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We have a chance to fix this before the list gets larger. It's redundant and hard to read when the word "County" is appended to every county listed. Why don't we just list "City - X and Y counties" or even "City - X and Y" with the "County" being understood (after all, the "City" is understood). I agree things should be consistent, but I don't think they should be redundant or unnecessarily "bulky".
Denvoran 16:53, 27 February 2006 (UTC) reply

As you've noted, my main concern is consistency. I would support "City - X, Y", "City - X, Y, Z", etc. As for changing it before or after the list gets large, I can change this with Vim to any of the proposed alternatives in a couple minutes. If it really bothers you, I can remove every "County" from the article pretty easily. If it turns out that anyone else is interested and the consensus swings the other way, it's just as easy to change back. Mike Dillon 02:40, 28 February 2006 (UTC) reply

Personally the County part doesn't bother me--and it saves the reader from having to make mental inferences based on the title what the various names mean. It might actually be clearer in table format--then I'd have object to dropping the "county" part.

A different question: is this list ONLY foc places incorporated as a "city" or is there interest in including any other sorts of incorporated municipalities that span multiple counties. I know there are at least six villages in Michigan that would fit. older ≠ wiser 02:55, 28 February 2006 (UTC) reply

I'm not sure how it would look in table format, so I'd have to see an example to see if it's a good idea. As for the purpose of the list, I started the list because cities in California do not span multiple counties and I was surprised that there even are such cities. I don't object to including other municipalities (and changing title to List of U.S. municipalities in multiple counties), but I would expect it would be limited to municipalities with legally defined borders. My fear would be that people would start including CDPs crossing over unincorporated county land.

On the original question, one more plus for including "County" is that there is less chance of ambiguity when scanning the list. That is someone could conceivably to mistake "Deep, Brown, Williams" as "Deep Brown, Williams", while they couldn't be do that with "Deep County, Brown County, Williams County". Mike Dillon 03:08, 28 February 2006 (UTC) reply

Regarding inclusion of "county", yes, that is what I was getting at. I just through the table idea out as a possibility. Lists have the advantage of being somehat easier to maintain (or at least less confusing if you're not used to tables).

I agree about drawing the line at incorporated municipalities. older ≠ wiser 04:00, 28 February 2006 (UTC) reply

I found a source for Wisconsin (including both cities and villages), but I only transcribed two of the cities (Milwaukee and Wisconsin Dells). The source is a PDF file at http://www.doa.state.wi.us/docs_view2.asp?docid=3593. Mike Dillon 03:10, 28 February 2006 (UTC) reply

It may be a little tedious, but GNIS has downloadable FIPS data sets. These can be loaded into Excel or a database and then filtered based on class code. Identifying entities that span counties is then a matter of looking for duplicate entries. The FIPS data may be getting a little stale (it doesn't show recent changes in status) and so might not indicate a city that has only recently expanded into another county. But I think it'd be pretty rare for a city to lose area after having once included land in multiple counties. It might be possible to get the same sort of info from the Gazetteer files, but I haven't looked closely at those. older ≠ wiser 04:09, 28 February 2006 (UTC) reply

It would be good to get a single, authoritative source. Mike Dillon 04:30, 28 February 2006 (UTC) reply

I just dumped the Wisconsin data to a text file and wrote a Perl script to turn it into wikitext. I haven't included the villages yet, but I could easily add them. Mike Dillon 04:27, 28 February 2006 (UTC) reply

A couple of the Colorado entries (I didn't look through them all, but found at least Arvada, CO and Bow Mar, CO) don't indicate in their articles that they are in more than one county. Do the articles for those municipalties need to be updated? Mike Dillon 03:13, 28 February 2006 (UTC) reply

Yes, they do. In many of the cases, such as Arvada and Bow Mar, a small, rather "insignificant" portion of the municipality lies in the second county and thus it is not necessarily in the public awareness or currently reflected in their articles. Denvoran 06:22, 28 February 2006 (UTC) reply

Can we try to reach a consensus before changing the formatting to tables (especially doing so incompletely). I personally think it looks bad with the tables, mostly because every table has different column widths. My vote is to stick with the lists. Mike Dillon 18:24, 25 March 2006 (UTC) reply

Another thing about the table formatting that is a drawback is that the syntax of the wikitext is much harder for new editors to deal with. I think Denvoran himself demonstrated this by having trouble converting to tables in the first place. Mike Dillon 18:26, 25 March 2006 (UTC) reply

My "vote" is for tables. It looks worse as a listing, for the same reasons Mike Dillon gives: every city/town name has a different width, so when you look at a listing it is harder to pick out the city/town names. The listing format also requires the word "County" to appear over and over and over again - which also makes the information hard to read. Finally, people coming to this article are likely to be looking at and comparing cities within a particular state, rather than considering all of the multiple-county cities of the entire country. So it matters less that the column widths vary over the entire article, because they are consistent among each group, which is what the reader is probably most interested in.

The problem wasn't converting to tables, it was having them appear within the subsections. I fixed it using a format lifted elsewhere, and now any editor can simply copy the format they see right here, just above or below. This is not "much harder". If an editor has trouble with this simple syntax, then they might not completely understand the concept of how parts of some counties can be in the same city in the first place.

Until a consensus is reached, I think my last revision should stay in place so that people can compare how both formats look. Denvoran 18:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC) reply

What a condescending comment regarding the wikitable syntax. If you can't admit that the wikitable syntax is more complicated than the list syntax, then I can't see us coming to consensus. The reason you initially had trouble with the tables is because you missed the closing tag for the table (|}). This seems like a pretty obvious demonstration of the problems with the table syntax. The idea that someone who doesn't understand a baroque, MediaWiki specific syntax for tables can't understand that cities can span multiple counties is offensive. Your derisive tone about the "vote" thing is also not appreciated. Mike Dillon 19:45, 25 March 2006 (UTC) reply

waving white flag - I will admit that the table syntax is harder, but not much harder. But that is semantics. Regardless of any problems I had, any editor can now simply cut-paste-replace the syntax that I now have in place: it's as easy as 1-2-3. For the record, I don't appreciate Mike Dillon's choice of the words "condescending comment", "offensive" and "derisive" - to me, these seem overly reactionary, not assuming good faith, and I feel like I'm being attacked. If someone has an issue with my approach or tone, please take it up on my talk page and leave this discussion to the subject of the article. Please let's not have this escalate into anything more unpleasant. Denvoran 20:29, 25 March 2006 (UTC) reply

Sorry if I've offended you. I just thought that there wasn't much room for good faith in implying that some editors might have a hard time understanding that cities can be in multiple counties (basically calling them stupid). As for the actual choice of lists v. tables, let's wait and see if anyone else weighs in on it. I don't want to get into a fight about this either. Mike Dillon 20:44, 25 March 2006 (UTC) reply

Formatting revisited

Could we convert the article to one format or the other now? We've given it a few months and since Denvoran and I last discussed this topic, four states have been added. Three were added with list syntax (Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Washington) and one was added with table syntax (Oregon). I still prefer the list-based presentation, but I don't want to fight about it. Can there be consensus? Mike Dillon 22:12, 11 June 2006 (UTC) reply

I was going to re-do this list with data from the 2010 Census or latest GNIS data... but I've found more than 1,000 incorporated places in multiple counties (or parishes). Some of those cases stretch the limits of what should be in Wikipedia. It'd be helpful to specify more criteria in addition to incorporation.

Example criteria: Minimum population of each "part" (this can be found in Census table GCT-PH1). Town boundaries overlapping county water boundaries generally appear unremarkable. — Mrwojo ( talk) 03:27, 28 November 2012 (UTC) reply

Bartlesville, OK AmigoNico ( talk) 06:36, 14 July 2013 (UTC) reply

 Done as well as all other Oklahoma cities. Kennethaw88 ( talk) 21:37, 20 July 2013 (UTC) reply

Jefferson City, MO (Cole & Callaway Counties) ^{[1] [2]} 2601:143:8003:6500:94B5:FBB5:A23D:8C7E ( talk) 21:10, 5 November 2020 (UTC) reply

 Done 2601:143:8003:6500:20AD:1AC3:63C9:1162 ( talk) 06:40, 10 November 2020 (UTC) reply

Since 2006, the article has claimed that Lansing, MI is in three counties: Clinton, Eaton, and Ingham. However, the Lansing, Michigan article only lists Eaton and Ingham. An unofficial search (i.e. Google Maps) shows that the north boundary of Lansing follows the Ingham-Clinton county line for about 3.5 miles but never actually crosses into Clinton County. The US Census Bureau does not offer Lansing as a civil division of Clinton County when looking up 2010 population figures. Should I have downloaded the FIPS data to make 100% certain Lansing is not in Clinton? Since the article does not use sources, how much proof is needed to make a deletion from the list? (There appears to be nobody claiming Lansing is in Clinton except for the article itself.)

Another potential source for conflict: the Lansing article mentions that Lansing controls several neighboring areas via 425 Agreement. The State of Michigan does not consider these annexations, but the Census Bureau does. I don't know how other federal agencies treat it. Thankfully these are all in Eaton and Ingham in this case, so that doesn't put Clinton back into the question. But a city could hypothetically control land with this agreement that is in a county where the city limits do not extend. If government agencies disagree on where a city boundary is, who is the definitive source?

Samtastic ( talk) 21:40, 7 September 2013 (UTC) reply

I think the claim was introduced with this edit to the Lansing article by an IP back in 2006. It was subsequently removed from the article, as the city in fact does not own the airport, but apparently this was propagated into the list article and went unnoticed until now. User:Criticalthinker has also addressed this on the article talk page at Talk:Lansing, Michigan#Note 1. I think it is safe to say the three-county claim is spurious. There appears to be some basis for the two-county extent, though. older ≠ wiser 22:33, 7 September 2013 (UTC) reply

Just an update, but as of a major/significant 425 Agreement with adjacent DeWitt Township late last year, Lansing now controls land in all three of these counties. Lansing "annexed" its adjacent airport in Dewitt Township, Clinton County in November, I believe. Not sure how you guys want to count 425 Agreements since they technically aren't annexations, but the Census recognizes them as such, and counts all population and land area towards the initiating party. In this case, that would be Lansing. To be clear, of Lansing's land area, it only TOTALLY controls areas in Ingham and Eaton counties, with some jurisdiction over the rest of the area in all three counties. Hope this makes sense. -- Criticalthinker ( talk) 06:25, 8 September 2013 (UTC) reply

I don't know the situation in Lansing, but based on your description I'd suggest that (1) the article should tell about the "425 Agreement", including how it is handled in the census data, but (2) this list should name only the two counties. -- Orlady ( talk) 14:03, 8 September 2013 (UTC) reply

It appears that, at least with regard to Maryland, some editors have confused the number of counties into which a city extends with the number of counties into which its postal area extends. Since municipalities are rarely coextensive with their postal areas, the two should not be confused. Doctor Whom ( talk) 18:59, 15 October 2014 (UTC) reply

Yes. I removed Laurel, which is entirely within PG Co. Adjacent unincorporated parts of Howard and AA have Laurel addresses. 2605:E000:844A:9B00:24A7:8B8E:3AE4:A061 ( talk) 03:30, 30 October 2014 (UTC) reply