Template talk:South Carolina

U.S. state templates

Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. states/state templates lists and displays all 50 U.S. state (and additional other) templates. It potentially can be used for ideas and standardization. //MrD9 07:25, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Standardization of state templates

There is currently an ongoing discussion regarding standardization of state templates (primarily regarding layout and styling) at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. states/state templates. An effort was made earlier this year to standardize Canadian province templates (which mostly succeeded). Lovelac7 and I have already begun standardizing all state templates. If you have any concerns, they should be directed toward the discussion page for state template standardization. Thanks!—Webdinger ^{BLAH | SZ} 22:59, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Broad River

According to Wikipedia, there are two different Broad Rivers in South Carolina. For now I changed the link to the disambig page, which lists both rivers, but I'm fairly certain it shouldn't be left that way permanently. Can anyone come up with a way to fit both into the template without confusion? Amphy 04:18, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Cities, towns, and "CDPs"

The current listing of cities, towns, and CDPs doesn't seem to make much sense. Is it even really necessary to have CDPs when towns of sizable reputations are left off?

Let's have a more intelligent listing please. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.203.211.168 (talk) 19:21, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it really helps, since many CDPs have plenty of people. The actual problem with the template was that it was extremely large, larger than any other state template—imagine {{Texas}} with 254 counties listed: it would still be smaller than this was! Without direct input from the state project, it really shouldn't be expanded like this; therefore, I've cut it down to a more normal size. Nyttend (talk) 15:26, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Hello. How did you determine what cities and towns were not as important and therefore not needed? After a quick count, I believe that there is now only 13 of the 46 county seats listed. Are these not important enough communities? Has there been a decision (or discussion) by a wikiproject about how many entries is a correct amount? I think if it is decided (by a national wikiproject since this affects all states) that most of the cities and towns should not be listed in a state template, then there needs to be some logical (or statistical) method of deciding which ones get listed. Rocketmaniac ^RT 04:47, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I can't figure out your rationale either. It seems to vaguely favor the upstate--cutting out Goose Creek and leaving Pendleton. I thought cutting some of the headings was a great idea, though, it was getting unwieldy. I agree with the IP--cut the CDPs and (as you did) the unincorporated communities. Darkspots (talk) 12:42, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I simply cut down the template to the way it was before undergoing the massive expansion that it had seen in recent months.

As to a more standard size: the usual way (which I'd advocate) would be to advertise on the wikiproject's talk page (especially since both of you are project members, it would be good for you to do this) to ask for a broader consensus than three registered users and an IP. There's no set standard, but the general way of doing things is to list the largest cities only. The number of places listed varies: {{Alabama}} shows twelve, while {{Utah}} shows thirty. {{California}} and {{New York}} only list metro areas, while {{Ohio}} and others list metros and cities. Several list multiple sizes of cities, such as {{West Virginia}} (five and twelve respectively) and {{Washington}} (seven and seventy-two respectively). A few with only small cities list every community with a rather small threshhold; for example, {{South Dakota}} gives every city with at least 1,000 people.

Overall, I'd advise you project members to cut down the listings, either to two (Metros and Larger Cities) or three (Metros and Larger Cities and Smaller Cities), with a defined total: ten metros (since there are only ten metros in the state) and, say, twenty Larger Cities; and if you want Smaller Cities, perhaps twenty of those too. Another way to do it is cut off the number by population: all cities larger than ___ are listed. That I don't find as useful, since there's the question of definition: do you go by the 2000 population, or by official estimates?

Also, it's not typical to list all county seats, and I don't think that it would be good to require all county seats to be listed: either the template is rather too large (listing a bunch of small communities) or the number of county seats means that a lot of larger communities can't be listed. A separate line for county seats could be added, but that's repetitious because most of the largest cities would be county seats. Overall, I don't think county seat status should be a criterion: it's not in other states, as far as I know. Nyttend (talk) 04:18, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

First, my comment about county seats was only about a city or town's importance as to whether or not it was listed. I don't believe that they need their own category. Second, I guess I'm just having a hard time figuring out the purpose of these templates and how the average reader views them or uses them. It's difficult for me to get into the mindset of limiting entries to just a handfull. At some point there's the question of whether or not the template is doing anything constructive or is it just taking up space. I personally have gone to this template many times when I was trying to find a city or town's article. It's been like a concise or compact set of bookmarks. In this reguard, having more entries is much better. So I guess this brings up the question as to why it is common practice to only list the largest cities? Why is a small template better than a larger one? I mean the template is going to take up the entire column (from the left edge of the screen to the right edge) whether or not there are 10 entries or 100. The only difference would be a template with 10 entries would be shorter from top to bottom. Later, Rocketmaniac ^RT 12:26, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't work with state templates generally; my "domain" is county templates. All I can say is that they're generally used to link the largest communities and various other important things about the state. Consider this: when are you going to stop if you list every community that you think of? It's one thing for New Hampshire, since there are a set number of towns. Overall, if you list tons of communities, it gets large enough that it's inconvenient to use—even as it is, after I cut out nearly half of the template, it's larger than most state templates. I think you'd do well to go ask those in other state projects who are familiar with the way their templates work and the way that the projects have decided to format them. Nyttend (talk) 21:23, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

(unindent)Getting back to this, the big revision Nyttend made still stands. I think that a another redesign is in order. None of the city/town/cdp headings is close to complete, each has a fraction of the settlements that belong in it. I'm thinking:

• regions
• larger cities
• smaller cities
• counties
• topics

But we should make both "larger cities" and "smaller cities" complete with every city in Category:Cities in South Carolina. That's 60+ cities for the template. Darkspots (talk) 12:21, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

That's rather excessive: except for a few states with very few cities (for example, in New England), "larger cities" and "smaller cities" are not meant to include all cities. The usual practice is to include a specific number or have a specific population threshhold. Nyttend (talk) 14:08, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Cities, Towns, and CDPs

The template needs to be reorganized. Unlike most states, South Carolina Law does not recognize the difference between a "village" or "town" or "city". SC Law only provides for an area to be incorporated as a municipality, that municipality then chooses how it identifies itself, therefore the current template gives viewers a misconception. Also, as previously suggested, there are probably many municipalities (of all sizes) and many CDPs (with large populations) left off of the template. The template needs to be redone to include all municipalities and only the largest CDPs.

I would suggest the template being designed out as following:

• Regions
• Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs)
• Major Cities (Populations of 50,000+)
• Medium Cities (Populations of 10,000-49,999)
• Small Cities (Populations of less than 10,000, must be incorporated under law)
• CDPs (if determined necessary)
• Counties
• Topics

Many of the municipalities are currently in a misleading category. For example, Isle of Palms, South Carolina has a population of 4,133 and is in the smaller cities category, yet Mount Pleasant has a population of 67,843 and is in the towns category. Even though Mount Pleasant identifies itself as a town it appears to be a small community. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tstarl0425 (talk • contribs) 02:00, 30 January 2012 (UTC)