Wikipedia:WikiProject Ghost towns/Article guidelines

This page is meant for our article guidelines. Right now I just figured we could follow the conventions used for other settlements, perhaps maybe develop an infobox along the way, for a more uniformed, project-like appearance. I figure we can discuss any alterations on the talk page. There are a few open points I think need to be decided.

Article guidelines can be seen below.

Open Questions

• When is a town a ghost town? This question leads directly to our coverage area, does it include a place the census says 8, 14, or 24 people live?

• Is everyone okay with encompassing defunct towns and cities into the fold? Maintaining defunct cities and towns in their own cats as well as ghost town cats. Specifically per the discussion here. A designation set aside for places absorbed by another municipality.

• Lists? Can they be done, and/or ever completed? Should we do them?

• Notability? How do we determine if an individual or company that comes up multiple times during the project warrants an article?

• What standard do we have for sub-cats on defunct, that is to say absorbed (if that is what we are saying), settlements? Will it be Defunct cities to Defunct cities in the United States to Defunct cities in Idaho, or will we use Defunct settlements in the United States, etc., etc.? We have standardization for each state; how about defunct standardization?

These and any other questions, suggestions, concerns and alterations can and should be addressed immediately on the talk page here.

Article Guidelines

Article names

Articles should be named as any other settlement would be, e.g. (Place name, State name). In cases where there is more than one place in the same state with the same name, include the county, e.g. (Place name, State name (County name)).

For example: Bridal Veil, Oregon or Princeton, Texas (Newton County)

Article body

This section is meant to provide a starting point.

Articles should include: Map and external link, as well as coordinate information at the top left of the page. information as any other settlement on Wikipedia would.

This code may help with the external link section. I have included an arbitrary example, fill in the coordinates of the settlement your article is about:

{{Geolinks-US-cityscale|42.0336383|-88.9356512}}

Basically, I like to follow conventions that seem to have become the norm on Wikipedia regarding cities, villages, towns and other municipalities.

Like so:

Intro

The intro should have basic information. Place name, county, state, founding if known and any other important info that needs to be top loaded.

==History==

Any history section should be more than mere speculation if possible. Cite reliable sources, see Wikipedia:Reliable sources

==Geography==

This section should always contain the coordinates, as accurately as possible. Use the following code for proper linkage, an arbitrary example follows:

Esmond is located at {{coor dms|42|02|01|N|88|56|08|W|city}} (42.0336383, -88.9356512){{GR|3}}.

==Demographics==

This section is often the hardest to know to any real degree of accuracy when dealing with ghost towns. Sometimes places will be near ghost town status or ghost towns and still have some available U.S. Census data as census designated places, it's good to just check anyway. Any information must also be sourced and referenced in this section.

== See also ==

Any pertinent internal links that weren't linked in the article, or were linked at the top of a long page.

==External links==

Use this code: {{Geolinks-US-cityscale|42.0336383|-88.9356512}}

Categories

Since this project is maintaining a United States focus the only cats we will need to mess with go something like this Category:Ghost towns in North America to Category:Ghost towns in the United States to Category of the state your ghost town is in.

For the states there are already cats for all 50 states. Every one is in the form: Category:Ghost towns in Illinois.

Other pertinent categories would include the ghost town's county, or its current municipality or governing body, if there is or should be such a category.