Talk:Manassas

Unless I'm missing something, there's no need for the "(Virginia)" disambiguator. There is only one city by this name, and Manassas National Battlefield, while an interesting place, is an attraction, not a destination. This should be moved to just Manassas, and I will do so unless someone comes up with a reason not to. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 17:48, 9 July 2006 (EDT)

Sudley Road

Regarding this edit, the shopping artery of of Sudley Road is almost entirely outside of Manassas. The main shopping artery of Manassas itself would be Centreville Road (Route 28) or maybe Liberia Avenue. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 00:55, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

While that might be true in a legal, technical sense, on Wikivoyage the traveler comes first. This means we don't adhere strictly to city limits, for example. Instead, the division between articles should be based on the amount of content. Big cities get broken up in to district articles, whereas rural regions with only a handful of towns might have a region article and nothing else. (Look at any printed travel guide and you'll see that they do the same thing.) So, if Sudley Road is the main shopping area that people in Manassas go to, then that's where this article should recommend going. And if it turns out that the division between Manassas and neighboring towns is not very clear or meaningful for travelers, then maybe at some point it can be proposed to merge some articles together. --Bigpeteb (talk) 13:25, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I mosey agree. I don't see why we shouldn't cover Greater Manassas, but we shouldn't call any of the cities of Greater Manassas "Manassas" (aside from Manassas itself). Calling Yorkshire (for example) "Manassas" would be like calling Alexandra "Washington DC", it's incorrect and confusing. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 14:24, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge, the only city arguably in Greater Manassas we have an article on is Centreville, and even then it's only southern Centreville that's arguably in Greater Manassas. That division between Manassas and neighboring cities isn't too meaningful, and not clear to even allot of locals. Old Town aside, over half the things referred to in this article are outside of Manassas. The best approach might be to define the scope of this article as Greater Manassas. This isn't a rural regions situation, but it does strike me as being similar to one. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 18:52, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

How about we just call this page "Greater Manassas", and make it scope Manassas and the suburbs of Manassas (Manassas Park, Yorkshire, Signal Hill, etc.). Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 15:54, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

In the absence of any objections I'll do that. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 23:26, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Normally it's okay to refer to a region by its major city; it's a little weird not to have an article on Manassas and redirect searchers to what looks like a region article. Powers ^(talk) 15:23, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I agree. This should be moved back to Manassas. Texugo (talk) 15:34, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

The thing is, these are distinct areas with their own identity. Manassas is the most central and most prominent of those areas' but it's only one of them. We don't want to call any of these area's, except for Manassas itself, "Manassas", it's far too confusing. Manassas does have some residential areas that, while outside the city limits, are for all piratical (non-legal) purposes part of Manassas, but that's not what I'm referring to here. It's not piratical to restrict the scope of this page to Manassas, people far to rotenely travel between (say) Yorkshire and Manassas, or Manass and the Sudley Area, to not cover them in the same guide. If it helps, think of it like the boroughs of New York City on a smaller scale; you would not call The Bronx "Manhattan". As for the region thing, firstly for piratical purposes this "region" is basically a city, secondly the lead makes it clear that the scope includes Manassas, how's it confusing. We are referring to the "region" by its major city anyway, so I don't see the problem.

We aren't trying to "restrict the scope of this page to Manassas". It can still talk about and include the surrounding areas. But the name of the article still should be only "Manassas". This is not NYC, but a small town, and we very regularly include surrounding areas in guides for small towns, rather than include small towns in guides for their surrounding areas, as you seem to be doing. Texugo (talk) 21:03, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I was just using NYC as an example to illustrate my point about terminology. Bigpeteb above said "While that might be true in a legal, technical sense [...] we don't adhere strictly to city limits", but part of my point is this isn't about city limits (there are parts of Manassas outside city limits and parts of not-Manassas outside city limits). It's not that I be leave the title should necessarily be "Greater Manassas". I don't think we should mislead the traveler by impaling that these distinct areas are Manassas, but at the same time I don't this should be littered with disclaimers about what is and isn't Manassas.

When I found this about half the stuff mentioned here wasn't in Manassas, and much more seaorisly everything listed under Do's "made the news" part was clearly implied to be in Manassas, when about half of it wasn't. I added disclaimers for when things happened in the other areas, but that littering with disclaimers didn't look very good. The point of renaming this "Greater Manassas" was so that we didn't need to worry at all about what was and wasn't Manassas.

Put simply I'd like this article to be able to freely cover all the distinct areas that make up Greater Manassas, without misleading the traveler into thinking that they are part of Manassas (and without the article tiptoeing around the term "Manassas"), if some wording change to the lead (under a "Manassas" title) has that effect, I'm happy. If it makes any difference, Manassas, let alone Greater Manassas, is very very far from being a small town. It certainly isn't NYC, but Manassas alone is 10 square miles, and that figure only counts the area within city limits. It's 5 miles from the western end of the Sudley area to Signal Hill, and 7 miles from Bristow to the northern border of Yorkshire, and almost everything along those two paths is urban/suburban. This isn't like a small town with a few attractions in its surrounding rural area.

That's just not how we do things. If it were, there would be several thousand more non-metropolitan destinations with "greater" in their title, but there isn't and there shouldn't be, because it's misleading and makes it sound like a populous metropolitan city region when it's just a spot of countryside. Nearby attractions are always covered in the city they are most closely associated with. It is not important to the traveller whether something is or isn't technically within Manassas city limits — what matters is that we tell them clearly how to get to each place, and that we cover it in the nearest logical destination. Texugo (talk) 23:35, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I think there might be a bit of a misunderstanding here, I'm not demanding that "greater" remain in the title, and this isn't about what is or isn't technically within Manassas city limits. ̴̴

(edit conflict) Since the move has turned out to be controversial, I have moved it back to Manassas. Hope not to offend; it's just the standard practice when a change is contested that we revert to the previous way while we discuss a way forward. I hope you can understand. Texugo (talk) 23:54, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Well, then I guess we do have a misunderstanding -- if it's not to prevent moving the article back to Manassas, what is it you are after? Texugo (talk) 23:54, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I am pretty tired today, I'm probably just not explaining my position well. Maybe we should pick this up after I get some sleep, but for now, suffice to say that the "Greater Manassas" title was only a means to an end and not an end in and of itself; I'm certainly open to other means of achieving that end. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 00:09, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Well, as I perceive it so far, it looks like you should be able to pursue your end just fine without crossing over into anything too out-of-the-ordinary, but yeah, let's see how it looks on the morrow. Texugo (talk) 00:13, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

You've mostly already achieved that end, I don't think there's anything left to discuss. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 03:53, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Also about the bobit thing, the link didn't show up properly in the edit summery, so here it is: w:Talk:John_and_Lorena_Bobbitt#Not_in_Manassas Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 00:59, 26 September 2013 (UTC)