Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of North American cities founded in chronological order


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result of the debate was no consensus. Okay, bear with me on this one. I count: 8 moves, 4 deletes, 3 keeps, with two of the moves being "well, maybe keep" or "well, maybe delete". I personally find the arguments for moving to List of North American cities by founding year to be the more persuasive, but I'm not prepared to go on' move just based on that, given the wide variety of opinions expressed here. The plain fact of the matter is, there's no consensus to delete. fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 10:44, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

List of North American cities founded in chronological order
inherently long, unwieldy, and impossible to maintain. It will never be complete or accurate. In short, unreasonable. WAvegetarian 02:32, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Perhaps move to List of Earliest North American settlements. Specify, say, nothing after 1650 or 1700. A list of this sort could be useful for research. Marskell 04:13, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment This is about the clearest example I've seen of systemic bias and a blatant violation of neutral point of view Did you mean List of Earliest European North American settlements, or are you simply discounting First Nations and Native Americans? WAvegetarian 16:17, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Uncle. Add European. Marskell 09:39, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Beyond hope of repair.  Fails to define Major North American cities.  Presumably that could be anywhere since Jamestown, Virginia no longer has any residents!  Fails to mention nearby Hampton founded 1610 and a moderate sized city.  There's too little effort here to be worth rescuing. Durova 07:07, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Another problem with this list is that it's inherently biased. North America wasn't empty of people in 1491.  Yet because only the Mayans had a written language and many of the others were nomadic, it will be impossible to date their settlements. Durova 16:42, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep Useful start on a topic of wide interest. I have categorised it. CalJW 10:57, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Per WAvegetarian. --Vizcarra 12:22, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Move and limit by date per Marskell. Squiddy 12:58, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Move and limit by date per Marskell. Please note that an a list's ability to be completed is not a criterion for deletion under current policy. See Template:Dynamic list. If that were a valid deletion criteria, the dynamic list template would be deleted, or perhaps redirected to an AfD tag. Jacqui ★ 14:48, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment According to User:Jeffq on the talk page for that template, "This template was created specifically to address the problem of robust lists that could not, by their nature, be considered complete." This hardly qualifies as a robust list. I find it highly unlikely that this list will ever reach a robustness that would qualify it a NPOV due to the ungodly large number of settlements before any written historical accounts. Unless we expect to gather data from the Inuit and other earlier settlers than Europeans, the entire premise of the article as named currently, or as suggested, is flawed.WAvegetarian 16:17, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Move to List of North American cities by founding year. Grammatically, the current title says they were founded in chronological order (hardly surprising). - Mgm|(talk) 15:09, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete, per Durova and others. Inherently biased, not to say Eurocentrically bigoted. POV. If kept and limited by date, rename to reflect the Euro-bias. "Post Columbian" would satisfy the need for clarity. KillerChihuahua
 * That still doesn't resolve the bias problem. Native peoples had massive migrations in the centuries following Columbus.  How would a list treat Seminole settlement of Florida?  What about the Trail of Tears?  Would it ignore Mexico City altogether as a renamed version of previously settled Tenochtitlan? An NPOV article on this subject would have to be an essay. Durova 00:05, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, Mexico City isn't just comprised of former Tenocjtitlan; it also takes in the former lakeshore cities - Chapultepec, Tlatlelolco, Texcocp, Xochimilco and another one or two (seven in total I believe); and Tenochtitlan was actually the youngest of the lot, and considered an upstart by the others...and all still relatively young compared to Tzintzuntzan, Monte Alban-Mitla-etc in Oaxaca and even things nearer Mexico City like Xochicalco (in Morelos). I agree there's a bias problem; the idea that something is "earliest" is inherently "Colombiano" in ethic.  In BC, BTW, there was this place Dimlahamid (Temlahan in Barbeau) which was destroyed by some natural/supernatural catastrophe, possibly older than Tenochtitlan; but I suppose legendary existence doesn't qualify either; of course somewhere like Cahokia does.
 * A further issue that struck me when I first saw this discussion is when is a city founded vs when did it appear as a settlement. New Westminster brags that it's the oldest city on the mainland of BC; by which I guess they mean their date of incorporation, although I suspect that a now-abandoned town somewhere might be slightly older (not sure which); and there are older settlements - Lillooet, Yale, and Lytton, as well as vanished Port Douglas - that did not become incorporated until the mid-20th Century, even though they were created BEFORE the Crown Colony of British Columbia came into existence (except Douglas); and on an aboriginal timeline, they were founded/named thousands of years before (Lillooet and Lytton are considered two of the oldest-inhabited sites of settlement in North America.  So is "founded" only in reference, or to incorporation?  Vancouver's founding date is June something 1885, but Capt Stamp's Mill was there in 1867, with Gassy Jack opening his bar in the summer of that year (the opening of his bar is considered to be the founding of the city).Skookum1 05:33, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Another good example of that problem has just been added to the article in the entry "1896: Miami, Florida, from early Spanish settlements dating back to 1566". The date 1896 is correct in that Miami was incorporated that year. There had been a Tequesta town there for perhaps 2,000 years when the Spanish came. There are records of a Spanish mission there off and on, but that doesn't qualify as "early Spanish settlements" in my book. In any case, any remaining Tequestas were removed to Cuba when the Spanish gave up Florida. The area was then uninhabited until the Seminole Wars pushed the Seminoles into the Everglades, and the Army built a fort on the Miami River. The fort was abandoned after the Seminole Wars, and the few remaining Seminoles stayed deep in the Everglades. The area wasn't resettled until the 1870s. My point in all this is that it is already very difficult to verify and maintain this list, as it is quickly becoming a junk pile of civic boosterism and unverified, and probably unverifiable, 'facts'. Add the POV problems, and it is a mess. -  Dalbury ( Talk )  10:48, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. and per Durova. -  Dalbury ( Talk )  01:00, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Move to List of North American cities by founding year as per Mgm. This could be a useful list. It is currently pretty heavy on US east coast cities but that can be fixed. A number of Canadian cities are missing: notably Tadoussac, Quebec (1600), Port Royal/Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia (1604), Trois-Rivières, Quebec (1634), and Montreal (1635). But the most glaring omissions are the Mexican cities (e.g. Mexico City/Tenochtitlan), both those that date back to before the conquest and those founded by Spaniards, including the US cities in former Alta California. It could be limited by date (e.g. 1800) or only cities with 1 million plus people for later founding dates. Luigizanasi 05:39, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment. I think that some sort of list like this could be useful, but how do we limit it? Founded by Europeans? Make that clear. Still in existence today? Then throw out Jamestown and the Roanoke colony. Otherwise, include L'Anse-aux-Meadows, the Popham colony, and the French colonies in Florida. By minimum size today? To keep St. Augustine in the list the minimum population would have to be no higher than 10,000. What does North America mean? Does it mean just the U.S. and Canada? The article includes "towns or former colonies of major historical note". I can see arguments over what is "major". The list as it stands is strongly biased to places founded or taken over early on by the English, and therefore prominent in U.S. history texts. Ah, I've said enough already. -  Dalbury ( Talk )  12:01, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, a useful listing of cities. The NPOV issues need to be fixed, sure, but deleting the article would be the first way to make sure that didn't happen. Christopher Parham (talk) 02:42, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment. Unless you can suggest a way to remove all NPOV issues, which I believe is impossible given the nature of the currently proposed list, I don't understand your vote. Voting to keep something in violation of policy because it may at some point in the future be made to comply with policy is ridiculous IMHO. --WAvegetarian 02:48, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I voted to keep on the basis that this is a useful list, mentioning the POV as just a sidenote. If you feel there are POV problems, fix them -- they aren't a basis for deletion, period. I'd love to see you make this list more complete. Christopher Parham (talk) 07:12, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment. Something like List of European setttlements in North America prior to 1700 would be more acceptable, IMHO. The current title is part of the POV problem. -  Dalbury ( Talk )  11:06, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Move to List of North American cities by founding year; failed settlements, plantations, abandoned forts, etc. can be moved to List of European settlements in North America before 1689 -Acjelen 00:27, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep or alternatively Move. What lack of completeness it has should not be cause to delete this article.  The concept is a good one and it should be kept and improved upon. NoSeptember 13:32, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
 * The objection is not to "lack of completeness," but to the flawed assumptions inherent in presenting information this way.
 * 1. Settlement constitutes habitation: this is true for agricultural societies, but not for nomadic peoples. However, most nomadic peoples return to the same locations on an annual circuit.  By definition this list excludes all such people on a technicality.
 * 2. Settlement by date: many of the earliest North American settlements are questions for archaeologists. It would be difficult to cover them adequately in a list by geographic region.  A list by date, consciously or not, inherently excludes most of these questions by rendering them impossible to resolve.
 * 3. Inherent bias: the first two factors favor Europeans, who had settled agriculture and written language. This fosters the illusion that previous habitation was insignificant.  We can't correct for these problems and still have a list.  We could correct for these problems in essay format.  But then this wouldn't be the same article. Durova 08:23, 26 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Delete or Move: I don't know what should be the right way to handle this page so I'll leave it up to you. All I know is that it can't stay the same way it is now. RENTASTRAWBERRY   FOR LET?   röck  01:28, 24 November 2005 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.