Category talk:Places

Alright. I'm declaring this the official root node of a "place hierarchy" that works something like wikipedia's stub categories Geography > Place-Related becauase they've probably already face our situation and fixed it "about right".

I'm requesting that this we rename this "Wiki Places" (and make it a subcat of "Wiki Lists") to go with "Wiki Age" and "Wiki Size" and so on.

So here's the game plan:

1. We have a "region (one or two levels) > countries > optional provinces/states if the country is really "big" > Cities > local neighborhoods or insitutions or whatever". It's a tree structure.

2. No pages should have two separate "Place Categories" unless there's a compelling reason... like sister cities or something. Sister city wikis should have those two cities, not the continent they happen to share. But many wikis are probably either "ageographical" (which maybe should get a category?) or obvious.

2. Individual articles should be "at the right generality if they're actually general" and and as local as they can get if they're not... so long as it doens't lead to "vanity categories" where they're the only thing in the category. Example: if you have a wiki about a specific neighborhood of New York City then it doesn't deserve it's own "New York City Neighborhood Category" until the New York City category already has like maybe three places that obviously could be categorized with the more specific neighborhood cat.

Here's the basic tree stucture we should be slowly editing towards (taken from the wikipedia stub page cited above):

• Africa
  • African Countries as Necesary (From Algeria to Zimbabwe alphabetically)
• Asia
  • Central Asia
    • As Necessary (From Afghanistan to Uzbekistan alphabetically)
  • East Asia
    • Japan
    • China
    • Korea
  • Middle East
    • As Necessary (From Bahrain to United Arab Emirates alphabetically)
  • South Asia
    • As Necessary (From Bangladesh to Sri Lanka alphabetically)
  • South East Asia
    • As Necessary (From Brunei to Thailand alphabetically)
• Australia and Oceania
  • Australia
    • Australian Provices...
  • Oceania
    • As Necessary (From Fiji to Tonga alphabetically)
• Europe
  • As Necessary (From Albania to United Kingdom alphabetically)
• North and Central America
  • Canada
    • As Necessary (From Alberta to Yukon Territory alphabetically)
    • As Necessary (From Barbados to Haiti alphabetically)
  • Central America
    • As Necessary (From Belize to Panama alphabetically)
  • Greenland
  • Mexico
  • United States
    • As Necessary (From Alaska to Wisconsin alphabetically)
• South America
  • As Necessary (From Argentina to Venezuela alphabetically)

Cities as it's own thing

Love your energy on this new plan, Jennifer. Just one thought. Wikis about cities are special. I'm not sure they're more special than wikis about countries or states or anything else, but I want to make sure we don't lose the fact that WikiMaas is about a city when it's categorized in it's correct place in the place hierarchy. Know what I mean? TedErnst | talk 14:26, 19 October 2006 (EDT)

Yeah, I also think that "city" is a privileged kind of location. It's "meaningfulness to people" goes all the way back to city states and greek philsophy on the proper role of a person in a "polis". Plus it's deeply entwined with dialects and economic communities and on and on...

Actually I think maybe I have a solution (how does it sound?): Make "Wiki List" contain a category called "Wiki Place" for "place-ish categories". Then you have a root node "Earth" (which works better than "ageographic" for wikis that aren't restricted to local issues) that leads to the whole tree structure of places on Earth proposed above. Parrallel to "Earth" you can have a category for "Polis" or "City" or whatever. So if you want a wiki that's only about something in London it would go in "Category:London" but if the subject of the wiki was "all and only London itself" then the wiki would go in "Category:London" AND "Category:Polis"...

Sound good? (I like the idea of naming the Category "Polis" but whatever your favorite term is I'll go with that. What do you like?)

- JenniferForUnity 01:38, 20 October 2006 (EDT)

I love the "polis" idea, but no one will ever find it by searching. Category "cities" still makes the most sense to me. Or "City Wiki" perhaps. TedErnst | talk 11:32, 20 October 2006 (EDT)

Yeah, the more I thought about it the more "Cities" makes sense to me too just in terms of people using it alread and it being easy to find. Cool, cool :-) - JenniferForUnity 13:56, 20 October 2006 (EDT)