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There appears to be some inconsistency with how formerly inhabited places are dealt with by these templates. For example, Template:Amador_County,_California refers to them as Ghost towns while Template:Merced_County,_California calls them Former settlements. For those counties using the Ghost towns descriptor, most of the places listed as such do not appear to be true ghost towns, i.e. there are no building remaining or other obvious signs that there ever was a town there, thus they do not appear to be ghost towns in the usually sense of the term. At least this is the case for those "ghost towns" that I've tried researching further. So I propose standardizing everything, and using the Former settlements terminology on all these templates. Any objections? Am I missing something? YilloslimeTC 02:27, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the quick reply and the link. I don't that discussion really bears on the present matter, though. The issue in that discussion was whether uninhabited places should be listed under "Unincorporated communities." What I'm wondering is whether it makes sense to call something a ghost town if there's no actual town to speak of. In the Venn diagram that I'm imagining, all ghost towns are former settlements, but not all former settlements are ghost town. So it seems to me like it would make the most sense to rename the sections to "Former settlements". YilloslimeTC 02:56, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I see that you tried to make the changes to the templates, but was reverted by User:Nyttend, who said "One person's support does not make a nonstandard format a consensus".[2] Which is just as well because I was meaning to ask you about "the Venn diagram that I'm imagining": is it based on something that is actually described in Ghost town and other existing articles, some reliable reference, or is solely based on your opinion? Thanks. Zzyzx11 (talk) 03:13, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) It's based on Ghost town. I do not see, for example, how this place is a ghost town. (This is Stockyards, California, which is designated as a "ghost town" on Template:Alameda County, California). A reliable source lists it as a former settlement, and I have no quibble with that, but no one other than wikipedia seems to call it ghost town. YilloslimeTC 03:31, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, these one or two sentence pages like that article do not give a whole lot of information. When did it cease to exist, and when did Emeryville annex it? If the town was abandoned before Emeryville annexed the land, then it would have technically been a ghost town between those two times. On the other hand, if Emeryville annexed Stockyard when it was still populated, then it could have become an actual neighborhood/district of the city (like Hollywood, Los Angeles, California or the five former independent settlements that became Fremont) – and then at some point, Emeryville chose to cease using the "Stockyards" name in official use. If that last scenario was true, then the Stockyards article should instead read that it was a former neighborhood/district of Emeryville. Zzyzx11 (talk) 04:51, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
And now that we mentioned one of those two- or three-sentence stub articles, I'd like to repeat what I said here:[3] my preference would be to merge all of those two- or three-sentence stub articles into one large page. In the immediate future, I highly doubt there would be anymore significant content beyond that for each of those settlements. Zzyzx11 (talk) 05:15, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(ec - great minds edit alike!) Just seems like WP:OR for us to call something a "ghost town" if there are no sources that call it such. "Former settlement" doesn't have that same problem. Am I looking at the wrong way? YilloslimeTC 05:17, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's probably another reason why I favor merging all those two- or three-sentence stub articles: then this issue on these navigation boxes become moot. Otherwise, I honestly do not really care whether they are "ghost towns", "former settlements", former municipalities, etc. Zzyzx11 (talk) 05:23, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I would tend to agree with this suggestion about merging all these. There's little chance any of these articles that are based solely on Durham's California's Geographic Names and a GNIS entry are going to be expanded beyond what the are now. And if they are expanded, then they can have their own article again. YilloslimeTC 05:25, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
FYI, I've raised this issue here. Hopefully we can get some broader discussion on this. YilloslimeTC 05:59, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Here's another distinct but related question: regardless of whether they're called "ghost towns" or "former settlements", why are we listing them at all on templates that are titled "Municipalities and communities of...". I guess you could argue that these are former communities, but that seems kinda week. At any rate, including these leads to the counterintuitive--and in my opinion undesirable--results. For example, Template:Los Angeles County, California includes Sisitcanogna, a former Gabrieleño Indian settlement whose exact location is unknown to GNIS, but not Hollywood. I'm not saying Hollywood should be in the template, only that Sisitcanogna maybe shouldn't be. YilloslimeTC 08:05, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the Sisitcanogna article: again, I would prefer this type of content merged into a "list of" page rather than keeping these small two- or three-sentence article based on what appears to be a "database dump" of the GNIS web site. As for the "Municipalities and communities of...": that is being generated from the master Template:US county navigation box, where all the county navigation boxes are currently being rendered from. As for adding "ghost towns" to these templates, as I recall, the first ones added were in fact notable ones like Bodie and Amboy, and there were no other suitable existing navboxes at the time to add them elsewhere. But after a while, like I said, a few users decided to do a "data dump" of the GNIS, presumably using those notable ghost town articles as a model. Zzyzx11 (talk) 08:34, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
