Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities/Archive 1

Ram-Man's comment

I don't know if anyone will read and respond to this before I just go ahead and figure out what to do, but I have a problem. I was working on the Towns and Cities of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania using the data provided by the United States Census Bureau. Now the state is divided up into governing bodies lower than the county. Such bodies include boroughs, townships, and CDP (not sure what it stands for). The problem is this. Townships are not unique to one and only one place. That is, a simple city name of "CITY, STATE" will not be sufficient uniquely identify a city. In fact some towns, like Ephrata, Pennsylvania are both a borough and a township. This may not pose a problem for some towns (like Ephrata), but the township name may be repeated in various counties across the state. Thus, a person looking for Brecknock in Allegheny County may get the page for the Brecknock in Lancaster County, and unless they are a native, they won't know the data is the wrong data. And the people in each township *think* that they live in *the* Brecknock. Also, the famed Intercourse, Pennsylvania is not even an official borough or township. There are many towns that are like that. My guess is that they simply lack a governing body in the town (too small or whatever). But these names could theoretically be used as official names elsewhere causing a naming conflict. I am almost positive that similar naming conflicts can exist in other states (but maybe not all). Is the solution to develop a different (and much more cumbersome) naming system? How can we solve this problem? Or do we just ignore it? -- Ram-Man

Dated September 21, 2002