Category talk:Cities and towns in Quebec

Naming question

Note: This discussion originally took place on the talk page of Category:Cities in Quebec, and had been deleted, but was retrieved by an administrator and added here in February 2010. Bearcat (talk) 19:08, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Because the term ville corresponds to both "city" and "town" in English, and both of those terms are being used in different articles contained within this category, I'm asking WP:CWNB for a review of how this category should actually be named.

1. Cities in Quebec
2. Cities and towns in Quebec
3. Villes in Quebec

For what it's worth, I view all three options as kind of problematic in one way or another — #1 is inaccurate since not all of them are actually what readers would commonly understand as cities, #2 is probably the least problematic of the three but is still using terms that have no legal standing in the province, and #3 mixes languages. But I also can't see any viable solution besides these three. So I have no personal opinion on this question, but would like to ensure that we have a documented consensus for whichever format is chosen. Bearcat (talk) 22:10, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

• I would prefer "Cities and towns in Quebec". I think the "ville" option is ungainly in mixing languages and "cities" does not describe the situation accurately. --Slp1 (talk) 22:38, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
• Use english first. So I support Slp1's proposal. GreenJoe 22:55, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
• "Cities and Towns in Quebec" seems like the best option. DigitalC (talk) 22:56, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
• This list includes only place with the "ville" designation, correct? If that is correct, there are townships that are excluded from this list. I think it would be confusing if we have a list of "towns" which excludes the "townships". So I think we are forced to use #1 or 3. I'd use three. Two is acceptable but confusing. --JGGardiner (talk) 10:45, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

There's already a distinct category for the townships. Bearcat (talk) 16:02, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

You mean the one I linked to, right? The List of township and united township municipalities in Quebec. That's what I meant. I think it might confuse readers to have one list of "townships" and one of "towns". --JGGardiner (talk) 22:22, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I think people are generally smart enough to able to note that suffixes differentiate meaning, and that there is a difference between hard, hardship, fellow, fellowship, steward, stewardship etc, In fact, it looks like someone even wrote a song about it, entitled "Ship the majesty suffix" [1]. The mind boggles! Slp1 (talk) 23:13, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

That's not exactly the case. As a suffix "ship" refers to the state of the stem, "town", for its legal territory. In that sense, the places on the "ville" list are (or have) townships but the places on the "township" list are not. Of course township can also be a synonym for a municipality which is a jurisdiction given to an area as if it had a town, even if it does not. But that's not the meaning on the second list either. The second list uses a peculiar Quebec convention of using "township" as a translation of "canton".

That's the problem. These names don't come from the words' inherent meanings but from the political context in which they were created. When you use various translations, it is hard to be sure what you're talking about. On top of that we are mixing political, legal and geographic meanings so there is a lot of potential for confusion. --JGGardiner (talk) 03:15, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

That's why I gave the examples I did. There is not a clear, high direct relationship between hard and hardship or the others I mentioned, at least not in the most common usage of the word. So people can and do understand that a ship suffix does not necessarily describe the state of the stem. I realize that your point goes beyond this, but I don't think it will confuse people enough to mean that we should avoid the word town. Slp1 (talk) 19:47, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't currently use this as a rationale for avoiding the word "town" in other jurisdictions that also have "townships", so I don't really see why Quebec needs to be different in that regard. Bearcat (talk) 15:11, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

• I agree that "Cities and towns in Quebec" is the best choice. DoubleBlue (Talk) 22:37, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Ideal goal

The ideal is for most if not all cities and towns to be defined in here with their own category. Then remove the category that put it into the lower level since it would be over-categorizing. All town and city categories would then have most of the articles in their own categories. Some might still be here because they are too small to have any other article associated with them. Student7 (talk) 13:21, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I was wrong about this. Best to lean towards overcategorization and argue it out with somebody (else!  :) Student7 (talk) 18:23, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

No, in principle you're right — but as things stand right now, most if not all of the major cities in Quebec that are large enough to easily support their own dedicated subcategories already have them. More can always be created as needed, certainly, but they shouldn't be created until there are actually enough related articles to justify a subcategory. Bearcat (talk) 20:22, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Break into 2 categories?

Most provinces (and states) that I see break this into 2 different categories, "Cities in XXX" and "Towns in XXX". Is there any reason why this isn't done for Quebec? Especially since there are so many entries that the category spans multiple pages. Greg Salter (talk) 05:13, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

The only distinction that exists between a "city" and a "town" in Quebec is an informal, arbitrary and purely ad hoc one in English speech; there's only one legal designation, ville, that encapsulates both terms simultaneously. So, unlike any other Canadian province or American state, there's no objective distinction that can be made between the two terms — the only functional difference between a "city" and a "town" in Quebec is a local habit of favouring one term over the other in a handful of cases, while for the majority of places either term can be used interchangeably. In a nutshell, there's no way to separate this into distinct "cities" and "towns" categories without violating Wikipedia's opposition to original research, because we'd have to invent our own criteria for deciding what belonged in which category. Bearcat (talk) 10:03, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Note that in order to provide better context, I subsequently retrieved and readded the original naming discussion that had been deleted from the talk page of Category:Cities in Quebec, this category's predecessor. That discussion appears above under the headline "Naming question". Bearcat (talk) 19:06, 10 February 2010 (UTC)