User:Baldhur/German cities

Just some thoughts about how to design an article dealing with a German city. Feel free to add your comments wherever you want.

General

Objections against a template, rightly raised by Andy: It doesn't make much sense to adopt a template with an infobox for cities in only one country, then we'd better aim for a common city template used for all cities world-wide. The other administrative subdivisions are unique to one country, so some design differences between an article on a german district or on a province of Thailand don't strike as much as design difference between two cities. IMHO instead of the strict template like it is used on de: a guideline of topics which should be present in a good article on a city is what is needed - the german template gives that guideline only as a side-effect of the strict sectioning structure, every section present in the template means a good city article should have that section.

Conclusion: No infobox will be created for the city articles. Existing infoboxes (e.g. Schweinfurt) should be deleted and their informations integrated into the text.

Short info

Brief information that could be included in the article introduction:

• District and state: yes
• Population: yes
• Area: unsure; dispensable
• geographical location: yes
• location (e.g. on the bank of river X): yes
• postal code, phone code: no (does not belong into an encyclopedia)
• coat of arms: no (should be moved to another place in the article)
• locator (map showing the location of the city): unsure; does exist in many articles, so it should probably be added to other articles as well

Sections

Following the introduction there could be the following sections:

• History: yes
• Geography: unsure; there's not a lot to say in most cases
• Sights, buildings: yes
• Coat of arms: unsure; I would like to have it but there is still the open question of legal usage; in any case a description can be added
• Politics: on city level obviously without interest; for large cities the mayors could be mentioned
• Traffic (railway stations, airports, highways): unsure
• Partnerships with other cities: yes
• External links: yes (not only official website, but also websites of museums, buildings etc.)