Talk:Under-occupied developments in China

Categorization

Not something that's a big deal, or worth an 'argument' or anything (I'm not particularly 'involved' wih the issue) but while you (User:Fayenatic london) are completely correct that "categories often include lists alongside individual examples", my removal of the category was based on my 'quick impression' that 'lists of ghost towns' aren't 'normally' categorized like this, but instead in the 'lists of ghost towns' that are subcategories of 'ghost towns'.

This was an attempted application of the 'general rule' that pages should only be listed in the 'most specific' categories, and not 'parents'.

To be honest, my 'real' impression now, from looking at 'similar' categories and pages, it that the 'categorization tree' of 'ghost towns' is what actually needs work, to make the 'appropriate categories' clearer....they are not 'consistent' across the articles, and look more like the product of 'random growth' than actual 'deliberate categorization'...

This isn't my 'editorial interest' or somthing I'm going to specifically pursue, though....making sure that articles named 'list of....' are actually /assessed/ as list-class and assigned to "WikiProject Lists" is a sufficiently 'huge' task for the moment, lol. Revent (talk) 17:46, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

For the record, the above is about Category:Ghost towns in Asia. Thanks, Revent, for adding Category:Lists of populated places in China alongside Category:Lists of ghost towns by country. The continent categories don't have sub-cats for lists of ghost towns, so it seems to me that this should be in "Ghost towns in Asia". Note that this list replaced category:Ghost towns in China which was emptied without discussion. – Fayenatic London 08:27, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

It is my 'future intent' to try to somewhat 'systematically' run though the lists of categories and try to identify 'outstanding issues' and get them discussed (and do lots of desperately needed cleanup, like categorizing set categories, tracking categories, diffusing categories, etc)....I'll probably 'revisit' this at some point in the (distant) future as part of that... Revent (talk) 21:20, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Requested move 11 May 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved. (non-admin closure) Simplexity22 (talk) 02:18, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

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List of under-occupied developments in China → Under-occupied developments in China – This is not a simple list accompanying a larger primary parent article, this is the primary article, which also has a list section, that does not make up the bulk of the article. Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 00:22, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

• No objection. I may not have been thinking straight when I reverted the WP:BOLD move.[1] There are other lists, even siblings within Category:China geography-related lists, that do not have "list" in the article name. – Fayenatic London 20:02, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
• Support. Everywhere you go in China, you see modern, empty buildings and inactive sky cranes. It makes no sense to create a list of eight such complexes when there are thousands more that could be added. Nine Zulu queens (talk) 06:03, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

This whole page reads like an advertisement for Wade Shepard. Everything is just his conclusions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:602:8E00:FF8F:E869:6F92:E2D0:BE44 (talk) 02:32, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Move to "Ghost cities in China"

Why are we using a euphemism here instead of the commonly recognizable name for this phenomenon? There is a relevant policy on article titles: WP:TITLE#Use_commonly_recognizable_names.

Most people hear about this phenomenon by the name of "Chinese ghost cities," because that's the term the mainstream English media (i.e., reliable sources) use. So when they're searching for info, that's the search term they're using. I think we all know that nobody has ever looked up "Under-occupied developments in China." This is the only article I've seen that calls it that. If you search that term, you only find this article, plus a bunch of media articles calling them ghost cities.

The phrase "Under-occupied developments in China" also sounds like a very strained mega-euphemism. Under-occupied? Developments? Oh, you mean ghost towns? We have an article on "under-occupied developments" on Wikipedia, it's called Ghost town. It doesn't use a euphemism, nor does it use a government's "official" name (according to policy, we use colloquial names, not official names); it uses the commonly recognizable name for the subject.

I think the most recognizable name is "Chinese ghost cities," but I understand there might be some semantic debate as to whether the cities should be called "Chinese" or simply "in China," so I'd be happy with either one. But whatever we choose, the current name needs to change because as it stands, it looks like a euphemism, and the fact that we're using a euphemism to refer to Chinese ghost towns but not to refer to ghost towns in general, or ghost towns in any other country, looks suspicious.

Readers may very well get the impression that A) Wikipedia is holding its tongue and tiptoeing around matters that hurt the Chinese government's reputation, or B) nationalists concerned with China's public image are interfering with this article. One or both seem to happen routinely on Wikipedia, and this title gives the impression of being connected to that pattern. I'm not saying that's why this particular name was chosen, just that the euphemistic language gives that impression, which we should try to avoid.

In any case, even if I'm wrong about that, the article title is still inconsistent with the relevant policy. We should be using the commonly recognizable name, which is certainly "ghost cities." If you look up "ghost cities in China" on Google you will find dozens of mainstream media articles about the phenomenon using that exact language. If you look up "Under-occupied developments in China" you'll find the same articles, calling them ghost cities.

Reliable sources call them ghost cities, the general public calls them ghost cities, so Wikipedia should call them ghost cities. In fact, we do call them ghost cities – in the first sentence of the lede! So why are we using this euphemistic title if we're just going to immediately disambiguate it by clarifying with the correct name in the first sentence of the article? You don't need to disambiguate if you just use the correct title to start with.

The title also makes this page harder to find. If you search "Chinese ghost cities," the first result is Ghost town rather than this article, presumably because the word "ghost" is not used in the title. At the very least there should be a redirect from "Chinese ghost cities" to this article or something. But IMO the title should be changed because the policy is extremely clear about this.

Edit: By the way, the claim that these are "under-occupied" because they're not really abandoned, but just taking a while to fill in, is totally false. From what I can gather in several mainstream media articles, there is no hope of them ever being normal developments. Some of these ghost cities have already been demolished. Many more are gradually being demolished. You can find video of the demolitions on YouTube. Most aren't occupied at all, they're owned by citizens as failed real estate investments, and if they're physically used at all, they're used as places to do drugs and commit crimes. They will never be occupied, because they're not safe to live in, many have no amenities or even electricity/running water, they serve no practical purpose besides money laundering and fraud. The idea that these will soon be occupied has been proposed for years and hasn't panned out. And even if there was reason to believe they would be occupied eventually, that wouldn't justify using this obscure euphemism for the title instead of the commonly recognizable name used by the English news media. If one of the buildings becomes occupied, then it will no longer fall within this category; that still leaves dozens of completely abandoned ghost cities and phony "cities of the future."

Please consider moving the article to "Ghost cities in China". Thank you. Aminomancer (talk) 14:02, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

While I agree that the current name is unwieldy and possibly runs against the common names policy, the definitions given in Ghost town seem to define towns that were previously full and are now abandoned. This seems to me to be a substantively different phenomenon than is seen in these Chinese cities.

That being said, I did come across this article in the first place by searching for "Chinese ghost cities," because, as you said, that has been far and away the most common name in English-language media for them, so moving to a different name seems like a reasonable idea. BenRavioli (talk) 15:21, 18 September 2024 (UTC)