Template talk:Onondaga County, New York

Hamlets and other places
I've edited the template to make the list of hamlets match what's given in the New York State Gazetteer pub. by NYS Department of Health, 1995; http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/scandoclinks/ocm35297616.htm) . This involved deleting a lot of places that are not hamlets, adding a few hamlets that had been omitted, and adding " (hamlet)" to the wiki name in cases where the hamlet and town have the same name. I've left all links as links. Many are redlinks, but that's no bad thing as long as the link is to an article that reasonably could and should be created. Now that the list has been pruned to true hamlets, I think they all satisfy that criterion. In any case, what's the point of being in a navigation template if there's no link?  Of the places I deleted from the hamlet row, a few were bluelinked, and I put them back in a new row of "other places".  This is the only line for which there's no "official" criterion for inclusion; a few redlinks here would be fine, I think, but insignificant places with no WP article and no good reason to have one probably should be omitted. -- Rsholmes 17:41, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
 * For further discussion of this see Talk:Onondaga County, New York. -- Rsholmes 03:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Update
Since these messages were left and this debate took place, there has been vast development in these templates: they have been standardised nationwide, and every county nationwide (except those that are entirely cities, such as Bronx, Kings, New York, Queens, and Richmond counties in New York) has one. The standard format doesn't distinguish between sizes of hamlets, either in New York or in other states. Nyttend (talk) 02:16, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Then perhaps it should. Doctroid (talk) 02:22, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Hamlets again
Nyttend asks, rhetorically (since it was in an edit summary, not a discussion) "Who's to distinguish between the categories of hamlets?"

Had I better documented my revisions of 17 Jan 2007 he wouldn't have had to ask: the answer is, the New York State Gazetteer pub. by NYS Department of Health, 1995. This contains as close to an official list of hamlets as we're going to get. As stated in the discussion above, I listed all of the places shown in the Gazetteer under "Hamlets", with a link -- red or blue. The few unincorporated places that had been in the template which were not in the Gazetteer I put under "Other places". Later I thought it would be clearer to relabel these as "Principal hamlets" and "Other hamlets".

The reasoning for the division is as follows: the number of places like Jack's Reef, Seneca Knolls, and Westvale, places with names but not substantial enough to be included in the Gazetteer's list, is presumably enormous. I feel we would not want to put links, most of which would be red, for each and every one in the template; it'd make the template huge and unwieldy. On the other hand, places like DeWitt, Geddes, and Pompey are significant enough that there really should be articles for them -- and they should be in any list of principal hamlets in the county. So I felt they should be in the template, as redlinks for now.

So there are two criteria for being in the template: Hamlets that are significant enough that they ought to, and probably will, have an article, and belong in a list of principal hamlets; and hamlets that are not that significant, but do have articles. The division in the template reflects those two criteria, and the Gazetteer makes a reference we can agree upon to decide what the "significant enough" hamlets are.

Kirkville should have a link in the template. Three reasons: One, people who don't know very much about Kirkville won't know to click on the "Manlius" link to find out about it. That's why we have redirects. Two, in a future update Kirkville should and probably will get its own article. The template might as well be ready for it. And three, Kirkville simply belongs in any list of principal hamlets of Onondaga County.

I've restored the split for now. If discussion shows a consensus against it, then (and only then) let's re-unify it. But my feeling is that keeping the small and not-so-significant hamlets in a separate division, with separate inclusion criteria, makes the template easier to use. Doctroid (talk) 02:20, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Why is a health department list considered authoritative on geography? This is a navigational template, and these templates for all counties nationwide distinguish between what types of communities they are.  The only distinction you'll find in templates nationwide for communities is (1) hamlets/ghost towns, (2) CDPs/other hamlets, (3) CDPs/ghost towns, or (4) CDPs/other hamlets/ghost towns.  There's no reason that this template should so significantly different from the other 3,066.  Nyttend (talk) 02:42, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Redirects
What's the justification for removing redirect links? How is an uninformed user to know e.g. that "Manlius" is the article to look in for information on Kirkville? If the justification is that saving space in the template is of paramount importance, then why keep the redlinks? What, really, is the difference between redlinks and redirects in so far as their utility in the template? Doctroid (talk) 02:28, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Frankly, I don't like redlinks in these templates either, since one can't go anywhere with them. The point is that these templates often have many links to redlinks, but it's nonstandard to link to redirects.  Nyttend (talk) 02:39, 10 August 2008 (UTC)