Nah the existing content was just to provide some examples of how to resolve conflicts, not how to name cities. Is my distinction clear?

How is CDP naming favored? I'm not seeing it.

Why? It's not a favoring, its a logical progression from official naming status.

It's only after you decide the CDP is legitimate that you would do this comparison. If this is an issue, but a big note at the top of my examples page that it is not to be used as local guidance, or something.

Nice additions.

To improve the ability to see what changed, I moved your new content to a different temp page: https://www.waze.com/wiki/Duplicate_cit ... ionTracked

That permitted me to first enter the original content and then isolate your revisions to that section so we can see your changes more easily.
https://www.waze.com/wiki/index.php?tit ... ldid=55733

Changes should be made to this new page as would have been done to the old page as would be done normally.

Once the feedback is complete we can just post the entire section over the original to also allow that same review of the section change in one history entry.

jondrush wrote:

First determine if both areas really do use that cityname. For example, sometimes a neighborhood name is imported into the map, but that name is not frequently used in addresses. See if any businesses in the area advertise with the Waze-assigned name. If one of them is not truly used, then reassign all the streets of that "city" to the correct name (typically the surrounding city). Note that this often happens with CDPs, as seen in the next paragraph.

Can I boil step 1 this down to this:
Eliminate any CDP names that are not used by the local populace, village names or neighborhood names. Either replace the these with the incorporated city name or No Name.

Jon, yours might be a little too short. I am not clear what you mean. I assume you meant to say:

Eliminate any CDP names, village names or neighborhood names, that are not used by the local populace.

Then when do we decide between using no name or one of the other names per your second sentence?

So, I have a question about CDP names:

Why would a CDP name not be actually used, considering it stands for Census Designated Places, which reflects the self-declared name by the people who live and own businesses in that given area?

I mean, this sounds like CDP is about as close to the colloquial name of an area as there is.

Ok, so it's been a few days since I've been able to check this thread, and upon reviewing it, it seems pretty clear that the following holds for city naming:

• Strict adherence to incorporated (municipal) names is not sufficient, particularly in the northeastern states where townships often have non-self-incorporated towns (or hamlets) within them with completely different names that those areas are far-better known by.
• Postal Names seem to be out, because any given "block" of any road could (and very often does) interchangeably support multiple city names and/or multiple spelling variations of them. Waze simply does not have the facility to correctly handle this - nor do we have the ability to quantify an obvious most-likely-to-be-used name/variant, so we have to assume all such searches would just end up being forwarded to Google anyway.
• CDPs apparently can be (though not always) assigned for factors other than colloquial names of areas, and as a result appear to not be an eligible end-all-be-all. However, because they frequently do reflect colloquial names of areas, they should be considered for the areas they represent, and then evaluated for whether a particular CDP name adequately reflects what the area is known by.

I still don't feel comfortable leaving city naming at the subjective levels it is now, lest we end up having endless "pork roll/taylor ham" debates on what to name half the rural and semi-rural areas of many states. But since the topic sounds like it actually might be subjective (shivers), maybe we can outline how to go about making a decision about it?

For starters, maybe we could point out some ways to tell an existing city name may be incorrect:

• The No City box is checked in a state that is comprehensively incorporated with townships
• The primary city name is a Greater ... Area name.
• A UR claims that an unexpected city name appeared on the map overlay, or an expected city name was omitted, despite plenty of space to render it.
• An editor brings to appropriate community attention that an area has the wrong city name.
• State or local GIS maps suggest a different name for an area than is currently used in primary city name.

Naturally, to go along with that list, maybe we can point out some ways to go about finding out what an area is actually called:

• When there's no city name or a Greater ... Area name, have a look around the larger region of the map. Chances are that area shares the same name as another nearby area. In NJ, for example, this happens a lot when a township has the same name as a neighboring boro (e.g. Chatham (boro) vs. Chatham (township)). In such cases, do the 2 municipalities border each other? If so, do people commonly distinguish the boro from the township or vice versa? If so, we may need to disambiguate the township with like a Twp suffix. If not, we may just be able to call both areas the same name.
• What do state or local GIS maps say the name of the area is? Many non-self-incorporated towns and hamlets do appear on GIS maps and can (but, again, not always) be an indicator of what an area goes by.
• If still in doubt or under contest, ask a local AM; after all, no one knows colloquialisms better than a local. WME provides a complete layer to show all AMs in any area. Send out a PM with a permalink and ask what the area in question is known as. After all, isn't this part of what AMs are for? If you can't tell which of the AMs in an area are actually local, you can always reach out to the state's SMs and ask if they know, or if they at least know which AM would have the best chance of knowing. Failing that, ask a CM, or Champ, or the state's RC -- but do not guess!

Any thoughts? Revisions? Additions?

jondrush wrote:

First determine if both areas really do use that cityname. For example, sometimes a neighborhood name is imported into the map, but that name is not frequently used in addresses. See if any businesses in the area advertise with the Waze-assigned name. If one of them is not truly used, then reassign all the streets of that "city" to the correct name (typically the surrounding city). Note that this often happens with CDPs, as seen in the next paragraph.

Can I boil step 1 this down to this:
Eliminate any CDP names that are not used by the local populace, village names or neighborhood names. Either replace the these with the incorporated city name or No Name.

Yes, that summarizes it. I went long only because I don't think newer users will grok this without illustration. Perhaps what is needed is a summary (bullet points, 1-2 short sentences each), and a longer version (an illustration for each, terms spelled out)