Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Independent city

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. postdlf (talk) 23:29, 20 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Independent city[edit]

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The article is almost completely unsourced and seems to be pure WP:OR. Not a single source supports the definition used in the article. Delete and redirect to City-state or Independent city (disambiguation). Zanhe (talk) 07:16, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:10, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and fix. No reason this can't be created into an article. It is a noted thing in many countries that major cities are removed from the local/state government and come directly under federal or state government. It needs referencing yes. And the proposed redirects make no sense anyway. Also see Independent city (United States), Independent cities of Germany and Category:Independent cities. The article name is not good however, a better term that is more common needs to be found. Also don't confuse with Autonomous city. If you want usage of the term, see [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. JT_dale^Talk~ 06:13, 2 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The only country where the term "independent city" is clearly defined is the United States (as shown in your links above), which has its own article at Independent city (United States). The German cities are called kreisfreie Stadt or "County-Free City". The first-tier Chinese cities are called Direct-controlled municipalities, which are NEVER called independent cities. The US independent cities are county-level divisions, while the cities of China and most other countries listed in the article are all provincial-level divisions. A truly independent city should be sovereign, i.e., a city-state. This article mixes all these diverse concepts together and labels them all as "independent city" without any supporting source, which violates WP:NOR. -Zanhe (talk) 06:37, 2 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Michig (talk) 08:01, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well, then, if it's only a US thing merge Independent city (United States) into this article and turn it into a US focused article. I will note, the Chinese ones are called independent cities by the western media (I provided a link that does just that). JT_dale^Talk~ 23:15, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Merging Independent city (United States) into this article sounds fine to me, but mixing the US concept with cities of other countries is a bad idea. If we applied the US definition of independent city (cities that do not belong to any county) to China, for example, then every Chinese city would be an independent city, because all Chinese cities are at levels equal or above counties. See Administrative divisions of China. -Zanhe (talk) 06:40, 10 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep - the article has several flaws as mentioned (fuzzy scope and definition, lack of sources, unclear structure). But it could provide a first good overview over the various types of independent (and "sort of independent") cities. It's certainly a valid encyclopedic topic. GermanJoe (talk) 20:20, 8 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid your argument is not based on policy. WP:NOR stipulates that Wikipedia should not contain ideas for which no reliable sources exist. As mentioned above, there is no clear definition of "independent city" outside of the United States, and applying to US concept to cities worldwide is original research. The vague concept of "sort of independent" cities is best handled in the disambiguation page Independent city (disambiguation), not a full-blown article composed of nothing but unreferenced OR. -Zanhe (talk) 06:48, 10 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Missvain (talk) 07:47, 14 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.