Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of cities in England

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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 redirect‎ to List of cities in the United Kingdom. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 12:09, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

List of cities in England[edit]

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List of cities in England (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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WP:REDUNDANTFORK created by copying from List of cities in the United Kingdom over the longstanding redirect and removing content perceived as not England-related. The achieved result fails WP:SUMMARYSTYLE and the page should also not exist per WP:PAGEDECIDE (several related topics, each of them similarly notable, can be collected into a single page, where the relationships between them can be better appreciated). The vast majority of the cities are in England so this will always be heavily duplicative and reducing the prose will also not produce anything useful because the English cities can be viewed together, separated from non-English cities, simply by sorting the table.
I note that List of cities in Wales and Cities of Scotland exist, but these countries were not always part of the United Kingdom. [see comment below before laughing please] The latter, which is a valid article, reasonably covers the topic of Scottish cities in general and throughout history; for example it has content about historic capitals. The Welsh list seems mostly redundant however, but this AfD is not about that page. —Alalch E. 21:15, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Geography, Lists, United Kingdom, and England. —Alalch E. 21:15, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Alalch E, England wasn't always part of the United Kingdom either. It's not massively unreasonable to have a list of cities in a country. Whether or not this list is actually needed, it does meet WP:CLN.—S Marshall T/C 21:30, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes I retract that pointless remark, I honestly don't remember why I made it. The rationale here is, as I believe can be read from the sane part of the nomination: the list isn't needed, it's a redundant fork and the topic is covered better according to the longstanding organization in which England's cities are listed among the UKs cities. Edit: Oh, I remember why I made it: Because of the historical capitals content in Cities of Scotland that wouldn't fit well in List of cities in the United Kingdom. (Just a silly sentence to come up with coming from that line of thought.) —Alalch E. 21:47, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The editor interested in developing the nominated list is now updating figures (example edit). So this list will have one set of figures (presumably the better, more up-to-date, figures) and the UK list will have another. If the lists are to be harmonized it would need to be done manually. That's almost twice the work for the same result in terms of utility for the reader. (What could be done is selective table row transclusion however for automatic WP:SYNC.)—Alalch E. 22:09, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Like Scotland, England has historical capitals. Colchester under the Romans; I think I'm right in saying that Athelstan's capital was Winchester?; York, of course, in the Danelaw; then London.—S Marshall T/C 23:13, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's not the same page, though. It's a different page listing all the cities in England and a bit of history on English city status. England also has historical capitals, such as York, noted on the page under history. England wasn't part of the United Kingdom until its foundation in the 1700s, like Wales and Scotland. Many of England's cities, if not most outside of industrial heartlands, were formed before this period, many in which going back to the Roman era and before.
If Wales and Scotland have pages like this, surely England can. 86.183.219.17 (talk) 03:04, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy redirect Entirely duplicative of List of cities in the United Kingdom, silly to have to keep both pages maintained so please update the populations in the primary list. Reywas92Talk 15:17, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't agree and I don't think that makes sense. To put this in terms an American might understand better -- we have many lists of the cities in the US, such as List of United States cities by population, List of United States cities by population density, List of United States urban areas, List of United States cities by area, and so on. And on, and on, and on. We also have a List of cities in Texas, and we don't think that's duplicative, do we? Well, just as the United States are a country and Texas is a state, so too the United Kingdom is a country and England is a state.—S Marshall T/C 16:07, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    List of cities in Texas contains a table-formatted list, which exists only in that article; it does not exist in any other article. List of cities in England contains a table-formatted list, but the same list had already existed and still exists, and should keep existing, in List of cities in the United Kingdom. It is the same insofar as it contains everything from the "List of cities in England" formatted in the same way, but also contains Welsh and Scottish cities. Created this fork created duplication ergo redundant fork. This isn't about what state/country/territory is deserving of what treatment by us, it's about how to keep the content organized and up-to-date for our readers. —Alalch E. 12:03, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Nobody said it was about that. Both you and Reywas92 have been quite clear that you think it's about redundancy and duplication, which means we need to explain to you how England and the UK aren't redundant to each other. Hence all the explanations. :)—S Marshall T/C 12:13, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    It doesn't mean anything to say that England and UK are or aren't redundant to each other. The content is redundant because it identically overlaps. 55 cities are all the same in both list, formatted the same with the difference being that the UK list contains the eight Scottish and seven Welsh cities. There is no meaningfully England-specific prose on the page and I've already cited WP:PAGEDECIDE to state that this is a case when several related topics, each of them similarly notable, can be collected into a single page, where the relationships between them can be better appreciated. Or in other words, if you will, there is a reason that for 20+ years no one created a "List of cities of England" despite the relative obviousness of this name and the encycopedic suitability of this list seen out of context (of other pages) (citing you: it does meet WP:CLN). It obviously doesn't produce any benefit to readers to duplicate this content over massively overlapping pages.—Alalch E. 13:42, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, it's certainly true that in its current state the list is duplicative. But WP:POTENTIAL: we should make these decisions based not on what the list is now, but what it could be.—S Marshall T/C 15:06, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    What could it be? Edit: I've pointed out above one thing that it could be: a source for transclusion into the UK list; for an example see Immovable Cultural Heritage of Exceptional Importance (Serbia)#List of Cultural Heritage of Exceptional Importance (source) and Immovable Cultural Heritage in the Kosovo District#Exceptional importance (target).
example markup

transclusion source: 

...
|-<section end="SK 1366" /><section begin="SK 1367" />
|[https://nasledje.gov.rs/index.cfm/spomenici/pregled_spomenika?spomenik_id=44878 SK 1367]
|[[File:Gracanica 1.jpg|100x100px]]
| <noinclude>style="background:#add8e6;" |</noinclude>[[Gračanica monastery]]<noinclude>*</noinclude>
|[[Pristina]]
|[[Gračanica, Kosovo|Gračanica]]
|25 October 1947
|4 June 1990
|[[File:Unesco Cultural Heritage logo.svg|45px]] [[World Heritage Site]]
|-<section end="SK 1367" /><section begin="SK 1368" />
...

transclusion target 

{{#lst:Immovable Cultural Heritage of Exceptional Importance (Serbia)|SK 1367}}
Do you think it's a good idea? I'm not so sure. It will remove the need to maintain two population data sets, but it could make editing more difficult, and cities are fluid, they can lose the status and new settlements can gain the status; edits to accord for such changes could break transclusion, and few editors are familiar with H:LST. Also, more importantly, perhaps, the tables in Cities of Scotland and List of cities in Wales would need to be reformatted to match the UK list and I am not so sure about doing it boldly. Some of the information in the tables would definitely be lost, for example, the nickname column in the Scottish cities' table. The images too. Something to think about. In the long term. In the meantime, this page should be redirected back.—Alalch E. 15:20, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to update the page list, then feel free to do so. It doesn't mean the page should be deleted. Also, there are clear differences on both pages. Check the history section, for example. It goes into detail about English city status and the historical capitals of England. 2A00:23C7:69B4:7101:30E5:833F:ED18:44AE (talk) 16:54, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's not about updating, it's about synchronization. About the prose: The prose is also duplicative from what I can tell. —Alalch E. 17:06, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Eh, I think these are ever so slightly two distinct topics, and it's not quite a WP:REDUNDANTFORK. Transclusion may be a possible solution but I don't see why this page can't exist? SportingFlyer T·C 23:01, 29 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Relisting as I don't see a consensus here yet. I am interpreting User:S Marshall's comments as an unbolded "Keep", please correct me if I'm wrong on this. The issue of whether or not this subject warrants a standalone list seem fundamental and more opinions on this topic would be welcome.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 22:02, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 23:22, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect. There's a 72% overlap between the two, which is not going to change, because that's how many cities are in each. One is entirely contained in the other, unlike with Texas and the US. There is no list specifically for Metropolitan France, or for the Contiguous United States, probably because of the amount of overlap.
Speaking of the France list, it has a column for subdivision (not region comma subdivision), allowing users to sort by their subset of choice. The UK list should be reworked to focus on comparability and sortability: one line per entry instead of three, split columns to contain only one type of data, etc. Then the list would only be two mouse-scrolls long. Wizmut (talk) 18:12, 16 January 2024 (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.
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