Talk:City of Washington

User:Lithopsian

I think we need a City of Washington page that is separate from a Washington, DC page, because they're not the same thing. No more than Georgetown and Washington, DC are the same thing. It creates links for the Mayors of the City of Washington that say they were the Mayor of Washington, DC and they weren't. In 1871 the City of Washington ceased to exist and a new entity Washington, DC came into being; so it's not "Washington, DC (after 1871)".

If you want citations that's a separate issue, but you didn't actually give a reason to revert this.

Volcycle (talk) 04:23, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Just because it is a separate entity doesn't mean it *must* have its own page. In your example, Georgetown has an existence separate from the District of Columbia and predates it, by a little at least. The City of Washington only exists within the context of the District of Columbia and as such is described within the redirect target (both of them). I notice that there was considerable debate about the need even for a separate article District of Columbia (until 1871) (it is still a dodgy title, and there is a lot of duplicated content). If you think the City of Washington is sufficiently notable for a separate article, or simply that there is so much content that it needs to be split out, then produce something more than a stub, with references, and you have a much stronger case for doing the split. With suitable references, I suspect I wouldn't have reverted the split. There is always the risk that having two separate articles about things that have no meaning independently of eachother becomes confusing and duplicative. I'm not sure a split discussion would be helpful, I suspect it would be inevitably biased towards "no". Perhaps just create a better article, in draft if you need to do it in stages, and see what other reviewers make of it. I'll tag the redirect appropriately. Lithopsian (talk) 14:24, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]