Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of cities and towns in Tennessee

List of cities and towns in Tennessee
Self-nomination (list was originally created and previously expanded by others, including Kaldari, but was recently expanded by me).

This list meets all of the criteria at Featured list criteria. It is a comprehensive list of incorporated municipalities in the U.S. state of Tennessee, with several well-sourced items of information about each municipality. It is formatted as a sortable list, so list elements can be ordered by name, county, population, date of incorporation, and type of charter. The article includes a lead section; encyclopedic text discussing and explaining some of the list items; one interesting and relevant image; and a table of contents. Although the information is available from other sources in a list format, this particular compilation is unique in combining all of these elements in a single list.

Active discussion of this list has occurred recently at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tennessee.

--Orlady (talk) 15:36, 24 November 2007 (UTC)


 * weak oppose I have a few things I'd like to see straightened out or at least justified.


 * Support my concerns were either dealt with or made irrelevant by consensus. Circeus 00:21, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Weak support - I'd love a map, but I can see that effort being better spent on "list of communities in X county", like the recently-featured Lycoming County, PA, list. I would also like a page that lists the unincorporated areas, I suppose that would be done by CDP? But that would probably belong in a separate list... --Golbez (talk) 01:11, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
 * To have all the unincorporated areas in the list would be perfect. I do not think that is managable or even possible. There are unincorporated places in TN that just slip through the net. Some too small to be a Census designated area, just boiled down to a current voting district, still, they have a name or had a name. Too many old and current unincorporated places (That would include Ghost towns as well, wouldn't it?). A list of unincorporated places can never be really complete, unlike the List of cities and towns. For a featured list I'd prefer something that can be complete, that has all known elements of the list in it. A link to a list of unincorporated places in the List of cities and towns would be nice, so who wants to can look that up. As you said, the unincorporated places would probably be better represented in a separate list. Take care, doxTxob \ talk 07:45, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Creating a comprehensive listing of unincorporated communities would be a mindboggling challenge. For every incorporated municipality in Tennessee (a total of about 350), I estimate that there are probably at least 25 unofficial towns, villages, hamlets, communities, inhabited hollows, ghost towns, large farms, neighborhoods defined by the name of the road they are on or the church they are near, and wide places on the highway that could make a case for being "unincorporated communities." There is no standard for identifying an unincorporated community, and it is in fact sometimes difficult to distinguish between real communities and "things made up one day." There are relatively few Census-defined places in Tennessee (and the Census Bureau's definitions is not always very clear; for example, I believe I've driven through Eagleton Village, Tennessee CDP on many occasions, but I have never seen a sign identifying Eagleton Village and I have not figured out what "place" the Census is referring to), so a statewide listing of them would not be exceptionally useful. A list of named post office locations could be another fruitful basis for crafting a useful list of unincorporated places, although that also has limitations (many "real" places do not have post offices or zip codes, including many of the incorporated municipalities and many significant unincorporated places such as Tellico Village, Tennessee). Regardless, it would not be possible for a list to present the same attributes for unincorporated places that are listed for incorporated municipalities (except for CDPs there are no official population data; there is no municipal charter; there is no incorporation date; and except for CDPs there is not even a basis for defining a community's boundaries, so there can be contention over which counties a community is in). Thus, the list of unincorporated places needs to be kept separate from the incorporated list. It would be nice to work towards more comprehensive coverage of Tennessee's "places," but first I chose to concentrate on the achievable goal of a comprehensive and useful list of officially constituted municipalities. --Orlady (talk) 16:09, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Which is why I didn't demand a listing of unincorporated areas (though a compromise would be to list the non-incorporated CDPs), though such information would be very good on a per-county list, like the aforementioned Lycoming County FL. --Golbez (talk) 00:41, 29 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Support for the featured list status. It is a comprehensive compilation of TN cities and towns and it delivers a lot of information. The list is well referenced and structured. The introductory content explains the scope of the list and introduces key facts and words to the casual reader. An image, representing the topic very well, accompanies the introduction. Expert advice can make the product even better but featured list status is deserved in my opinion. Take care, doxTxob \ talk 07:45, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Support. Wow, this list has come a long way since I built the initial table back in 2005! Orlady has done a magnificent job making this list more "article-like" and giving it the polish it needs to be a featured list. I whole-heartedly support it being promoted to a featured list. Kaldari (talk) 15:46, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment. I've started an "area" column to make the list even more comprehensive. Obviously this is going to take a day or two to fill in, so please be patient. Kaldari (talk) 19:26, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
 * It was pretty tedious, but I added the areas for all 351 municipalities. And it sorts correctly by area (thanks to the nts template)! Kaldari (talk) 01:49, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Support per doxTxob. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 03:22, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment. I'm not knowledgeable about this subject, but I found this list very similar to the recent FL List of municipalities in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, since they both list US incorporated municipalities. Could someone explain why the titles are different? Thank you. CG 19:52, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Keeping the name simple is a matter that was discussed on the talkpage of the list Talk:List_of_cities_and_towns_in_Tennessee. doxTxob \ talk 19:59, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Also note that nomenclature differs from state to state. Under Tennessee law, incorporated places are officially called either "city" or "town"; they are seldom referred to as "incorporated municipalities" (although that's a more straightforward description of what they are, IMHO). In contrast, Pennsylvania provides for three distinct kinds of incorporated municipalities (city, borough and township) and apparently often uses the word "municipalities" as a collective term for most or all kinds (see, for example, Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code Pennsylvania League of Cities and Municipalities, pamunicipalitiesinfo.com, and Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities Association). Thus, what makes sense in PA might not make sense in TN (or vice versa). --Orlady 21:02, 2 December 2007 (UTC)