Wikipedia:Higher-Level Jurisdiction Criterion

The Higher-Level Jurisdiction Criterion (HLJC) is a proposed criterion that may help to determine a primary topic.

Rationale
The HLJC leads to safer linkage where there is doubt as to the topic intended. For example, if someone intends to refer to New York City, but is misunderstood to mean New York State, their statement may be true, as New York City is in New York State. Exceptions include statements such as "New York has a population of 8 million" or "New York has four major airports." The HLJC is already allowed in principle on a case by case basis, as in Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links/New York villages within towns.

On the other hand, if they mean the state but are understood to mean the city, there is a good chance that their statement as understood will be false. Albany is in New York is only true if the state is the understood meaning, while The Statue of Liberty is in New York remains true even if New York is misunderstood to mean the state. One must also remember that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and therefore physical topography is a very significant element of a geographical jurisdiction, and that significance does not merely lie in the population or human impact of a jurisdiction. Furthermore, HLJC provides organizational structure.

In almost any Wikipedia state or major city article - Geography is consistently listed as a higher-precedence topic compared to Demographics, placing the physical landscape, which includes both rural and urban landscapes contained within, at a higher level of importance than the element of impact created by humans upon those landscapes.

Progeny articles
A good test of whether the HLJC is applicable is whether one article is a progeny article of the other.

A parent/progeny article relationship exists where:
 * The parent article contains a section that links to the progeny article by a template (or could logically do so).
 * For the progeny article to similarly link to the parent article would not make sense.

If both of these conditions are met, then the HLJC supports the parent article being the primary topic, and counts strongly against the progeny article.

Examples

 * Albany is in New York is only true if the state is the understood meaning, while The Empire State Building is in New York remains true even if New York is misunderstood to mean the city.
 * Campinas is in São Paulo is only true if the state is the understood meaning, while, Museu Paulista is in São Paulo remains true even if São Paulo is misunderstood to mean the state (in Portuguese Wikipedia).

Status
There is currently no consensus as to when or even whether this criterion should be applied. It is actively under discussion.

The Disambiguation guideline reads in part:

''There is no single criterion for defining a primary topic. However, there are two major aspects that are commonly discussed in connection with primary topics: A topic is primary for a term with respect to usage if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term; A topic is primary for a term with respect to long-term significance if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term. (emphasis added)

This explicitly leaves open the possibility of other criteria, such as the HLJC, to be among the most significant determinants of primary topic, notably when two geopolitical entities are involved where one jurisdiction is geopolitically a subset of another, such as New York, the state versus its namesake city, or Mexico, the country versus its namesake state or the country versus its namesake city (but not the State of Mexico versus Mexico City, which are mutually exclusive geographically).

Difficulties this would present
This would mean a change in how certain articles are treated:


 * America

The "option" option
One viable solution would be to adopt the HLJC as a completely viable option. In other words, not mandate it, but make it a legitimate option. This would avoid exerting unintended domino effects upon other articles.