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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Calieber (talk | contribs) at 19:47, 4 May 2004 (=History Notes= blackout babies). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Government, politics

I have moved the politics and courts section to a seperate Government of New York City page, which I am working on cleaning and greatly expanding. I've substituted a shorter Government section which points to the main government page.

Friedo 23:35, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Tourism, sports

In an effort to further de-clutter this article, I would like to move the sections on musuems, sports and tourist sites to a separate Tourist and Recreational Attractions in New York City page. (Or if someone can think of a better name, let me know. I'm also going to move the List of famous buildings, sites, and monuments in New York City there, unless anyone objects.

Friedo 04:51, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Places and Buildings to add

  • RCA Building/Center
  • Radio City Music Hall

History Notes

  • Tammany Hall
  • Fiorello LaGuardia
  • the fiscal crisis of the 1970s
  • immigration and Ellis Island
  • the subway system. Vicki Rosenzweig

I've always thought that the baby boom 9 months after the blackout was an urban legend; though it was reported in the mass media at the time, no statisticians were consulted. Though, it could be an urban legend that the misreporting was an urban legend. Bugmuncher

It is[1]. And as I recall, in August it was too hot to do anything that might contribute to that sort of thing, at least in our apartment.

Questions

How do New York City boroughs differ from New York State counties? Are they just different names for the one entity, or do the county and borough have different administrative structures? What administrative structures does each borough have? Is the mayor of NYC mayor of all five boroughs? If so, what are the leaders of each individual boroughs called? Mayors also? -- SJK

I've added a brief explanation of boroughs as counties. Let me know what you think. -- Vicki Rosenzweig----
I have added a history of the borough/county situation in the History section. (There was some very erroneous information about the 1898 consolodation there.) Let me know what you think. -- Friedo 13:05, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Name of Article

Could this be moved to New York City? I spent 5 minutes thinking someone had cheekily moved the page on the city to the song title... :-) More pages link to New York City than here... Evercat 01:25 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)

All US cities are in the [City, State] format - I see no need to make an exception here. But New York City, New York is still a better title - I'll make the change. --mav 02:13 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I propose moving the page back to New York, New York. The official name is the City of New York, not the City of New York City. (Contrast this with, for example, The City of Jersey City.) Of course, the informal name New York City is very common as a way of a distinguishing the City of New York from the State of New York. But nobody says or writes New York City, New York, which is the new title of this page. For example, mail is addressed as New York, New York, not as New York City, New York. --Cjmnyc 13:56, 30 Jul 2003 (UTC); added example 16:00, 30 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I agrre with you. And besides now the redirect for the song at the bottom makes no sense at all. Rmhermen 14:13, 30 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Then change it to City of New York, New York. I was just responding to a complaint about "New York, New York" sounding like a musical title. --mav
One of the reasons that the song is called New York, New York is that the city is called New York, New York. It's not just a matter of catchy repetition, though I'm sure that's part of it too. I hate to propagate a ridiculous slogan like this, but it's also the reason why New York is sometimes called "the city so nice (or so great, or so big) they had to name it twice". -- Cjmnyc 20:47, 30 Jul 2003 (UTC)
To put it a different way, New York City, New York and City of New York, New York are redundant. "New York City", "New York, New York", and "City of New York" are all ways of distinguishing the city called New York from the state called New York. Once you've named the page anything but "New York, New York", you've already departed form the standard (City, State) format. Attaching "New York" on the end of "New York City" or "City of New York" neither maintains consistency nor disambiguates anything. -- Cjmnyc 05:31, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I think in the case of New York the city should be at plain New York, while the state should be at New York State. While this violates custom, New York is a special case, most people in the world when they hear New York think of the city rather than the state. SimonP 14:26, Jul 30, 2003 (UTC)

It is not at all incorrect to say that something happened in "New York" when you mean to say that something happened in the city by that name and not the state because the city is in the state. If somebody wants to be unambiguous about the city they will say more than just "New York." But the opposite is not true; "The capital of New York is Albany, New York". Common usage is fine but should not be taken to an extreme. --mav
Will rambot have a problem with this page if it is anywhere other than New York, New York? --Cjmnyc 16:01, 30 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Just leave a message and RamMan will fix the bot. --mav
OK. Thanks. -- Cjmnyc 20:47, 30 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I moved this sucker back to its home, New York, New York. A case can be made that the article should reside at New York City or City of New York, and redirects certainly belong there, but no one calls this place New York City, New York. Discuss among yourselves... -- Someone else 05:38, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I just have to point out that many people think, New York, New York refers to New York County, New York. If I say to someone, "I live in New York," they say, "Oh, you live in Manhattan?" I respond, "No, Brooklyn." Their rejoinder is: "Oh, you live in Brooklyn, New York." If I say, "I live in New York City." The question comes back, "Oh, where in New York City do you live?" My response is: "Brooklyn". Their rejoinder is: "You live in the borough of Brooklyn, is that New York? I thought that was the fourth largest city in America!" I hear people refer to New York City a lot. Also Greater New York City refers to NYC and the suburbs in the parlance I am familar with, generally a diameter of about fifty miles or so... Alex756 18:13, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

This is true of all very large cities. I grew up in Anaheim, California (which is 40 miles outside of Los Angeles) and later moved to Northern California and found it infuriating when people said that Disneyland was in Los Angeles! --mav
I have never heard anyone say "New York, New York" to refer to New York County. Manhattan, sure, but the two are not coextensive, and my part of Manhattan isn't "the city" in that vernacular sense either. And "fourth largest city in America" is a cute line on the bridge into Brooklyn, it's not what many people think of or say when they hear "Brooklyn".
If I say "the city" I might mean part of Manhattan; if I say "New York City" I expect people to either just say "oh" or offer some stereotype (if they have the same hazy idea of New York geography that I have about neighborhoods in Chicago), talk about a time when they were here, or ask where and be prepared for an answer like "downtown", "Brooklyn", or "Coney Island" if they actually know a bit about the city.
The New York area is a larger and more amorphous thing, of course--and part of that is that people say they're from New York because they don't expect non-locals to know where Hoboken, Yonkers, or Massapequa are, and saying you're from Amityville or Hicksville is just asking for stupid remarks.Vicki Rosenzweig 01:57, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)
No one I know says New York, Kings County, New York when speaking about Brooklyn, they say Brooklyn, New York is Kings County. Likewise New York, New York is New York County (maybe this is only prevalent with police, firepersons, lawyers, judges, county officials and people who are in NYC government, i.e. only about 1,000,000 New Yorkers and Brooklynites). Even here in Brooklyn they say, "I'm going into the City." What is that all about? New York is Manhattan to many people in Brooklyn who rarely go there. No one in Manhattan will say, I'm going to New York City, Kings County. No, they say, "I'm going to Brooklyn." I know many New Yorkers who have never been to Brooklyn or Queens. "Cross the East River, why that's not New York, that's Long Island" (which is true, but it is also New York). It's just not a very neat nomenclature. Alex756 02:28, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Brooklyn is part of New York. It's also a separate entity for some purposes (mostly postal). When I moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan, I didn't go from one city to another, although I now but something different than formerly in the "city" blank when I fill out forms. On the other hand, Disneyland isn't in LA -- it's in Anaheim. People who say Anaheim is LA are wrong; people who say Brooklyn isn't NYC are -- well, also wrong, but not necessarily as confused. Granted, when people hear "New York City" they think Manhattan, but when people hear "Boston" I suspect they think of the North End (if not Cambridge) so that clearly doesn't count for much.
That said, I'd always told people I lived in Brooklyn. That said, none of them appeared to conclude from that statement that I did not live in NYC --Charles A. L. 18:26, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)

Comment

As a neophyte, I hesitate to edit the article, but as a New Yorker I wanted to comment that I don't think the 2nd paragraph of this page should be about the WTC tragedy. NYC is about so much more. The incident is also in the history section, which I think is more appropriate.

True, and you should feel free to move things about. As time goes by past the Davis shooting, the section can be made smaller (I think it wound up here because those adding thought it would be more exposure here than in the James E. Davis article), and it could be counterbalanced with other New York City assassinations (John Lennon, Stanford White, some political ones. Go for it -- Someone else 05:46, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)~


Also, the focus on recent events (i.e. Councilman Davis' death) seems to outweigh possibly more important past happenings and other hisotrical events not mentioned at all.

I'll take a stab at some edits soon...

Rocstar, I look forward to reading your contributions. By the way, please sign your posts to the talk pages. An automatic way to do this is to add 4 tildes like this: ~~~~ . See Wikipedia:Talk page. -- Cjmnyc 05:53, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Chinese Traditional and Simplified

Should the Chinese articles be the same or should they split based on Traditional and Simplified? WhisperToMe 03:16, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

New Pics

I like the new pics, but what happened to the Statue of Liberty? That was a great pic. Also, that's certainly not a very impressive skyline pic. Lower Manhattan from the south, now that the WTC is gone (God it hurts every time to say it), isn't all that stunning. I think the best view is from the Jersey side and panoramic enough to include Midtown and Downtown. JDG 23:07, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Someone disagreed with putting the Liberty pic in the article. Check the edits list to see who removed it. WhisperToMe 01:06, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Events timeline

Is the Davis assassination worth including? Obviously the Davis family would say so. I don't see the stabbing of Mayor Gaynor up there. --Charles A. L. 18:11, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)

Placement of Manhattan Picture

I believe that the picture of Manhattan should be oriented towards the right, as some users have larger monitors. User:Timwi believes that the pic should be oriented to the center, as it seems that on his monitor, the pic cannot float to the right as it is too small.

I'm discussing about whether or not the picture should be to the right or to the center. I personally like the idea of putting the Statue of Liberty pic back in the article and putting that on top. WhisperToMe 01:06, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I am puzzled how "some users have larger monitors" is supposed to be an argument. That's like saying "we don't need to practice safer sex because some people don't have AIDS." -- Timwi 01:14, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I find that both versions look fine in IE on my 17" monitor, but WhisperToMe's version is screwed up when I use Opera 6.0. -- Cyan 01:24, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Yea, the challenge here is to find an arrangement that works universally. Timwi, please realize that the monitor size affects how the page is spaced out on Wikipedia, making placements drastically different.

So, maybe we should restore the statue of liberty pic as its slender and should work universally. WhisperToMe 01:27, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

A photo of a statue in the middle of a bay is not a good photo to have at the start of an article about a city famous for its skyscrappers. Best to have a skyline. I have fixed the first three images in this article so that it should work for both people with large monitors set at high resolution and the rest of the known universe who have normal-sized monitors with standard resolution. Now we need period photos for the first part of the history section. --mav 05:05, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Okay... How about someone takes a picture of the statue IN FRONT of the skyline. While its a statue in the bay, its Iconic of new york, but at the same time, it shows a skyline. WhisperToMe 23:09, 25 Jan 2004 (UTC)
It's a good thought, but it really can't be done the way you're probably imagining. There is no way to get a picture of the statue and the NYC skyline at the same time that features both prominently except to show the statue directly from the rear, which is fairly featureless. The statue could be featured at a side view in front of tall buildings, but it would be the skyline of downtown Jersey City.Decumanus 01:23, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Sectioning off history and etc

I think Cunc needs to announce his major changes (splitting off the history and the timeline) about a day or so ahead of time so that others can contribute their input on the matter. WhisperToMe 00:33, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I agree. Simply ripping out the history of a city is not acceptable. A summary should always be in a top-level article like this. That way people who only want an overview can read the summary here and the people who want to explore the history of this city in more detail can visit the daughter article. However, IMO, the crime section is not as important to have in the top-level article. --mav 06:33, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I apologize for the last revert or two; the summary is good. --The Cunctator 06:54, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Standardization

I will standardize the naming of the boroughs by placing them under their borough names (which are more common than their county names). --Jiang 05:22, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

History

I rewrote the opening sentence of the summary. The 1624 date refers to the Walloon families' arrival into the colony of New Netherlands (which ranged from Connecticut to Delaware and up the Hudson). New Amsterdam, which was not a colony but more accurately the first settlement within the colony of New Netherlands, was not founded until two years later. The statement about the land having been bought from the Lenape (of whom the Canarsie were but one group) is something that has been widely discredited as a misinterpretation. Decumanus 08:03, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I added a few sentences in the History section about the Nineteenth Century. Although most of the history should go in the spin-off article, the brief outline that remains is still, in my opinion, a bit choppy, and I thought it needed the info I put in to give the "history in brief" a more coherent flow. Decumanus 04:50, 24 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I rewrote the sentences of the history summary about the American Revolution. The part about being "the Tory capital of the world" is deceptively out of context, since most of the patriots were driven out after the Battle of Brooklyn (I used this version of the term here, since it makes more sense in the context of an article about New York City history). There were plenty of patriots in NY, but it was a dangerous place to be open about it. -- Decumanus 03:21, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I've added yet more info the history summary. I wanted to give at least one sentence to the major eras in the city's history, to give it a coherent flow without going into too much detail, and hopefully without sounding too much like Ric Burns. I did take out the sentence about the 1977 blackout. It didn't seem like an event of great importance for the summary, which should tell the story of the city in a nutshell, but rather something that should be in History of New York City. -- Decumanus 09:58, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Movies and Television

Well someone had to do it. It was bugging me to see the tv shows and movies mixed together, so I went ahead and separated them. I think the movie list in particular could grow very large and should probably eventually be spun off into a separate list page in the near future.

Also, I removed The Sopranos from the television listing, since it's really set in New Jersey. -- Decumanus 23:48, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

OK, I added a lot of television shows in an obsessive bid to think of them all. The page is now > 36 kb, so I'm spinning the tv shows and movies off into separate pages. -- Decumanus 07:03, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I'm adding it back, as 1. The part of NJ the Sopranos are in is suburban NYC, and 2. I believe they venture into the city several times in the show. WhisperToMe 15:38, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)
OK. Shows in the metro area. I was thinking of it as a list only of shows set within the five boroughs per se. I have no problem if the list is going to include the whole metro area. It would bring a few more shows that aren't really NYC shows, like Everybody Loves Raymond and Maude (which had NY in its opening credits (like the The Sopranos does) but was definitely set in Westchester County. The Dick Van Dyke Show was a hybrid "commuter" show, with home scenes in Westchester and workplace scenes in NYC, so it definitely is on the list. But neither Raymond or Maude is really about life in NYC in the same way as, say, King of Queens and The Jeffersons, which are/were fellow spin-offs of the same line of shows, but are true NYC shows.-- Decumanus 20:31, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)
A little bit of nuance required. Have now changed the format of the tv show listing to include a category for shows set primarily in the greater metro area, and included previously mentioned shows there, including The Sopranos. My impression is that people in most of the country probably think of it as a "New York City show", but in the New York area, the show is considered definitely a New Jersey show. -- Decumanus 21:29, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Naming (again)

I shall bring up once again the issue of the name of this article. While New York City may not be the official name, it is a much less awkward article title than New York, New York, which is rather silly in any case. Mexico City's official name translated would be "City of Mexico". Even more so, Guatemala City is not officially called that (the word "City" or "Ciudad" does not appear in the name of that city). So far as I am aware, the capital of Panama is simply Panama, but we call it "Panama City". By the standards of this article, the last two, at least, should be Guatemala, Guatemala and Panama, Panama. So why not New York City, again? john 08:47, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Naming conventions of U.S. cities are different than that of foriegn cities. WhisperToMe 23:09, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Vote on the name? Fredrik 18:45, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Poll: Name of page

This is a poll on where to place the article. Currently, the article is located at New York, New York. There are five choices for the name:

  • New York, New York
  • New York City
  • New York City, New York
  • New York (city)
  • New York, NY

There is discussion scattered throughout this Talk page on the subject. The poll opened May 1, 2004; the poll closes May 8, 2004. Please vote below. --Lowellian

Poll Status (9/12/0/1/0)

New York, New York

  1. RickK 00:07, 2 May 2004 (UTC) Standard for US cities is city, state. Shall we move Los Angeles, California, San Francisco, California, et. al.?
    • I don't see why not. Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, etc. are unique names, and there's no reason the main articles shouldn't be there. State should only be included if necessary for disambiguation. john 00:10, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
      • I wouldn't go that far; there's nothing wrong with LA and SF as they currently are. However, there is a problem with NYC because "New York, New York" looks confusing, and it keeps making me think of the song rather than the city. --Lowellian 00:13, May 2, 2004 (UTC)
        • There's nothing particularly wrong with it, but it is an example of a specific naming policy that completely, and for no compelling reason that I am aware of, goes against general wikipedia naming policy. I remember that the calls of a few of us to get Bertrand Russell moved to Bertrand Russell, 3rd Earl Russell a few months back were largely met with cries about the most common name rule. And this is true, and I understand why so many people were unwilling to go along with that. But I think there were some compelling reasons to use an "all peers go with their peerage title" rule, as well. I'm not sure what compelling reason there is to have the article at Chicago, Illinois rather than just Chicago. For one thing, such a move isn't even consistent, because it just means that US cities are named on a basis completely different from cities anywhere else in the world. It's not as though we have Melbourne, Victoria, or London, England. john 00:25, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
  2. It is U.S. city policy. Besides, "New York City" is not the actual name of the city - it is "New York". WhisperToMe 00:35, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
    • I don't see why the fact that there is a policy is any defense. Isn't that policy essentially a result of the bot that put in all the US city articles to begin with? Why should U.S. cities be named on a completely different basis from cities anywhere else in the world? john 00:42, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
    • Canada and Japan have their cities named on the same basis too. See, there are articles made for tons and tons of cities in the U.S., and many of them share the same name as other cities, so one has to disambiguate by putting the state in. Eventually, so much of this will happen that ALL of the cities will have to have the state name in. Come to think of it, this should happen in the U.K. too if more articles on towns are made. See, decisions like this are made on a country by country basis. There are way more U.S. city articles than there are articles for cities in, say, Sudan. Therefore, the USA, Canada, and Japan name it one way, and the others name it another way. This is why I am against moving this to "New York City" as it goes against what all other U.S. cities are named. Come to think of it, instead of picking on NYC, why not change naming conventions of cities of other countries with lots of cities made on that country, E.G. Australia and the UK? WhisperToMe 00:45, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
      • It's absolutely not the case that ALL of the cities will have to have the state name in. There is only one Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Austin, Jefferson City, Saint Louis, New Orleans, etc. etc. etc. of any importance. eIf there are other cities that share the name, you can have a disambiguation notice at the top. Only if there are numerous cities, none of them particularly more well known than another, should the main article be at a location to disambiguate. And I think the convention is wrong for Japan and Canada, too. Disambiguation should only be used if necessary. There is only one major Tokyo (not at Tokyo, Tokyo, by the way), one major Kyoto, one major Toronto, one major Montreal. The fact that these main pages already redirect to the longer title, rather than being disambiguation pages, shows that the main article should be there. john 00:55, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
        • John, there IS more than one Houston! See Houston (disambiguation)! - Tokyo is actually a "metropolitan area", not a city, and it has cities with itself. Japan is "in progress". And if so many cities have (CITY), (STATE), ALL of them should simply because its NICE and EVEN! WhisperToMe 00:58, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
          • There is only one Houston of any importance. This is already proved by the fact that Houston redirects to Houston, Texas, rather than being itself a disambiguation page. We could just as easily have the page at Houston and the same disambiguation notice, and the other articles at Houston, Pennsylvania, or whatever. As to Tokyo, I'll take your word for it, but I still think this is silliness. NICE and EVEN isn't a reason to have pages with longer titles than necessary.john 01:02, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
  3. Strongly oppose move: We already have a specific naming convention on this at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names) and specific naming conventions counteract general ones (such as the common name one). In the U.S. we have a systematic way of naming cities and that is the standard by which we name things here in Wikipedia. --mav 01:49, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
    • But we deviate from that standard when it causes confusion, for example, Northampton, Fulton County, New York and Northampton, Suffolk County, New York. And "New York, New York" causes confusion. --Lowellian 05:10, May 2, 2004 (UTC)
      • Huh? Those cases require more disambiguation. So what? New York, New York does not cause confusion - having most U.S. cites in [City, State] format while the more famous ones in [City] format will cause a great deal of confusion since people follow the most visible examples. --mav
  4. Strongly Object to Moving. Specific naming convention, as above. Why have a convention if no one is going to use it? No one is going to confuse New York, New York with the other New Yorks that dot the country, but wikipedia is all about neutral POV, saying tha NYC can be an exception to the rule indicates that NYC is somehow better or more important than the other cities that do have to follow the convention. Which may or may not be true, but indicating such would be violating the Neutral POV policy.Theon 02:09, May 2, 2004 (UTC)
    While there is a kind of attitude in NYC that it is "better" (no other city, country, people have this attitude), I strongly see this as a matter of common usage. People might ask for a hotel reservation to "Tokyo, Japan," or "London, England," or perhaps "New York, USA" or "New York City, USA" but would anyone say they are going to "New York, New York"? It's awkward--what about the Wikipdeia convention that article should be named by common usage. The article on President Clinton is Bill Clinton, not William Clinton," "William J. Clinton," or "William Jefferson Clinton." -- Cecropia
    It doesnt matter wether its bill or william or William J. or whatever No one would argue that naming the page any of those would be giving special treatment to that name, since presidents are listed by their names, and Bill is the name that this president went by. Saying william or bill does not violate any standardized presidential naming convention, and therefore does not violate neutral POV. If it was "bill clinton the great", everyone would object because it is clearly POV. Treating NYC differently from other cities clearly indicates it is somehow special.Theon 02:37, May 2, 2004 (UTC)
    New York, New York is better than anyplace else, but that's besides the point, [[City, State]] is the convention, and there's no compelling reason to violate it here. "Common usage" isn't compelling; no one's going to say "New York, New York? Where the hell is that?" Or at least, people who would wouldn't find any of the alternatives any clearer. ♥ «Charles A. L.» 05:19, May 4, 2004 (UTC)
  5. Keep it here. Not only do I dislike the idea of breaking the standard format but as I reread the previous discussion it seems that New York City is not an unambiguous term. Rmhermen 05:29, May 2, 2004 (UTC)
  6. This seems to be the policy. Evercat 11:19, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
  7. Keep. That's how we do U.S. cities. I have no problem with the others redirecting to [[New York, New York]], although I doubt [[New York (city)]] is really necessary. ♥ «Charles A. L.» 05:19, May 4, 2004 (UTC)
  8. Keep here. We shouldn't break the good and useful City, State convention. There are REDIRs to pick up the strays. –Hajor 15:54, 4 May 2004 (UTC)
  9. I was intending to vote to change to "New York City", but I find the arguments here compelling (especially as regards to not making it 'special'. Leave it where it is. --ALargeElk 16:08, 4 May 2004 (UTC)
  10. Stick with the "standard" and use disambiguation pages and redirects. --Ram-Man 16:14, May 4, 2004 (UTC)


New York City

  1. I'm going to quote from Evercat, since that user summed up my feelings perfectly: "Could this be moved to New York City? I spent 5 minutes thinking someone had cheekily moved the page on the city to the song title... :-) More pages link to New York City than here". Also, Wikipedia generally favors using the most common name for a place, and I think in common usage, New York City is used much more often than New York, New York. --Lowellian 23:56, May 1, 2004 (UTC)
  2. The city, state rule for US cities is poor anyway. john 00:10, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
  3. Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Madrid, Madrid and Ottawa, Ontario all redirect to the the city name alone. Dublin, County Dublin doesn't even exist. - MykReeve 00:21, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
  4. Wik 00:29, May 2, 2004 (UTC)
  5. Most common name. We even do this with little towns in Spain, when there is no ambiguity. Jmabel 00:47, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
  6. older≠wiser 00:51, 2 May 2004 (UTC) By far the most familiar and least confusing option. As the vote on the Wikipedia:Naming policy poll shows, it doesn't matter what the actual name of a place is, the Wiki way is to use the name by which a place is most commonly known. Maybe we should use the Google Test to determine what to title this as the advocates in that other poll call for (speaking somewhat sarcastically). older≠wiser 00:51, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
  7. Seth Ilys 01:07, 2 May 2004 (UTC). After all, that's what it's most commonly referred to as.
    • Narita International Airport was known as such for decades, yet before April 2004, its true name was "New Tokyo International Airport", but when I moved the article there from its unofficial name, nobody really cared. See, we still need to call cities in the U.S. by their official names. New York, New York is often called "New York City", but technically, that is not the city's name! In addition, if everyone calls urine "piss", would you move the urine article to "piss"? WhisperToMe 01:11, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
      • What a total straw man. And we absolutely don't need to call cities in the US by their official names, especially if cities in, say, Guatemala and Panama are not. john 01:25, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
  8. Fredrik 02:04, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
  9. New York City is common usage. It is also necessary to distinguish it from New York State. In other U.S. cities where you have a city with a name that is also a state, "City" is part of the name: Kansas City (Kansas or Missouri); Virginia City, Nevada. Also, it is a nuisance when linking because noone says (e.g.) "The Metropolitan Museum of Art is in New York, New York" so you have to type "The Metropolitan Museum of Art is in [[New York, New York|New York City]]".
    BTW, FWIW, the corporate name of the City is "City of New York", and the city seal bears the inscription Sigillum Civitatis Novi Eboraci, meaning Seal of the City of New York. The [NYC website] uses "New York City" throughout. Cecropia 02:20, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
  10. New York, New York is New York County and does not include the rest of the boroughs. Brooklyn, New York is also part of New York City as is Staten Island, New York, Queens County, New York and Bronx, New York. Keeping New York, New York as the name for New York City is incorrect because it marginalizes those of us who spend time in the other four boroughs. Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York is in New York City, it is not in New York, New York. MOMA is now located in Long Island City (also part of New York City in Queens County). There are many former villages in Queens that still use such names and are part of the City of New York. — © Alex756 16:49, 3 May 2004 (UTC)
    Doh!! That's correct! I didn't even think of that. "New York, New York" is only Manhattan Island (and a little piece of the Bronx). Calling the greater city "New York, New York" reinforces the Manhattan-centric attitude of the very people who think New York is "special." Put another way, "New York, New York" encompasses about 2 million people. "New York City" encompasses 8 million. -- Cecropia 17:07, 3 May 2004 (UTC)
    Guess this Brooklynite should stop relying on the NYPD and Fire Dept. of NY, and stop trying to vote for Mayor of New York. ♥ «Charles A. L.» 05:19, May 4, 2004 (UTC)
    OK, address a letter to "257 Broadway, New York, New York" meaning Broadway in Brooklyn (or Fulton Street, or Lexington Avenue, or Park Avenue, etc. etc.) and see where it ends up. :D -- Cecropia 14:27, 4 May 2004 (UTC)
    If it has thr gright zip code, it shoud end up in the right place ;-) Theon 16:04, May 4, 2004 (UTC)
  11. Proteus (Talk) 13:48, 4 May 2004 (UTC)
  12. Giving a British persepctive, if I came to Wiki wanting to know about Manhattan Island, I would search for New York. As it currently stands I arrive at a page which recommends New York City which I would then also click on. That worked well for me. However, if more than one faction can "win" the argument with skillful use of redirects and disambiguation, then that would seem the way to go.--bodnotbod 15:36, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

New York City, New York

New York (city)

  1. I would not have any objection to this, either, although I think New York City is simpler, and, in spite of what Rmhermen may say (on the basis of, what, questions about boroughs?), completely unambiguous. john 07:13, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

New York, NY

Comments

Is there anywhere that would be a good location to bring up the whole question of this kind of issue for city names? Because I think the current policy for American, Canadian, and apparently Japanese, cities is deeply mistaken. john 01:12, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

The current policy originated from many smaller cities sharing names in those three countries. One way that the policy may have occurred was, "Gah, let's just use this convention for all cities, since it is tiresome to choose which city to lengthen the title of over and over again" - and in the U.S., this was often the case. WhisperToMe 01:15, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

Well, I think in most instances, where none of the cities is very well known, they should all just include the state. Springfield, for instance. But for cities where the main article is already redirecting to one city, it's pretty clear which one is the most famous. john 01:23, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
Why not look at what other encyclopedias are doing? BTW, while Encarta follows similar logic as you do, it uses New York (city), not New York City. "City" is not part of the actual city's name. WhisperToMe 01:27, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

Britannica has Los Angeles and New York City. Columbia has New York and Los Angeles. I would be fine with New York (city), as well, if you'd prefer that, but only so long as the state is moved to New York (state). john 01:32, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

If naming conventions for the three countries change in favor of simpler entries, then I would be in favor of that. WhisperToMe 01:44, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

The standard in the U.S. for naming cities is the [City, State] format - this is the standard that the US Postal service uses as well as just about everybody else in the US (so much so that many of us refer to Paris as Paris, France). The reason why this is needed is due to the fact that city names in the U.S. are not at all unique - there are literally dozens of cities and towns with just about any U.S. city name you can think of - thus we preemptively disambiguate them all. The name of this city is New York, and to distinguish it from other things called New York we use this standard as well. I see no reason why this U.S. city should have special treatment and all the other 35,000+ should be be in the standard format. We have also already gone over this at great length well over a year ago on the mailing list and developed Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names) as a result. Other names, especially non-federal ones, do not have such a severe naming conflict issue as to require a naturally (outside of Wikipedia)-developed standard for disambiguation. We should follow outside standards like this whenever they solve real issues we have here. --mav 02:03, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

The standard that the US postal service uses? What kind of bogus nonsense is that? People call Chicago Chicago, people call Los Angeles Los Angeles, people call Boston Boston (although the English city of that name complicates that), people call Miami Miami. Yeah, the state is sometimes included, but not always. And, as I said before, and nobody has refuted, if the Miami article already redirects to Miami, Florida, then there's no need for the article to be at a disambiguating location. john 17:53, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

National standards are not bogus - esp one that is external to Wikipedia that works for nearly all U.S. cities. The only ones it does not work with are the few cases where there is a city, Census Designated Place and/or a town all with the same name in the same state. Then we have to add the county name in between. People call Napoleon Napoleon or Napoleon Bonaparte, yet our article on the one most people mean is at Napoleon I of France. The Peerage system and the standard way to name U.S. cities are very similar in this regard. Boston is a great example where the [City] format breaks down. Having all U.S. cities in the same format makes naming and linking predictable. Again, we should follow systematic naming standards whenever the great majority of results will be exactly what the common name would be anyway. That is the case for well over 30,000 cities in the U.S. - only about a half dozen are famous enough to have the [City] version of the name redirected to that article. But those half dozen control the standard for all the others since people follow notable examples. Thus they should follow they same standard as all the others. --mav
Okay, your second to last sentence, which seems to be the crux of the entire argument, is utterly incomprehensible. Why can't we simply have those few well known cities at the proper location, and have the other cities as they are now? A huge percentage of US cities have articles already, anyway, so I'm not sure how this is going to influence naming of future articles. As to a half dozen, there's a lot more than half a dozen

New York City
Boston
New Haven
Yonkers
Jersey City
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Baltimore
Annapolis
Virginia Beach (okay, I just made that one because there was no article there at all)
Charlottesville
Charlotte
Winston-Salem
Spartanburg
Atlanta
Jacksonville
Miami
Tallahassee
Pensacola
Fort Lauderdale
Sarasota
West Palm Beach
Nashville
Knoxville
Chattanooga
Biloxi
Louisville
Cincinnati
Detroit
Battle Creek
Ann Arbor
Indianapolis
Chicago
Milwaukee
Minneapolis
Des Moines
Little Rock
Baton Rouge
New Orleans
Shreveport
Houston
Galveston
Dallas
Fort Worth
Amarillo
Oklahoma City
Tulsa
Fargo
Sioux Falls
Denver
Colorado Springs
Tucson
Salt Lake City
Las Vegas
Carson City
Los Angeles
San Diego
San Francisco
Santa Barbara
San Luis Obispo
Sacramento
Seattle
Eugene
Fairbanks
Juneau
Sitka
Honolulu
Hilo.

In Canada you have Toronto
Montreal
Vancouver
Winnipeg
Calgary
Edmonton
Quebec City (which, by the way, is no more the name of that city than New York City is the name of New York)
Ottawa (which is, anomalously, the location of the main article)

Let me also note that, from my search for all these things, I notice that a) there has not been an aggressive attempt to make sure that the basic city names have articles or redirects at them, leading to some places not having articles at all, and me creating them (as I did with Virginia Beach) or, in some cases, to articles being created at those locations about cities with that name in other locations, or to other things called that, without any reference to the location (see Nome). Now, I'm not sure what this means. But this kind of sloppy "oh, there's only half a dozen famous enough to do that" is clearly nonsense. There's a lot of cities like that. I don't know that all of them ought to be moved - Eugene probably shouldn't even redirect to Eugene, Oregon. But I'll reassert that this absolutely isn't a policy which creates consistency. It's a policy which creates inconsistency. City names should just be at the city name, unless there is a need for disambiguation. john 06:11, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

The crux of the issue is that city names in the U.S. are not at all unique except for rare cases. When 99% of a set of items are named in a certain way that creates a standard in itself that should be followed for consistency. Nearly every single U.S. city article is at the [City, State] format already - any not in that format should be moved to conform to the pattern set by the others. Their location can be surmised very easily when they are all named following a very widespread standard outside of Wikipedia. Just about every example you give above have many different cities in the U.S. that share the same name. Ideally there should be disambiguation pages at the ambiguous names, but we often use redirects and create (disambiguation)-titled pages instead as needed depending on how much disambiguation work the editors of those articles feel like doing. In the U.S. we have a convention to add the state name after the city name - treating it almost like a last name (not unlike the 'of {kingdom}' format in peerage). The vast number of cases require this, thus the more famous cases come along for the ride (and it is very important that they serve as examples of the convention). Having to require on different people's interpretation of what is the most important city of a certain name (something that will come up constantly for U.S. cities) will only create inconsistency and move wars. We should follow one standard for U.S. cities - other nations may have their own conventions or none at all (thus defaulting to general rules of disambiguation). In this case we do have a widespread standard - we should continue to use that. --mav
Mav, the thing is, we've already decided "what is the most important city" for all those cities that I listed above. As far as I am aware, there have not been any edit wars about this. There are almost certainly other cities where deciding this could be very easily done. Santa Fe, for instance. So, to be honest, I don't understand. What possible problem would be created by having Chicago, Illinois redirect to Chicago instead of vice versa? For Chicago, at least as far as our disambiguation page goes, there aren't even any other cities of that name. There isn't even a disambiguation page for Los Angeles. So I still wonder what purpose is being served by this, but why on earth are the ordinary rules of disambiguation inappropriate for US cities? Where is the evidence that this would lead to massive revert wars? john 17:43, 3 May 2004 (UTC)
There is a standard way to depict city names in the U.S. That standard is [City, State]. Names like Santa Fe are ambiguous as are most city names in the U.S. There are in fact 5 cities in the U.S. named Sante Fe (with the one in Texas about as famous as the one in New Mexico). The city I live in Sacramento, California shares a name with four other cities in the U.S. (and a couple places outside of the U.S. as well). Down the road the city of Auburn, California shares its name 18 other cities in the U.S. Richmond, California in the SF Bay area also shares its name with 18 U.S. cities and a couple of ones in Canada as well. When I think of Richmond or Auburn, however, the first cities that come to mind are the ones in California - not the others. So we disambiguate all U.S. cities in a standard format that is fair and naturally developed outside of Wikipedia and is enforced by the US Post Office. Evidence of a move war is already brewing right here for this city. --mav
All kinds of things that have article titles are ambiguous. Now, Auburn should certainly be a disambiguation page - no city called Auburn is famous enough to be the entire article. And Richmond ought to be a disambiguator, too, if only for the existence of the English location of that name. But Santa Fe is nonsense. Santa Fe, Texas has less than 10,000 inhabitants, and seems to be an utterly insignificant town near Galveston. It is nowhere near as famous as Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is a state capital and one of the oldest cities in the United States. And whether or not you think of the city in California is irrelevant. It is what most people think of. And that's pretty clear. I mean, I'm from the Washington DC area, and when people say Vienna, I may think of the town in Virginia. But that doesn't mean that the Austrian city isn't the most famous. I assume that the people from the ten or so American cities named Paris think of those cities as well, but that doesn't mean that the French city isn't by far the most famous. Since we use judgment in those cases to determine when a disambiguator is necessary, why on earth can't we use similar judgment for US cities? Sure, there's 12 US cities named Nashville. But if you just say "I'm going to Nashville", except in the context of someone in a location close to one of the smaller cities, it will be generally understood that the one in Tennessee is meant. If a "move war" were to develop for this city, it is only because of you and those who support the current policy. It is not because there are different people who think that different places called New York are equally famous, and are arguing about which one the main article should be at. So, what's your evidence that this would cause chaos? For other countries, no chaos is caused. No chaos is caused by the fact that like fifty US city names currently redirect to the city, state format, even though many of them share their name with other, smaller cities. This is, once again, an example of the fetishizing of a pedantic consistency (mandated by the US Postal Service!) with no reason behind it other than dark hints that without the rule, we would somehow find ourselves in a Hobbesian state of nature, where wikipedians will battle over the locations of city names, where only the strong shall survive, or something. But yet there's no evidence for this, and the existence of redirects at the city pages for many large cities, with no particular evidence of edit wars, when, if your theory is correct, these pages should be alternating between being redirects for different cities of that name, suggests that this view is completely wrong. I shall conclude with the statement that any policy which results in the page for New York City being located at New York, New York ought not to be held as holy gospel. john 05:39, 4 May 2004 (UTC)
Not gospel but a very widespread neutral standard that exists outside of Wikipedia for naming a large set of similar items. Its all about following standards where they exist. That's why we have standardized on the Peerage system even though their probably is a bunch of examples that really don't need it. But they are still part of a set of similar items that happens to have a standard for naming those things - thus we follow the standard. It makes naming simple and easy to predict. --mav
But on the peerage it was widely agreed, after a lengthy vote, that we do not want to use the peerage title in an utterly consistent manner. Bertrand Russell, Harold Macmillan, and Robert Walpole remain where they are. Although I argued against this at the time, I've come around to thinking that this is probably best (and I gradually came to that position during the debate on the subject, so I'm not just changing my position because it's convenient to the position on a different subject that I'm taking, although perhaps there's some of that). But I'd still say that using highest peerage title in all cases presents advantages that are not present in this case. One problem with people who became peers is that it's frequently hard to say what they're most commonly known as. They're known as different things for different parts of their lives. So to say "put them at highest peerage title" gets you out of that difficulty. This isn't the case with city names at all. With these city names we have two basic options - city or city, state. The city is known as city, normally, and only city, state when it's necessary to disambiguate. So use of the state is entirely a disambiguator. The noble title is a disambiguator, but it's also a part of the name which, in most cases, is actually used. Using the peerage title provides advantages beyond just disambiguating, while use of the state is only worthwhile for disambiguating. If you're not using the main page as a disambiguator, anyway, I don't see what advantage it has. john 06:31, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

New York is a special problem no matter how you slice it. There are three New Yorks in the U.S., state, city and county. City is in state, and county is in city. The entry for New York (county) redirects to Manhattan, but that's not exactly right. Manhattan is a [Political subdivisions of New York State|Borough|borough] of New York City; New York (county) is a subdivision of the state. Of course, county doesn't mean much in the context of NYC—e.g., there is no county executive, but there are still certain county functions—there is a sheriff, there is a county clerk who registers businesses, and so on. Cecropia 03:46, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

New York, New York has five counties, but those five counties have less power than those outside of New York, New York. Still, we shouldn't call New York, New York a county. WhisperToMe 04:33, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

All I'm saying is that there is also a New York County which is not the same thing as either New York City, New York State, or Manhattan. Cecropia 04:39, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

Where was the recent discussion on this issue where a group of people tried and failed to resolve this issue via consensus finding and talk? Without such a discussion this vote is nothnig but a non-binding straw poll as far as I am concerned. Voting is something you do to resolve impasses - not something you do to stifle reasoned discussion. See Wikipedia:Dispute resolution and Wikipedia:Current polls. --mav 03:20, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

There has been discussion, a long one months ago that brought up relevant issues. Look above on this Talk page. And that discussion basically left things unresolved. The problem is that it's hard to get people to discuss a topic without using a poll, and it's also hard to see how many people are standing on which side of the issue. And you cannot say there was no attempt to start a discussion, because there was. John Kenney tried to revive the discussion from months ago, but it was a week before WhisperToMe responded, and no one else responded. After a month had passed, Fredrik suggested a poll, and still no one responded. Two months have passed since Fredrik's suggestion, and I started a poll. And then people started to respond. --Lowellian 05:00, May 2, 2004 (UTC)
The reason why polls spark interest is in the possible finality of the result. A lack of talk otherwise should be an indication that the status quo is fine. But yes, I remembered incorrectly about where the previous talk had gone. It doesn't much matter since there is no consensus (80%+) to change the name yet. --mav
Where are you getting the 80% figure from? Is there a page where that is listed? --Lowellian 08:59, May 2, 2004 (UTC)
See Consensus - Consensus is not possible with majority or even a supermajority. At one time this was at Wikipedia:Current polls but I see somebody has removed it. Either way it is also what we use for Votes for Deletion, Admin promotion, Steward elections, and also policy and naming convention changes. The 3-revert rule passed as a policy due to a greater than 80% vote. --mav

As to polls, I think this is a serious issue. When a policy is agreed to, people who are involved in that decision feel that it is final, and then basically ignore any comments from those who disagree. As when I questioned the article's location before, and was essentially ignored. At least the poll has caused this stuff to be discussed. And I'd note that you're only discussing it here, where there's a poll. I invite everyone to discuss the current naming standard for US cities with me at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (city names). john 17:53, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

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