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[edit] Do we really want counties as destinations?

I am having a hard time with this. I don't see a US County as a valid destination in most cases. I can see the need for spilts of the major regions in each state, but I am not convinced that counties are the best split in most cases. Maybe I am short sighted and this is the best way to go, but I would like to discuss this before we get too far down path. -- Tom Holland (xltel) 18:24, 13 March 2006 (EST)

In the case of a county that's considered not to warrant its own article, should there be a correctly disambiguated redirect page - so that if someone searches for that county (or perhaps follows a link that a contributor has mistakenly created within another article), they automatically get taken straight to the article that does cover it? -- 218.208.237.175 19:22, 13 March 2006 (EST)

I would say No, if the county does not warrant an article, I don't want an edit page to open or a disambiguation page that offers a link that opens an edit. The disambiguation page even less so, as that to some extent that validates we "want" the county article. If it is county that warrants an article (few of those) then the opposite applies. My point really does not apply to the question of how to disambig counties, I just don't like counties as destinations across the board. The consensus may disagree with me, but I would like to discuss the issue before we get too far down the slope. This page brought that to the front burner for me. I don't mind setting a policy on how to disambig counties, I just don't want to do 3000+ of them on one page at this point. Others may disagree. Let's talk first and get a conensus. I am going to be quiet for awhile and others comment. --Tom Holland (xltel) 19:57, 13 March 2006 (EST)

I think you mean "Yes" then - creating a correctly disambiguated redirect page for a county that does not warrant an article would prevent the edit page (of the "unwanted" county article) from opening; the redirect would instead return whichever article does cover that county. -- 218.208.237.175 20:50, 13 March 2006 (EST)

No, I really mean no. Maybe this conversation should be moved over to the talk page for Wikitravel:Geographical hierarchy. Just to wrap up here. I think this should wait till we have a consensus on counties in the hierarchy. I really don't even want a redirect page with the county name on it. Now, again... there are exceptions to this and I do believe we need a policy on how to disambiguate counties, if in "some" cases counties are needed or desired as travel destinations. But, back to the need for counties, which again maybe should be discussed on the talk for Wikitravel:Geographical hierarchy, I have created 6 large regions for Oklahoma and populated those region with links to 89 cities and towns, which each city has then been created with a template. This is all good, but I just don't see the need to ever "create" the 77 counties in Oklahoma. I just don't see the counties as valid destinations for travelers. All most all of the counties have their largest town or city under 10,000, now all the towns and cities will need at some point their own travel page. Maybe the regions can be split and of course at some point we can split out Oklahoma City and Tulsa in metro areas. But I really don't ever see the need for all 77 counties from a traveler’s point of view. Now what I would like is to hold of on creating this page, county disambiguation pages, county pages and county redirect pages until we can get comments from others and come to a conensus on how we are going to handle counties in the Wikitravel:Geographical hierarchy. In the end conensus may say lets go with counties. At that point I will create and do my best to populate all 77 counties in Oklahoma. -- Tom Holland (xltel) 09:16, 14 March 2006 (EST)

Hi Tom. Actually I think you are both right, and that you are sort of cross arguing. I think the redirect the anon user suggests above will achieve exactly the effect you are after in that they will make it very unlikely that anybody will go to the trouble of removing the in order to make a real page, rather users will get dumped into the appropriate region page.

One of these days I intend to do exactly that with the list of swiss cantons, which as with us counties are probably not all destinations. -- Mark 10:40, 14 March 2006 (EST)

Yes, to use Oklahoma as an example - if there are 77 counties in Oklahoma which it would be better not to create individual articles for, then in their place we should create 77 redirects using the exact same correctly disambiguated names, each one a redirect to the article that does cover that territory (presumably in every case this will be to one of the 6 large region articles). Otherwise, it's inevitable that sooner or later someone will come along and see that Muskogee isIn|Green Country (Oklahoma) and will think "ah! - no it's not, it's in Muskogee County and Muskogee County isIn|Green Country (Oklahoma), I'll plunge forward and fix that" - and then they'll discover that no Muskogee County article exists, so they'll create it, and outline it, and mention which other cities and towns it contains, and then notice that those other cities and towns also say isIn|Green Country (Oklahoma) and start changing them to isIn|Muskogee County too... which is exactly what you would prefer to avoid. So we should create Muskogee County now, and it should be a redirect to Green Country (Oklahoma). Maybe it should also contain a brief comment (which, because it's on a redirect page, would only be visible at http://wikitravel.org/wiki/en/index.php?title=Muskogee_County&redirect=no or http://wikitravel.org/wiki/en/index.php?title=Muskogee_County&action=edit ) saying something like "before deleting this redirect and replacing it with an outline, please see..." blah blah blah. -- 218.208.238.135 14:31, 14 March 2006 (EST)

You are talking about 3100 plus redirects plus maybe another 1000 disambig pages that will give a list anyway... with the redirects of course to all the disambig'ed counties. Why? How many people are going to be typing in a county name? How will they type it? Will they conform to the 3100 entries with "County" on the end? Will we need to create a base disabig page without "County" on the end? Then if it finally does work and they get redirected to a region, they will likely say; "How the heck did I get here?" My point is I don't think we should do counties. We have 7700 articles and you desire to create 3100 plus pages as redirects for articles that don't exist, plus all the disambig pages. I still don't get it. How soon do you think you will have it finished? I guess it could be scripted, but why? Now, back to the point. Do we want to do counties or not? That is the question. If there is a consensus that we do want counties, then the redirect discussion is mute. You are attempting to solve an issue that does not exist yet. -- Tom Holland (xltel) 15:02, 14 March 2006 (EST)

The issue I was attempting to solve was disambiguation.

Do we want to do counties or not? - seems to me that for sure there's a need for some, and that for sure there are many that will be better covered by more regional articles; and that in the case of the latter, some will be more urgent candidates for a redirect than others. -- 218.208.238.135 15:31, 14 March 2006 (EST)

I'm thinking that it's best to create a more tourist oriented region and then create redirects from both county names. -- Mark 14:35, 14 March 2006 (EST)

Not sure I follow what you mean by "both county names" - ? -- 218.208.238.135 14:43, 14 March 2006 (EST)

Mea culpa. I was reading "Green Country" as "Green County". -- Mark 15:09, 14 March 2006 (EST)

This is an old discussion, but I want to add my two bits: "Do we really want counties as destinations?" NO! U.S. Counties are (more often than not) a really bad way to break up a travel guide. Look at a map of U.S. counties such as [1] and you'll see just how artificial and arbitrary these pigeonholes are. Let people figure out what works locally; if it's a county, great, but they should not be the default or standard way of dividing up states. - Todd VerBeek 21:42, 27 July 2006 (EDT)

I'll disagree on this... not on the spirit, but on the details. I think there are a lot of counties that locals think of as "real" local regions. Marin County and Orange County are two famous ones in California; Westchester County is a famous one in New York. In addition, counties have the nice property of being legally defined and thus not subject to (much) argument. --Evan 23:45, 27 July 2006 (EDT)

Like I said: If what works locally is a county, great. The fact that they're legally tidy is a bonus (something I recently argued in favor of for Maine). But cities (especially metro regions) often cross county lines (Holland (Michigan) has one going through downtown), and being a legally defined region doesn't necessarily make it a useful one. I keep going back to two Wikitravel:Geographical hierarchy guidelines that have become rather unfashionable, but held a lot of wisdom: that the definition of "city" should be flexible enough to include/exclude suburbs and satellites depending on the individual case, and that regions don't have to follow what some government says they should be. - Todd VerBeek 00:20, 28 July 2006 (EDT)

To add another No to this old discussion, I am just finishing up with the elimination of county articles in Washington (state). They were useless (in all but a few exceptional cases) as travel destinations, and had very little content in them. Those counties that deserved it became region articles, the rest became redirects to the corresponding region articles. JimDeLaHunt 03:51, 31 August 2007 (EDT)