Template talk:Largest cities

Capitalization

Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters ("Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization. Most capitalization is for proper names, acronyms, and initialisms."), I believe the row header should be "City name" instead of "City Name" (also, it seems like in the test case/example, it should be "English region/country" instead of "English Region/Country"), but the template looks complex enough I'm reluctant to make the change myself. 71.197.244.119 (talk) 06:10, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

fixed. Frietjes (talk) 20:53, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! 71.197.244.119 (talk) 06:24, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

No div needed

In the case where there is no 'div' required, as in {{Largest cities of Nevada}}, if you don't specify one the template displays '[[]]' which is wrong. If div is not provided it should display nothing. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:01, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I share this concern. A lot of new templates are being created with columns full of "[[]]", which is both wrong and ugly. --Orlady (talk) 18:57, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Not everything in these lists is a city

This template is being used to create "largest cities" lists for some of the U.S. states. Unfortunately, in some states, some of the listed places are not "cities", but have some other legal designation. For example, in both Connecticut and Rhode Island, one or more of the ten largest is a New England town, not a legally incorporated "city." Unfortunately, the template allows no option for any other designation than "cities". Can't this be changed? --Orlady (talk) 18:47, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, this template seems to be quite inflexible. For example, I would like to be able to use piped links for cities like San Ignacio (town), but unfortunately it doesn't seem possible. Kaldari (talk) 06:14, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Data sources

Many of these templates are being sourced to http://www.citypopulation.de/USA-Hawaii.html , which does not appear to me to be a WP:RS, although the data seem to be OK. --Orlady (talk) 18:57, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Deletion discussion started

A deletion discussion for the applications of this template in U.S. state templates has started at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 April 30. --Orlady (talk) 21:15, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

City 4, but not City 3

An image for City 4 cannot be seen without the City 3 image being set up.
Is there an empty or null image that could be used as a placeholder? Or could the code test for a reserved word, e.g. null.bmp, which means to skip that image?
This pertains to Template:Largest cities of Zimbabwe.
99.237.143.219 (talk) 07:48, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

fixed. Frietjes (talk) 18:16, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

The "Pop." column heading

With 3 or 4 photos in the template, the column headings align horizontally.
But with 2 photos, or fewer, "Pop." is out of alignment with the other headings. It's higher.
This effect can be seen in the templates for Zambia and Zimbabwe.
99.237.143.219 (talk) 14:47, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

fixed. Frietjes (talk) 18:17, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 30 December 2013

IP vandalism calls for semi-p, not te. I hope this isn't indicative of how te is applied elsewhere. — Lfdder (talk) 11:03, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Not done: requests for changes to the page protection level should be made at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:11, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I will waste your time if you waste mine. — Lfdder (talk) 22:47, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

What Jackmcbarn said. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:36, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

No, I think this is a great place for it. — Lfdder (talk) 00:20, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

With all respect, this is a great place to spin one's wheels on this issue. If you really want to lower the protection, then you are well-advised to take it to RFP with all due speed. – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 00:44, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

• Not done: requests for changes to the page protection level should be made at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. Like Jack & Rose said. Technical 13 (talk) 00:38, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Remove whitespace

Like what I did on the sandbox version of this template. Please see the diff. --Zyma (talk) 15:08, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Done Jackmcbarn (talk) 15:39, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 19 May 2014 - remove excess bold

Please remove the excess bold formatting, specifically

• The name of the country in the table heading (when the templates is used on that country's article page)
• The names of the cities in the table

The bold formatting does not comply with the general use of bold specified in MOS:BOLD. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:05, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Not done: What you are asking for is a change of how the MediaWiki software works (which could be accomplished by changing common.css for .selflink to not be bold). Either way, this isn't the proper venue for that. Try Bugzilla or VPT — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 12:17, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

are you asking for the bold to be removed like this? if so, seems reasonable, and doesn't require any change to the MediaWiki software :) Frietjes (talk) 18:59, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

The table headings are bold by default and I wouldn't want to change that. But Frietjes is right about the city names, and I don't think it should be controversial, so we could just make the change and see if anyone objects? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:05, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

 Done – names of cities are no longer in bold format – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 04:28, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

PS. The country (or state) will no longer be excessively bold. Clear your browser's cache. PS left by – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 10:52, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Does anyone know the rationale behind the [[{{{country}}}]] code? Specifically why, since this template is mostly used in country and state articles, why does it need to be linked? Yes, this is also used in US state articles where the state name is used as the "country" in the code, and there are demographics articles and city articles that also use this template, so the country/(state) link is "live" and blue on those pages. However, all those articles have links to the same country (or state) names, both in their leads and elsewhere in the articles. I submit that having the country linked in the header of this template, which causes the excessive looking bold that the requester seeks to omit, is nothing more, nothing less than over-linking. If no one objects, I would like to remove that link and resolve this excessive bold problem. – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 05:56, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that. It looks much better now. Mitch Ames (talk) 09:39, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

I was able to use a parser function (ifeq:) to return the "country" link on all pages that are not the "country" pagename. – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 11:10, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

fine with me, but make sure there are no pipe-tricks with this parameter (e.g., |country=United States|USA. Frietjes (talk) 15:45, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Good thought! Okay, the US article doesn't use this template; it uses {{Largest Metropolitan Areas of the United States}} instead, which does not appear to link to the US article at all. If there are any exceptions with pipes, it should be easy to deal with that. – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 22:55, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

PS. Also, I did something similar at {{Largest Metropolitan Areas of Canada}}. – Paine

Largest cities IN

Most WP articles are written in formats along the lines of "List of cities in ...". To my mind this is more a specific format less vulnerable subjective interpretations. GregKaye 11:23, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

done. Frietjes (talk) 16:24, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Frietjes just to clarify, most of the article titles, which are obviously themselves presented at tops of the article pages, are written in the format: "List of cities in ..." Titles of templates for some reason, and which are not themselves displayed, are written in the format, "Template:Largest cities of ..." I have also opened an extensive RM re these titles based at Template talk:Largest cities of Acre#Requested move 1 March 2015 and to my reading your edit is supported within this thread. I still thought that you should be aware of the other discussion. GregKaye 14:16, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

The RM mentioned failed mainly, by my reading, on the basis that the title of the large number of templates did not make a difference to the content actually displayed. The argument for consistent content with the 808 articles with titles beginning with the text List of cities in remains. Similar articles replace "cities" with "towns", "towns and cities", metropolitan areas etc. As far as I have seen all titles use "in". GregKaye 08:11, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Infobox masquerading as a navbox?

Instances of this template are typically used as a navbox (in a collapsed state at the end of an article) and less frequently as an infobox (uncollapsed in the body of an article). The purpose of a navbox is to aid navigation between closely related articles, nothing more. This "navbox" includes optional parameter for sources (|stat_ref=), populations (|pop_n=) and for graphics (|img_n=). This extra data extends far beyond a navbox and is more appropriate for an infobox. This template currently has a |class=nav parameter. I propose to modify this template so that it accepts a |class=info(box)/nav(box) parameter that would control whether the template behaves like a navbox (displaying only links) or as an infobox (displaying links + populations + graphics + sources). Since this template is more frequently used as a navbox, I further propose that the default value of |class= be set to navbox. Is there support for this change? Boghog (talk) 12:30, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm in support of these proposed updates to the template. The changes will allow a single template to display the content in better accordance with infobox/navbox guidelines, and avoid removal of valid content. —ADavidB 11:40, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 25 May 2017

Largest city is now Nashville, population 684,410. http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_and_towns_in_Tennessee_by_population Bsutto04 (talk) 13:56, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

That doesn't require an edit to this template. An IP editor has updated the article. Cabayi (talk) 14:03, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 9 April 2018

Suppress the link to the country in the title. It is mainly unnecessary and in cases like the Netherlands, it creates a redirection. Thanks. WhatsUpWorld (talk) 21:07, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

 Done. As this change was not discussed, it is revertible on request — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:07, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Withdrawn nominations for deletion

For the record, many templates using {{Largest cities}} were nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2018 June 19#Largest cities navboxes, but it was quickly withdrawn. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:08, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

style="width: 100%;"

Is there any reason to stretch the table to 100%? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:E1:6714:4500:8D08:4C19:CF7E:DF59 (talk) 10:26, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Template:Largest cities of Jordan

Greetings and felicitations. Template:Largest cities of Jordan (which uses this template as a base) has a reference in it. The problem is that it is used as a navbar at the bottom of the ten listed articles, causing the reference to appear below it and the other navbars. What do you suggest is the solution for this? Remove the "Largest cities of Jordan" from the ten articles? Something else? —DocWatson42 (talk) 16:05, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

This can be replaced with a navbox such as Template:Cities of the Philippines or Template:Metropolitan cities of China. The current template is a leaderboard/scoreboard.Catchpoke (talk) 18:08, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion

A newly-registered user randomly nominated one of the templates using this one for deletion. Discussion is at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2021 May 17#Template:Largest cities of Israel. --Triggerhippie4 (talk) 07:04, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

This is an incorrect description of a sincere TfD nomination. I also note that User:Triggerhippie4 is WP:CANVASsing here against the TfD proposal, on dubious arguments and casting WP:PA's against an editor, postulating Bad Faith without base. Before this post, in the the TfD, Triggerhippie4 was already notified by multiple editors not to throw around PAs. -DePiep (talk) 16:30, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

We might have to go back to this.Catchpoke (talk) 01:25, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

@Catchpoke: The link you provided proves my point about your nomination being useless. The nominator withdrawn within an hour and admitted his mistake, because everybody agreed those templates are staying. --Triggerhippie4 (talk) 06:58, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

This is WP:harassment. The next attack will see you at WP:ani.Catchpoke (talk) 23:56, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Guiding policy of WP:NAVCOLOR

In article space, this template is used in numerous city articles but in a recent template discussion, it was determined that there is no policy which states national level templates should be kept.

The policy relevant here is WP:NAVCOLOR and that would mean that this template and templates that implement it would need to be deprecated and deleted.

WP:NAVCOLOR is applicable here because the design is arbitrary and capricious. This is due to the fact that this template gives options to list either 10 or 20 city entries and either 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 pictures of cities and these options prevent the internal dimensions of the template from staying consistent. Catchpoke (talk) 03:20, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

I fail to see the connection. WP:NAVCOLOR is about the use of non-default colours in navboxes, it has nothing whatsoever to do with whether a navbox should exist or not. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:47, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

"Navigation templates are not arbitrarily decorative" is the title.

The first bullet states: "There should be justification for a template to deviate from the colors and styles contained in MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Vector.css (and the other skin.css pages)". If I interpret this correctly, it means there should be justification for a template to use a different color scheme as indicated by MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Vector.css (and the other skin.css pages).

The second bullet states: "There are two basic layouts:": "On the right side of page" or "at the bottom of each article, stacked with other similar templates".

Paraphrasing WikiCleanerMan on my talk page, if they should be kept, they should be converted to navboxes instead of the list format they are currently designed as. --Catchpoke (talk) 16:46, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Nope. Still not getting it. Template:Largest cities of Israel is built upon {{Largest cities}}. If its colours or photos are a problem, fix them. Don't condemn everything for the fault of one. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:52, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Not exactly that, Redrose (but deletion is not based we agree). The problem is wider than just colors or navboxs colors.

As the TfD describes: when a template is a WP:NAVBOX it should be (css-)colored as a navbox, be used as a navbox, and have class="navbox". However, when not a navbox, it shall *not* be defined class="navbox" (e.g., see TfD post PrimeHunter 12:13, 23 May 2021).

The example template {{Largest cities of Israel}} you mention is *not* used as navbox, but is used *in the article body* here and everywhere. Therefor the navbox-class must be changed into class="info" (which also solves the incorrect usage of navbox colors and suggestion). This should be checked & corrected for at least all article instances of this meta {{Largest cities}}.

The different template {{Largest Israeli cities}} is a navbox. I'd advise to rename true navbox templates in this series into having "navbox" in their name. -DePiep (talk) 15:08, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

We should all mind the fact that this isn't about one template but all the templates with the title "Largest Cities of". A vast majority of these are not used and should be since they do serve a purpose, but a change in style must be considered because they certainly aren't navboxes in appearance. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 19:28, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Redrose64: Exactly what part of my explaination do you not understand? Does linking to WP:EMBED help? And regardless of colors or pictures, subnational templates are regularly deleted but it was argued that "national" templates are not. For example: {{Largest cities of the United States}} is not used but currently is part of this series of templates at the national level. I've included WP:NAVCOLOR because inclusionists were incorrectly stating that this template is a navigation template; it is not: it is an embedded list.Catchpoke (talk) 00:39, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

It seems that in some articles, this is used as a navbox and in others it is not:

On the left are the lists and on the right are the navboxes. If we remove the lists where a navbox already exists, would that be tolerable?--Catchpoke (talk) 17:02, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Comment. This doesn't seem very complicated, and I have no idea how the discussion has evolved into this mess. Some thoughts:

• First of all, these are good when used in the middle of articles about a country (or subnational entity) "X" and maybe "Demographics of X", and not much else. They should not be used as bottom-article navboxes in city articles, for instance, and should be removed on sight if this is done.
• Relating to the first point, these templates are using (rather, abusing?) the navbox class for presentation purposes, which has clearly been misinterpreted by some editors as green-lighting for use at the bottom of city articles (this should not be done). This has resulted in the present confusion, where editors agree these are good presentations of info when used in the middle of country articles, but bad as city navboxes.
• Because they are navboxes and not say, wikitables, they are not visible right now on mobile, which is a problem. They are also not good from an accessibility standpoint.

This has nothing to do with NAVCOLOR or anything else. Let's talk about ways to convert these away from navboxes and into something that is accessible and visible on mobile. It is a really appealing and useful presentation of relevant information, but it shouldn't be a navbox. — Goszei (talk) 00:59, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

You say it isn't a navbox, but then you say they are navboxes. You can't fix these templates without removing the pictures so WP:NAVCOLOR does apply. And the code doesn't use wikitables but parameters. But we can agree that where these templates are used as navboxes, they should be removed. Catchpoke (talk) 20:00, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

I am not sure how I am still being misunderstood: take the "largest cities" templates and turn them all into something (like a table) that has absolutely nothing to do with navboxes, neither in implementation nor usage. — Goszei (talk) 20:13, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

There is no consistent format with the way Template:Largest cities and its daughters are being used: Sometimes only 10 cities are used, while most of the time 20 cities are used. I might as well note here that not every country has these templates:

Template:Largest cities and its daughters has no consistent format with regard to the number of photos that are displayed: there may be none, 1, 2, 3, or 4. This isn't appealing, attractive, or useful at all. Catchpoke (talk) 20:24, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Well both WP:SALs and WP:EMBEDDEDs are lists; whether or not they exist for all countries is another issue. Catchpoke (talk) 19:41, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of templates

Templates "Largest cities of " has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. --Triggerhippie4 (talk) 06:58, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Better if statements needed?

I found this test case in an article, and it is displaying template code to readers. It looks like we need better if statements. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:27, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Images in Vector 2022 layout

As Vector 2022 layout has become Wikipedia's default theme, the images in this template (like Template:Largest cities of the Philippines) have been causing image overflow on top of text or the right sidebar in smaller laptops with screens like 1280x800 px. Can the template be modified to hide the images for narrower screens (or just disable adding images altogether [since in Featured articles, such small thumbnail images are considered not accessible])? Sanglahi86 (talk) 14:36, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Option for not full width

To allow the template to be used to display a decent table within the body of an article, there needs to be an option for {{{class}}} which does not set margin-left: auto; or width: 100%; — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 13:40, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Municipal Pop.

Sorry, could a WP:TED undo those edits by Beland from last month? I just noticed the change, and I think it potentially makes the template misleading. I use this to rank U.S. Census designated metropolitan statistical areas on Virginia, which are specifically not always individual "municipalities", and I'm sure that is not the only article to use this template to rank a broader definition of "cities" than one which ends at some municipal line. The rationale given was "avoid confusion between population of cities and population of counties", but there is already a Template:Largest municipalities wrapper for Template:Largest cities. Better to just keep this one as general as possible with simply "Pop." Thanks -- Patrick Neil, _oѺ^∞/Talk 17:15, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, the problem is when a higher-level administrative division is included, e.g. counties as it's used on Massachusetts#Cities, towns, and counties, it's unclear whether the population listed is for the municipality or the county. Maybe it would be appropriate to use a template other than "Largest cities" for tables that don't actually list the largest cities and towns? Template:Largest population centres? Or if there's an override for the column header in question, that would also work. -- Beland (talk) 19:37, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Personally, I don't find it particularly unclear, the population listed there refers to the city because it's a table topped with the bold text "Largest cities or towns". So I'm not sure why the default here should to be changed from "Pop.", and even if it should change, why choose to add "Municipal", an adjective that restricts the flexibility. Wiktionary defines "municipality" as "a district with a government that typically encloses no other governed districts." To me, it is a term synonymous with "city proper". Of the thousand articles that transclude this template, what percent limit their numbers to the city proper? Paris's municipal population is 2.1 million but the metro population is six times that, and it's the bigger number that is used on the table at France#Major cities. We could call the column "City pop.", but again, that just seems unnecessary to me in a table that is made for listing cities.

And yes, could we go through and switch the template on France to use Template:Largest population centres (which currently is mostly for trans-state entities), and then do that for any articles that use Template:Largest cities for any urban area that isn't a defined municipality? I guess? Though why wouldn't we go the other way and use the existing Template:Largest municipalities for any that did limit their definition of city? And if there was to be yet another wrapper template created, maybe the new one would be the more specific template, with the words "Municipal pop.", and this root template would stay more generalized, with just "Pop." But yes, an override for the column header would work too! That would look something like this. -- Patrick Neil, _oѺ^∞/Talk 22:26, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Sure, some people will be able to figure out the ambiguous labels and others will be confused.

There are certainly municipalities that contain other municipalities. For example, as List of municipalities in New York explains, NYC spans five separately administered counties, and some cities and towns contain incorporated villages, which sometimes cross town borders. Civil townships are not considered municipalties when they are an intermediate level between county and city.

"City proper" sounds ambiguous to me. It could mean the incorporated city at the center of a metropolitan area, e.g. the City of Boston in the Boston metropolitan area. But we also use phrases like "Boston proper" to mean "the parts of Boston not including outlying neighborhood and formerly independent cities like Dorchester and Brighton" - that is to say, the downtown business district, which is not incorporated as a governing entity.

In the United States, it looks like the population fields in our infoboxes use "City" to refer to the core incorporated municipality, "Urban" to refer to the urban area, and "Metro" to refer to the metropolitan area. I would avoid using the term "city" to refer to metropolitan areas, which is why using the template "largest cities" for metro areas is unexpected, and why it's logical to treat cities as a subset of incorporated municipalities. -- Beland (talk) 03:26, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

It looks like this template already has conditions for ranking metro areas; perhaps they are simply not being triggered by the usage in Virginia? It's also possible the metro branch doesn't use a different header for the population column and metro areas are now showing up as "Municipal pop."? This template is probably too complicated and I think could benefit from splitting up. -- Beland (talk) 03:54, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

If you find the template too complicated, maybe don't be messing with it? Yes, there is a "metro" flag here that users can turn on, it creates an additional column with the heading "Metro." and then users can add a second population figure with "metro_1=", "metro_2=", and on. User:Frietjes added that when they merged in a fork that only Sweden was using. It doesn't replace the "Municipal pop." column, and as far as I can tell, Sweden and its subarticles are still the only ones that use it. And yes, could the table at France#Major cities be changed to include two population figures? Probably. I'm just not sure this template should be forcing that decision onto the editors of every article it's transcluded on. If the editors on France want to define "city" as "metro area" on their table, then who are you to say "no, that's wrong, you can't use this template that way"? The significant portion of my own family who hail from Boston certainly feel that their fair city is the nexus by which all other human settlement should be graded and measured, but I just really feel we should keep an open mind and leave the default here as simply "Pop."

Also, while we're at it, I can tell you that despite the "missed a couple" edit, you didn't actually change that heading for all situations. There is a scenario by which we get one column named "Municipal pop." and one named "Pop." It happens on lists of more than ten when both the "name" and "list_by_pop" field are used, but then the latter is left blank to be its default. See this in action on China, Italy, Brazil, Japan, or California. So those tables, like the one France, are currently displaying confusing information because of the edits you made here. These are not minor articles, all have over 10,000 daily readers. But I could be wrong, and I'd love some additional opinions on this. I'll post to WP:CITIES to see if any experts there want to weigh in. Thanks -- Patrick Neil, _oѺ^∞/Talk 14:33, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

I've reverted the column headers to "Pop." since there are articles currently using it for metro area populations.

I have a degree in computer science from MIT; if I find the template too complicated, then the number of editors who are going to be able to use it without making mistakes - much less improve its workings - is vanishingly small, and that creates a long-term problem. When software engineers find code too complex to be intuitively obvious, the best practice to avoid bugs is to refactor the API or implementation if possible.

In this case, the documentation didn't even mention the metro options. (I just added a note.) Those parameters are also confusingly named; I would expect to use either city_1 or metro_1, but actually those are for the population, so metro_pop_1 would probably be better. The column header "Metro." is also a little unclear; I would kind of prefer something like "Metro pop." "Population" would also be better than "Pop." for readers with English as a second language, if there's room. It's weird and confusing that some articles use the metro_X fields for metro populations, and other articles use the pop_X fields for metro populations.

I'm happy to use this same layout flexibly for both municipalities and metro areas; we just need to enable more differences for the two use cases and possibly local vocabulary differences across global jurisdictions. We could do that and reduce the branching in this template at the same time by refactoring it so there's just a layout template that takes the display strings and link types as parameters, and then two or three wrapper templates that set defaults for common cases. The layout template should have a single point of truth for column header names, so it's not possible to have the same data under one name on the left and an accidentally different name on the right.

While I'm catalogging problems, the fact that the column headers are centered and cell values are left-aligned or right-aligned is visually unattractive. This is not the case for the Rank column, because there's a color box that gives the header something to be centered above. In cases like Template:Largest cities of Maryland, it just looks like the chunks of text are aligned to nothing in particular, which is why it feels messy. -- Beland (talk) 16:23, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you thank you! 100% agree the ugly misaligned column headers should be fixed. And that "metro" needs to be added to the documentation here, and that "Population" is better than "Pop." (when space allows). This template certainly is horribly overdue for a mobile-friendly re-write. I will reiterate though that I am not as confused that some articles use pop_X for metro populations because the tables typically identify in their overall heading what they're listing. Look at Demographics of Canada#Cities, where this template is used twice, once with "Largest cities or towns" and once with "Largest metropolitan areas". And I think that's fine.

Lastly, I wanted to note that, if it is confusing to have "City", "Region", "Pop." in that order, the UK specific template Largest Urban areas does it "Metro.", "Pop.", "Principal city", with the population figure in the middle. So perhaps putting the population figure next to the place it is for, as in "City", "Pop.", "Region", would be an alternative solution to the instigating issue. Thoughts? -- Patrick Neil, _oѺ^∞/Talk 17:33, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Certainly having e.g. county name next to the city population makes it feel more like the number is a county population. But swapping the order would put the e.g. county name next to the rank number, which would make it feel more like the counties are what's being ranked. With Template:Largest Urban areas, it's unclear from the column headers which entity the number belongs to; the table title kind of implies the answer, but it's not until you read the fine print under the table title that it's firmly established.

I think the best solution would actually be to just drop secondary entity columns. In many cases they don't seem all that important (e.g. counties in US states) and sometimes they are highly redundant (e.g. on United Kingdom#Demographics, the principal settlement almost always has the same name as the metro area). -- Beland (talk) 20:45, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, just to clarify, that last suggestion was to move the administrative division (i.e. region) column to the right of the population column, so the order would be rank, city name, population, region. I was just using the UK template to say that different column orders exist. The region field is certainly used by many, if not most, of the country articles that use this template, so I would be hesitant to remove something that many editors found a use for. -- Patrick Neil, _oѺ^∞/Talk 21:01, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

That order then also makes it look like the population could belong either to the city or the region.

Dropping the region column also makes things more compact and mobile-friendly, and if the information isn't important for a given context, the fact that someone has previously put it in isn't that great of an argument for keeping it. Maybe they are just using the field because it's there, not because they had good reasons or strong feelings. But we can certainly chat with Wikiproject and page editors to see if they have strong reasons for wanting these columns. It's also possible they are desirable in some geographic contexts but not others. Like here in Massachusetts, I think most people don't even know what county they live in, because almost all counties have been disincorporated, and the boundaries just generally aren't used for all that much.

If we absolutely did need region columns, maybe we can clarify with color - that is, put the population and the city it's quantifying in the same color, and the region in a different color (like white vs. light grey). Putting the province in the linked city name (like Boston, Massachusetts) could also clarify. -- Beland (talk) 21:22, 25 June 2024 (UTC)