Category talk:North America

Categorization Scheme

It's been suggested in one of the talk pages to make a Unites States category, put all the states under that, and all U.S. graticules under their respective states. Thomcat, Sartakh and I are kicking ideas around. Anyone? -- Jevanyn 17:12, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

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Washington, Idaho, Montana, Hawaii, and chunks of California are now done under the new scheme. Each contains only the state (or states) and either active or inactive. Category:Washington gets you to the city list, and Category:United States gets you to the list of states. Eventually, Category:North America will just list Canada, United States, Mexico, and probably Central America. Presumably, Category:World will then list North America, Europe, Asia, Oceania, etc. --Thomcat 17:30, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

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Is it possible to have major and minor subcategories? For U.S. cities, I think it makes sense for each graticule to be categorized under all states that it intersects. For example, Newark, New Jersey would be categorized under Category:New Jersey, Category:Pennsylvania and Category:New York, but it would be listed higher on the page for New Jersey, and lower on the page for the others. This would be helpful for someone near a state border who is in the other state's graticule. -- Jevanyn 17:15, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

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I haven't found anything yet, but I am still learning my way around MediaWiki. --Thomcat 17:19, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

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Jevanyn, I agree that categorizing graticules that intersect numerous states in all of those states is good and appropriate, but the problem there is that of possible confusion for users. What might be more appropriate would be to list the main graticule by the major population city in it and by the state of that population center. Then create redirects named for other towns/cities in the graticule that are categorized by their respective states. Of course, it might be a problem in the case of sparcely populated areas.

Thomcat, I see very large recreational possibility with geohashing (like with geocaching) and that's why I created the National Parks category. I go to Lassen frequently, and will be checking that graticule before I go now. I think that perhaps we should continue with the current naming convention (city in the graticule) and put in a redirect for the graticule that contains the park and name/categorize the redirect appropriately. I'll fix up Yosemite today. --Sartakh 17:35, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

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Here's a thought for categorizing cities that might keep the State categories a bit cleaner. In the case of a graticule that is on a border, categorize it for the appropriate state for the city. Then add redirects for cities in the neighboring states - categorized appropriately.

An example would be South Lake Tahoe, California. Rather than categorizing it as California and Nevada, categorize it only for California and then add redirects for Nevada towns in that graticule - and categorize them for Nevada. This sort of scheme is highly extensible for numerous things - such as adding a Universities category.

--Sartakh 19:41, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

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I like it! I'll do some fixup on the border areas around Washington State for a test. Incidentally, I added the other two Washington State parks - Mt. Rainier and North Cascades. The complete list is Here. --Thomcat 20:11, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

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A great thank you! to Sartakh, Jevanyn, and most recently Moose Hole for helping finish up this project in North America. Huzzah! --Thomcat 13:40, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

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For the major/minor categorization, I'm not sure it's feasible to do that for graticules in states. However, I noticed that on the Active Graticules category, Graticules is listed at the top. On further inspection, this was done by adding |* to the end of the category, making it filed as an asterisk instead of somewhere in the alphabet.

I used this technique for National Parks in United States, since it's not really a state, and also for Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Territories. Does this seem like a good way to go about things?

Also, is the username and time thing automatic or do you guys put it in manually? I've been doing it manually but it would be nice if there was an easy way to make it automatic. Edit: Answer to my question is to use 4 tildes (~~~~), thanks Thomcat!

--Moose Hole 19:41, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

State/Province Names

I've visited a lot of graticules and found that I can easily guess which population centre it's going to be named after, but the most inconsistent thing is in the use of state/province abbreviations or names. I never know if a particular graticule will be e.g. just "Vancouver"; "Victoria, BC"; or Albany, Georgia. I think we should have a standard. Robyn 14:00, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

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This was discussed on another page, and the consensus was that we should use Full State or Province names, since the abbreviations are (nearly) meaningless to some from Europe and points abroad. All the United States are categorized this way, but I was waiting to change Canada. Moose Hole has recently created redirects for some, and I think others will have to be "moved" to complete this project. --Thomcat 15:10, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

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Many US graticule pages are named with no state name whatsoever. I saw several in Washington state, for example. Robyn 15:50, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

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I use the All Graticules list as my guide. The only graticules in Washington that don't have a name are the parks graticules - "Mt. Rainier", "Mt. St. Helens", "Olympic National Park", and "North Cascades National Park". It would be easy to move these also; I didn't yet as I figured they were globally unique. I see I missed "Lake Chelan", I'll go fix that now. --Thomcat 16:00, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

All renamed and Done. --Thomcat 02:54, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Previous Discussion

I'm curious about the categorization scheme you are pushing. You categorize U.S. cities as "North America / State" and remove a categorization of "United States"

Following that scheme, I would think that the cities would be categorized under their respective state only, the state categorized under "United States" and "United States" categorized under "North America" to yield a heirarchy structure.

Might I suggest this, since I will be adding a number of places here in the near future and we seem to be butting into one another. --Sartakh 07:44, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Either heirarchy of (NA, US, state) is fine with me. The majority of pages had only NA, state, then a few others had US (instead of or added to NA), so I made them all the same (usually while doing other work).

In hindsight, I agree that your proposal (each has US, state) would clean up the North America category considerably, and a similar thing could be done with Canadian provinces. Clean up would involve replacing NA with US on over 100 pages at this point, though. If you're still game, then I'll pitch in also. --Thomcat 13:45, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea. The North America category currently has links to Canada, some U.S. states, and many cities, which doesn't sound helpful. I can do some of this if you agree it's worth doing. -- Jevanyn 17:15, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

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Actually, my suggestion is that each U.S. city be categorized with only it's appropriate state. Each state categorized as U.S., and U.S. categorized in North America. Categorizing the cities in both state and U.S. would clutter U.S. pretty bad - like North America is now.

According to this though, North America would have only U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Adding the U.S. states to North America would really fill it though. your thoughts?

Cities definitely need to be pulled out of North America though. I'll start on that.

If this thing grows considerably, this will become a major consideration. Best to nip it now.

I created a Pacific Ocean category and put Hawaii there also, but I think that Oceania would be more accurate. Do you agree? --Sartakh 16:43, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I'll work on some states tonight. A similar thing could be done in Europe, which I am only about 15% through my task of categorizing Active/Inactive.

Oceania might solve some of the problems of the New Zealanders and Australians have with being lumped as "Australasia" or the like. --Thomcat 17:24, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

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Technically - I think - Australia, being a continent in it's own right, doesn't fit in with Oceania, though New Zealand probably does. That would apply to things like Hawaii, Marshall Islands, etc. A quick trip to the CIA fact book would be warranted I think. Bit of work now, though will save users a real headache on lookups in the future if this thing really grows - as long as folks stay with the heirarchy. It should get a life of it's own with time though.

I also think we will need a very top level "World"????, under which the various geographic areas would go. This would be useful for casual browsers as a starting point. Continents/general areas under that, then countries, then states as applicable.

--Sartakh 17:32, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

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I was looking at Dothan, Alabama and this raises an interesting problem that could be an issue in the future. How to name graticules that cross borders. Within the U.S. this is not an issue other than that of potential confusion, but some neighboring countries that would share graticules would not appreciate cities being categorized as being in both countries. Turkey/Greece, Israel/Jordan come to mind right off the top of my head. Naming by the graticule coords is good and then doing redirects, but graticule coords is not very user friendly.

Ideas?

--Sartakh 19:34, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Shared cities/countries might not be a huge deal, as the city and country are listed. If a particular group really wishes to disavow the existence of another neighboring group, they will probably have to create a separate graticule. The main graticule page could then be a redirect (did you mean "these guys" or "those guys"?)

I see you have done Hawaii and parts of California. I've edited Washington, Idaho, and Montana to match the new scheme as I understand it (state or states, active or inactive).

Finally, not sure about the "National Park" category. Many graticules will contain one, but I presume you are targetting those in which the majority is parkland. Either way, I'm pretty sure the Olympic National Forest will qualify. --Thomcat 17:19, 17 June 2008 (UTC)