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CDPs vs. unincorporated communities

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Some of these CDCs are actual unincorporated communities. Will anyone strenuously object if I redefine them as such? -- llywrch 01:13, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Most cenus-designated places are unicorporated communities. IMO, if a place is both, it shold probably have both categories. older ≠ wiser 16:29, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

CDPs vs. unincorporated communities revisited

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(discussion relocated from user talk:Katr67) Section there was titled Re: CDPs —EncMstr 07:25, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
addtional material copied form user talk:Nyttend for clarity, where section was titled Oregon communities, and refactored for readability. Katr67 16:41, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Can you please stop removing the unincorporated community info from the CDP articles? Many of those places were communities long before the term CDP was invented, and as you can see from the blurb I've added to a couple of those articles, it is possible to clarify the status without removing the information completely: "For statistical purposes, the United States Census Bureau has defined Foo as a census-designated place (CDP). The census definition of the area may not precisely correspond to local understanding of the area with the same name." I got this from Bkonrad. If you disagree, maybe we can discuss the wording with him. There are some CDP-only type places such as Three Rivers, Oregon, which is a name the Census Bureau made up, and I don't think any of those also claim to be unincorporated communities. Thanks. Katr67 (talk) 20:19, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the quick note. I've removed this information because, frankly, it's unnecessary: by the definition of the CDP available on the article, it's obvious that it's a community that the Census has recognised as a specific place. It's as if we said "Lake Oswego, Oregon is a municipality and a city in Clackamas County, Oregon, United States..." — we don't need to say that it's a municipality, because by definition of a city in Oregon, it's a municipality. And in case people don't have an idea what a CDP is, they can simply click on the link to a CDP to find what it is; it's not like it's a hard thing to understand :-) Nyttend (talk) 20:34, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've asked Bkonrad and Llywrch to take a look a this discussion as they have been involved in similar disambiguation between Oregon CDPs and communities as I have, for a longer time. If there is a better place to have this discussion feel free to move it, thanks! Katr67 (talk) 20:34, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The thing is, it's not obvious. Three Rivers, Oregon isn't a community at all. It's a loose conglomeration of housing developments. What we are trying to do is show that many of these places had an identity of their own before the census decided to name a CDP after them. Katr67 (talk) 20:38, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But the place wasn't named Hebo by the Census: the data is listed by the name that the Census recognised was already used. Of course, they have to find a name for a group when the area being studied doesn't already have its own name, but most places being studied surely have their own names already. Nyttend (talk) 20:44, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think "unincorporated community" is superior to CDP and to municipality: "municipality" seems to mean different things in different regions of the U.S.; CDP is subject to arbitrary government fiat. An "unincorporated community" is less formal, but everyone knows what it means. —EncMstr 20:51, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
One big advantage of making the CDP superior is verifiability: the article was created in the first place as a CDP because of Census data. Unless you have access to local government documents or some sort of state official document, without using Census data, the only way that you can prove the existence of the community (or its unincorporated status) is an atlas or other privately published document, but a CDP is well-referenced and its boundaries (although changeable at ten-year intervals) are specific. By the way, don't expect me to say anything more on this for a while; I need to leave for work now. Nyttend (talk) 20:58, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I have one of those: Oregon Geographic Names, and I can verify that each of the Oregon CDPs, with the exeption of a half-dozen or so, are also communities. Trust me, this isn't some whim of mine, it's sort of my area of expertise. I don't care what you do with the other states, but as far as Oregon goes, we're on top of the Oregon articles and I'd really like to include the wording I discussed earlier. The bottom line is, if I revert your changes, will you protest? Katr67 (talk) 21:06, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to weigh in on Katr67's side here. First, CDP's are an artificial creation, whose size and shape are determined for the benefit of the Census Bureau, & often with little relationship to the community they are mapped onto. Second -- this thought just occured to me as I re-read my previous point -- are CDP's notable in themselves? Third, from having used it for several years, I find that Oregon Geographic Names is a reliable & comprehensive source for unincorporated communities, so your concerns about verifiability is met with that work -- in Oregon, that is. I don't know if a similar work exists in other states, & if they don't Nyttend has a valid point there. Whichever way this discussion goes, I would like to point out that identifying "unincorporated communities" is pushing one of the boundaries of Wikipedia, so when in doubt we should always look to how we can verify the statement. -- llywrch (talk) 21:46, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Very well, if Oregon wants to use this, it seems like I'd be attacking consensus to do otherwise. One big problem is that I know very little about Oregon; probably half my knowledge about the state's geography comes from the 1992 edition of The Oregon Trail. If we accept places that aren't parts of larger communities (i.e. not neighborhoods) as notable, surely a CDP is more notable than a random unincorporated community without Census recognition. As far as the OGN: I've never heard of such a thing for any state. As you say, "the bottom line is" that I can't imagine how I could better fulfill WP standards by fighting for this change against you and the two that have agreed with you. Still, I'd ask that perhaps you change the wording somewhat; for example, no source was provided for saying "The census definition of the area may not precisely correspond to local understanding of the area with the same name." Nyttend (talk) 01:56, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'll reinforce what Katr67 and llywrch have said. In and of itself, the CDP designation is pretty marginal -- most people who live in such places would likely not realize (much less care) that they live in a "census-designated place". Where a place is a community with verifiable history -- that in and of itself is more significant than any census bureau jargon. I have the book Michigan Place Names which documents many such place names in Michigan. I've seen a similar book mentioned for Minnesota and have seen one for Ohio, so I'd be very surprised if many other states and/or regions did not have similar resources. older ≠ wiser 01:59, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Re: CDP boundaries not precisely corresponding to local understanding -- that is almost inherent in how a CDP is defined. It is based on Census Bureau standards for population density, with some cooperation from state or local officials. Providing a verifiable source for such differences in each case would be difficult though. Perhaps the easiest is where there is a Post Office with the same name as a community. The delivery area for the Post Office name is rarely if ever the same as the CDP. But in most cases, I'd take such as statement almost as a truism and place the burden of proof on anyone claiming that the Census designation perfectly corresponds with local understanding of the area with the same name. older ≠ wiser 02:10, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, odd place to find this discussion. I'll assume that this edit is the basis for discussion? Nyttend, I'm a little disappointed that you see this as a "fight." It strikes me as a worthwhile discussion, to determine the best course of action. If you believe you have a valid point, I think you should continue trying to articulate it; nobody can "outvote" the truth. That's not how consensus works.
However, I do feel that "unincorporated community" is the proper phrase for the article's lead. As EncMstr points out, the only reason it was ever a CDP is because it was a community or settlement to begin with. When people talk about Hebo, they are almost always talking about the "town" (an inaccurate term, since Oregon technically has no towns. ) They are not talking about a conceptual structure defined by some government agency, but a place you can visit or pass through (which is generally my preference, in this case.) The CDP is wholly dependent on there being a generally-recognized settled place to begin with, and therefore of secondary importance. -Pete (talk) 02:18, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

[removing indent] Oh, no, I'm not considering this a fight; that was a response to the thing about "The bottom line is, if I revert your changes, will you protest?" and saying that I'd not revert war. Otherwise, I'd be ignoring this page and giving up. Actually, there were several different edits; Hebo was just an example that I used. I'm not likely to propose any new ideas, since I've already gone through my entirely-convincing (at least to me :-) arguments, and I don't see the point of making all of you read the same thing repeated several times. I'll keep paying attention to this discussion, and I'll be likely to reply to any more comments and questions, but not to add new stuff. By the way, for all of you who want it to say "unincorporated community": I've added county templates for several more Oregon counties tonight, and most of their CDPs said "___ is a census-designated place in ___ County, Oregon"; for consistency's sake it would be best I expect to check those places and add the unincorporated community etc. bits into their intros. Nyttend (talk) 03:17, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oregon is about the fourth state I've participated in CDP-related discussions, and I've never (to my memory) seen much consideration of the local input on boundaries. What do all of you think of "The boundaries usually are defined in cooperation with local or tribal officials. These boundaries, which usually coincide with visible features or the boundary of an adjacent incorporated place or other legal entity boundary, have no legal status..." from this page? I'm rather curious of how this would be "arbitrary government fiat", a "conceptual structure defined by some government agency", since the locals likely have input on these communities that we're discussing. Nyttend (talk) 03:22, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think it goes further than that: locals don't just have input, it's decided by landforms and state of mind. Witness Oregon income tax: it is obligatory for several usual reasons, but primarily for anyone who "thinks of Oregon as home".[1] (how's that for volunteerism?) An unincorporated community is clear since most (maybe all?) have rivers, ridges, mountains, USFS or BLM land (the latter two total more than 50% of the state) which clearly delineates one place from another. If you're visualizing huge expanses of level plain with people randomly scattered across it, then I can see why you might think community dividing lines are ill-defined. But virtually everywhere in the state there are natural features which vividly focus communities. CDPs are pretty disrespectful of those in the few cases I've observed. —EncMstr 08:22, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yet another thing: another state that appears to have a geographical-names book is Vermont; you can see it referenced in the newly created article on Tangletown, Vermont. Nyttend (talk) 03:26, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry if I came across as confrontational, by asking if you would object if I reverted, I just wanted to see how much more discussion this would need, in other words: how convinced were you? Certainly not trying to bait anyone into a revert war. Like you, I try not to get in the habit of repeating myself so I wanted to cut to the chase. Pete, the discussion started on Nyttend's talk page, so the first part is a bit fragmented, but for the record it was Parkdale, Oregon that caught my eye first. As for adding the blurb to other articles, yes as soon as I'm done reverting all the vandalism I find every day on the Oregon articles, trying to write a new article occasionally and trying to participate in the collaboration of the week. :) Should I mention the 2000 or so articles on my watchlist and the hundreds of Oregon community articles I've been trying to work to get consistent for over a year? *sigh* Yes, you've kind of run into me and my "thing". I try not to be all WP:OWN about it, but there ya go. Katr67 (talk) 03:34, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oh lost in the shuffle is a big belated thanks for bothering to do the tedious work of tagging all the settlement articles with the county templates! I saw that they had been created and tried to standardize them a bit and add them to WP:ORE, but there's no way I was planning to adding them to all those articles! Katr67 (talk) 03:47, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes -- I'd like to echo that! Good work. -Pete (talk) 03:48, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
For what it's worth Katr, I don't think you're even close to "own." You've developed strong expertise, and you're forthcoming with your reasons when you have a disagreement. I think it's fair to say that we at WP:OR very much appreciate your attention to this kind of detail. You have a long history of showing very good judgment and proper respect for other people's perspectives, and I think when you say "we at WP:OR think that such-and-such," it's generally accurate; you don't use phrases like that to advance your own personal biases. I think you should be confident in embracing a leadership role in this area, because the community is behind you.
Nyttend, your suggestion is an interesting one. It would be good to explore this in a little more depth. It's nice to know that the Census maintains the goal you mention, but whether or not they're successful at that is a valid question. I don't think it would be right to alter our phrasing on Wikipedia simply because they assert that goal. However, finding a few sources for various perspectives on that would definitely be useful, for all of us editing articles that concern CDPs. I'll do a little googling. -Pete (talk) 03:47, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

'Note: Great discussion, but if I get fed up with Orange "you have mail" bars while I'm editing does anyone mind if I move this discussion to, say, Category talk:Census-designated places in Oregon? Katr67 (talk) 03:58, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, that's one of the hazards of having a talk page on Wikipedia. ;-) Seriously, what is annoying is when people copy-edit forgotten discussions near the top of your Talk page & you spend half an hour trying to figure out what has changed. At least you're being summoned to read the latest exchange in a thoughtful conversation. -- llywrch (talk) 04:27, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Good idea. I don't have the problem that Llywrch talks about, as I simply hit the "differences" thing to see what was changed, rather than looking for it myself :-) Nyttend (talk) 05:42, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You obviously haven't met llywrch. I don't find it that hard to imagine him searching for the "diff" button for half an hour. ;) (note: this is an attempt at humor. llywrch likely has more years on WP AND more edits than the rest of us combined.) -Pete (talk) 07:12, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
LOL. I'd say 85% of the time when I receive notice that there's a message for me on my Talk page, it's right at the bottom. 10% of the time it's somewhere else, but in a logical spot that requires maybe a moment's searching. It's that last fraction that forces me to rely on the "diff" function (which is broken on the browsers on some of the computers I use) that frustrates me -- especially if it's case that someone is simply making minor edits (e.g., correcting "form" to "from"). As for my number of edits I fell out of the top 150 at least two years ago & have been steadily falling in rank since; because I don't use helps like AWB I doubt I'll be stopping that slide very soon. -- llywrch 17:23, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ghost towns

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I disagree with the Nyttend's removal of the Category:Ghost towns in Oregon from some community articles as well. Let's have the discussion here in order to keep it all in one place, if that's OK. This is admittedly a nebulous designation, but I hold to the definition that a ghost town isn't necessarily a perfectly preserved, zero-population western town, but that the definition also fits former boomtowns that experienced a significant drop in population, per ghost town. Depending on how this discussion goes, List of ghost towns in the United States#Oregon will need cleanup. (Most of those have not been added by me, but I try to keep it organized.) One resource I use is ghosttowns.com, but I don't take them as the final word when I add the category to an article, I check with OGN and other sources as well. For example it lists Aurora, Oregon, which is quaint, but calling it a ghost town is a bit of a stretch. Anyway, perhaps it is pushing original research. Should we do away with the category all together? Discuss. Katr67 18:21, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, I must say I've never heard this idea that a ghost town can be a place with some people in it. I decided to check several dictionaries:
Obviously the problem is not that someone stupidly thought that little towns were ghost towns; it's that I simply wasn't aware of this usage. Now for the principle itself: I expect everyone agrees that a community once populated but now unpopulated is a ghost town, and there are plenty of those communities, so such a category is a good thing and should be kept. On the other hand, I don't see how we can properly categorise populated places as ghost towns, unless it's officially stated (I remember that there was one populated community with an official nickname about being a ghost town) or found in a reliable source; without such a source, it would be original research, as Katr notes. Since we see that a populated community can be a ghost town, I believe that it would be appropriate to place these "official ghost towns" in the ghost town category. Nyttend 00:30, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It should be noted that I discovered in my research about whether "town" was a legal designation in Oregon, that there is something in Oregon Revised Statutes about "historic ghost towns" though I have been unable to discover if any have actually be so designated by the state. I should think Shaniko and possibly Sumpter would qualify, since their "ghosttowniness" is their main notability. More news at eleven... Katr67 00:53, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yi yi yi.... Not intending to open a can of worms, but what classification is Granite, Oregon with a population of 86 in 1940, 2 in 1960, 24 in 2000, but is falling again?[2] A former ghost town? A twice ghosted town? One and a half ghosts? No special designation at all? —EncMstr 01:05, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I was thinking about Granite on my way home. For the longest time, I remember when it was billed as having a population of 3, then it was 1 and now it's 24. Since during the gold rush the population was around 5000, I'd say it's a ghost town, no need to split hairs about it! Katr67 01:30, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"Ghosttown", while not a legal term, is a long-accepted historical term similar to the lost villages of Europe: it's an attested, if unincorporated, settlement, where practically no one lives any more. (Many abandoned villages do have people living there, usually little more than a church, a minister's house, & maybe the manor house.) I'd opine that best criteria to determine if a given place is a ghost town is whether a reliable source stating that there was a once-prosperous settlement there, which has since declined to a neglible number of inhabitants. If one encounters a source that is a bit iffy (for example, ISTR that an old edition of Oregon for the Curious identified a stretch of road east of North Plains as a "ghost town", but after visiting the spot I was dubious about the accuracy) simply cite it as a claim, viz. "According to Fred Snodgras, Wanker's Corner is a ghost town." -- llywrch 19:14, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think the problem here is that "ghosttowns.com", which seems to be a widely used authority in wikipedia classification, is a bunch of hooey. A lot of the cited entries I looked at were from one "Henry Chenoweth", maybe a penname of the page owners who are apparently operating an advertising site relying on external submissions. If all the entries which relied for source only on ghosttowns.com were removed then the situation would probably get a whole lot better. Jbowler (talk) 08:02, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that ghosttowns.com isn't the best source, but in some cases it's the only one we have for pictures and such. It certainly shouldn't be the only source for "awarding" a place a ghost town designation. I suspect print sources (vs. online) would be a better place to look. Katr67 (talk) 15:40, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the picture on the Kerby, OR page on ghosttowns.com is in Kerby - I don't recognise it though there are a lot of buildings which come and go round It's a Burl. There also used to be a commercial venture (the "Kerby Ghosttown") just north of Kerby which maybe had that construct (it closed years ago). I don't know about the other towns - I only looked at 10 or so and I don't live in those - but I got the funny feeling that Henry Chenoweth and Dolores Steele (the credit for the pictures on most of the Chenoweth pages) maybe aren't the authorities on ghosttowns that wikipedia seems to be setting them up to be. Jbowler (talk) 17:12, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say Wikipedia isn't setting up anybody to be anything. Nor are any individual editors such as myself. We're just citing a source that may not be the most reliable, i.e. one that is probably more equivalent to a blog posting. If there are any articles that use ghosttowns.com as the sole source, that would be a problem. If you find any please let me know. Also I suspect these folks--Chenoweth and Steele--don't have an agenda, they just like ghost towns... Katr67 (talk) 18:59, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed - the blog analogy occured to me too. My google search "ghosttowns.com site:wikipedia.org" finds all the references. I'm guessing a few percent are single sourced - Somersville, California, Beaver Mills, Alabama (already tagged), Graysonia, Arkansas (the rolling stock external ref seems out of place) - just from the first page. Jbowler (talk) 20:18, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If anyone is still watching this thread, I've posted over at Category talk:Ghost towns in Oregon. Katr67 (talk) 14:34, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If anyone is still reading this, I can talk extensively about this subject as I have been wrestling with the concept for years as I travel the state, find new towns and write about them both on my blog and in my (hopefully soon to be published,) book. The problem is that the traditional definition of ghost town to most people means standing buildings, completely abandoned with no population. This describes a good many locations around the State and the country. But, that then looses sight of locations that should be remembered. Valsetz is definitely a ghost town, but any remains were burned down years ago. Shaniko is on every list possible as a ghost town, yet it has a population and is a popular tourist destination. To solve this problem someone created a Ghost Town Classification system years ago. I was turned on to it by someone from the Department of the Interior who said they used it to define towns that needed money for preservation, or places that needed to be saved (or not) during emergencies such as forest fires. I use that system extensively, but my first rule of thumb is to look for a post office and a general store. If the town once had one (or more) but no longer does - it is a ghost town. Hamellr (talk) 21:39, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

BTW - Henry Chenoweth is/was the owner of ghosttowns.com. He started the page by copying out of books, then the rest of the site is user submitted with no fact checking on his side. I've offered to help edit several times but he has continually declined over the years. Hamellr (talk) 21:41, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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