Talk:Upstate New York/Archive 2

Definition
"There is no in whether or not a place is "upstate", as well as elevation and being away from sea level (hence the prefix "up", meaning both to the north and having a greater altitude). "

What? It would appear that there are some words missing from this sentence. It would be great if this could be fixed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.51.184.48 (talk) 13:37, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

North of the Erie Canal
Since the Erie canal is a major geographical landmark which runs horizontally across New York state, it would be better to denote anything above it as upstate. That is, anything above Buffalo to anything above Syracuse. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.138.161.14 (talk) 18:27, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

What a piece of crap.
This article has a lot of potential, but it's basically a disputed, unsourced cesspool of WikiLinks and "it may be this, but it's probably that" statements.

When I finish reviewing a GA nomination I'm going to rip this article to shreds and turn it into something whimsical and informative without all of the filler and contradictory statements that, while needed, aren't presented the way they should be. Stay tuned. Buffaboy talk 04:48, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
 * If you take that approach, you're liable to get reverted or start disputes. It's not at all the job of Wikipedia articles to be "whimsical". Please see WP:TONE and WP:RELEVANCE.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:40, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
 * "Whimiscal" wasn't a good word to use. Slow, steady and constructive edits will help the article. It does have some good content, but the structure isn't great. Buffaboy  talk 05:16, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

RfC: How should this article "define" Upstate New York?
I would like to work on this article, making it similar to the upper 2/3s of Northern California. Since Upstate New York is an often disputed term, how should it be defined with respect to WP:NPOV? Buffaboy talk 05:00, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Whatever reliable sources say is the best option. Grognard Extraordinaire Chess (talk) Ping when replying 00:12, 28 May 2015 (UTC)


 * From 1992 Trace substances in environmental health, vol. 25, p.278: "Upstate New York includes all counties and townships outside of New York City." That was ever my own understanding, even though I lived on Long Island for two years and never considered it part of "Upstate".  "Upstate" meant all of "continental" New York.  But I am a sample of one.  KDS 4444  Talk  05:25, 4 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Also found this: "Upstate New York includes all of New York State with the exception of the New York Metropolitan area, consisting of New York City, Long Island, and Rockland, and Westchester counties." So I guess I was right after all in my sentiment.  KDS 4444  Talk  05:29, 4 June 2015 (UTC)


 * It's probable that exact definitions conflict; the term probably means subtly different things in different regulatory (and other) contexts. This is a common problem in articles on such regions. The usual approach, I think, is to go in the lead with the general definition used in the preponderance of reliable sources (without getting bogged down in nit-picks), then explain in the body of the article what the definitional divergences are in particular contexts.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:39, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
 * You aren't going to see a better answer than that one right there. KDS 4444  Talk  07:44, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
 * That seems to be a good approach. Thanks for the input everyone. Buffaboy  talk 02:59, 11 June 2015 (UTC)


 * It's kind of a subjective term. When you need to define subjective terms, sometimes it's best to do a survey of what the sources say, summarize them, and then report it in the lead.  This is what I did in cult film, which is about a highly disputed term, both in fan and scholarly discussions.  For the record, "anything outside NYC" is really only applicable to residents of NYC.  Orange, Sullivan, and Dutchess counties really don't consider themselves to be upstate, and they would say that it starts further up toward Syracuse or Albany.  This is discussed in The New York Times.  I'm sure you could pull dozens of articles from The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York, The New York Observer, and The Village Voice just to start.  After that, hit up the Hudson Valley newspapers (The Poughkeepsie Journal and Times Herald-Record, for example), and then the Southern Tier, Capital District, and further north. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 01:00, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Upstate New York
The thruway runs from east to west, if you live north of the thruway you are in Upstate New York. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.123.143.102 (talk) 16:10, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

I think of the Shawangunks ridge (and the valley behind it, e.g. Roundout, Bashakill, etc; i.e. approximately a line drawn from Port Jervis thru Wurtsboro and Ellenville to Kingston/Rhinebeck, or rather just to the southeast of these communities) as the boundary between upstate and downstate. The area south and east of that diagonal is "downstate" as I see it. Everything north and west of that line is "upstate", with Kingston and that valley being a border region. This corresponds with a break in the continuity of population distribution, as a result of the Shawangunks (See http://www.dec.ny.gov/images/air_images/24hrpm25fig5.jpg) and, to a great extent, with who commutes to work in and around NYC. 50.149.22.198 (talk) 13:48, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Demographics
There should be a way to get a population number and even more in depth data straight from county data on Wikipedia or elsewhere without manually working the numbers one by one. B137 (talk) 00:54, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Namely I questioned that the population of Upstate went through steady decline for an extended period ("Since the late 20th century, with the decline of manufacturing and its jobs, the area has generally suffered a net population loss."). Much of the area is and always has been very sparsely populated. It's easy to ignore all that and only focus on anyplace that's anyplace, that being Buf, Roc, Syr, Albany and maybe binghamton. While these have declined sadly over the latter half of the 20th century, the areas around them haven't necessarily. For example, Monroe County, New York only logged one tiny loss for 1980 of 1.4% but quickly gained it back and is unequivocally higher than ever. Not so with Erie County, New York (Buffalo, New York) and Onondaga County, New York (Syracuse). But bring in many of the podunk counties, some of which don't even have incorporated cities, and the population has gone up by almost two million, an increase of more than 35%. If you include most of the next few counties as part of "downstate", that accounts for an increase of a few hundred thousand, not nearly enough to justify saying upstate had a "net population loss trend [over an extended period]", though a few counties did lose some. Not to discredit the Rust Belt for not being awful, the economy is rather stagnant (New York high-speed rail mentions this) outside of NYC. Little things come and go but nothing major. B137 (talk) 00:14, 7 September 2015 (UTC)


 * New York City
 * New York
 * Rockland
 * Westchester
 * Nassau
 * Suffolk


 * upstate 1950: 14830192 - 276129 - 672765 - 625816 - 89276 - 7891957 = 5,274,249


 * upstate 2010: 19378102 - 8175133 - 311687 - 949113 - 1339532 - 1493350 = 7,109,287


 * Minus all this for any given census year should yield the widely acknowledged "upstate" pop.


 * The clear conclusion from all this is that Upstate has NOT been losing population over the [late] 20th century. I'm not advocating for the economy or significance of the sparsely populated and much less know state of New York, but let's recognize the facts. B137 (talk) 17:54, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Bold Title in First Sentence of Article
I would like to start a discussion on here to achieve consensus and avoid edit warring. Editor User:Zacwill wants to change the bold title in the first sentence from "Upstate New York" to just "Upstate". I believe that the bold text should remain "Upstate New York", for the following reasons:
 * According to MOS:BOLDTITLE, the whole article name should be in bold.
 * The term "Upstate" can refer to other regions, and Upstate does not redirect to here (also following MOS:BOLDTITLE.
 * While people in New York State sometimes refer to the region as simply "Upstate", the widely-accepted name outside of the state is "Upstate New York".
 * While using "Upstate New York" can introduce some redundancy, as the definition that follows references the state of New York, the Manual of Style clearly gives an example similar to this (the Oxford English Dictionary) where such redundancy is unavoidable. (Note that the first part of the example does not apply, as "Upstate New York" is a subject, and is not descriptive based on Wikipedia's definition.)

User:Zacwill, could you please provide your counterarguments here?

Vmanjr (talk) 12:03, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Upstate again
There's a paragraph in the Definition section that talks about where "upstate" is and gives a source reference, but not a single thing in the definition is supported by that reference, it's like the reference was put there completely at random: There is no clear official boundary between Upstate New York and Downstate New York. The broadest usage of the term Upstate New York excludes only New York City and Long Island, which are always considered to be part of Downstate New York. Another usage locates the Upstate/Downstate boundary further north, at the point where New York City's suburbs segue into its exurbs, as the exurbs do not fall within the US Census' urban area. This boundary places most, but not all, of Westchester and Rockland Counties in Downstate, while putting the northwestern edge of Rockland County as well as the northernmost quarter of Westchester County (including Peekskill) in Upstate.

I've marked the ref as failed verification as a first step, but imho that doesn't go far enough, as a whole series of unsubstantiated claims like this needs a reliable source, or several of them, and someone should either provide them within a reasonable time frame, or else the entire paragraph should be removed. Mathglot (talk) 09:59, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

References for 'Upstate again' 

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Two questions to add to this article

 * 1) What percentage of the state of New York's area does this constitute??
 * 2) What percentage of the population of New York lives in this area?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:30, 9 January 2017 (UTC)