Talk:List of fountains in the Kansas City metropolitan area

"more fountains than any city in the world except Rome, Italy."

I do not doubt that Rome has more, with somewhere around 2,000. According to the (promotional) City of Fountains Foundation[1], Kansas City has roughly 150. Sources put Paris over 350.[2] New York City has well over 500.[3]

The source we have for the claim is the last line of a local news story, archived here The brief article mainly cites Parks and Rec, though I am unable to find a similar claim anywhere on their site. Also mostly silent on the matter is the City of Fountains Foundation which seems to purposefully avoid the claim "Like other great cities of the world, such as Paris and Rome, Kansas City is a city with many fountains-both public and private. More are being added all the time making it impossible to give an exact count."[4] At another point, they weakly attribute the claim to "it is thought".[5]

A similar claim was first weakened then removed from Kansas City, Missouri (see [6] and [7]) Searching the visitkc.com site originally quoted there, I find this laughable bit: "Fountains are all over the place in this busy mid-west city known for having almost as many of them as Rome. Actually, I partially made that up – I have no idea how many fountains are in Rome. In fact, nobody seems to know how many are here in Kansas City either. Estimates are over 200 but nobody will let me quote them." I was not able to find an archive of the page originally cited. Discussion at the main city article eventually found, quite reasonably IMO, that the tourism board is not an independent reliable source. The claim is now back. While the original cite seems to be lost, I think this is likely a copy:[8] The wording there is pretty similar to the other claim: " Kansas City has more fountains than any other city in the world, except maybe Rome. The exact number of fountains is not known as new public and private fountains are added regularly. But, the City of Fountains Foundation, which keeps the only known database of Kansas City fountains at www.kcfountains.org, currently lists more than 200 fountains that flow in Kansas City." The foundation currently lists just under 150 and Rome seems to have about 2,000, making the "except maybe" a good reason to question the research that went into the promotional release.

Summing up: the best source we have is a throw away line in a local news story. Organizations you would think would want to spread the claim do not. There are apparent examples contrary to the claim. Thoughts?

(In hopes of bringing in more opinions, I am adding a notice of this discussion on the talk page for the main city article.) - SummerPhD^v2.0 02:59, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

I can not think, try as I may, of any reason to include this sort of claim in the article, unless we want to veer into the myth realm, which we might but probably don't want to do. Carptrash (talk) 02:13, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Piland & Uguccioni's book, Fountains of Kansas City: A History and Love Affair says in the Introduction, "One of the questions most frequently asked is, "How many fountains are there in Kansas City?" The question cannot be answered immediately" and their ultimate answer is that it connote be answered at all. Just in case any one was wondering. Carptrash (talk) 02:25, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, Carptrash. As there has been no other input in these two weeks, I have removed the claim from both articles. - SummerPhD^v2.0 04:29, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

This discussion has been over for a while but I should add that it seems there are around 150 in Kansas City, Missouri alone. This article is about the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, so there are bound to be a bunch of fountains unaccounted for. ― TaltosKieronTalk 13:44, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

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