Talk:Amherst (New York)

The finer points of districtification

Swept in from the pub

I'm going to be finished districtifying Buffalo before too long, and I've begun looking ahead to my next major project which will consist of articles on suburbs such as Tonawanda, Amherst, Cheektowaga, etc. I hope to have at least one or two of those finished by May, when Buffalo is slated to be DotM.

Right off the bat, I can identify at least one suburb (Amherst), and possibly more, whose article is likely to be comparable in length to the current version of the Buffalo article, which we all agree is far too long at nearly 350K in length. The obvious answer, then, is to districtify.

Districtifying an article on a suburb is, I am almost certain, uncharted territory for our project. Are there any things I should keep in mind as I continue to formulate a strategy? Specifically, I know that the decision to districtify an article is largely made on the basis of its length, but is there a certain minimum population or other factor that a city should have, below which it should not be districtified per policy or precedent? (Amherst has a population of ~125K, most other suburbs which may or may not need to be broken down have populations of <100K). Might districtifying a suburb even be prohibited by our current policies? Should the suburban articles themselves be considered district articles for Buffalo?

Any help would be mightily appreciated.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:47, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I'd think that number of landmarks, actual listings and article length would be a greater factor in deciding whether to districtify, instead of merely population. A suburb with half a million people in identical tract/row houses but nothing unique to see would likely not be worth listing, in the extreme case. K7L (talk) 21:56, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I think that whether a suburb could be considered a "district" of a city has a lot to do with local attitudes. It might be defensible to consider places like Silver Spring, MD and Bethesda, MD "districts" of Washington, DC, because people there identify as being from DC, at least in my experience. It would not be defensible at all, in my opinion, to consider any suburb of New York City a "district" of NYC because the city has a very different identity from any suburb, or/and is separated from some suburbs by water (which would cover a place like Hoboken, which is more like a part of New York than a fairly major neighboring city to New York like Yonkers is).

In terms of what to consider when districtifying a suburb, I don't think there's really anything different to consider than you'd consider when districtifying any other city. Just do it in a way that serves the traveler or potential traveler. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:02, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, Erie County is one of the most provincialist, Balkanized places in the United States (for good and ill), so Ikan Kekek has answered my question quite definitively with his NYC analogy.

Thanks for the assistance; I shall proceed on that basis.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 22:27, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Hoboken is out of state. I suppose the corresponding "not-NYS" example for Buffalo would be Fort Erie (ON) or Erie (PA)? K7L (talk) 22:35, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Arlington, VA, Silver Springs, MD, and Bethesda, MD are "out of state" for DC, too. That's not the important distinction, in my opinion. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:59, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Erie is not a suburb of Buffalo, nor is it even a satellite city—it's nearly 90 minutes away by car, and has pretty much the same level of relationship with Buffalo as Rochester. (Perhaps even less, as Rochesterians tend to root for Buffalo's sports teams, while Erie residents usually follow Pittsburgh's teams). Fort Erie is closer, and debatable, but IMO there aren't enough cross-border commuters in Fort Erie for it to truly qualify as a suburb. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 23:04, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

True, but even something like Kansas City gets split in half on our region boundaries (instead of being treated as one city with districts as needed). {{isPartOf}} can only list one parent region due to limitations in mw:extension:GeoCrumbs. K7L (talk) 23:26, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I am in disbelief that Amherst is in need of districtification. Andre, your enthusiasm is inspiring, but at some point you do have to edit yourself. =) LtPowers (talk) 01:41, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, just off the top of my head, an undistrictified Amherst article would include: Glen Falls, Amherst State Park, Buffalo Niagara Heritage Village, the Erie Canal, UB-related attractions (art galleries, performing arts center, sports facilities, and so forth), multiple bike trails and golf courses, at least a half dozen entries in "Do#Festivals and events"... not to mention "Eat", "Drink" and "Buy" sections that would be far larger than any Buffalo district article even if only the very best places were included.

-- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 02:24, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

For Do and See, that seems comparable to Rochester (New York), which is not districted. I don't know about Eat, Drink, and Buy. I think perhaps we're coming from the wrong direction on this. Rather than seeing it as Amherst -- which, let's face it, is more of an administrative division of Erie County than a single community -- needing to be districtified, maybe what we should really say is that we need articles on the various communities within Amherst: East Amherst, UB, Williamsville, etc. I can much more readily accept the idea of Williamsville and East Amherst needing to be in different articles, than the idea of needing one giant overarching (i.e., "huge city") Amherst article. LtPowers (talk) 16:42, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Pagebanner

Just a note that I removed the pagebanner image, File:AmherstNYPagebanner.jpg, because it's too small. Pagebanners need to be at least 1800 pixels wide. If there's an original source image that's wide enough to re-crop from, I welcome its restoration. Powers ^(talk) 00:54, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Powers - Unfortunately, I took the source image myself and it's already at its maximum resolution (it was originally uploaded to my Facebook page at a time before they preserved original versions of high-res photos uploaded there). Thatotherperson has replaced the banner with a new one that, while higher in resolution, I don't think is as good in terms of subject matter. I'll leave the current version up on an interim basis, but some time in the next few weeks I'll likely return and take a new version of the original. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 13:41, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Done -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:35, 4 May 2015 (UTC)