning? I understand the desire to make sure people find the article they're looking for, but the final result is a jumble of italic text that distracts the reader from the heart of the New York City article. Sometimes being correct is not the same as being useful --RoySmith 13:03, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

--I agree completely, at a certain point it just becomes overkill. --Jleon 13:24, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * These are useful for people that type the things that redirect here, though I do agree that the condensed way it is now is better. --SPUI (talk) 00:42, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

NYWiki
Am I just out of it that I didn't know about the NYWiki site? (Probably, and that's okay). It's a pretty great site with a lot of information. Check it out if you don't know about it (perhaps some of you started it...) Moncrief 00:25, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)

The new pics.
-Well I uploaded a total of four new pics of Jackson Heights today. One of them is here, and there's one each under Jackson Heights, Queens, NY, and the New York City Subway. I didn't neccessarily want to replace this article's pic of Harlem, but I thought that was a good place for the new one to go since its within the "culture" section and right next to the paragraph on gentrification. I also have about two dozen other pictures of JH I took on Sunday which I could try out if anyone is unhappy with the ones I posted. --Jleon 13:46, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * YAY! Non-Manhattan photographic representation in the NYC article!  Thanks so much for doing that.  Personally I like the photo you put on the Jackson Heights page the best - I like photos where you can see people and what a typical street looks like.  The photo here is great (the elevated subway tracks, the storefronts), but it looks a little unclear until you click on it and the foreground has all those cars in it.  This is not a big deal and it's your call, but I do like the street-scene photo with the people even better.  Either way, thanks.  Moncrief 17:51, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

--OK, I went back into photoshop and recropped the image to eliminate some of the visual clutter. Its very difficult to get any nice photos of Roosevelt Avenue because of the elevated subway and the street traffic, but it really is the focal point of the neighborhood. --Jleon 18:24, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Looks good, Jleon. Thanks! I went to Jackson Heights and Roosevelt Avenue last summer when I was in NYC and had a look around. Fascinating area.  Moncrief 02:43, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

Requested move
New York City to New York, New York to comply with city naming standards and also to please those straight-laced people who belive all cities should be city, state in the U.S. -- Dralwik 00:42, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Voting over – see decision below

Support

 * 1) Strongly support returning the only US city exception to the defacto cityname, statename convention (which has recently also been adopted for all Australian cities except their 5-10 capitals). Niteowlneils 01:20, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) I vote in Support of a move. WhisperToMe 03:09, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * 3) Absolutely 100% SUPPORT. The article title is wrong (not just disliked, but outright wrong) on not just one or two, but in fact three counts:
 * 4) *There is no such place named "New York City" anywhere in the world! The city's name is New York and that is a legally-documented fact.
 * 5) *Yes, people call it "New York city", but notice that the "c" is not supposed to be capitalized, as it is not part of the name.
 * 6) *It defies the perfectly logical and uniform naming convention for every one of the other tens of thousands of other U.S. places.
 * This article title makes no more sense than Atlanta City, Miami City, Chicago City, Los Angeles City, Denver City, (or conversely Oklahoma, Oklahoma, Salt Lake, Utah, Kansas, Kansas) or any other place that doesn't exist. Again, I understand that its called "New York city" to disambiguate it from "New York state", but so is "Washington state".  It doesn't matter how many people make this mistake, it's still factually wrong and therefore does not belong in Wikipedia as a "correct" article title.  Furthermore, if it was moved without consensus as someone mentioned, then it should be moved back immediately.  For people that like to whine about moves and create excessive edits because links are via an essentially-invisible redirect instead of being "direct", so what??  That's what redirects are for!  The users don't even see them!  –radiojon 20:00, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Even the official New York City web site, which is at nyc.gov (the nyc standing for New York City), says "Welcome to the official New York City Web site". It's not clear to me how you can say that the name New York City is in any way wrong when that is exactly what the city calls itself. Nohat 20:25, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Oppose

 * 1) Oppose. I think applying this naming convention uniformly to major cities is unfortunate (and most unfortunate with this most major of cities).  I think the name of the city alone should suffice; there isn't a disabmbiguation issue.  So in my ideal Wikipedia, the non re-directed article title would be simply "Detroit" instead of Detroit, Michigan and so on for U.S. cities without dab issues that are over, say, 500,000 in population.  If, for example, UK cities can get by with article titles of single town names like Kenilworth even for lesser cities, why not major U.S. cities too?  A long way of saying: Oppose.  Moncrief 01:40, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) Oppose. It's actually called New York City.  That should be enough.  "New York, New York" is the postal address of New York County (Manhattan).--Pharos 02:32, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * 3) Oppose Leisure outpacing sense once again. Think of the reader. --Wetman 02:43, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * 4) Oppose. (P.S. Kenilworth isn't a city.) Proteus (Talk) 11:05, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * 5) Strongly oppose- This is completely redundant for a number of reasons. This is the rare (if not only) instance in which the name of the state is contained within the name of the city. Add to that the fact that the name of the city is "New York City" not "New York, New York." This is a clear case in which needless technicalities end up hurting the experience for the reader. I didn't raise too much of a fuss over this discussion with Chicago, but now I wish I had. Why don't you start in with Mexico City, London, Tokyo and Paris too? --Jleon 12:39, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * 6) Oppose The word "City" is necessary to prevent confusion with New York State; what confusion is adding the state name preventing? Donald Friedman 13:33, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * 7) Oppose The "use most common name" is more important than the city name policy, which isn't really supported by consensus. We've been through this before, and all other title suggestions for this page are inferior to "New York City", because everyone calls it New York City. Even the official New York City website, which is at nyc.gov (standing for New York City) says "Welcome to the official New York City Web site. All other names for the city are restricted to limited contexts in actual usage. The only unambiguous and generic name for the city is "New York City". Nohat 17:43, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * 8) Oppose. It's a city. People call it New York City. It's not New York State. Relatively few people call it New York, New York, unless they're writing a postal address or singing along with the old Sinatra tune. older &ne; wiser 22:59, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * 9) Oppose. During the last round of debate, I was ambivalent about the choices, but since then, I have come to feel that "New York City" is definitely the best title for this article. -- Decumanus 01:21, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)
 * 10) Oppose. Oh no, not this old chestnut again! James F. (talk) 01:51, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
 * 11) Oppose. Would cause further confusion with the same-named county --Berkut 07:41, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Other

 * 1) Abstain. I'm going to go off in left field here and say that I think the article should just be called "New York". It may not be the official name, and it may not match some naming convention, but it's what most people call it, and thus it's what most people are most likely to type into the search box to find it.  And they'll be surprised to find an article about New York State there, and it'll be two more clicks before they get past the referenced disambig page to where they were looking to be in the first place.  But I imagine I'm in the minority on this, so I think I'm just going to Abstain.  --RoySmith 02:41, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) Agree with above comment. Article should be called "New York" as the term more often refers to the city than the state. State article should be moved to New York (State). 80.255 23:47, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Discussion
I would argue that it is not even necessary to gain consensus to move it back, as it was moved to "New York City" without consensus (the only poll I found from that time period ended up a virtual tie, 17-15). Niteowlneils 01:20, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * As an editor, I find the convention saves a lot of time. I can type Puyallup, Washington or Miami, Florida without having to take the time to check if the article is actually there. Niteowlneils 02:49, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Also, I believe formal uses (ie written) should out-weigh informal (ie verbal/IM/Text msging)
 * What if you don't KNOW what state the place is in? Lots of people might know a city name without knowing the state name, particularly though not exclusively non-U.S. users.   Anyway, this isn't the place to debate the general Wikipedia policy, just the NYC article. Moncrief 02:52, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * There's always the disambiguation page. WhisperToMe 03:09, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Whoever is voting here should be aware that "New York, New York", is basically never used around the city.--Pharos 03:28, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Nor is it used around the country (see my comments below). Moncrief 03:29, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

I think applying this naming convention uniformly to major cities is unfortunate (and most unfortunate with this most major of cities). I think the name of the city alone should suffice; there isn't a disabmbiguation issue. So in my ideal Wikipedia, the non re-directed article title would be simply "Detroit" instead of Detroit, Michigan and so on for U.S. cities without dab issues that are over, say, 500,000 in population. If, for example, UK cities can get by with article titles of single town names like Kenilworth even for lesser cities, why not major U.S. cities too? A long way of saying: Oppose. Moncrief 01:40, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * That has been rejected recently at Talk:Chicago%2C_Illinois and Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_%28city_names%29 (proposal started with a 500k cut-off) and probably other places in the past. Niteowlneils 02:26, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Isn't that unfortunate? How many international users are going to think to type in "Chicago, Illinois" if they want to read the article on Chicago? (And I do know that "Chicago" redirects there and not a dab page; I think instead "Chicago, Illinois" should redirect to "Chicago").  Now that I'm aware this debate has been going on, I'll be sure to add my two cents to it throughout Wikipedia. Moncrief 02:28, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

I reopened the debate at Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_%28city_names%29. Please help!Dralwik 14:34, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

It's actually called New York City. That should be enough. "New York, New York" is the postal address of New York County (Manhattan).--Pharos 02:32, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * It may be most often "actually called" "New York City" in and around New York, but I don't believe that holds true in the rest of the country. Niteowlneils 02:49, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * So what do you think other Americans actually call it? "New York, New York"?  If I heard someone saying that (and I live 3000 miles from NYC), I'd think they were talking about the Frank Sinatra song.  What else other than "New York City" or just "New York" do you think people call the place? People in the NYC area tend to call NYC (or at least Manhattan) "the city"; in the rest of the country, we certainly don't say "New York, New York"! Moncrief 02:57, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * Pharos' point is important. So I will put it in bold: the name "New York, New York" is not an acceptable title because it is ambiguous. It is the postal address of only the borough of Manhattan and not the rest of the city. Only the name "New York City" unambiguously refers to the entire city. Application of the so-called preemptive disambiguation policy in this case actually results in a title that is more ambiguous, not less. Nohat

Naming conventions (city names) says:
 * ''Cities in the United States and Canada, however, will be disambiguated with a format of City, State or City, Province (the "comma convention"). Over 30,000 U.S. city articles are already in the form of "City, State" even if they do not need disambiguation.  Those U.S. cities which need additional disambiguation will be disambiguated with their County (e.g. Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina and Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina).


 * ''There is some dispute as to the general applicability of this convention and no real consensus to support it. See the Talk page.

--Philip Baird Shearer 11:04, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Philip's point is important. There is in fact no real consensus to support the policy other than the fact that Rambot enacted the policy in de facto way by creating many thousands of aticles that adhered to it. There was a poll on whether to adopt the policy, and only 4 people voted on it, hardly enough to constitute consensus, regardless of the outcome. There are so many downsides to adopting an alternate name for this page that adheres to this "policy", and the only upside as far as I can tell would be the dubious benefit of "consistency". Nohat 17:56, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

--Here's another very important reason why I'm opposed to all of this: automatic redirects might seem like rather inocuous things at first, however, many people don't seem to understand that redirects are routed through Wiki's search protocol. If you don't believe me try typing in one of the things that redirects to the New York City article now and see how much longer it takes for the article to appear than if you just typed in "New York City." This article is viewed by thousands of people every month, and forcing the vast majority of them through the delays associated with the redirects is just plain wrong. Also, the countless articles throughout Wikipedia that have "New York City" hotlinked would also experience these same delays as well. --Jleon 17:34, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, since searches elsewhere are not case-sensitive, people will type "new york city", and still be piped thru a redirect, rendering this argument largely moot. Niteowlneils 20:24, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

--Its not a moot point for the hundreds (thousands?) of articles that link to "New York City." Besides I would presume the case sensitivity issue is something that will be fixed much sooner than the redirect issue. --Jleon 20:30, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Decision
It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it to be moved. violet/riga (t) 15:24, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Bizarre vandalism
Does anybody know what's happening with this page? It appears to have been vandalized, but it's more than that. I've made several attempts to revert it, and I just get the vandalized text back. It looks like other people have had the same experience. Very strange --RoySmith 01:31, 6 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Appending "?action=purge" to the URL fixed it. --SPUI (talk) 01:50, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

What caused this? Was it some clever vandal-hacking, or just some strange glitch in the wiki software? --RoySmith 13:18, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Consulates associated with the UN
The lead paragraph contains the sentence:


 * and the hundreds of international consulates associated with the United Nations

My understanding is that consulates deal with commercial and passport type issues, are unlikely to have any involvement with the UN, and there are presumably lots of them in New York because it has lots of people and lots of business. Those consulates would be subordinate to a country's 'Ambassador to the United States' based in Washington.

Dealing with the UN would however be the responsibility of a separate 'Ambassador to the United Nations'. Not sure whether this means countries actually maintain 'Embassies to the United Nations' in New York, but it seems likely for at least the larger countries. -- Chris j wood 19:44, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

--You're right they are embassies, not consulates. NYC has most of the international consulates for the US as well but they are not directly related to the UN. I'll go in and fix. --Jleon 20:21, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

-- As I am aware most countries' embassies are in Washington D.C. and there are then consulates as outposts in New York City. The Ambassador to the UN then has his office as a sub-department to the consulate being the "Permanent Mission to the United Nations". At least this is the case of Sweden, the case might be different for different countries so a generic assumption should of course not be made. --Lindus 15:25, 28 September 2005 (EDT)

explanation for extra spaces
I created a lot of extra spaces because the photos and tables mismatch with the text with a 17 inch screen (mine).

Revas 3:30 (CET) 14/05/05

--Hmm, thats weird. I have viewed this article today on two different screens (one of them 17in.) with two different browsers and I didn't see any problem. I think this may come down to your settings for text display. Does anyone else experience these problems? --Jleon 01:37, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Visibility of contents
(copied from user talk pages -- Chris j wood 19:14, 13 May 2005 (UTC))

Hi, what was your intention of breaking apart the intro just to add the heading "overview"? I think its pretty clear that for most large city articles the intro serves as the overview. I've also never heard of what you're calling the "convential position" of having those separate, and I think the article looks much worse now. --Jleon 18:21, 13 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Firstly let me congratulate you on your speedy response. I've actually yet to see the results of my edit (apart from the pre-save preview) as all Wikipedia will give me is Sorry- we have a problem... The wikimedia web server didn't return any response to your request.


 * However the intention was not about breaking up anything, but rather about making sure that the contents were shown in a rational place in the article. When I first looked at the article, viewing full screen on a 17" monitor with medium sized font, I couldn't even tell that it had a contents list, and I therefore assumed it was a fairly short and lightweight article. Obviously I was sufficiently motivated to scroll down and find that wasn't true, but other readers may not. The contents list performs an important 'selling' task in giving the reader a quick view of how comprehensive the article is, but only if readers don't have to scroll to see it.


 * Or to put it another way, here is what the Manual of Style has to say about the lead section:


 * The lead section is the section before the first headline. It is shown above the table of contents (for pages with more than three headlines). The appropriate lead length depends on the length of the article, but should be no longer than three paragraphs in any case.


 * (my emphasis). The lead section before my change had four relatively long paragraphs. Please feel free to change what I have done, but do please consider the need for the contents list to be immediately visible. -- Chris j wood 18:48, 13 May 2005 (UTC)


 * --OK I understand what you're trying to do, but this created a lot of "negative space" by creating a mismatch in the placement of the contents and the main info box. Other large cities tend to have fairly large intros like New York's, and I can't imagine anyone giving up from thinking that is the entire article. --Jleon 18:52, 13 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Ok, I've managed to display the article now, and I see what you mean about the whitespace mismatches. Obviously someone had carefully aligned the contents and the info box, and my change kicked them out of kilter. I've tried again; if you still don't like feel free to revert. Will copy this discussion to Talk:New York City -- Chris j wood 19:14, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

--Well it definetly looks a bit better now, but my concern is that people won't really be reading the overview if its buried directly under the contents box. I guess it all has to do with how individuals use Wiki, because personally I never pay any attention to the contents boxes. Let's have an informal vote for who would prefer the old format and who likes the new organization. --Jleon 02:02, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Votes

 * Keep contents list visible. For the reasons I give above. -- Chris j wood 11:59, 16 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Restore to the original format. Having the four small paragraphs for the intro above the TOC is very similar to other city articles (i.e.- Paris, Tokyo). I don't think most readers use the TOC box very often anyway. --Jleon 12:19, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

African Burial Ground?
I am surprised to find that there is no mention (nor even an article in wikipedia regarding it) of the African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan. This burial ground is a significant part of the city's history, and for anybody who remembers, became a big issue for a brief period after it was discovered (many objected to the examination of the bodies and graves). I will including it in the list of parks and grounds near the end of the article. I hope that someone can give it a more comprehensive treatment. --Sophitus 16:13, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I don't know how to include the African Burial Ground in that list of NYC-related topics. When I try to edit it, all I find on the edit page is something like {NYC topics}. Could somebody who knows how add the African Burial Ground to that list under the section "Parks and Grounds"? --Sophitus 16:19, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

--You're totally right. I added it to the List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City, instead of to the parks list beacuse its use is largely cultural (like the Irish Hunger Memorial or the Holocaust Memorial). If I remember correctly, the memorial itself is currently under construction, but the site is still used for various cultural activities. I will likley go in and write the article for it this week if no one else gets to it first. --Jleon 17:15, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

-Ok, here it is: African Burial Ground. --Jleon 14:13, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Reducing this article
Lately, I put 2 sections of this article into their own articles, and still this page is over 32KB. What can I do next to keep it from being large?? Georgia guy 19:30, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Uh, why don't you slow down a little bit. This article is the colloboration of many active editors (of which I don't see your name in any recent contributions) and (although yes boldness is good) it would be wise to take a pulse of how things are going before deciding that you need to chop the article up. -- Decumanus 19:34, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)

--I agree 100%, I have already restored partial versions of the material, but would personally prefer them totally restored for the time being. What is the point of having an major heading with only a link below it? Also why have an article called "transportation in NYC" and then a separate article still called "mass transit in NYC"? We need to progress more slowly with the trimming process, there's really no need for urgency. --Jleon 20:02, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

We now have a lot of subway photos
Thanks to User:Aspersions (though they're all from the surface and in Manhattan). See IRT, IND and BMT. --SPUI (talk) 03:52, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * you should mention that taking photos in and around the subway system is now considered an act of terrorism, and you will be subject to a random search and seizure, followed by incarceration and confiscation of said photos and camera... isn't living in a police state wonderful? - 19:18, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

GDP
"If it were a nation, the city would have the 16th highest gross domestic product in the world, exceeding that of Russia ($433 billion)." Wouldn't it be the 17th, and it's surely less than Russia. - List of countries by GDP (nominal) Or am I missing something? HybridFusion

Postal address question
One thing I've never figured out about NYC is this: in Manhattan, the postal address is always "New York, NY". In The Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, it's always (I think) the respective borough name. In Queens, sometimes it's "Queens, NY", but sometimes it's the name of a neighborhood, like "Long Island City, NY" or "Flushing, NY". How come (a) we don't use "Manhattan, NY" and (b) "Queens, NY" apparently doesn't apply to the whole borough? 151.202.118.94 02:36, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Life's funny that way. Some Bronx residents use their neighborhood name in their address (i.e. "Riverdale, NY or City island, NY are common). It's not technically correct, but the mail gets through (as long as the zip is right, nothing else really matters).

The answer for Queens is much more straight-forward. All those things like "Flushing" or "Ridgewood" that we currently call neighborhoods, used to be individual towns in Queens County, before it was part of New York City. The names stuck. RoySmith 03:02, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

--The primary reason for this is not necessarily the history of the places, but the fact that the U.S. postal service insists on not making things too complicated with street addresses. For instance, throughout the five boroughs there are 5 "Main" streets, at least 3 different Broadways, and about a dozen duplicate sequences of numbered streets. Just in Queens alone there about 3 different "68th Aves" in different neighborhoods. Just about anything goes in Queens though, you can mark an envelope by the borough, the neighborhood, or the so-called "township". Supposedly, you can also mark anything as "NY, NY' and if it has the right zip code it will get there. --Jleon 13:55, 13 July 2005 (UTC)


 * the answer is simple, counties, technically Manhattan is New York county, making the mailing address NY, NY... Queens is Queens county, hence Queens, NY... so on and so, except for Brooklyn, which is Kings County, so don't ask about that one..
 * what I'd really like to know is why the heck people from Long Island remove the NY and replace it with a freaking LI, for instance Hicktownusa, LI... it's not a state - 172.156.14.66 19:22, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Well I have to beg to differ, it really has nothing to do with the counties- county names are not used in addresses anywhere else in the state. The whole thing with LI is not the official way of marking postage, and is usually only found on advertisements and brochures to help businesses make their locations a little clearer. --Jleon 14:00, 26 July 2005 (UTC)