Talk:List of Kerala cities by population

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I have rewritten the list using official census data. I base my decision on-
(1) On similar pages with lists of cities by population, the 'city' refers to an urban agglomeration, and not merely the area that falls under the municipal/corporation authority.
(2) The numbers cited earlier were wrong, and were from a non-official website. I am sure that you will agree that the official census website is a much more authoritative and authentic source than a private website with no references, or methods of data collection, whatsoever.
If you disagree with my judgement, we can perhaps debate it here? I request all stakeholders to keep the info on the page as it stands now (with references to the official census data) until an agreement is reached.
Thank you!
--Neogarfield (talk) 21:22, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi Neogarfield,

The article is for explaining the City Corporation or Municipality based population of Kerala cities, not Metropolitan Area based population. The new census data based on Metropolitan areas will give you an info that "Kochi's population is 21 Lakhs", but the fact is that "The total population of areas coming under Kochi Corporation is less than 6.5 lakh". Try to understand the difference between both these facts.

And if you want to mention those population related details, kindly create another article for Metropolitan Area based population. Try to read the Notes section coming under the population table before making any changes. See:- http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Template:Major_cities_in_Kerala

"**Note:-

The figures shown in this article denotes the total population in a city corporation or municipal limit. No relation with Urban Agglomeration or Metropolitan Area population. Kollam City Corporation area increased in 2015 by merging Thrikkadavoor panchayath. Kannur is the newly formed city corporation in Kerala(in 2015) by merging Pallikunnu, Puzhathi, Edakadu, Elayavoor and Chelora grama panchayats with Kannur Municipality."

Thanks : Arunvrparavur (talk) 08:58, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

There may be several articles mentioning on the Metropolitan Area-based population. Why do we need to copy paste same data on several articles? The intention behind the formation of this article was to clearly mention the population details of City Corporations in Kerala. I've mentioned that in the article itself, under the "Notes" title.

For Metro population, you can refer several other articles available on Wikipedia including [List of million-plus urban agglomerations in India]]. So no need to clone these details again here in this article. It's for local body-based population details, that too got changed recently.

http://www.corporationoftrivandrum.in/general-information-0
http://www.kollamcorporation.gov.in/public-disclosure
https://cochinmunicipalcorporation.kerala.gov.in/
http://kozhikodecorporation.lsgkerala.gov.in/en
http://www.corporationofthrissur.org/
http://kannurcorporation.lsgkerala.gov.in/

Thanks : Arunvrparavur (talk) 09:06, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

@Arunvrparavur: Alright, I understand your point. But, I reiterate my two points.

One, a city is generally understood to be the the group of municipalities and corporations that make the metropolitan or urban region. To restrict a list of 'cities' to 'municipalities' is highly misleading, and if that is the list that we intend this to be, we ought to change the title of the article. Let me cite an example from Kochi. The Corporation of Cochin is the local government responsible for certain areas of the city; but, the city of Kochi/Cochin is much greater than that area. And these areas which do not fall under the corporation is still part of what is called 'Greater Kochi', and the Greater Kochi Development Authority is responsible for the development and upkeep of all these areas. All corporations and municipalities that belong to the city comes under the jurisdiction of such authorities. For example, BBMP in Bangalore, MMP in Mumbai, or HMDA in Hyderabad. Interestingly, Hyderabad is spread across different administrative districts, and yet has the same city authority. Other articles with such lists use the metropolitan area population - what is called a 'city'. For eg. List of cities in India by population

Two, and more importantly I think (and the only reason I'm getting involved in this), is that the website you source - census2011.co.in - for all the data that you claim to be 'facts', is a non-official website, with no references, no methodology listed, and one which takes no responsibility for the data that it displays (according to its terms). The website is highly suspect, and does not meet WP:V. The official Census 2011 data website is [1]

If you agree with me, please revert your counter-edits, or make the relevant edits with authentic references. If not, do let me know why.

Thank you. Neogarfield (talk) 20:36, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the message, Neogarfield. You are talking about the mega cities across our country. Hope you can understand the difference between Kerala cities and other Indian metropolis. Kerala can be considered as the largest city in India if you can understand it's urban nature all the way from Kasargode till Parassala. And as I told you, we have several numbers of articles in Wikipedia dealing with the Metropolitan Area population, like List of million-plus urban agglomerations in India. My intention behind the creation of this article was to start a page that deals with the LA-based populated cities in Kerala. In my opinion, one more article dealing with Metropolitan Area population is irrelevant and if you still want to add that, we can add another section in this article itself.

The websites from these city corporations are managed by the councils. They are dealing directly with the general public. I don't think that the data from such websites are non-official websites. All are coming under Government's LSG Department. In my opinion, the state Government would be having most accurate info about Kerala compared to 6 years old census data. Post census, a corporation has been formed and several panchayats have been merged in Kerala. So I believe, the websites from LSGD Kerala is more accurate than this old census data.

Thanks : Arunvrparavur (talk) 04:46, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

@Arunvrparavur:

Dear Arunvrparavur, your claim about the 'urban' nature of Kerala is quite debatable, and as a social scientist, I would take up the debate. However, since Wikipedia is not the place for arguments to be made, nor for taking a view, I would think that we go by what is generally meant when we talk of a 'city'. Kerala has some cities that are quite like a 'city' in that sense. Kochi, Thiruvanathapuram, Thrissur, Kollam, and Kozhikode are all typical cities, with sharp urban-rural divides. Of course, these are only the cities that I've visited - I'm sure there are others. The question of relevance does not arise, and I believe accuracy should be preserved over relevance. To call municipal areas 'cities' are highly misleading, and untrue.

Again, I'm more concerned with where this data comes from. None of the data you've put up on the article page come from the local self-governments - they come from a third party website, which looks highly dubious and suspect, and like I said before, does not meet WP:V. Further, your argument that the local self-government data is more accurate than census data would not hold; only the census does actual counting of the people in the country. The local self government data, if any at all, either comes from census data, or from estimates from birth and death certificates; it would not account for migrations (in and out), and is therefore not accurate for the number of residents (or citi-zens). Population data comes only from two sources - one, the decennial census, and two, the quinquennial sample survey. Data from either of these would be most accurate. I would, however, be glad for even data sourced from the self-government pages, since they could at least be held accountable. That would still be better than the dubious third-party sources. Thanks, Neogarfield (talk) 05:54, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Dear Neogarfield, I don't think that it is a debatable topic. And "what is generally meant when we talk of a 'city'" is not always based on Metropolitan Area everywhere in this world. It's a perception, in my opinion. The scenarios are entirely different in Kerala. There are only 2 Development Authorities here, whereas we have Trivandrum, Quilon, Cochin, Trichur, Malappuram, Calicut, Cannanore Metropolitan Areas, as per Central Government reports. Except Trivandrum & Cochin, the projects and development activities are carried out by local bodies in all the other cities. ie, Kollam Municipal Corporation at Kollam(Quilon), Thrissur Municipal Corporation at Thrissur(Trichur), Malappuram Municipality at Malappuram, Kozhikode Municipal Corporation at Kozhikode(Calicut) and Kannur Municipal Corporation at Kannur(Cannanore).

The websites that I mentioned above are not just third-party owned websites. All those websites are under the control of respective municipalities and City Corporations. Each time after the election, they make changes in that. 'Believing it or not' is up to the visitors. It's not 100% accurate because nobody can count the births-deaths happening in a city all the day and make changes in the website every day accordingly. So it's clear that none of the info available about the city population is 100% accurate. After the last Census, 2 major changes happened in Kerala cities. So I'm talking and adding info based on these facts. I have used http://censusindia.gov.in/PopulationFinder/Population_Finder.aspx website for counting the population here. In my opinion, both Census data and population data from local body websites are correct. Happy to hear that you are a 'social scientist'. But I don't think that your knowledge about Kerala's urban nature and urban bodies are up to the mark.

Thanks : - Arunvrparavur (talk) 06:24, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

@Arunvrparavur:

I'm not sure you get my point about the concept of a city. But let that be, I'll be happy if the sources are authentic. You have mentioned websites above, and I have given my reasons to why the official census data is more authentic than lists displayed by local bodies. In any case, the sources you have indicated above have not been references at the respective places in the article itself. If you could do that, I think we'll be able to have a more coherent debate without talking past each other. Please do check out WP:RS. Further, being an encyclopedia, we are limited to working with data that has already been published, and are verifiable (see WP:V). What you report doing, I believe, falls into original research, which is disallowed. Please do see WP:NOR.

Thank you, Neogarfield (talk) 14:04, 27 June 2017 (UTC)