Talk:Washington (state)

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I moved this to disambiguate it according to the article naming conventions. -- Evan 11:38, 4 Nov 2003 (PST)

So, does anyone know this state well enough to make better region listings? Are "East of the Cascades", "West of the Cascades", and "The Cascades" as good as it gets? --Evan 15:25, 2 Jun 2004 (EDT)
West of the Cascades should have Vancouver, WA and surrounding areas broken out into a Southwest Washington region. My picks for regions would be SW Washington, Puget Sound (the NW part of the state), and Eastern Washington (which is now East of the Cascades). I'd do it myself, but I'm absolutely clueless as to how to go about it.--Ookla 19:30, 24 Mar 2005 (EST)

[edit] Geographical hierarchy

We really need to break up the huge number of counties into a more reasonable group of regions.

Experience Washington (the official tourism site) has a nice Washington region map. Dmoz has fewer, only 5 Washington regions. There's a nice County map of Washington state on Wikipedia. Based on these, I'd like to suggest the following hierarchy (list format used for presentation only):

I think this is a rough layout, so please feel free to amend liberally. I'm not married to the idea of using counties for third-level regions, but it does make things pretty easy. Let's work on this a bit and then roll it into the article. --Evan 14:19, 7 Dec 2005 (EST)

I'm not from Washington, but a half hour of searching around makes your list look good, but I'd like to see the Puget Sound region consolidated to include King County and Kitsap Peninsula. It might also be good to consolidate a bit of eastern Washington, perhaps combining Southern Washington, Palouse (Washington) and Columbia River Plateau. That would leave:
Does this sound reasonable? -- Ryan 19:42, 14 Dec 2005 (EST)

As a Washingtoninan, I'd have to say no, that doesn't sound reasonable. :-) The point here is to guide travelers. If they need to know which county is which, they can look it up from a more encyclopedic source. Dividing Washington into regions isn't hard, but Washington is geographically complex. You can encounter everything from temperate rainforest to coastline to alpine meadow to pine forest to desert steppe, all in a (long) day's drive. And there are so many subcategories... For instance, the northern Columbia plateau is famous for apples, while the southern Columbia plateau is famous for its burgeoning wine industry. Which story do you want to tell travelers?

I'd chop up Washington this way, with an eye to places people might want to visit: Olympic peninsula, San Juan islands, Puget Sound (including other islands), Southwestern Washington (between the peninsula and the Columbia), Cascades (north and south, I-90 as boundary), Columbia plateau, Rockies along the northeast, palouse along the southeast, and the Blue mountains in the very tippy tip southeast corner.

The distinction between the San Juans and the Puget Sound islands is that, first of all, the San Juans aren't in the sound. :-) But the San Juans are more typically destinations unto themselves, whereas islands in the sound are more like stepping stones across the water. Also, some sound islands house military bases, which alters the flavor of a visit. —The preceding comment was added by 24.18.190.175 (talk • contribs) 23:35, 2007 February 11.

As a British Columbia resident who visits family in Washington often, I agree with 24.18.190.175 that the county division doesn't seem all that helpful to travellers. I also agree that the nine regions they give make sense as top-level divisions (or at least more sense than the current set of regions). Many of those regions would probably need subregion division eventually. But I wouldn't mind replacing every single county article by a city or region article with boundaries set by travel logic, not Washington state administration. JimDeLaHunt 02:59, 28 May 2007 (EDT)
I have to agree with the above two notes, one from JimDeLaHunt and the other from 24.18.190.175, for the reasons they offered - use regions with no political distinctions, if they need more, thats what Wikipedia is for and anyways, we link back and forth on destinations. Celticevergreen 03:23, 28 May 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Proposal to make San Juan Islands a top-level region

I propose to make San Juan Islands a top-level region under Washington (state). My reasons: 1) these islands are in the top three widely-known travel destinations for Washington and thus shouldn't be buried; 2) they are likely to have some of the more detailed coverage of the state and thus should be top-level to avoid too deep a hierarchy; and 3) are located outside Puget Sound, per Wikipedia.

The proposed San Juan Islands region will consist of just that area north of the strait of San Juan de Fuca, east of Vancouver Island and its Canadian waters, south of the 49th parallel, and west of the mainland (which includes Fidalgo Island). Whidbey Island, Kitsap Peninsula, etc. remain in the Puget Sound region. San Juan County is the only county in the proposed region.

Implementing this is simple; all we have to do is change the IsIn links for San Juan Islands, and San Juan County (Washington). There are presently only three destination articles in the region: Orcas, Friday Harbor, and Roche Harbor. They have IsIn links to San Juan Islands. If we keep counties as an organising level between regions and destinations, the IsIn links for the destination article should instead point to San Juan County — but see the other proposal, to eliminate counties from the hierarchy.

I propose to let discussion roll out for 7-10 days. If there's a consensus at that point, I'll implement the change. JimDeLaHunt 15:40, 28 May 2007 (EDT)

From an outsider's point of view it seems fine - you've set out some well-defined borders, so that makes it clear where the new region begins and ends. Now all we need is for someone who knows the state well to put together a map!-- Ryan • (talk) • 15:57, 28 May 2007 (EDT)

No objections registered, so I'm going ahead with implementation. It should be done today. For the record, I also posted a notice Wikitravel:Travellers' pub#Proposals to change Washington (state) geographic hierarchy to be sure word got out. JimDeLaHunt 14:57, 9 June 2007 (EDT)

And it is now completed. Was completed on the 9th, actually. JimDeLaHunt 16:55, 11 June 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Whither Snohomish County?

Having stared at the Puget Sound and North Cascades regions for a while, I'm now beginning to think that we should move Snohomish County from North Cascades to Puget Sound (subregion North Sound). The towns in Snohomish County (Everett, Lynnden) seem like part of the Seattle/King County urban area. They are about as far north as the rest of North Sound, e.g. Whidbey and Camano Islands. I'm busy with scrubbing away the county articles now, but I expect I'll come back to this. JimDeLaHunt 02:46, 14 June 2007 (EDT)

I now think it is best to put Snohomish County content into the Puget Sound region, and I intend to do this in the next few days as part of removing the county articles. That is, when I clean up the Snohomish County article I'll put its content into the Puget Sound instead of the North Cascades region. JimDeLaHunt 13:44, 17 June 2007 (EDT)
It is now moved. Now was good time to do it, as part of deleting the Snohomish County article. JimDeLaHunt 23:33, 17 June 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Proposal to eliminate counties from hierarchy

This project was proposed on May 28, 2007, started on June 9, 2007, and completed on September 17, 2007. The discussion in this section is kept here as an archive. Originally part of the discussion was under #Geographical hierarchy, and part was in Wikitravel:Travellers' pub. JimDeLaHunt 03:38, 18 September 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Talk Page discussion

I propose to eliminate counties from the geography hierarchy in Washington (state), and move content in current county articles either up into the containing region article or down into traveller-oriented subregion articles. My reasons: 1) as others have noted above, we are writing a travel guide, and county boundaries don't matter all that much to travellers; 2) where travel-oriented subregions do exist, the county level forces them deeper into the hierarchy without adding value; and 3) there is so little content in most county articles that it won't be that difficult a change.

Here's a summary of the existing region and county articles, and what's in them:

Contents of existing region and county articles for Washington (state)
# of existing articles or redlinks:
Region # of counties subregions city or destination Conversion status
Puget Sound 6 (Isl, Kit, Kg, Pi, Sn, Th) 2 (King Cty, Kitsap Penin.) ~46, most in King County done
San Juan Islands 1 (SJ) 0 4 done
Olympic Peninsula 4 (Clm, Jef, Mas, Gr) 0 12 done
Southwest Washington 6 (Co, Clk, Le, Pa, Skm, Wa) 0 17 done
North Cascades 5 (Che, Kit, Ok, Skg, Wh) 0 29 done
Columbia River Plateau 9 (Ad, Be, Do, Fr, Gr, Kl, Li, Wa, Ya) 0 27 done
Rocky Mountains (Washington) 3 (Fe, St, PO) 0 3 done
Palouse (Washington) 5 (Sp, Whi, Col, Ga, As) 1? 10 done

Note: every county article is at "outline" quality; none are better.

To implement the change, I propose doing the following, region by region:

  1. For each region, go through its counties.
  2. Add a sentence to the region's "Understand" section that says, "For our purposes, the XX region consists of A, B, and C counties." This is a sentence rather than bullet list, to reduce the temptation to turn the county names into links.
  3. For any subregion mentioned in a county article, add link to the subregion in the region article above, and set IsIn of the subregion to the region instead of county. (There is only one of these: King County in Puget Sound region. The Spokane Valley is suggested as a destination but not linked, so this becomes a comment in the Palouse article.)
  4. For any destination mentioned in a county article (whether red link or blue link), add the link to one of three locations:
    1. to an appropriate subregion article, if one exists;
    2. to the article for the region above, where that doesn't lead to too many destination links in the region article; or
    3. to the "Get out" section of the article for the dominant city in the county (perhaps the county capital, perhaps not). (Create an outline article for the dominant city if needed.) e.g. For Kitsap county, Bremerton rather than capital Port Orchard is dominant.
  5. For any destination mentioned in a county article which has an existing article (a blue link), set IsIn of the destination article to the region or subregion article, as appropriate. (May need to do some cache purging at the end to make all the IsIn hierarchy show up correctly.)
  6. If there's any other travel content in a county article, find an appropriate destination article to receive it. e.g. the "things to do in Wenatchee" and "around Wenatchee" content in Chelan county, moves to the Wenatchee article. Some counties have an external link to the county government page; move this to the destination article of the county capital.
  7. Check the "What links here" tool to see which articles link to the county article. Change those linking articles to unlink the county name, or redirect the link to a region. Links from this Talk article are OK to leave. N.B. many destination articles have a formulaic statement in their introduction which says the destination is in so-and-so county, so be sure to fix that.
  8. Once all counties in a region have been cleaned out, change the county article to be a redirect to the region or subregion article, as appropriate. Thus, there will be no more county articles and no more content in county articles.

N.B. it's frequently convenient to open each destination article once and do steps 5, 6, 7, and (as needed) 4 in one edit. This works especially well if your browser lets you open many tabs, and edit several articles in several different tabs.

I propose letting the discussion percolate for 7-10 days after I gather the data from the table above. If there's consensus, I'll start implementing. I'll start with the Puget Sound region, and I'd love to have help doing it. JimDeLaHunt 16:42, 28 May 2007 (EDT)

I've made no secret of the fact that I dislike the use of U.S. counties as part of our geographical hierarchy. They make sense in places like the UK and Ireland where they reflect long-standing historic identities and are therefore well known. There are also places in the U.S. where counties provide some meaningful buckets to put places, such as in the colonies where they were defined to reflect existing regions, and around large cities where certain counties serve as handy metro regions (e.g. Dade County, Orange County). But in most places, they're just grids on a map [1], about as meaningful to the traveler as the coordinates on a Rand McNally Atlas page. - Todd VerBeek 21:50, 28 May 2007 (EDT)
I agree that counties are generally poor as region articles, but they sometimes work nicely in defining the borders of parent regions (eg. region A is made up of counties X, Y and Z). We used counties to determine some of the borders of regions in Ohio and California. Whether they're useful to help define regions in other states is probably TBD on a case-by-case basis. -- Ryan • (talk) • 02:17, 29 May 2007 (EDT)
I say go for it - use the existing regions, as listed above and with the various counties currently defining each region, with an explanation under an ==Understand about the different counties reflected in each region and links to each county page in Wikipedia if they want to know more about the county aspect of the region. A map showing the regional areas of the state and, if we are lucky, a map within each region and we are all set to be a true travel resource for people interested in visiting Washington. Celticevergreen 02:34, 29 May 2007 (EDT)

Having gone through all the county articles to draw up the table above, I am still persuaded that the couny articles should go. I also have some new observations about the process. There's wide agreement that county names are a good way to define the boundaries of a region, so we should add a sentence to each region article about which counties comprise it. Some county articles have destination information, e.g. "things to do in Wenatchee" and "around Wenatchee" in Chelan county, so we move this content to an appropriate destination article, e.g. Wenatchee. There are up to 43 destination articles referenced by the county articles in some regions, which is too much to go into a single region article; and in most cases there's no subregion article to take up the slack. (A good fraction of these references are to articles that don't yet exist.) So for those regions where there are over 20 destination references and no subregion, I think we should create a destination article outline for the county capital town, and put links to the other county destinations in the "Get out" section. I've updated the list of steps above to reflect these observations. JimDeLaHunt 20:46, 6 June 2007 (EDT)

Like the idea but have a problem - take Kitsap County for example. Port Orchard is the county seat but it is not the dominent community within Kitsap County. Bremerton is and so I propose that instead of a county seat destination article that we use the dominant communities within each county. i.e For Kitsap I would propose Bremerton, Pierce would be Tacoma, King would be special because I think Seattle should be a region all its own while the rest of King County could be Bellevue for north and east King County while maybe Renton for South King County, etc. Celticevergreen 01:25, 7 June 2007 (EDT)
Good point. I've revised the implementation step 4.3 to say "dominant city", which might or might not be the county seat. JimDeLaHunt 15:27, 7 June 2007 (EDT)
Rather than trying to guess what city they might want, I would redirect the county articles to the new region each county is included in. - Todd VerBeek 11:41, 7 June 2007 (EDT)
Todd, I think you're making a slightly different point than the thread. Redirecting county articles is already in implementation step #8. The thread here is about what to do with the links in "Cities" section of the county article, if there are too many (>20) to put into the region article. JimDeLaHunt 15:27, 7 June 2007 (EDT)

I've taken a closer look at the Seattle and King County articles. Seattle has very rich coverage, with separate sub-articles for many neighborhoods. King County also has rich coverage, and a lot to cover. I think it makes most sense to redefine the King County article to be a sub-region article about metro King County excluding Seattle. Both are IsIn Puget Sound. This should keep the hierarchy a little flatter. JimDeLaHunt 12:52, 8 June 2007 (EDT)

No objections registered, so I'm going ahead with implementation. There were quite a few good suggestions. I've incorporated them in the implementation plan above. I expect the implementation to take 1-2 weeks, because I don't want to do it all in one go. I welcome help, if anyone is interested. I'll modify the table above to provide a record of completion. For the record, I also posted a notice Wikitravel:Travellers' pub#Proposals to change Washington (state) geographic hierarchyto be sure word got out. I'll move those comments to this section as an archive. JimDeLaHunt 15:00, 9 June 2007 (EDT)

Wow. Well, I wish I'd objected before. I don't think your argument (that the county articles are mostly empty) makes a lot of sense. Most articles in Wikitravel are mostly empty; that doesn't mean they don't have a place in this hierarchy.
Cities in a region don't go under "Get out" -- they go under "Cities". If there's too many to fit in that section, you need to break it up into sub-regions. If there are regions that need to be split up into sub-regions, using counties seems to be the path of least resistance.
I'm open to some changes, but please, don't design this group of guides based on the content that is in the existing pages. We're not done with Wikitravel yet... really! --Evan 21:36, 11 June 2007 (EDT)
The discussion about the Washington regional breakdown has never really been settled (see discussions above) and Jim solicited feedback here and in the Pub over a period of a couple of weeks before making any changes. His argument isn't that counties as regions are bad because they're empty, but that counties as regions in Washington are bad for travel purposes. The argument that the current county articles are empty was that the lack of content would make re-organization easier - "3) there is so little content in most county articles that it won't be that difficult a change". The changes he has proposed/implemented all seem reasonable, and there haven't been any specific objections that weren't addressed; without any specific reason NOT to re-organize the consensus at this point seems to be to do so. -- Ryan • (talk) • 23:16, 11 June 2007 (EDT)
So, re-reading I think I understand a little better. It sounds like there's a plan to create some more logical sub-regions under the top-level Washington regions, and if that's the case, I'm definitely behind it. I'll be completely useless in helping to devise those sub-regions, but I'll stand on the sidelines and cheer. --Evan 23:56, 11 June 2007 (EDT)

Status update: work is proceeding, but it's taking longer than the "1-2 weeks" I expected. What's taking the time is the list of destinations under the See section of county articles. There are anywhere from 5-20 entries in each county article, and each is just the name of some destination with no information about location, URL, etc. Thus I'm having to do a little research project for each one, and it takes hours per county. The result is that when the destination gets put into its new article, it has more information: almost always a URL, a see tag, and a location, and often more information besides. If anyone wants to help with this, you could edit a destination listing in the See section of a county article to add that information. The work reinforces my conviction that the county articles don't add very much traveller value. JimDeLaHunt 01:26, 4 August 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Proposals to change Washington (state) geographic hierarchy

(moved here from Travellers' pub)

There are a couple of proposals open to change the geographic hierarchy for the articles about Washington (state), USA. One is a proposal to make San Juan Islands a top-level region. One is a proposal to eliminate counties from [the] hierarchy. Follow the links to the respective sections on Washington's talk page to contribute your opinions. One useful bit of information would be: do any other states or provinces use counties (or other regional political divisions) in their article hierarchy? How well does it work? Answers to the proposals sections please. Thank you! JimDeLaHunt 21:02, 28 May 2007 (EDT)

I have been involved with some of these decisions in New England (United States of America). My personal bias is to use counties as delineating where region boundaries are but not to use them in the hierarchy per se. That is, a state region can be defined by one or more counties, but the counties themselves are not necessarily articles. It's a convenient way to know what falls into a region that may not be otherwise clearly defined. Like all rules of thumb this doesn't always work well--like when one or more of the counties is not homogenous. OldPine 09:27, 2 June 2007 (EDT)
I agree that it is very useful to create new regions by amalgamating administrative districts like counties. Which reminds me, would it make sense for us to list counties under their amalgamation-regions? This might set a bad precedent and editors might go around making articles for the listed districts. But on the other hand, it would be useful in directing editors as to where they can stick content by clearly delineating the regions. --Peterfitzgerald Talk 14:03, 2 June 2007 (EDT)
I'd suggest listing the counties at the top of the region article, but as a comma-delimited list (e.g. "The Freedonia River Valley includes Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe Counties."), rather than as a bullet list with a "Counties" header. That makes it clear what the region consists of without enticing people quite so much to "fix" that section by wikilinking the county names. - Todd VerBeek 15:57, 2 June 2007 (EDT)

Thanks, everyone, for your comments. It's been nine days, there is support for eliminating the counties, and no objections. Discussion has died down. I've incorporated the suggestions above into the implementation plan. Last call for comments, please add them to the proposal to eliminate counties from [the] hierarchy, or proposal to make San Juan Islands a top-level region sections of "Talk" for "Washington (state)". If no objections emerge in the next 2-3 days, I'll start implementing. JimDeLaHunt 20:52, 6 June 2007 (EDT)

No objections registered. I'm going ahead with implementation over the next several days. JimDeLaHunt 14:50, 9 June 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Nine City Rule

I would like to propose removing any suburb of Seattle (i.e. Bellevue) for other significant cities in more geographical scattered areas with a more diverse economy (i.e. Port Angeles). I don't find the need to have Bellevue listed when it is regarded as just greater Seattle by the average person. I'm sure a resident of Bellevue would disagree, but the whole purpose of Wikitravel is to inform the user and to become a credible destination guide for non-residents. Does this sound reasonable? -- GeorgeWashingtonInn 14:17, 24 Dec 2006 (EST)

Sounds reasonable to me, but I don't know Washington that well. The "rule" is actually a guideline that states that lists should be limited to seven items, plus or minus two. It's usually applied to regions or countries that contain a lot of cities or sub-regions as a way of avoiding lists containing dozens of items. There are five cities I recognize as notable from this list - Seattle, Olympia, Vancouver, Tacoma and Spokane, so it may even make sense to just limit this list to those five. -- Ryan 15:15, 24 December 2006 (EST)

[edit] Resources for travel info

Here are a few good resources I'm finding useful in writing about the state and its top-level regions. Feel free to expand the list:

[edit] Regions map

I left off Nez Perce because—isn't it in Idaho? If so, it should be removed from the other destinations list. I also don't know if it would be possible to map out the Lewis & Clark Trail—if it is, please point me to a link that shows where the trail falls throughout the state. I also left off rivers—if they are really important for understanding where you are in Washington (I don't know if they are), tell me, and I'll put the major ones on. And I thought about drawing out all public lands, but that last trace seemed too onerous! Lastly, I'll also fix the regions if I got them wrong, or if they are revised. Please contact me via my talk page. --Peter Talk 15:42, 26 August 2008 (EDT)

Great to see a regions map! Thank you for this! The region boundaries look plausible, but they are defined in terms of county boundaries, so the real test is to check this map against county boundaries. Nez Perce National Historical Site is mostly in Idaho, but has some of its 38 sites near Lewiston (Washington). JimDeLaHunt 03:25, 27 August 2008 (EDT)
The regions as I've drawn them match the county boundaries—I traced them from an existing counties map. I'll see what I can do with the Nez Perce locations in Washington—I don't think they were marked on my Washington Public Lands map, so I'll look at other sources. --Peter Talk 11:20, 27 August 2008 (EDT)
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