The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move. -- tariqabjotu 00:09, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Las Vegas (disambiguation) → Las Vegas —(Discuss)— Being discussed at RfD, was suggested that it should be flagged up here for additional input. WjB scribe 18:39, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

• Note: The RFD request has been closed in favor of the WP:RM request. However, there is discussion at the RFD request, that should be taken into account in this debate. -- JLaTondre 11:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Survey

Add "* Support" or "* Oppose" or other opinion in the appropriate section followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

• Oppose Redirect Las Vegas to Las Vegas, Nevada. It seems obvious to me that the vast majority of people typing in "Las Vegas" expect to find precisely the content of Las Vegas, Nevada. Joeldl 08:09, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose and redirect Las Vegas to Las Vegas, Nevada. I understand that the strip is not technically in the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, but there is a prominent mention of the strip in the intro to the Las Vegas, Nevada article that can send users to the article about the strip; links to Las Vegas that are meant for the strip are wrong only in an official sense. Thanks for setting up the discussion here. Dekimasu よ! 08:19, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support. The purpose of a redirect is NOT to send a reader to the wrong article. As explained below and in many other discussions, most of the links are not destined for the city article. The logic above is supporting directing readers to the wrong article and then leaving it up to the reader to figure out the correct article, often by going to the dab page. This approach is exactly what the first entry in the guideline says to avoid, albeit with a second automatic redirect. I don't see how expecting the user to figure this out is better. Redirects should facilitate disambiguation as the guideline says, note the example they use as a target America. In Wikipedia:Disambiguation we see that it says what article would they most likely be expecting to view as a result? In this case there is no primary, with the city well down on the list, so there is no likely primary target hence the dab is the correct target. Do the least damage is the best choice and directing to one of the least common intended targets is clearly not in the best interests of the reader or the encyclopedia. Vegaswikian 17:32, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• While I fully support the dab guidelines and I understand what you're saying, I feel that the best way to handle this particular case is to expand the coverage of the strip in the article on Las Vegas, Nevada. I feel that the distinction disallowing the strip as a subtopic of the main topic "Las Vegas, Nevada" is artificial. This means that if the Las Vegas, Nevada article handles the strip as a subtopic, links to that page aren't really broken. Dekimasu よ! 00:29, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

• This makes sense. Usually an article about a major city should contain information about parts of the metropolitan area of major interest, even if they are outside city limits. Joeldl 01:06, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
• Well, even if this was the decided direction, there is still a lot about the city that needs to be added to that article and it already is a rather large 40K. I'm not sure how much more we want to add to the article. So suggesting that a major topic be added would hurt in the long run. While a bit more on the Strip could be added, the current article would need to remain with most of the information. Vegaswikian 02:54, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

• Support The fact that the conversation can go for this long demonstrates that there is no primary topic. Regardless of this, I'd also encourage the regular editors of the Las Vegas (Nevada) pages to consider whether in fact the article named "Las Vegas, Nevada" should be about the Las Vegas metropolitan area, and the city centre/downtown should be in a new article "City of Las Vegas" (accepting that the existing article with that name needs to be moved out of the way), or "City of Las Vegas, Nevada" if the other article can't be moved. This change of focus would likely require some moving of text between the articles and should be thoroughly discussed first. It would not change the need for Las Vegas to be the dab page. -- Scott Davis ^Talk 00:44, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

• It is a fallacy to say that the conversation going on for a long time means that there is no primary topic. That would make sense if some were arguing that Topic A was more important, and others that Topic B is more important. Instead, what we have is some saying that Topic A is much more important than Topic B, and others that Topic A is not much more important than Topic B, which is precisely the issue we are determining. In any event, nobody referring specifically to the Strip calls it "Las Vegas". Most likely, they think it is part of Las Vegas, as part of the Strip indeed is. The fact that many people want to know about the Strip when they refer to Las Vegas, Nevada is precisely because they expect to find information about it in the article about the city, not because they are looking for an article about the Strip itself. Joeldl 06:49, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

• So we tell a little white lie rather then educate? And yes, some say that a block or two from the strip are in the city. Not significant. Vegaswikian 07:08, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

• Would you not mention the airport because it's in Paradise? Nobody is saying we should lie. It can be mentioned that the Strip is not entirely located within city limits. A division of information based on city limits will force people to look in two places when it should all be in one place. Of course, you could put it all in the article about the metropolitan area, but I suppose it's something of a convention in an encyclopedia that the primary article for a city and its vicinity is at the name of the city rather than at the article for the metropolitan area. Joeldl 07:30, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

• Support. I concur that there is no single primary topic. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 20:39, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support per Vegaswikian. As his work with the disambig links show, there is a lot of different meanings that editors and readers are looking for when they type in Las Vegas and there is no "Primary Topic" preference given to Las Vegas, Nevada. Hence the purpose and benefit of Las Vegas being a disambig page. It is for the better service of the reader to get to the article they want to get to. Agne ^Cheese/ ^Wine 20:57, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support. This makes sense. The current destination for Las Vegas (here) is at odds with present disambiguation policy. Moving this page there will allow the various links to it to be properly disambiguated. It is clear that there is more than one thing someone might be looking for when they type "Las Vegas" and a disambig page is the best way to help navigation. WjB scribe 07:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support. Vegaswikian makes a good case. A disambig page seems the best way to go. Bolivian Unicyclist 12:57, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
• Comment This is one of the oddest move polls I've seen. It seems common sense to me that "Las Vegas" usually means "Las Vegas, Nevada". I've reproduced below the top twenty Google hits for "Las Vegas" (in English, -Wikipedia). Other than in the two references to the TV show, there is nothing that tells me that "Las Vegas" means anything other than the city Las Vegas, Nevada. While a "Las Vegas hotel" may be outside city limits, if you search for a "Los Angeles motel" on the Motel 6 website, most will not be in Los Angleles itself, and the same could be said for virtually any major city. Even "the Las Vegas Strip" just means "the strip belonging the city called Las Vegas", despite the fact it's not all in Las Vegas. I doubt that people linking to Las Vegas expect that they're linking to anything besides Las Vegas, Nevada. Joeldl 14:37, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
  • This goes to common usage. Your information below shows that when people use Google they are looking for general information about the area and clearly not about the city specifically. The data prove that at worst there is no primary target and at best it is clearly not the city. That's why if the dab page is not the correct target, the Las Vegas metropolitan area would be the next best choice. Vegaswikian 19:52, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
    • I don't see anything in the examples that distinguishes Las Vegas from any other major city. Have a look at the articles Los Angeles, California and Greater Los Angeles Area. The Los Angeles article covers many topics of interest to the entire area, such as past earthquakes and climate, making it clear that it is intended to cover many issues of area-wide interest, rather than restricting attention to what is specifically of interest to the city itself. It has information such as: "The metropolitan area contains the headquarters of even more companies, many of whom wish to escape the city's high taxes." It contains informaion about airports which are not inside city limits. It contains information about sports teams such as the Anaheim Ducks, not located within city limits, but of significance to the city itself. As I said before, there is something of a convention that many issues of area-wide importance should be covered at the article for a city, rather than moving it all to the article about the metropolitan area. The data do not show what you say at all. To the extent that people are interested in the area, there is nothing showing that the situation is any different than for Los Angeles, in that people usually say "I'm travelling to Los Angeles" rather than "the Los Angeles area". Joeldl 01:45, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments

Las Vegas means different places to different people. For now lets ignore Las Vegas, New Mexico. Reading the paper and listening to people talk it seems that when someone says Las Vegas, they are talking mostly about the area of town know as the Las Vegas Strip which is not in the city. I believe, as do others, that most readers and most links are not about the city but the surrounding Las Vegas metropolitan area or The Strip. So moving the dab page to Las Vegas will allow reader and editors to select the correct target. Based on the dabs I have done, I'd say that maybe 10% were for the city and maybe another 10% I could not figure out where they should be directed. The remained were split between the two articles listed above or to the county article. This issue was raised in the settlements naming convention discussion and consensus there was that Vegas was a bit odd and this type of approach could be appropriate. There is no reason to have a redirect to the dab and the city article is not the primary target. In fact there is likely no primary target so there should not be a redirect at Las Vegas but the dab should be there. Vegaswikian 07:37, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Here are excerpts from the top 20 Google hits for "Las Vegas" (in English, -Wikipedia).

1. Get a deal on a Las Vegas flight.
2. Official Las Vegas Tourism Web Site
3. Planning a trip to Las Vegas? Find deals on Las Vegas hotels and entertainment. Purchase tickets to Las Vegas shows on our website.
4. Las Vegas, Nevada (Official City of Las Vegas Web Site)
5. Want to know what’s next on the Las Vegas TV show series?
6. McCarran International Airport - LAS. Serving Las Vegas, Henderson, and surrounding communitees of Clark County in southern Nevada.
7. The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce
8. Las Vegas Online Entertainment Guide contains over 5000 pages of Las Vegas information including ratings and comments about all Las Vegas Hotel/Casinos.
9. Official site for the Bellagio resort hotel on the Las Vegas Strip
10. Las Vegas, Nevada (89044) Conditions & Forecast
11. University of Nevada, Las Vegas
12. "Las Vegas" (2003) — this is a TV series title.
13. craigslist: las vegas classifieds for jobs, apartments, personals ...
14. Las Vegas Monorail - Home
15. Las Vegas Sun
16. Author's Aunt Mac tells how blacks persevered in Las Vegas.
17. National Weather Service - NWS Las Vegas
18. 2007 International CES, January 8-11, Las Vegas
19. Las Vegas Travel Deals
20. outside the luxurious Paris Las Vegas

Joeldl 14:40, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. Once a clearer and more supported title is proposed, then I would recommend relisting at WP:RM. Regards, Kilo T 12:33, 14 June 2011 (UTC) Kilo T 12:33, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

---

Las Vegas → Las Vegas (disambiguation) – The move request that made this a disambig was three years ago. I believe it deserves revisiting. Many of the arguments for not redirecting "Las Vegas" to the city in Nevada are, in my opinion, ridiculous. First of all, the Las Vegas Strip is not a contender for primary topic as it is called "Las Vegas Strip" and not "Las Vegas". Second, the metro area is not a contender, just like Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston and Atlanta don't make any allusion that anyone is looking for an article on the metro area. Finally, the argument that Las Vegas Strip is a different topic because it's not in city limits is ridiculous. The Los Angeles River isn't entirely in Los Angeles, Chief Seattle is not buried in the city that bears his name, but that doesn't make those pages lead to disambiguation pages. Wikipedia doesn't title or redirect articles on technicalities - Bill Clinton is at Bill Clinton, not William Jefferson Clinton. Finally, a reminder that the Strip and the metro area only exist because of the city. If there was no City of Las Vegas, there would be no Strip and no metro area. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 00:09, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

• Comment Just so you know what prompted this request, I edited Helendale, California to note that it's 180 miles southwest of Las Vegas. Then I edited Mojave Desert to note that Las Vegas is the largest city located there. Then I discovered that I created links to disambig pages. For a city as large as Las Vegas, with no other large cities having the same name, creating a proper link to it should not be difficult. As long as this page makes it difficult, that huge list of improper links to disambig pages will keep on growing. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 00:29, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
  • OK, and how does that meet WP:COMMONNAME? As stated above somewhere between 90% and 95% of the links at the dab page are for the metro area and not the city. The city and the TV show have very similar counts on links to the dab page. Where are the Billboard Music awards being held? Not in the city. Where was the Manny Pacquiao fight according to the LA Times? Again not in the city. Miss Universe, Miss America, MTV's Real World Las Vegas? All are outside of the city. The fact that someone assumes that a link will be going where they want is not a problem. Vegaswikian ( talk) 05:16, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
    • Wikipedia does not name articles on technicalities that no one cares about. What Billboard Music, Mann Pacquiao, Miss Universe, Miss America, Real World Las Vegas all have in common is that it is only a technicality that they aren't in Las Vegas. Most people neither know nor care whether the Strip is in city limits or not. When we create links with the name of a major city, we NEVER link them to the metro area article. The Angels don't play in Los Angeles city limits, but the link on the page doesn't lead to the metro area. I challenge you to find any such metro-area links for a city other than Las Vegas. As far as Pacquiao, YOUR link has the following: "Pacquiao's one-sided, unanimous-decision victory in Las Vegas..." - The link you cited explicitly says the fight was in Las Vegas, and doesn't mention that it was technically not in city limits. Why? Because no one cares. I will contend that some pages should link to an article on the Strip, and not the city, but that doesn't make the city anything less than the primary topic. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 15:40, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
      • Actually the LA Times has it correct based on common usage. Las Vegas, or just Vegas, is applied to the whole of the the Las Vegas Valley. That is what it's usage is. When you what to talk about the city you have to say so (City of Las Vegas). Also, not all of those events above happen in facilities that are on or near the strip. So please don't include the strip as your argument. Ask most people who have been to Vegas where they went? I'll wager that most will describe places on the strip or off strip like the Convention Center or The Palms. Again not the city. So common usage clearly establishes that using Vegas or Las Vegas means much more then the city. If you want to say the city you specify that. Vegaswikian ( talk) 17:50, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

If I may...

I think part of the problem here is that it strikes editors (quite rightly) as silly that Las Vegas is a disambiguation page. If someone comes up to you and says something about their trip to Las Vegas, you don't stop them and ask "which one?" You don't even ask "Wait, do you mean the strip, or the city, or just the whole metro area?" You just know they mean "the urban area with the pretty lights and legal gambling."

The problem is that we don't have an article for that. The way we treat most U.S. cities in the encyclopedia is to have an article on the political entity and a different article on the metropolitan area (which normally encompass several surrounding counties, many of them quite rural). Neither captures the essence of what people mean when they "Las Vegas", primarily because the most visible and well-recognized part of Vegas is outside the city limits (a rare case in the U.S.).

I've run into similar problems on Talk:Rochester, New York, where the word "Rochester" tends to mean much more than just what's inside the city limits (but at the same time, much less than the entire metro area). I've so far been unable to create a solution that has a consensus; most of the editing public seems to be clear that we must have articles on the individual political entities we call "cities", but has little tolerance for incorporating expanded definitions into these core articles.

What we need is an article on "VEGAS", Sin City, the place where whatever happens stays there -- however you want to describe it. That article would be the primary topic, indisputably.

The problem, of course, is writing it.

-- Powers ^T 18:33, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I favor your suggestion and I believe some editors have suggested as much since the scope of the metro article ( Las Vegas – Paradise – Pahrump combined statistical area) creates problems in that it includes areas outside the valley (it even includes another county where prostitution is legal while it is not in the valley so clearly the current article scope is problematic). However in the past there has been opposition to that direction. At one time we had an article on the Las Vegas Valley which to a large degree did what you are suggesting. However an editor moved that to Las Vegas metropolitan area since that was what is used for this type of census defined area in the rest of the country. At the time, I believe we had the Las Vegas-Paradise, NV MSA (now redirects) which is now the Las Vegas–Paradise–Henderson Metropolitan Statistical Area. Right now the Las Vegas metropolitan area is serving two purposes, the one you describe and the MSA and CSA. I think the MSA and the associated data should be its own article. Then the metro area can be moved back to Las Vegas Valley or a better name from this discussion. If a move like that happens, there will be a need to move article content into the Clark County, Nevada article. That should not be a factor in the decision process, just fall out work that will be needed. Vegaswikian ( talk) 19:08, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I think all the above is irrelevant. Most newspapers consider the strip part of Las Vegas (such as the boxing article above which describes a fight on the strip as "in Las Vegas", making no mention of its official status. Most tour guides on Las Vegas focus on the strip, and only occasionally mention its legal status. Millions of tourists would be surprised to hear that the Strip isn't in city limits. Thousands of newspapers, thousands of tourists and millions of tourists, and probably most Las Vegans consider the Strip part of Las Vegas. The local governments do not. In this case, I would say the local governments are wrong and everyone else is right. Official government structures aren't the end-all be-all here, and local governments do lots of stupid things, and the Strip's absence from the official city is a perfect example of this. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 01:17, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

It's nice that my information is irrelevant. It would appear that you have decided on what should be included in Las Vegas, Nevada and then based on that we should redirect this page. In fact we need to determine what if anything is the WP:PRIMARYUSAGE. Your points above make a very convincing and bulletproof case that the city is not the primary use for Las Vegas. We just can't ignore the fact that the world considers Vegas to mostly be the areas outside of the city. Vegaswikian ( talk) 01:53, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I made no such point. My point is that the official government status can't always guide what an article should cover or should be called. My point is that newspapers, travel guides, tourists and Las Vegans are correct to put the strip in Las Vegas and the government is incorrect not to. The point I made that you seemed to miss is that the legal definitions of the city is mostly irrelevant in this case, since everyone seems to ignore it. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 03:31, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

The point that you are making is that Las Vegas is used to label a large area. There is an article on the City of Las Vegas. All of the examples you are providing say that the city is not the primary use. This has nothing to do with government definitions it has to do with common names and primary usage of a brand. Vegaswikian ( talk) 05:07, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

But a city is more than a line on a government map. Take London - the "City" of London is a tiny little thing, but that's not what people mean when they say London (Mind you, London is a very unusual case which doesn't apply to Vegas.) Government is one small section within a huge article about Las Vegas and every city. As with all cities described in Wikipedia, the city is the primary article and primary topic which describes the city and major surrounding areas associated with the city. The metro area article is always a sub-topic of the city article which details the extent of surrounding communities. What this means is that Microsoft is part of Seattle's economy, despite being located in nearby Redmond, and the same is true of the Las Vegas Strip - it's part of the Las Vegas economy and a Las Vegas neighborhood, despite not being in city limits, and McCarran Airport is part of the Las Vegas transportation network despite being in Paradise. The city of Las Vegas is the primary topic and both the Strip and metro area are sub-topics - same as every other city, no reason to treat this one differently. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 05:28, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

It seems like you didn't read what I wrote above. I have tried and tried to convince people that Rochester, New York should be about more than just what's inside the city limits, but to no avail. I'm frankly stunned that Seattle mentions Microsoft at all, given the pushback I was getting. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities/Archive 11#Scope of a city's article, where I was told flat-out that the article on the metro area is good enough for any information that isn't strictly within the city limits. Powers ^T 12:37, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I've been looking at city articles during this discussion and have noticed that most of them do discuss things that are outside city limits. Atlanta mentions several companies headquartered in Sandy Springs, West Point and other suburbs. The Los Angeles geography and environment sections discuss the entire LA basin, and also discusses the Port of Long Beach. Thus, it is common, routine and proper to mention places that are not in city limits in an article about a city. A separate article about the legal entity is only provided when the legal city is completely different that people's perceptions about what the city is, such as London. The City of Las Vegas mostly matches people's understanding of what the city is, so a separate article isn't needed. Just mention that the Strip isn't inside the imaginary line, which the article already does.

I think part of the issue with Rochester is that there is a difference between barely outside city limits (like the strip) and way outside city limits (the Los Angeles article doesn't mention Disneyland, for example). I'm not familiar with Rochester, but it sounds like the name is used to describe places far away. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 14:07, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I just read the wikicities archive you posted and it doesn't say what you said it does. The other users unanimously agreed that Kodak belonged in the Rochester article despite not being in city limits. The article currently also mentions Bausch & Lomb and Xerox, as well as the Rochester institute of technology. The other wikipedians explicitly said that things outside city limits can be considered on a case-by-case basis. The only "pushback" you got was about Wegman's. I'd like to point out that Wegmans is non-existent and completely unknown outside of the northeast US, so it doesn't have a Kodak's significance for that reason. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 14:38, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

• Proposal
  • Las Vegas, Nevada would be primary topic for Las Vegas. Place a hatnote at the top pointing to the Las Vegas Strip and the metro area. The article would treat the Las Vegas strip, most things on the Las Vegas strip, and most things with Las Vegas in the title (such as sports teams) as part of Las Vegas, while noting that they are not in city limits. Only statistics (demographics, etc) and government should be restricted to city limits.
  • Las Vegas metropolitan area would be a sub-topic and would focus much more on the city's suburbs rather that Vegas itself. This is why we have metro area articles.
  • Las Vegas Strip would remain as is, though a longer summary of its content should be provided in the main Las Vegas article.
• There is really no confusion as to what Las Vegas means. The metropolitan area and the Strip are both sub=topics under the main heading Las Vegas, and most mentions of Las Vegas should point to the city. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 14:07, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
  • You are correct there is no confusion if you follow WP:COMMONNAME and WP:PRIMARYUSAGE. Don't forget that your proposal is also not including all of that the world considers Las Vegas. As far as for facts, the last dab run I did had 16 articles for the Las Vegas Valley, 1 for the TV show, 1 for North Las Vegas and 2 for the city which I think were the ones you were talking about above. Vegaswikian ( talk) 19:15, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
  • You may also want to read the last RFC on this topic only a few months ago that basically sanctioned keeping the the status quo. Vegaswikian ( talk) 19:31, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
    • Just to clarify, I meant to redirect "Las Vegas" to "Las Vegas, Nevada". The rest was ways to deal with these possible confusions with other related Las Vegas topics. Obviously a disambiguation page would include the TV show, North Las Vegas, the New Mexico town, and so on. Actually, I'm quite surprised that Vegas isn't on AP's "don't mention the state list", since the New Mexico town is so much smaller and most people probably don't even know that New Mexico has a town with that name. Maybe the city should petition the Associated Press to get on the list. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 23:25, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
      • That is understood and that is what is oh so wrong. Las Vegas should be moved to Las Vegas (disambiguation), then Las Vegas metropolitan area should be moved to Las Vegas and rewritten with the metro stuff moved to the census bureau defined name. This is what is suggested above and matches how Las Vegas is actually used and meets WP:COMMONNAME and WP:PRIMARYUSAGE. Vegaswikian ( talk) 23:31, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
        • Wait a minute, you do support this move? Then what have we been arguing about this whole time? :) D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 05:14, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
          • I strongly oppose moving Las Vegas, Nevada to Las Vegas which seems to be what you are advocating. As I have repeated over and over that does not meet WP:PRIMARYUSAGE. Vegaswikian ( talk) 05:35, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
            • That's not what I'm advocating. I'm advocating moving "Las Vegas" to "Las Vegas (disambiguation)" and making the new "Las Vegas" redirect to "Las Vegas, Nevada". Of course, if Las Vegas ends up on AP's list (long overdue, if you ask me), we would move it, but they haven't, so we won't. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 04:56, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
              • Las Vegas is on the AP list, according to WP:PLACE, so a move to the unqualified "Las Vegas" is acceptable. Rai• me 05:51, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
                • However if you read the naming convention, you will see why it was not moved there with some, but not all, of the other city articles. As I have been saying, and apparently not being understood, this gets down to there being no primary topic, especially not the city. While that is not listed in the summary, it is explained that the cities must be the primary topic. You can dig through those archives if you need the details. Vegaswikian ( talk) 17:46, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
                  • I don't think it is true that there is no primary topic; it is just true that the primary topic is not the city alone. It seems that the primary use is the Las Vegas in Nevada - the Las Vegas that includes the city, the Strip, and all of the small communities that the postal service and most news organizations refer to as "Las Vegas, NV." This doesn't include the entire metro area; major cities like Henderson and North Las Vegas, while being in the Las Vegas Valley and the metro area, are usually not referred to as the unqualified "Las Vegas." I think that we really need to create a separate "Las Vegas" article that covers all of these topics and makes the differentiation between them much more clearly than this dab page. Cheers, Rai• me 23:49, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
• Comment: You all may want to review a related move discussion that happened earlier this year, Talk:Las Vegas, Nevada#Requested move, that proposed to make the city the primary topic of "Las Vegas". That resulted in no consensus. Apparently, some of the same arguments, for and against, are showing up here in regards to this current proposal to make "Las Vegas" a redirect to the city article. Zzyzx11 ( talk) 05:55, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

• Comment: I more or less agree with Dondegroovily's proposal above. I really don't think the current dab page helps people find the topic they are looking for at all. Readers who type in "Las Vegas" will simply click on "Las Vegas, Nevada" on the dab page; most people are unaware that much of what is commonly known as "Las Vegas" is actually outside of the city, and the current dab page doesn't clarify this in any way. Readers who are looking for the Strip will most likely type in "Las Vegas Strip", not "Las Vegas," so I would guess that most of the incoming traffic to this page are readers who are seeking "Las Vegas, Nevada." I definitely think we need a "Las Vegas" page that describes the city and the Strip in one article; this is the common use of "Las Vegas." I think the best option is what Dondegroovily described above; expand the city article to include info about the Strip and the immediate suburbs, noting that much of what is normally considered "Las Vegas" is actually outside of the city; on top of this, we should move the page to "Las Vegas." If we create an all new "Las Vegas" article, "Las Vegas, Nevada" should, IMO, be redirected there; if the city is not the primary topic of "Las Vegas," I don't see how it could be the primary use of "Las Vegas, Nevada" either, since the latter is used just as often to refer to the Strip and the metro area as the unqualified city name is. In this case, the city would have to moved to a title such as Las Vegas (city), Nevada, which is somewhat messy; this is why I think Dondegroovily's proposal to expand the city article above is the best option. Cheers, Rai• me 21:55, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
• Cancel Request - I suggest, as pointed out by Raime ( talk · contribs), since Las Vegas is on AP's "don't need the state" list, that this move request be canceled, and instead move Las Vegas, Nevada to Las Vegas. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 12:31, 13 May 2011 (UTC) Oops, looks like they already had that discussion. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 00:14, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

  That would be inappropriate. In the original discussion of the "Don't need the state" list, Las Vegas was carved out as the common usage not being the city, but the strip or the metropolitan area. (I said there was no common usage, but consensus is that the common usage was not the city.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:22, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

  I find it odd that consensus agrees that the city is not the primary use of "Las Vegas", but is the primary use of "Las Vegas, Nevada." How does the addition of "Nevada" help to differentiate it from other regions within the Las Vegas metropolitan area that are also in Nevada and are also referred to as "Las Vegas, NV"? Whether we expand the city article and rename it "Las Vegas", expand the metro area article and rename it "Las Vegas", or leave Las Vegas as a dab page, I think we need to have "Las Vegas" and "Las Vegas, Nevada" direct a reader to the same place; the qualified title is no less ambiguous. Cheers, Rai• me 23:49, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

  That would be true if, and only if, both are clearly used to talk about the same thing. Las Vegas in general usage includes Henderson and North Las Vegas. Most people consider the Hoover Dam as being in Las Vegas and it clearly is not in the city. I have no problem with an article being moved to Las Vegas but clearly the city is the wrong article to be there. If you expand it's scope to include what really is Las Vegas where does it stop? At North Las Vegas which I believe means we can't include the Las Vegas Motor Speedway or Nellis Air Force Base? Or cut out Boulder City, Nevada so we can include the dam? Or stop at The Strip which excludes The Palms and the Las Vegas Convention Center. Trying to use the city article to cover the broader meaning overly complicates the problem. Why not base the article on where the hotel rooms are, or the casinos are, or where people visit for day trips? And don't forget the advertising campaigns that clearly focus on the hotels and casinos outside of the city and sell the Las Vegas brand. Having the city article at Las Vegas, Nevada just happens to follow the naming convention for US cities. So having a city article there is logical. Also, what is being marketed and sold as the destination? It is 'Las Vegas' or 'Vegas' and not 'Las Vegas, Nevada'! Vegaswikian ( talk) 02:19, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

  Not everything that anyone could possibly consider to be in Las Vegas, including all suburbs, anything with the name "Las Vegas" in it, and tourist destinations over an hour away from the city are commonly known as "Las Vegas". By that logic, no city could ever be a primary topic. It seems like we have a clear place to stop: where "Las Vegas, NV" stops being the official address used by the postal service and major news organizations. "Henderson, Nevada" is almost always referred to by its proper city name in common usage, just as Quincy, Massachusetts is not referred to as Boston in common usage. And who considers Hoover Dam to be in Las Vegas? Some very confused tourists, but not the general public. The closer, unincorporated communities, meanwhile, are almost always referred to as Las Vegas, largely because their official addresses are, in fact, in "Las Vegas, NV". And I don't agree with your logic regarding the name of the city article; the "Welcome to Las Vegas, Nevada" sign, after all, is not in the city of Las Vegas, Nevada. Even though that title follows typical U.S. naming conventions, if the city is not the primary topic, then it should not be at that title per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. I fail to see how adding the "Nevada" qualifier disambiguates the city from other places commonly referred to as "Las Vegas" that are also in Nevada. We would need some qualifier such as Las Vegas (city) or Las Vegas (city), Nevada. Cheers, Rai• me 03:00, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

  But just to be clear: I wouldn't have much of a problem with a new Las Vegas article being based off the metropolitan area article (although I still think the scope would be too broad), as long as Las Vegas, Nevada redirects to the new Las Vegas page and the city article is renamed. The common use of "Las Vegas" is clearly the same common use of "Las Vegas, Nevada", especially considering the fact that "Las Vegas, NV" is used officially to refer to the unincorporated communities in which the Strip is located. But because such a move would a messy, I still favor broadening the scope of the city article. Cheers, Rai• me 03:13, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

  "Las Vegas, NV" is only used officially by the USPS as far as I know. But putting that aside, moving Las Vegas metropolitan area area to Las Vegas makes sense based on how those inbound links have been used for the last 2 or so years. That move would bring also only inbound links that apply to the valley. Yes, if that is done, the article needs to be rewritten to confine it to the Las Vegas Valley, as defined by a cleaned up Las Vegas Valley (landform), or some other defined area within the valley. That move is needed to preserve all of the incoming links. Prior to this, Las Vegas would need to be moved to Las Vegas (disambiguation). I'm not sure how much of the current metro article would need rewriting, but it may turn out that portions just need to be moved to Las Vegas–Paradise–Henderson Metropolitan Statistical Area or what ever the census bureau calls it. So the basic cleanup could be rather simple. Doing that refocus fixes an ongoing issue with Boulder City which is in the metro area but not in the valley as I understand it. Given the long history here, I'd limit the moves to the above for now. Once the cleanup is done, then you can start on a move of Las Vegas, Nevada. Adding that to this discussion opens up another bag of worms. Oh, and a bunch of categories will need renaming, but that would be a simple task of finding all of the ones that need renaming and then nominating them. Vegaswikian ( talk) 05:05, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

  Well, creating a Las Vegas Valley-focused Las Vegas article would certainly be better than the situation we have now; I don't think having "Las Vegas" as a dab page makes much sense. So are you proposing that the article cover Boulder City as well? I really think we should try to keep at least most of the focus on the city, the Strip, and the surrounding unincorporated communities. The metro area article would also need a lot of improvement; we would need to remove many of the lists (the Culture and the arts section in particular needs work). I do think that we should try to incorporate a lot of the information from the city article, as that article does actually seem to cover much of the surrounding metro area. Cheers, Rai• me 06:38, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

  Boulder City would not be included, as I see it being outside of the valley. There have been issues raised in the past that it is not in the valley and the culture there is very different (no gambling). As to the rewrite, I believe we may be on the same page but the devil is in the details. The rewrite really needs to wait for a resolution here since the proposed move changes the scope to be much narrower. I think we agree on the basics of the scope. I linked to the landform article since that should probably define the area included and is not WP:OR. I'll note that the landform article is not the best article on the wiki in its current state and needs some work. Vegaswikian ( talk) 06:49, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

  Well, like I said above, I still favor expanding the city article and renaming that Las Vegas because at least in that case, "Las Vegas" and "Las Vegas, Nevada" would go to the same place. If we rename the metro area article Las Vegas, then Las Vegas, Nevada will still direct the reader to the city, as I highly doubt that there will ever be consensus to move that article to Las Vegas (city), Nevada. But if most users are against expanding the city article (as this RM and past RMs seem to indicate), then I would strongly favor expanding and renaming the metro article over the status quo. Cheers, Rai• me 07:27, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

• Support moving Las Vegas → Las Vegas (disambiguation) with a follow on move of Las Vegas metropolitan area to Las Vegas followed by a major cleanup of that article. I think this is the consensus of the extensive discussion above. Vegaswikian ( talk) 21:38, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
  • That seems odd to me. The metro area is far, far larger than what most people mean when they refer to Vegas. Powers ^T 14:24, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
    • Yes, the metro area is far larger. However at one point, as I recall, an editor combined the valley article with the census area article and gave us the metro area article. I think we need to get the valley article back and the census area needs its own article since it exists for the census bureau and does not really get used by people in normal usage. Other then demographics, the metro area has pretty much remained about the valley. So the cleanup means splitting off the census material for the MSA. As an aside, however this cleanup goes, it should result in a much better focused article then the current one. I'd love to see it get to at least GA. I can't see how to pull that off for the current article. Vegaswikian ( talk) 17:51, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support per Vegaswikian. Cheers, Rai• me 07:06, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support Vegaswikian ( talk · contribs)'s idea. However, I'm not clear what is proposed for the Las Vegas, Nevada article if that happens. The new metro area article can provide much more focus on Pahrump, Henderson and Boulder, and other non-"Vegas" communities. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 12:40, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support moving Las Vegas → Las Vegas (disambiguation) with a follow on of moving Las Vegas, Nevada to Las Vegas, and copying some of Las Vegas metropolitan area to Las Vegas, followed by a major clean up of the result. Generally, the article at Las Vegas (to which Las Vegas, Nevada should redirect) should cover the municipal entity properly known as City of Las Vegas as well as the strip and perhaps more of the valley area. The entire metro area including Pahrump and Henderson is going too far and should be covered in the separate metro area article as it exists. I see no need for a separate article on just the strict municipality as that can be fully and properly covered in the article about the topic to which "Las Vegas" normally refers which includes the municipality as well as immediately surrounding area (most notably the strip). -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:57, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Alternative proposal

If we must have an article on the municipality, then I suggest:

• Las Vegas → Las Vegas (disambiguation)
• Las Vegas, Nevada → City of Las Vegas
• merge( Las Vegas, Nevada, Las Vegas Strip) → Las Vegas
• Change Las Vegas, Nevada to redirect to Las Vegas

My argument is that "City of Las Vegas" is much more precise than "Las Vegas, Nevada" in terms of referring to the topic of the municipality, and that the primary use of "Las Vegas, Nevada" is to refer to the topic we're all agreeing should be at Las Vegas. But, if there is no consensus about the primary topic of "Las Vegas, Nevada" (the various uses include: 1) the municipality, 2) the municipality + the strip, 3) the area covered by the "Las Vegas, Nevada" mailing address), I would not oppose having Las Vegas, Nevada redirect to Las Vegas (disambiguation). -- Born2cycle ( talk) 16:23, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

if this is a serious proposal please add it at Wikipedia:Requested moves so it's well-publicized.   Will Beback  talk  22:30, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

I think we need to create a new, clearer proposal and then post notices at Las Vegas, Nevada and WP:VGS. From all of the long discussions on this page, it is getting difficult to see which of the alternate proposals actually have the most support. We may want to start with a strawpoll to determine what the preferred changes are, as many different ideas are being floated around here. Cheers, Rai• me 00:09, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Unless you are moving the material from Las Vegas metropolitan area that is contained in the Las Vegas Valley into this proposed new Vegas, your proposal fails since it does not encompass what is Vegas and is an arbitrary thing what represents WP:OR. Using the USPS mailing address is problematic since it changes, including and not including parts of other cities. Also there is an article at City of Las Vegas and using that for the city name goes against the naming convention. I had planned to try and pull out the census definition area today into a new article since I believe that using that is too broad of an area to base the Valley's article on. What your proposal does say, other then some redirects is to rewrite, cleanup and split articles based on the above discussions. Doing that is fine and leave the city to the very end to see how to deal with it. Moving the city will be another discussion so move forward on what can, and for the most part has been agreed on and then address the city's article. Vegaswikian ( talk) 17:34, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I definitely agree with Born2cycle - "Las Vegas, Nevada" should direct a reader to our proposed Las Vegas page, not to the separate page about the city. City of Las Vegas may go against naming conventions, but Las Vegas (city), Nevada or simply Las Vegas (city), as I proposed above, does not (this convention is already used - see Rutland (city), Vermont). I fear that if we leave the proposal to move the city to the end, as Vegaswikian proposes, then a consensus to move the city article will not be reached; the result will then be "Las Vegas" and "Las Vegas, Nevada" redirecting readers to two different articles, and is not a desirable outcome seeing as the primary use of both is the region, not the city. I therefore do think that we should try to reach consensus for everything at once, rather than splitting off the proposed move of the city article and saving it for later. Cheers, Rai• me 20:31, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I think it is fair to say that there is a consensus to:

move Las Vegas to Las Vegas (disambiguation)

move Las Vegas metropolitan area to Las Vegas this already includes parts of what is proposed in the merger above and the article no longer has the MSA material that caused much of the problems with it's focus. Following the move, the article would need rewriting, but that is not an impediment to the move. It's a desired result. This move is necessary since it preserves a ton of inbound links that clearly are the focus of the new article.

Everything else is still problematic like eliminating the article on the strip. Vegaswikian ( talk) 20:49, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

No one has proposed eliminating the article on the strip. It should be a subarticle of the main article at Las Vegas. I disagree with the move of the metro area article to Las Vegas. That's a broader topic and deserves a separate article. Material from it may be used in the Las Vegas article. That means we would be left with:

• Las Vegas - main article focusing on city/strip region known as Las Vegas
  • City of Las Vegas - the municipality, mayor, political border, etc.
    • Downtown Las Vegas
  • Las Vegas Strip
• Las Vegas metropolitan area
• Las Vegas (disambiguation)
• Las Vegas, Nevada (redirect to Las Vegas)

-- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:17, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

The metro area is just badly named and should properly be returned to Las Vegas Valley but that move would not make sense if we are freeing up the Las Vegas name. The metro area has been split off to Las Vegas-Paradise, NV MSA which really is all of Clark County. So if your illustration was:

• Las Vegas - main article focusing on city/strip region known as Las Vegas (the Las Vegas Valley aka Las Vegas metropolitan area)
  • City of Las Vegas - the municipality, mayor, political border, etc.
    • Downtown Las Vegas
  • Las Vegas Strip
• Las Vegas (disambiguation)
• Las Vegas, Nevada (redirect to Las Vegas)

it would be more accurate. But not I'm not in favor of a rename of the city article. However for discussion purposes it can be on the table. In your illustration, the old metro article should really have been the top parent since it included all of this and more. Also your proposal requires moving City of Las Vegas to another name since this is a totally different article! Vegaswikian ( talk) 21:28, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

The city itself is definitely the primary topic for "City of Las Vegas" over the train. It wouldn't be controversial to move hte train article to "City of Las Vegas (train)". D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 00:23, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

City of Las Vegas does not follow U.S. naming convention for cities. Rai• me 08:01, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but ignoring such guidelines is allowed when there is good reason to do so. In this case the good reason is that "Las Vegas, Nevada" is ambiguous and something other/more than the city is the primary topic for that term, while "City of Las Vegas" is precise. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:24, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

There is no good reason to ignore all rules and move the city to "City of Las Vegas" when Las Vegas (city), Nevada (or maybe just Las Vegas (city)) is just as unambiguous and is permitted by the naming conventions. Cheers, Rai• me 22:15, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

I disagree that these forms are just as unambiguous as City of Las Vegas which is a standard form to refer specifically to a city municipality in American English. Someone looking at either could easily think there is some other Las Vegas or Las Vegas, Nevada that is not a city, like a lake or something, so that the disambiguator is needed. More importantly, they are hideous and cumbersome. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:20, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

I hope this discussion isn't being used as a back-door way of moving "Las Vegas, Nevada" without proper review at that article's talk page.   Will Beback  talk  21:16, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder. I just added a move notice over there. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:04, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

• I agree with Born2Cycles article structure, however, I don't think that the city itself needs a separate article. The fact that Boeing and Microsoft are part of "Seattle" didn't prompt a separate article called "Seattle (city)". There should, however, be a separate metro area article, to cover suburbs like Henderson and Boulder, and even Pahrump. These suburbs should not be mentioned in the "Las Vegas" article - only things commonly known as "Las Vegas" should go there. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 00:23, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Vegas generally includes Henderson and North Las Vegas since they are in the Valley. That definition excludes Pahrump, Searchlight and Boulder City. Vegaswikian ( talk) 01:34, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
    • Actually, does "Las Vegas" usually refer to the entire Las Vegas Valley? It seems that Henderson and North Las Vegas, as separate, incorporated municipalities, would usually be referred to by their proper names. Certain places like the Nellis Air Force Base may be mentioned as being in or near Las Vegas, but this doesn't mean that the entire city itself is also always referred to as "Las Vegas." As Dondegroovily noted above, it is common for major cities to have some institutions that are commonly thought of as being in the city proper actually be situated in surrounding suburbs; this doesn't mean, however, that all of these suburbs are in turn always thought of as being part of the city proper. Vegaswikian stated above that it was original research to make the new "Las Vegas" article specifically focus on the city, the Strip, and the immediate surrounding unincorporated municipalities, but it seems just as "ORish" to pick the Las Vegas Valley over the broader Las Vegas metropolitan area as defining "Las Vegas". I think this is why we should expand the city article to cover what is officially known as "Las Vegas, NV" by the postal service, as it is these communities that seem to almost always be referred to as "Las Vegas." It also isn't OR, as we would have a specific region to cover that is officially referred to as "Las Vegas" by a major organization (I am pretty sure that major news organizations also cite articles as being in "Las Vegas" or "Las Vegas, NV" when the focus is on something in the Strip, so it really isn't just the USPS). Then we wouldn't need a separate city article, and can keep a broad metropolitan area article that covers all of the surrounding communities that are not typically referred to as being in "Las Vegas" itself. Cheers, Rai• me 08:01, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
      • I agree that the most common use of "Las Vegas" includes the strip but not separately incorporated areas in the valley. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:27, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
      • Yes, Las Vegas is clearly more then the strip. Look at the Hard Rock, the Palms, the Convention Center. Just this week someone added Hooters to the Strip template. Any assumption that the term has such a limited meaning of the city and the strip is WP:OR. Vegaswikian ( talk) 00:01, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose moving "Las Vegas, Nevada" to "City of Las Vegas". The current name of that article is consistent with the long-standing consensus on naming US cities. The issues with the surrounding urban areas are not sufficient to warrant an odd name for this article.   Will Beback  talk  22:19, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Note also that a different proposal for "Las Vegas, Nevada" closed less than six months ago. Talk:Las_Vegas,_Nevada#Requested_move   Will Beback  talk  22:21, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose moving "Las Vegas, Nevada" to "City of Las Vegas". I see no good reason to ignore the naming conventions here. I would, however, support a move of the city article to Las Vegas (city), Nevada, which is permitted under the U.S. place naming conventions, but only if there is consensus to make a new "Las Vegas" article about the Las Vegas Valley (in which case "Las Vegas, Nevada" would redirect there). I still favor the option of expanding the existing "Las Vegas, Nevada" article to include information about the Strip and the surrounding unincorporated municipalities known as "Las Vegas" and then redirecting "Las Vegas" to that article, as then no messy move of the city article is needed. Cheers, Rai• me 23:59, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Las Vegas should follow Australian standards for cities and metropolitan areas. The issue is strikingly similar to how Brisbane and Perth, Western Australia deal with naming conventions. If I understand correctly, the government area within the city limits is named City of Brisbane and City of Perth, while the larger "city" is referred to as Brisbane and Perth. With regard to Las Vegas - with the exception of keeping the metropolitan area article for government statistical purposes - .. I would

• Support the move of Las Vegas, Nevada to City of Las Vegas and...
• Support the move of information on the Las Vegas Valley and Las Vegas Strip to Las Vegas. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 00:35, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

• Support move of Las Vegas, Nevada to Las Vegas, as the city is the primary topic. Las Vegas metropolitan area includes other cities and rural areas, so is different from the Australian cities quoted and is not what most people mean by Las Vegas. Cjc13 ( talk) 14:53, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment I never suggested that the entire metropolitan area was referenced by the city name. Just the larger area. Obviously Brisbanites and people from Perth recognize other cities within the metropolitan area (i.e. Gold Coast, Queensland). Though in reference to Las Vegas, most people think of the Strip, City, and areas off strip on the Las Vegas Freeway (I-70) as Las Vegas. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 23:55, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
    • Comment There is no mention of Gold Coast, Queensland in the article for Brisbane. Cjc13 ( talk) 12:22, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
  • What sources the city as the primary topic? I believe that it has been clearly established that based on incoming links to Las Vegas the city is a tiny majority, in the same range as the Las Vegas (TV series). Clearly not the primary topic! Las Vegas is clearly used to describe an area that is larger then the city as evidenced by actually looking at how the term is used in the press and publications. In fact all of the arguments for moving Las Vegas, Nevada to Las Vegas are based on the fact that the term is used to describe more then the city. That data clearly establish that the city is not the primary topic! What is not established is that the city is the primary topic. Simply looking at the last press release from one of the US Senators from Nevada yesterday, clearly does not refer to the city when using Las Veges. Instead he describes Las Vegas as a destination or an area. No mention of this being about the city! Moving the city article and expanding it to include the strip is clearly original research and not an place for an article on the city. Vegaswikian ( talk) 02:07, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
    • It's not original research if the article is expanded to include only the unincorporated areas that are referred to officially as "Las Vegas, NV" by the USPS, most major news organizations, and many websites. After all, the article title is "Las Vegas, Nevada," which as established above does not unambiguously refer to the city; these unincorporated areas are also known as "Las Vegas, Nevada." Thus, it would be entirely appropriate for the "Las Vegas, Nevada" article to cover things outside of the city that are still referred to by that name. But it is original research is to assume that "Las Vegas" always refers to the entire valley. Cheers, Rai• me 06:13, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
    • As regards the press release from the Senator, he is merely using Las Vegas as an example of a destination or area. As he also refers to Reno, a city, it seems likely that he was referring to the city of Las Vegas. If you enter Las Vegas in Google it provides a map which clearly pinpoints the city. Looking at the links to Las Vegas metropolitan area in Wikipedia, many of them are articles about celebrities such as Kelsey Grammer most of which are likely to actually refer to the city rather than the metropolitan area. Personally as an outsider, I think of Las Vegas as the city with a gambling strip rather than a governmental area. Cjc13 ( talk) 12:47, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
      • OK, I just read the Kelsey Grammer article. The only reference to Vegas is at the NAB show which is held at the convention center which is in Winchester. That is not on the strip or in the city so it would be outside the area being proposed. Most gaming offered in Southern Nevada is not in the city so to suggest that the strip is an extension is like the tail wagging the dog. Adding the unincorporated areas is an improvement, but that still does not address the fact that North Las Vegas is generally considered to be a part of Las Vegas. And for marketing, Henderson generally is. Look at the site for Lake Las Vegas]. How prominent is the fact that it is located in Henderson? It does make prominent use of Las Vegas as a brand. As to using the USPS as a reliable source. Take a look at zip 89124 which the USPS labels as Las Vegas, NV with a list of alternate names. Your proposal would include areas that are clearly outside of the valley. Also the USPS zips do move to include and exclude areas it some cases in the past, the zips crossed city boundaries, at least out here. Vegaswikian ( talk) 18:47, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
        • The Lake Las Vegas article doesn't seem to mention "Las Vegas" much at all; it has "Las Vegas" in its name, but other than that it seems to mention the "Las Vegas brand" (gambling, nightlife, etc.) as little as it mentions Henderson. Almost all major metro areas have buildings, companies, etc. that are named for the central city but are actually located in suburbs; as I said above, this does not imply that all of these suburbs are therefore indistinguishable from the city. I certainly don't think that this proves that Henderson is commonly known as "Las Vegas," and the same goes for North Las Vegas - these are separate cities that are located within the Las Vegas metropolitan area but are otherwise distinct than the surrounding communities. Consider Emporis, a major building database used as a reference for most skyscraper articles. Henderson and North Las Vegas are considered separate from Las Vegas and have their own subsections, whereas Paradise, Winchester, Spring Valley, etc. are all clumped into Las Vegas. Any hypothetical Las Vegas article should take this into account; the surrounding unincorporated communities that have "Las Vegas" as an official address are virtually indistinguishable from the city, whereas incorporated cities that happen to be in the metro area are quite separate and distinct. Cheers, Rai• me 01:31, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
          • I agree 100%: "the surrounding unincorporated communities that have "Las Vegas" as an official address are virtually indistinguishable from the city, whereas incorporated cities that happen to be in the metro area are quite separate and distinct.". That rule should determine the scope of the article at Las Vegas. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:45, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
            • Separate and distinct? Not! Basically you are talking about removing two cities from this new article since they are separate and distinct from the rest of the valley and from the city of Las Vegas in some way that says it gets included and they do not. Las Vegas was named well before the city came into existence. Both Las Vegas, Nevada and North Las Vegas, Nevada are named after the meadows as is the Las Vegas Valley. So based on naming, NLV is tied to both the other city and the valley. Let's look at other areas where these two communities as so separate. Also by including unincorporated areas but excluding the two cities means you are not aware of what are locally called county islands. These are unincorportated islands within the cities. While most are in the city of Las Vegas, there are some in NLC, albeit small in size. Who processes the sewage for NLV? Yep, the city of Las Vegas and Clark County. OK, how about water. Water is provided by the Southern Nevada Water Authority and is distributed by the Las Vegas Valley Water District. Since garbage collection, power and gas are provided by the the same private companies across the valley, utilities are the same for these two odd ball cities. While they provide basic law enforcement and fire protection some services are not provided by all departments so there is some sharing like heavy rescue and bomb squads. Also these two odd ball cities fully participate in the southern Nevada Fusion Center which deals with terrorism and other security and crime issues in the area. So for law enforcement and fire protection, there are some differences but there is also overlap. Let's look at schools. OK, same district so there is no difference. How about local taxes for those communities. Yep, they both pay taxes to the county for common services like Family Court, general services that the county provides and care for indigents. Again there is overlap without regard to the municipal boarders. How about trying transportation. Well, yea, the NLV and Henderson do police their own streets along with NHP and for some service the LVMPD does investigations or assists (as do the other departments for LVMPD). How about paying for streets? Well those two cities do that with the exception of projects that the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada handles. So most major road projects are by the RTC. How about transit services. Other then a few small routes bus service throughout the valley is provided by the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada. Cabs? Again regulated by the Las Vegas Taxicab Authority and the Nevada Taxicab Authority and they service the valley Noting that companies like Henderson Taxi is really a brand operated by Bell Trans which is not based in Henderson. So for transportation there are differences but much overlap. How about flood control? Well again there is the Clark County Regional Flood Control District which covers all of the valley including those pesky two cities you want to eliminate. I'll also add that the Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, having agreed to share selected services, are working out the details. Likewise there are negotiations with the county and other cities to share services further blurring the lines. So basically there is large overlaps of critical services and trying to show that two out of three cities are not part of the area is problematic if not impossible. One final point, not one of the cities or the county have what is called home rule so basically they are controlled by the state for a lot of issues. So in the end having the main article be the valley seems to offer a good solution without the confusion and OR of other creations. Vegaswikian ( talk) 19:27, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
              • There is a big difference between separate and distinct from the Valley and separate and distinct from "Las Vegas." I sincerely doubt that the majority of people define what is "Las Vegas" by what areas in the metro area share flood control, garbage collection, and taxi service. To most readers, "Las Vegas" is a city in Nevada that contains the Strip and region immediately surrounding the Strip. Unknown to these readers, this particular city does not exist - in reality, the Strip and the areas immediately surrounding it are located outside of the city. But the fact is that after years of having Las Vegas at a dab page and having links that inappropriately direct readers to Las Vegas, Nevada changed to Las Vegas metropolitan area, "Las Vegas, Nevada" is still by far the most read Las Vegas-related article according to hit counts - 162,000 for the city in April 2011, compared to 80,000 for the Strip and a mere 26,000 for the metro area. Using these stats, it is abundantly clear that the entire Valley/metro area is not the primary topic here - the scope of that article is far too broad. The incoming links may indicate that the city is not the primary topic, but traffic statistics clearly indicate otherwise. We need a Las Vegas article, but one that only covers Las Vegas, Paradise, Spring Valley, and Winchester - this article would cover the city of Las Vegas, the Strip, and the area surrounding the Strip that is virtually always referred to as "Las Vegas." I don't think that we should cover every city in the metro area except NLV and Henderon, and I don't think that we should cover all of the other unincorporated areas in Clark County - ideally, the new article should only Las Vegas, Paradise, Winchester, and Spring Valley. The scope of the Valley article is far too broad, which is why moving Las Vegas Valley to Las Vegas is not the best option here, and why Las Vegas metropolitan area, despite having far more incoming links, has very low traffic statistics compared to city and the Strip. Cheers, Rai• me 02:24, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
                • Hit counts are not a good indicator since the city article was at the main name space for a while. Those inbound links were never corrected and probably represent 70-80% of the inbound links. Maybe the picture would be different if those links were fixed. Bottom line is that the city is not the primary use of Las Vegas. Vegaswikian ( talk) 02:47, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
                  • You're right; the city isn't the primary topic, and neither is the entire Valley/metro area. Las Vegas, Paradise, Spring Valley, and Winchester, which are pretty much always collectively referred to as "Las Vegas, Nevada" and are widely thought to all be contained within the City of Las Vegas, are. Changing links to Las Vegas metropolitan area is a poor solution, as about 90% of the time "Las Vegas" links that incorrectly link to Las Vegas, Nevada are intended for the region of "Las Vegas" that is Paradise or Winchester or Spring Valley (which are almost always referred to as "Las Vegas, Nevada"), not the entire metropolitan area. Cheers, Rai• me 03:16, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
• A key question in this whole discussion is "What is Las Vegas?" Everybody here but Vegaswikian agrees that it's not just the city limits. You won't find any city article on Wikipedia that takes that approach - Seattle mentions Boeing and Microsoft, LA mentions Port of Long Beach, etc. So what is Las Vegas? If a reliable source says it's Las Vegas, it's Las Vegas, easy solution. USPS, newspapers, websites, TV, all say that the strip is Las Vegas, so the strip is Las Vegas. On the other hand, reliable sources never say something in Boulder or Henderson is in "Las Vegas" (tho they might say Vegas metro, a different thing). So the easy solution is to follow the sources and write the article as if the strip is part of the city. Once you do that, there is no dispute whatsoever as to what the primary topic is. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 03:48, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
  • This logical is appealing. It would be much easier if the name Las Vegas was applied in the article to include all areas under the "Las Vegas" postal umbrella. Having the article about the Valley is unreasonable as it includes incorporated cities other than the City of Las Vegas. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 04:51, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Wrong again. I have not been saying that Las Vegas is limited to the city. I have been showing facts that support Las Vegas being something much more then the city. Creating something that you call Las Vegas and limiting it to just one of the cities in the valley and a 5 mile section of one road is simply WP:OR. Limiting it to places with a USPS address is also WP:OR. The simple and factual solution is to use the Las Vegas Valley. A geographic feature that is not OR. Vegaswikian ( talk) 05:15, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
    • I don't see how making the "Las Vegas, Nevada" article encompass all regions that are officially known as "Las Vegas, Nevada" by several reliable sources, including the USPS and most major news organizations, is OR. The claim that the entire Valley is Las Vegas, meanwhile, is OR, as I don't know of any reliable sources that commonly refer to every town and city within the Valley as "Las Vegas." The latter is a far less "factual" and far more subjective option than using the USPS designation is. The city's article is, after all, titled "Las Vegas, Nevada," so it should cover all regions that are referred to as such. Rai• me 05:30, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
      • Las Vegas Valley gets 25,000,000 Google hits and Las Vegas, Nevada gets 21,500,000 Google hits. So Las Vegas Valley is not a very OR term. And again, the common name is Las Vegas or Vegas and not Las Vegas, Nevada. Vegaswikian ( talk) 06:34, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
        • I believe Raime was saying that applying the term Las Vegas to the Las Vegas Valley is OR, not that the term Las Vegas Valley is OR. Again, the Valley includes incorporated cities not thought of as Las Vegas. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 06:37, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
          • Yes, I meant what 08OceanBeach SD said above - applying "Las Vegas" to the entire "Las Vegas Valley" is certainly OR, whereas applying "Las Vegas" to the "Las Vegas, Nevada" USPS designation, the designation of a government agency, is certainly not. And regarding Google hits, the link you provided for Las Vegas Valley above indicates only 10.5 million hits, compared to 21.5 million for the city, 49.8 million for "Las Vegas, NV", and 94.2 million for "Las Vegas" + "Nevada". These hits hardly seem to indicate that the entire Valley is the primary topic here. Rai• me 18:31, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
            • Well, here are a few more facts to show how Las Vegas is used as a common name. Let's look at the 2010 Las Vegas Visitor Profile Study published by the LVCVA. This is one of three that they publish with the other two being for Mesquite and Laughlin. Their marketing web site [1] allows you to select the various Las Vegas locations. Those who want to insist that they are not doing original research might want to look at what is in that box! The LVCVA, which is made up of elected officials from Boulder City, Henderson, Mesquite, North Las Vegas and the City of Las Vegas and some corporate representatives. So it is rather likely that Henderson and North Las Vegas are consider by the others as a part of Las Vegas and are included in all of the marketing materials for the brand as such. If you read the 2010 profile, it only breaks out two areas, downtown and the strip as they relate to certain statistical information. They do not attempt to break out a definition of Las Vegas that in any way matches what is being proposed here. If anything, you could say that Las Vegas is defined in their documents to be everything in Clark County outside of Laughlin and Mesquite. I will note that some of the reports do use the term, citywide to describe the area as well as a destination. Keep in mind, this is the Las Vegas definition that everyone sees in the ads that sell the destination. I found it interesting in how the city itself is not really mentioned in any of the reports that I looked through. As some additional material, lets look at a few news stories today. This one on the Las Vegas cabs that operate in the entire valley including Henderson and North Las Vegas with no attempt to exclude those two cities. Or this article from the RJ which includes the following quote from the casino operator; "We're the only casino opening this year in all of Las Vegas". The only mention about Henderson is that their officials are expected to be present and that Henderson is nearby. Clearly being in Las Vegas is worth mentioning but not that it is in Henderson. Or how about another article from the Sun. While it does blur the usage of a city vs a metro area, it is clear that the statistics for Las Vegas are the metro area and not the city. In fact if you look at the source report that identifies what they mean by Las Vegas, they use something called Las Vegas-Paradise, NV aka Clark County, Nevada. So again, I think the sources don't support the scope that is being proposed for this new article. If anything the most reliable source here supports the current structure and the two breakouts ( Downtown Las Vegas and The Las Vegas Strip articles that we already have). As for the primary topic, if there is to be one, it must be either the Las Vegas Valley (mildly too restrictive based on common name usage) or Clark County (way too broad for the article that is really needed). A mail routing system by the USPS what is not intended to show what city an area is in is not a reliable source. Clearly this shows more about what the primary topic is and how the name Las Vegas is actually used. The city is just part of the area that uses that name. Vegaswikian ( talk) 06:07, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
              • Vegaswikian, you don't seem to understand the distinction between "city" and "metropolitan area". Henderson, N Las Vegas, and Boulder City are unquestionably in the metro area and unquestionably not the city. LVCVA represents the metropolitan area, not the city, and they have chosen to split the metro area into the valley and other areas. They may have split the metro area, but they are still two parts of the metro area, with no one there claiming it's the city. I'm not sure why a business association that explicitly represents the entire metro area is more reliable a source than the government-run US Postal Service. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 22:15, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
                • Actually I believe that you are the one who does not understand the difference between a city and a metro area, and a destination or a brand. The city is Las Vegas, Nevada, everything else goes by Las Vegas or Vegas. Adding NV or Nevada is simply wrong for everything other then the city (you know the article that is currently at the name that follows the US naming convention)! For virtually my entire adult life, your so called reliable source, the USPS has never given me a mail address that said where I actually lived! That is because they did not want to build more post offices, not about any concern for being right. In some cases was not even the closest post office to where I lived was used. So your claim that what the USPS uses is accurate and reliable to determine where someplace actually is, is totally and completely false. It is a mail routing system, no more and no less. As to saying that the LVCVA is not a reliable source, this is the group behind phrases like What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, so surely they have no idea what they mean when they use Las Vegas. The city is a member of this group and they seem to agree that Las Vegas includes NLV and Henderson. So if you want to shoot down the LVCVA, how about the AAA? Are they also wrong? They publish 3 maps for Las Vegas (again note the lack of NV). The southern one includes Henderson on the cover (you know that place that you want to exclude from Las Vegas without any qualifiers). Or how about this one. Look at their 2011 Southern California & Las Vegas Tourbook. Notice that again nothing about Nevada on the cover. Then look inside at say the The M Resort Spa Casino which by every measure is in Henderson. Look at the index on page 1001 and what does it say? LAS VEGAS, NV, so are they also wrong about how Las Vegas is used in the real world? Note that they had to use Nevada in the index since the places listed are in both CA and NV. Their writeup does not even mention Henderson. However it does say, your first (or last) chance to roll the bones in the metro Vegas area is at... so clearly they are placing this in Las Vegas at the I15 entrance to the Las Vegas Valley. Or look at their map for the Las Vegas Area on page 890. Dang, but there is NLV and Henderson! Accept the fact that Las Vegas actually is used to describe more then the city which shares it's name and it likely named after the valley and the area which were named long before the city existed. Vegaswikian1 ( talk) 23:34, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
                  • Everything you say supports my argument. USPS definition of Las Vegas may not match city limits, but Henderson, NLV and Boulder have separate USPS areas, thus USPS is refering to the city. The M resort advertising itself as Las Vegas is irrelevant. Business in suburbs routinely advertise themselves as being in the main city - M Resort does this because, unlike Henderson, people actually know where Las Vegas is. The AAA map of every city includes suburbs, because these aren't city maps, they are metro area maps, which is why the title says Las Vegas area. You give me quote after quote that all say "area" or "metro" in them to argue they count as part of the city. No they don't, that's why they said "area" or "metro". You've once again shown that you don't know the difference between a city and a metro area. I don't think anyone else here agrees with your no strip in Vegas argument. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 02:03, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
                    • The USPS defines Las Vegas? You actually know what the USPS thinks or intends despite facst that show the opposite? You might actually look into how zip codes across the country are used. No one that opposes your position, not me, not the LVCVA, not the AAA are trying to say that these places are in the city. The city is not the metro area and the metro area is not the city. That is a fact, plain and simple. You are trying to include things that are not in the city in the city. I know what a city is, it is what said city defines its boundaries as. You seem to find this as acceptable for Henderson and NLV, but not the City of Las Vegas. Also please learn to read and to quote me correctly. My position has always been to correctly state that the strip is not in the city. This is a fact. The strip is part of an area known as Las Vegas or simply Vegas. The flaw in your above logic is that you are assuming that every use of Las Vegas must by definition mean Las Vegas, Nevada. Again that is not the case and clearly would not match what is the city of Las Vegas. Vegaswikian1 ( talk) 06:24, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
                      • All of the links supplied by Vegaswikian above clearly favor the entire Valley as the primary topic of Las Vegas over the city. I didn't realize that reliable sources, most notably the two newspapers, referred to the entire Valley (including Henderson and NLV) and not just the city/Strip area as "Las Vegas," but given that they do I definitely agree with Vegaswikian that Las Vegas Valley should be moved to Las Vegas. In addition, the above links also seem to indicate that "Las Vegas, NV" is used to refer to the entire Valley as well. The fact that the casino in Henderson, which would even have an official address of Henderson, NV, is being marketed as being in "Las Vegas, NV" shows that the qualified name also refers to the entire region and not just the city (a fact that is also supported by the location of the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada sign). It is true that "Las Vegas" is used much more than "Las Vegas, Nevada" to describe the Valley/metro area, but it still appears that "Las Vegas, Nevada" applies more to the entire metro area than just the city alone. Cheers, Rai• me 17:33, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
• I don't know where to put this but I Support making the city in Nevada the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and the direct link for anyone searching under Las Vegas. Softlavender ( talk) 08:35, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Consolidating proposals to determine consensus

The discussion on this page has gone on for weeks, and it is getting very difficult to determine what users are actually supporting and opposing in the matter of what "Las Vegas" should redirect to. In an effort to determine a clear consensus, I have recreated the four proposals below that seem to be the most popular options from the above discussion. Discussion of each proposal (and support/oppose/neutral opinions) can take place below so it is clear what each user actually favors as an outcome. I only listed the four proposals that I could easily pick out, but if I missed one or if someone else has another proposal, please feel free to list it below.

Proposal 1

• Move Las Vegas Valley to Las Vegas
• Move Las Vegas to Las Vegas (disambiguation)
• Leave Las Vegas, Nevada as the article about the city

Discussion

• Oppose - The Valley, not the city, is the primary use of Las Vegas, Nevada. Rai• me 18:18, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose - The Valley is not wholey synonymous with Las Vegas. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 20:03, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose We don't need three articles. We need Las Vegas for the city and Las Vegas metropolitan area for the wider metro. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 22:10, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 2

• Move Las Vegas Valley to Las Vegas
• Move Las Vegas to Las Vegas (disambiguation)
• Move Las Vegas, Nevada to City of Las Vegas
• Move existing City of Las Vegas article to City of Las Vegas (train)
• Redirect "Las Vegas, Nevada" to new Las Vegas article

Discussion

• Neutral - I still don't see a good reason to ignore U.S. place naming conventions and move the city article to City of Las Vegas, but this is a better option than Proposal 1 (leaving the city at "Las Vegas, Nevada"). Rai• me 18:18, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Neutral Better than some other options. It leads "Las Vegas" to a destination that makes sense. This creates separate articles for City of Las Vegas, Las Vegas Valley, and Las Vegas Metro Area. We really only need two articles. A separate article for the valley is unnecessary, except to focus on it as a geographic feature. The primary topic is the city, including the strip. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 22:19, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose The entire Valley is not synonymous nor the primary topic of "Las Vegas." 08OceanBeach^S.D. 01:45, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. Las Vegas, Nevada should stay at its present location.   Will Beback  talk  20:59, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 3

• Move Las Vegas Valley to Las Vegas
• Move Las Vegas to Las Vegas (disambiguation)
• Move Las Vegas, Nevada to Las Vegas (city), Nevada (per U.S. place naming conventions)
• Redirect "Las Vegas, Nevada" to new Las Vegas article

Discussion

• Support - The Valley is the primary use of both Las Vegas and Las Vegas, NV, as evidenced by the sources provided by Vegaswikian in the above discussion. Rai• me 18:18, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Actually, Vegaswikians sources consistently show that the valley is not the primary topic. All of his references that show Henderson and Boulder, etc, explicitly said "Las Vegas area" or "Las Vegas metro" and never just "Las Vegas." Including the strip as part of the city clearly makes the city the primary topic. No one would ever propose that Los Angeles Basin is the primary topic for Los Angeles, would they? D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 22:16, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
  • The newspaper articles provided by Vegaswikian refer to the entire metro area as "Las Vegas" without an qualification. Rai• me 04:31, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose The Valley is not the primary topic as it includes Henderson and Boulder. Vegaswikians sources also show the use of Las Vegas accompanied by the terms "area" or "metropolitan." 08OceanBeach^S.D. 01:42, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. The entire valley is not the primary topic, only the city + the strip is the primary topic (see 4a). Las Vegas (city), Nevada might be consistent with the guideline, but it's ugly and a non-standard way to disambiguate in general. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:54, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. Las Vegas, Nevada should stay at its present location, in order to be consistent with the naming guideline.   Will Beback  talk  20:59, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 4

• Expand the city article, Las Vegas, Nevada, to include information about Las Vegas Strip and surrounding communities (follow USPS designation of Las Vegas, NV?)
• Move expanded city article Las Vegas, Nevada to Las Vegas, keep "Las Vegas, Nevada" as a redirect
• Move Las Vegas to Las Vegas (disambiguation)
• Leave Las Vegas Valley as article about metro area

Discussion

• Oppose - The city is not the primary topic of "Las Vegas," and the USPS designation of "Las Vegas, NV" does not reflect common usage. Rai• me 18:18, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support The city is the primary topic and USPS does reflect common usage. Media articles about the Las Vegas Strip and events there always give the location as Las Vegas without any qualifiers whatsoever. However, the Las Vegas Valley article should focus on the geographic feature, rather than its human population. The metro area article can focus on the human population. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 22:14, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
  • If the USPS address is an infallible source, then please explain the mailing address for the California Lottery store in Nipton, CA. Vegaswikian ( talk) 02:38, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support The city and strip are the primary topic; government sources (USPS), and the media, support this common usage. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 01:39, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
  • The USPS designation of "Las Vegas, NV" covers an area far greater than just the city and the Strip - an article based off that designation would essentially include every unincorporated region in Clark County and actually have a larger scope than the Las Vegas Valley article. Rai• me 04:21, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
    • I see. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 04:26, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
      • Well if there are two primary topics, then the guidelines say that we use a dab page. No policy or guideline mandates or suggests that you rewrite a perfectly good article that mirrors thousands of other articles for the purpose of making an article the primary topic. And exactly where are the sources that show the media uses Las Vegas to only mean the city and The Strip? How many media articles on The Palms, as only one example, don't claim that it is in Las Vegas? Vegaswikian ( talk) 05:15, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
        • "Two primary topics" is an oxymoron. There can be at most one primary topic for a given term. That said, I would not disagree that Las Vegas, Nevada has no primary topic and so should be a dab page. But Las Vegas does have a primary topic -- the city + the strip -- and so should be its own article. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:41, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support, but I prefer 4a which I just added below. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:51, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. Las Vegas, Nevada should stay at its present location, in order to be consistent with the naming guideline.   Will Beback  talk  20:59, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Actually, the naming guideline says to follow AP, which states to exclude "Nevada" when mentioning Las Vegas. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 12:29, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
    • For someone who seems happy to attack me for not reading it is interesting that you missed this in the very short naming convention. Cities listed in the AP Stylebook as not requiring the state modifier may or may not have their articles named City provided they are the primary topic for that name. So since the city is not the primary topic, it is does need the state added. It might help if you read the archives where that short summary came to pass from multiple long discussions. Vegaswikian ( talk) 18:10, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
      • The "provided they are the primary topic..." doesn't apply in this case. There isn't another city, or a movie, or a person with that name that could be primary topic. There actually is no dispute as to the primary topic, just its scope. No one here has argued that the town in New Mexico or the TV show is primary topic. My proposal to redirect Fargo to the city was rejected, because of the movie - that's a legitimate case. The only debate here is whether to use city proper, to include the Strip, include the valley, or include the entire metro area. All four of those options are still some version of Las Vegas, NV. The city is definitely unquestionably the primary topic, but we just can't figure out how much of the city is the primary topic. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 12:36, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
        • Yes, the Valley is clearly the primary topic as has been established by numerous examples. Let's start explaining this to you again with a true or false trivia question. The topic is elections. When we have a congressional race, are residents of Henderson allowed to vote, during early voting, in the City of Las Vegas? Tick-Tock-Tick-Tock. Ready? The correct answer answer is yes! Does that surprise you? Let's switch over to the news again for more reliable sources. In the this article it says, "Dozens of valley residents lined up at different locations throughout Clark County," Guess where those elections are for? They are the cities in the Las Vegas Valley (city of Las Vegas, NLV and Henderson in case you forgot). Yep they are in the valley that you want to exclude them from. Lets go back to housing if you are still confused. Take the headline Las Vegas home prices could fall further, if you read the text, the article makes it clear that it is about Las Vegas, the area. Amazing that there is no mention of the city but it does mention NLV by name. Again a case that shows that Las Vegas is a lot more then just one city and someones personal idea of what land outside of the city should be included. And speaking of land, how about we go back to housing? Las Vegas housing market fluctuating is the headline although in the print copy it was L V housing market bobbing, which based on your logic is not about Henderson or NLV. Well, it is. Take a look at the caption at the top of the story and where in the city of Las Vegas is it located? Yep, it is in NLV! Let's try air travel from today's news. Weekly flight counts set to increase at McCarran Yep it talk about the Las Vegas Valley where visitors spend $698 per visit excluding gambling and hotels. Yes this does include NLV and Henderson. Those 15,000 rooms that were added are not just on the strip or in the city of Las Vegas. Again there are facts to support how the valley is used to be the Las Vegas that everyone uses. I have provided numerous examples to show this and yet you have provided nothing that proves these facts to be wrong other then your opinion which, while very valuable, is considered as WP:OR and it not a WP:RS. So it is about time for you to accept the facts that are not OR and are from RSs. Vegaswikian ( talk) 18:23, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. Why should the largest city in Nevada not have it's own article? There is no reason to have to incorporate randomly chosen portions of Clark County into the article's scope other then the badly intentioned idea but to try and create a primary topic article when none exists. The USPS zip codes is not the way you define an area. They are a main sorting system and not a reliable source for Wikipedia article naming. The links to Las Vegas that have been dabbed for more then the last year don't support this. This has been pointed in other places in this discussion using reliable sources. Vegaswikian ( talk) 23:58, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 4a

• Expand the city article, Las Vegas, Nevada, to include information about Las Vegas Strip and surrounding communities (follow USPS designation of Las Vegas, NV?)
• Move Las Vegas to Las Vegas (disambiguation)
• Move expanded city article Las Vegas, Nevada to Las Vegas; keep "Las Vegas, Nevada" as a redirect
• Leave Las Vegas Valley as article about metro area

Discussion

• Support. Avoids USPS designation problem of Proposal 4. Folds some coverage of the strip into the "Las Vegas" article, which makes sense because most people include the strip in the concept of "Las Vegas". There is no reason to have an article devoted to the municipality that does not include the unincorporated strip. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:51, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
• Partially support. I agree that it'd be suitable to merge in information about closely surrounding areas popularly known as "Las Vegas, Nevada". However the article should be left at that title.   Will Beback  talk  20:59, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose - The Strip and the city is too narrow a description of "Las Vegas" per the reliable sources (particularly the newspaper articles) listed by Vegaswikian above. What reliable sources limit what is defined as "Las Vegas" to only the city and the Strip? Rai• me 22:27, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support This on or the original #4. Raime once again completely misreads Vegaswikian's sources which indicate that Las Vegas "area" or "metro" covers a wider area, not just "Las Vegas". D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 04:35, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Excuse me. Just because something does not meet your definition of what Las Vegas is, does not make wrong. Las Vegas is simply not just the city and the strip. If you read the sources or, while it might be OR, talk to visitors not in the two areas you want to limit Las Vegas to and see if they agree with your point. What references to the Palms, as one of many examples, don't say it is in Las Vegas when the celebrities visit? Vegaswikian ( talk) 05:01, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Clearly misreads? I am starting to wonder if you have read all of the links provided above. Where does this this Sun article, which is describing taxi service throughout the metro area, refer to the region as "Las Vegas area" and not simply "Las Vegas"? And this Sun article, clearly referring to the entire metro area, continues to refer to the region as only "Las Vegas". And this Review-Journal article, while not as strong an example as the other 2, does indicate that even Henderson is commonly known as Las Vegas. If a person was opening any business in a suburb outside of a city, they would never say "we're the only __ to open in CITYNAME this year, as then everyone would be confused as to the actual location of the business. Instead, the distinction of "CITYNAME area" or "CITYNAME metro" is always used; interestingly, this is not the case for Las Vegas, where the distinction between the city proper and the surrounding communities is so blurred that the entire region is referred to as Las Vegas. It seems like you are applying the fact that the AAA map refers to the region as "Las Vegas area" to all of the sources, but these newspaper articles are reliable sources that claim that the entire Valley is the primary use of "Las Vegas." Such reliable sources have yet to be provided for the claim that the primary use of "Las Vegas" is only the city and the Strip. Rai• me 16:35, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
    • As I said, people are often sloppy about the distinction between metro area and main city when it's not important. The first example doesn't list a specific place and incorrectly call it Las Vegas - and no one ever say an article about Seattle cab drivers that includes Bellevue drivers means that the city is not the primary topic. The second area has "metropolitan area" in the title and the first sentence, for God's sake, clearly establishing the topic of the article is the metro area, which they shouldn't have to say a million times, as you seem to insist. In the third example, the article explicitly says "Lake Las Vegas" and "Henderson officials" and only the marketing person says "Las Vegas" under the common practice for all cities to name the main city if you're in a suburb. So, again, your examples are far from convincing. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 00:20, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
      • As opposed to your examples, which are nonexistant? You can find a way to disregard all of Vegaswikian's sources, but you cannot provide sources that support your narrower definition of Las Vegas. The city is not the primary topic here, and as Vegaswikian pointed out below, nearly everything that people identify with "Las Vegas" is outside of the city, so clearly this case is not comparable with Seattle or any other American city. For the first article, the Seattle region would be identified as "Seattle metro" to avoid confusion with the city proper. And I said above, it is certainly not a common practice for representatives of suburban representatives to identify business locations as being in the main city when they are in suburbs; the common practice is to identify the location as the "CITYNAME metro" or "CITYNAME area". Las Vegas is a distinct case. Rai• me 00:57, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
      • People only get sloppy when a term clearly means one specific place and it is not in common use for other places. For today's example of Las Vegas not being used to describe the strip or the city, try today's article from the RJ. Vegaswikian ( talk) 01:09, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
• Support - I also would support this proposal; for some it would be satisfactory as it excludes the USPS criterion present in proposal four. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 22:16, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. Why should the largest city in Nevada not have it's own article? There is no reason to have to incorporate a randomly chosen portion of Clark County into the article's scope other then the badly intentioned idea but to try and create a primary topic article when none exists. In fact the links to Las Vegas that have been dabbed for more then the last year don't support this. By only including the strip it would probably lead to more confusion for readers since the article at Las Vegas would not really cover what they consider Las Vegas to be. This has been pointed in other places in this discussion using reliable sources. Vegaswikian ( talk) 23:55, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

The problems with the proposals

1. Trying to create an article so that multiple redirects can all go there is putting the cart before the horse. The purpose of redirects is to send readers to the article that they are most likely to want to be at when you enter another name that is used for the article in question.

2. Articles exist and you need to understand what they cover and what the inbound links to them are for, or in the case of a disambiguation page, what the intended target is. If you look at what the inbound links for Las Vegas have been, you will see something like this:

North Las Vegas - 1%

Henderson - 1 %

The city of Las Vegas - under 5%

The Strip - 30% to 45%

Everything else in the Las Vegas Valley or metro area or whatever you want to call it 30% to 50%

Now look at the reverse logic, how accurate is a given target if it were actually at Las Vegas:

Las Vegas Valley 100%

The Strip - 30% to 45%

The city of Las Vegas - under 5%

So why is an article like the Las Vegas Valley or metro area or whatever always the right target? Because it includes everything that people actually mean when they use the phrase Vegas or Las Vegas. That includes the city (the mayor is the chairman) and the county since they are involved with the marketing that does not make the distinctions that some editors seem intent on making. As soon as you try to artificially limit what this covers, you increase the number of bad links. Vegaswikian ( talk) 05:41, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

• Give me an example of a link that says "Las Vegas" that is refering to the entire valley/metro area. I imagine that most of the links have text like "located in Las Vegas" and in most cases really do refer to the city (which includes the strip according to all reliable sources) rather than the entire metro area. If an article about something in Henderson says it's "located in Las Vegas", it would make more sense to revise the text to say "located in the Las Vegas Metro area".

Keep in mind that, like all big cities, articles about places there are often sloppy about the distinction between suburbs and the main city. Just because a casino in Henderson advertises itself as in Las Vegas doesn't mean that the city is no longer the primary topic - it just means that the marketers rightly decided to use Las Vegas so tourists would know where it is. This is similar to articles that say Boeing and Microsoft are in Seattle - that doesn't make the Seattle metro area the primary topic for Seattle. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 12:35, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

• Even links to a city don't refer to the whole city. They are mostly about small areas that just happen to be in the city. Is something about the downtown area about the whole city? The city is not the focal point in the valley. The skyline is not in the city, most hotel rooms are not in the city, most casinos are not in the city, most tourists are not in the city. Provide data to the contrary. Again if you seem to be in this discussion to show the the city is more then what it is. The facts that you seem to want throw aside clearly establish that the usage of Las Vegas is simply not about only the city. You would have a stronger case arguing to make the Las Vegas Resort Corridor the primary topic. However I still have not been able to find a map. I did find an RTC site that defines it as the 'the major focus of employment in the region.' I also found this that gives some idea of what the resort corridor covers. I'll note that most of these discuss the corridor as being the center of the valley. Oh, I did love the Yahoo map for the city. Also, you seem to be insistent about including the city as the base for this new Las Vegas article yet you fail to address how to handle the county islands that are not in the city. Do we exclude those from this article? Or do we include them and cover more of unincorporated Clark County? Vegaswikian ( talk) 19:18, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
  • I think the thing to do is have "Las Vegas" the city as the primary article, and include in that all urbanized adjacent areas that are not part of another city. This covers the Strip, the Airport, Palms and most big off-strip casinos and all the county islands. I think that would cover the important topics well and address the fact that Henderson, Boulder City and NLV are not quite as "Las Vegas" as the strip. FWIW, it seems that Las Vegas is unusual for a primary city of a metro area to not be surrounded on all sides by suburbs. This is probably why other cities haven't had this argument. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 00:10, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
    • So is your proposal to cover all of the Las Vegas Valley with the exception of North Las Vegas, Henderson, and Mesquite, given that those three cities are the only incorporated places in the urbanized area besides the city of Las Vegas? Given that the scope would be so much greater than the city, it would make more sense to use the Valley as the starting point and leave the city as a separate article. Rai• me 01:03, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
    • This ignores the fact that Henderson and NLV are considered to be part of Las Vegas. Do you have some sources that would support this odd exclusion criteria? Also you are creating an area that includes areas that would be in this theoretical article but are separated from the rest of the area covered by the cities of NLV and Henderson (those pesky county islands again). I fail to see how this is factual or logical in any way. You really need to stop thinking of the city of Las Vegas when you use Las Vegas. The two are different animals. Vegaswikian ( talk) 01:16, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
      • I would not go as far to say that NLV and Henderson are considered to be a part of "Las Vegas." I hear locals and non-locals alike refer to Henderson and not even mention Las Vegas. Neither is Mesquite part of the urbanized area of Las Vegas. There are miles of undeveloped land between Mesquite and Las Vegas. I am strongly against making the proposed "Las Vegas" article include information on the whole valley. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 02:00, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
        • Mesquite is not in the valley. What does the valley include that is not considered to be Vegas? The LVCVA does not make a distinction for NLV or Henderson. Henderson is used, mostly by the locals when they are going around town. But if you live on the west side of I-15, Henderson is also part of the east side of town that you tend to avoid. How many people staying at the GVR booked a stay in Vegas? As for GRV they consider themselves to be in the LVCUA's definition of Vegas. The LA Times commonly does use Vegas here. Looking at an existing article on the wiki, you find ones like Darby O' Gill and the Little People. Notice where that article places GRV. Vegaswikian ( talk) 02:46, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
          • Umm, I typed Green Valley Ranch into Google, and it gave me a map saying "Green Valley Ranch, Henderson, NV" [2]. So, umm, wrong. Of course their marketing materials will say Las Vegas, because tourists know where Las Vegas is, and not where Henderson is. That doesn't mean the casino is actually in Las Vegas. And the fact that the convention/visitor center includes everything is meaningless, as such groups pretty much always represent the metro area. Seattle's promotes the Bellevue art museum, for example, and currently features Mt Rainier on its homepage, neither actually in Seattle. Also, I never said to include Mesquite. I said urbanized areas adjacent to the city of Las Vegas, which does not mean the entire valley except Henderson/Boulder/NLV. Mostly it adds Paradise to the article. Raime missed the use of the word "adjacent"; an urban area adjacent to Henderson goes into the Henderson article, of course. And enough about the county islands - this does not mean an area isn't part of the community, is means Nevada's annexation process is corrupt and used for private gain rather than to ease governing. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 12:26, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
            • Yes, as you have found out a buildings address can be different then the location it is commonly placed in. You really do need to sort that out for yourself. Having an address in Henderson does not mean that people don't include that as part of Las Vegas which is not the city of Las Vegas. Vegaswikian ( talk) 22:46, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
              • I feel this may be striding in WP:OR. Many people think of Orange County or even San Diego as being part of Los Angeles. But you don't see them lumped together under the Los Angeles article. Nor do you see Disneyland, a popular "L.A." destination, being labeled as in Los Angeles. Rather on the article, it is labeled under Anaheim, as it should be - regardless of what the media or multiple tourist organizations may say. The same usage could and should apply to Henderson and the issue of what is in the Las Vegas scope. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 22:52, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
                • It has been clearly established with reliable sources that this is not OR. And yes, LA is a problem in that the city as you point out may not be the primary use. But that is a different problem. BTW, what OR would you use to draw a line where an area would be included in Las Vegas, NLV or Henderson? Vegaswikian ( talk) 23:05, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
                  • You're sources repeatedly say Las Vegas area or Las Vegas metropolitan area and do not consistently refer to Las Vegas as the whole Valley. Only spotty tourist organizations. There is no problem with L.A. as I explained, it has been dealt with accordingly as should this issue with Vegas. Another suggestion that is quite simple is to have Las Vegas, Nevada move to Las Vegas. The Nevada part really does no good because as shown, we can't even define what Las Vegas is. The one true definition of Las Vegas is the city. Other uses are the Las Vegas Strip or Las Vegas Valley, but never simply Las Vegas. Perhaps this is a change of mind, but it is also seems to be the simplest, yet most reliable, definition we have. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 18:31, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Let's get this over with

Sheesh, this is getting nowhere fast. You know, I can live with "Las Vegas" redirecting to a page on the valley. Let's just stop linking to a disambiguation page, for God sakes. In case you forgot, that was the whole point of this discussion. Redirect "Las Vegas" to "Las Vegas Valley" or something and get it over with. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 12:33, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

At this point we're just waiting for someone closing WP:RM discussions to get to this one. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 16:17, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid that the closing result is likely to be: No consensus, except that the present configuration is not supported. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:43, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, it you go to near the top of the discussion to just before Alternative proposal and the first post by Born2cycle, there was, I believe, consensus for what Dondegroovily is suggesting here. The only concern was raised by Powers about the definition of the metro area being too large. That has been addressed by moving the metro area to Las Vegas Valley and beginning the cleanup to reflect this new focus (Boulder City stuff was removed to the census name for the metro area among other cleanup). That move was discussed many months ago and no objections were ever raised. So at this point, that could be a possible solution. In discussing the alternative proposals, 08OceanBeach is also opposed as is Rai•me. But Rai•me's opposition is based on the opinion that "The Valley, not the city, is the primary use of Las Vegas, Nevada", a different issue then the question raised to begin this discussion. Vegaswikian ( talk) 17:42, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Are we talking about moving Las Vegas Valley to Las Vegas or simply redirecting Las Vegas to Las Vegas Valley? From the above discussion, it seems like most were in favor of either moving the Valley article to "Las Vegas" or the city to "Las Vegas." Rai• me 22:05, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

The only proposal with any degree of consensus is Proposal 4 or 4a. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 22:08, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm thinking moving Las Vegas Valley to Las Vegas. Since the city represents a tiny portion of the inbound links to Las Vegas over the past year or two, that would not lead readers to the correct article if we moved the city article. Vegaswikian ( talk) 22:43, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

We know that's your preference, but that's what 1, 2 and 3 involved, and all were clearly opposed by consensus. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:06, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Excuse me, but look at what the inbound links were before you say that is my preference. My direction is based on what needs to be disambiguated when a link goes to a dab page. If the city was supported by those links I would agree to move that. The links simply don't support what you are suggesting. Vegaswikian ( talk) 23:11, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Regardless, only proposals 4 and 4a achieved a degree of consensus, with 4a seeming to be favored of the two. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 22:08, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

But only if you decide to use original research and statements that go against all of the reliable sources which means those !votes get discounted. So I fail to see any consensus there. Vegaswikian ( talk) 18:27, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

The reliable sources supported by those statements are that the USPS labels the area under "Las Vegas." Quite frankly we seem to have no consensus. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 18:32, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

The unreliable source you want to use labels the stuff as Las Vegas, NV and not Las Vegas. Vegaswikian ( talk) 01:22, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough. But, the sources you use, say Las Vegas area or Las Vegas metropolitan area and do not consistently refer to Las Vegas as the whole Valley. Not to mention as I said above, the Nevada part really does no good because as shown, we can't even define what Las Vegas is. The one true definition of Las Vegas is the city. Other uses are the Las Vegas Strip or Las Vegas Valley, but never simply Las Vegas. (maybe we should consolidate discussion as well?) 08OceanBeach^S.D. 21:02, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Where we do agree is that Las Vegas, Nevada is the city article. While we may disagree about what Las Vegas includes, it is clearly more then the city. Consider this, we can not write an article about the economy of Las Vegas or transportation in Las Vegas or housing in Las Vegas without including Henderson or NLV. All of those are very tied together and the city is not the driver in this. Vegaswikian ( talk) 21:57, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Okay. Theoretically you could, and have the information about the city proper; but yes, the markets are very tied together. However, say we do end up grouping Henderson and NLV into "Las Vegas;" what happens then with naming for the related articles? 08OceanBeach^S.D. 22:08, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, I think that the three city articles stay where they are and the Vegas (I'm using this to avoid the Las Vegas naming to try and not imply a named solution) article is the umbrella over those and whatever is included. Ignoring the name for now, there is the question that has been raised about what would be included if we used a definition based on the valley landform. Well, let me offer this as the definition. The Vegas article is basically what occupies the land-form and includes:

Las Vegas, Nevada

Henderson, Nevada

North Las Vegas, Nevada

Apex, Nevada

Arden, Nevada

Blue Diamond, Nevada

Enterprise, Nevada

Paradise, Nevada

Spring Valley, Nevada

Summerlin South, Nevada

Sunrise Manor, Nevada

Whitney, Nevada (formerly East Las Vegas)

Winchester, Nevada

I think that this is an inclusive list and likely a reasonable definition since it describes what is in the valley. The issue is that the valley also includes some areas that are not incorporated or in a township or other definition like a CDP. I'm also not sure how the county islands in the three cities are classified in regards to the townships. However that last part can be addressed by including the county islands within the three cities. This definition drops Boulder City from the current usage which I don't see as an issue. It also drops Overton, Nevada which I don't believe is an issue. Does this work? Vegaswikian ( talk) 23:09, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't make sense to leave the city article where it is if a new, broader Vegas article is going to be created. Vegaswikian, you said yourself above that the USPS uses "Las Vegas, NV" to identify far more than the city, and (more importantly) that a majority of the links going to Las Vegas, Nevada do not in fact refer to the city. Why, then, should the city remain at such an ambiguous title? It is clearly not the primary topic; either the Valley is the primary topic, in which case "Las Vegas, Nevada" should redirect to the new Vegas page, or there is no primary topic, in which case "Las Vegas, Nevada" should be a disambiguation page. And the argument that the current title follows the U.S. place naming conventions is incorrect; if a municipality is not the primary topic of the CITYNAME, STATENAME title, then the convention has a solution: Those places that need additional disambiguation include their county or parish (for example Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina and Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina). If more than one place within the same county has the same name, specify the type of local government unit in parentheses before the comma (e.g., Poughkeepsie (city), New York and Poughkeepsie (town), New York, but not "Poughkeepsie, New York (city)"). The city does need additional disambiguation, and since the entire region that is referred to as "Las Vegas, Nevada" is also in Clark County, the suitable title here is clearly Las Vegas (city), Nevada. Rai• me 04:36, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I strongly disagree moving Las Vegas, Nevada to Las Vegas (city), Nevada. Obviously it is a city! Everyone in the world knows that. The naming conventions for U.S. cities even dictate that Las Vegas, Nevada can be simply named Las Vegas. As I said before, the other "Las Vegas'" are always accompanied by "strip," "metropolitan area," "area," or "valley." The city is the one true Las Vegas. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 05:06, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Leaving the city article where it is follows the US city naming convention and does not create any additional problems. I have never suggested that Las Vegas, Nevada means any thing other then the city. Las Vegas is used to describe a locale that is something other then the city and at times the city. Two of the choices for an article at Las Vegas are, one that will be right about 5% or less of the time or one what is right, but maybe not too specific for some readers, about 98% of the time. Somehow I think the latter is preferred. With a reasonable hat note it would be one extra link for readers who know they wanted something else. I don't see a need to try and change everything all at once. If that is what we are trying to do, it makes reaching a consensus on the original question significantly more difficult. Let's fix what is wrong and if needed later additional changes can be made. Vegaswikian ( talk) 05:28, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Leaving the city article where it is does not follow the US naming convention if "Las Vegas, NV" is an ambiguous term, as I already pointed out above. I strongly oppose any proposal that does not address this issue; there is already a move notice at Talk:Las Vegas, Nevada, so now is the time to discuss moving the city article. "Las Vegas, Nevada" and "Las Vegas" need to direct a reader to the same article, as they both clearly refer to the same thing. Far more than the city is referred to as "Las Vegas, NV" - you mentioned above that 70 to 80% of incoming links to Las Vegas, Nevada actually refer to the metro area, which shows that this name often refers to much more than just the city. Rai• me 05:48, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

When they talk about ambiguity in city names, they are referring to genuine ambiguity, such as a person or car or animal with the same name. Everyone agrees that the Nevada city is the primary article, the only issue here is what the scope on that primary article should be (city only, versus city plus strip, versus entire valley, etc). Whichever version of "Las Vegas" we choose, the article should land at "Las Vegas" without including Nevada. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 06:41, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I have been following this rather silly debate for a while but have been too busy with work to participate. I strongly support Vegaswikian's well-thought-out position and oppose all others. I would be happy to offer my support for Vegaswikian's side if arbitration becomes necessary. -- Coolcaesar ( talk) 06:18, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Las Vegas the place not the city - Rai-me's excellent idea

Let's not conflate city and place. I, for one, reject the notion that the city of Las Vegas is the primary topic for "Las Vegas". Rather, the primary topic is the place that encompasses that city, but also at least includes the strip. That is, when people think, say, or search for "Las Vegas", they are most likely referring to the place that includes the strip as well as the city.

I also suggest that the primary topic for "Las Vegas, Nevada" is also the place, rather than the city, and this is especially important for the many references to "Las Vegas, Nevada" that are referring to the place that includes the strip. For example, at Dean Martin it states: "For three decades, Martin was among the most popular acts in Las Vegas" (note that Las Vegas is a link to Las Vegas, Nevada). Clearly this refers to the place, not the city proper. That's only one example, but clearly is typical/common usage.

This is why the place (city + strip) needs to be the topic of the article at Las Vegas, and why Las Vegas, Nevada needs to redirect to that article as well. I'm not convinced that we need a separate article about the municipality, but if we do, again, I would put it at City of Las Vegas as being an exception to the U.S. city naming guideline because this is a very special case. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:40, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Looking over the respective Las Vegas, Nevada and Las Vegas Valley articles, it appears that the city article actually already does cover much of the Valley (at least the immediately surrounding areas and the Strip) already. The city is also a much better article, prose and content-wise, than the Valley article. What if we attempted a merge of the content of the two articles - that is, merge the information from Las Vegas Valley into the Las Vegas, Nevada article, leaving "Las Vegas Valley" as a redirect to "Las Vegas, Nevada". This broad article would cover the entire Valley, as it is OR to limit the definition of "Las Vegas" to only the city and the Strip, but the majority of the article would still focus on the city + Strip area because that is undoubtedly the center of what constitutes "Las Vegas". This article could then be moved to "Las Vegas," and "Las Vegas, Nevada" would remain a redirect. However, in addition to this, a new article about the city would also be created, entitled either Las Vegas (city), Nevada per the naming conventions or City of Las Vegas. The content of this article would be much briefer than the current city article, but it is in this article than we can describe very "city-centric" information - such as census statistics, city geography, city government, and demographics - in more detail. This solution does not require a messy move of the Las Vegas, Nevada article (we could leave it at "Las Vegas, Nevada" since that name does refer to the entire region, although the unqualified "Las Vegas" is clearly preferable), allows the city to have its own dedicated article that does not include information about other regions in the metro area (important because the most populated incorporated place in Nevada really does need its own article), and has a scope that covers the entire Valley. Rai• me 23:29, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

This idea seems the most favorable and reasonable so far. Las Vegas Valley could also be directed to the land-form article or itself be turned into a disambiguation page to either the Vegas article or the Las Vegas Valley (landform) article. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 23:35, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

There is no reason to move the city article since it complies with the naming convention and moving it would, in my opinion, create more confusion. See my comment below. I have been holding off trying to start a cleanup of the material while this discussion has been going on. There is no reason for a messy move, just a need to cleanup several articles. The city article is correctly titled Las Vegas, Nevada and for that name it is the primary topic. However the city is not the primary topic for Las Vegas. How everything else redirects, does not affect the two articles that there now seems to be consensus for. Don't let that confuse or overly complicate what should be a simple solution. Rewrite the two articles and maybe move the one not about the city to Las Vegas or make that a redirect. Vegaswikian ( talk) 00:03, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

For a while, in the moves the city article was at the top of a dab page for Las Vegas and as a result many of it's incorrect links were, I believe, created by good intentioned editors who did not really understand the dab page they were working to cleanup the inbound links to said dab page. This work needs to be undone at some point and this probably influences the incorrect perception of how often the various pages are read. Vegaswikian ( talk) 00:03, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

The argument that the city is the primary topic of "Las Vegas, Nevada" is very weak when nearly 80% of the links to "Las Vegas, Nevada" do not refer to the city. "Las Vegas, Nevada" clearly refers to more than just the city the majority of the time. Where are the casinos? In Las Vegas, NV. And where is the Welcome to Las Vegas, Nevada sign? In Paradise, not the city. My proposal would not require moving the city article; leaving it where it is (Las Vegas, Nevada) is an option, although moving it to "Las Vegas" is also an option. In the end, the expanded city article would serve as the new "Las Vegas" article, but it would still have a scope that covers the entire Valley. The new (not moved) Las Vegas (city), Nevada or City of Las Vegas article would serve a similar function to the Las Vegas-Paradise, NV MSA that was proposed a while back - information about demographics, government, geography, etc. that is exclusive to the city. Rai• me 00:19, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

In Vegaswikian's defense, he does not appear to be arguing that the primary topic of "Las Vegas, Nevada" is the city; he seems to be ignoring WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and simply arguing that the topic of the article at Las Vegas, Nevada should be the city, per the U.S. city naming guidelines. However, the counter to his argument is to invoke WP:IAR, and, since WP:IAR requires a good reason to ignore a rule (in this case the U.S. city naming guideline), the good reason here is WP:PRIMARYTOPIC.

I presume we all recognize that in probably every other case of "Cityname, Statename", the primary topic is the city of that name in that state. Las Vegas really truly is an extremely rare special case, possible even unique. This is a perfect situation in which to apply WP:IAR.

I fully endorse Rai's suggestion above with either Las Vegas (city), Nevada or City of Las Vegas as being the destination of the article about the city proper, though I favor the latter. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:27, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

The question of what should be the topic of the article at Las Vegas, Nevada comes down to whether a specific naming guideline or WP:PRIMARYTOPIC should prevail when there is conflict in guidance from the two. I'm pretty sure I've always consistently favored WP:PRIMARYTOPIC in such cases, as that seems to be much more important that a specific naming guideline. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:04, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with both of you on this. It sounds like you don't know what Vegas is; the result will be a totally illogical, incoherent sui generis mess. We have enough of those on Wikipedia! Wikipedia is about things that actually exist (like the City of Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Valley, and the Las Vegas metro area), not things that exist only in people's fantasies (some weird nonexistent conglomeration of just Paradise and the City of Las Vegas). By proposing an article on something that doesn't actually exist, you're clearly violating Wikipedia's core policy against Wikipedia:No original research. The more elegant solution is to simply keep the city article where it is at Las Vegas, Nevada and tighten its scope as needed (with appropriate brief disambiguation references to the articles on Las Vegas, Paradise, and the Strip for confused WP newbies), and have Las Vegas discuss the whole valley including the city and the Strip.-- Coolcaesar ( talk) 06:32, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand how you can say this proposal is original research when the assertion that the term "Las Vegas" applies to the entire Valley is clearly one mislead and not accurate. The accompanying sources explicitly say Las Vegas Valley, Metropolitan Area, or Area. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 07:00, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, creating an area that is not used by anyone for anything is OR as it relates to the article's content. This is especially egregious when you consider the fact that there are definitions that don't require this unique treatment. Also your argument that the facts supporting this definition of Las Vegas are to 'misled (sic) and not accurate' is simply bogus. The statements support what reliable sources mean when they use the term. They clearly establish that they do not simply mean the city. Likewise that clearly don't include a narrow area and they clearly include Henderson and NLV. Vegaswikian ( talk) 18:29, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

My proposal is not to limit the scope of the expanded article to the city and the Strip; I agree that that is OR. "Las Vegas" clearly often refers to the entire Valley, but the epicenter of the Valley is the city + Strip area. Like a city article focuses a great deal of attention on the Downtown area, the expanded Las Vegas, Nevada article would focus largely on the city and Strip area, because that is undoubtedly the economic and cultural center of the region. But Henderson and NLV would be clearly mentioned in the article as part of the Valley. Since "Las Vegas Valley" would likely be a redirect to the expanded article, it needs to be broad in its scope. Rai• me 00:52, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

First, WP:NOR applies to article content; it does not apply to the process of selecting article titles, nor to the editorial decision of deciding article scope. Second, the place most commonly known as "Las Vegas", and most commonly referred to as "Las Vegas" in reliable sources, though it may not be precisely defined, does actually exist. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:24, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

• Support Rai-me's suggestion at the top of the page. Whether to keep the article at "Las Vegas, Nevada" or move to "Las Vegas" can be discussed there D O N D E groovily  Talk to me 00:29, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
• Support - I also support merging the Valley in Las Vegas, Nevada and then moving to Las Vegas. Then creating a separate, for municipal/government purposes, City of Las Vegas/ Las Vegas (city), Nevada article. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 07:00, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Ah, isn't this basically what we already? All that is lacking is a move of Las Vegas Valley to Las Vegas. Vegaswikian ( talk) 18:29, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
    • It makes more sense to incorporate the text from Las Vegas Valley into Las Vegas, Nevada. First and most importantly, doing so would not require a messy move of the existing city article. The primary topic of "Las Vegas, Nevada," like the primary topic of "Las Vegas," is not the city, so an article about the city proper alone should not occupy that space (also, having both a Las Vegas article and a Las Vegas, Nevada article that cover two different topics is far too confusing, given that each clearly is referring to the same thing the majority of the time). Secondly, the existing Las Vegas, Nevada is a much better article than the Valley article. As long as in the end (a) the scope of the "Las Vegas" article covers the entire Valley and (b) the city proper has a separate article, redirecting "Las Vegas" to an expanded "Las Vegas, Nevada" article would have essentially the same effect as moving Las Vegas Valley to "Las Vegas". Rai• me 02:11, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
• Support merging of content of Las Vegas Valley into Las Vegas, Nevada and moving Las Vegas, Nevada to Las Vegas, leaving Las Vegas Valley and Las Vegas, Nevada as redirects to Las Vegas, as proposed by Rai-me above for reasons stated above. Also support creating a new separate article about city proper as Las Vegas (city), Nevada or City of Las Vegas, but prefer the latter as it is the most precise (but not more precise than necessary) commonly used name to refer to that topic. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:24, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Vital article

I just noticed that Las Vegas, Nevada is listed as a vital article. Given that status, I think any changes to increase the scope of the article to include more then the city should proceed with caution. Vegaswikian ( talk) 21:20, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't see why. The vitality of the topic is not affected by either moving it from Las Vegas, Nevada to Las Vegas, nor by expanding the scope. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:50, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Also, it is only a level four vital article. Yet going by Raime's proposal, the link would just be changed and directed to the new City of Las Vegas or Las Vegas (city), Nevada. No big problem there. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 21:51, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I would argue the vital link should go to the article about the city and resort known as Las Vegas, which would be covered by the article at Las Vegas (and to which Las Vegas, Nevada would redirect). -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:08, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Makes sense. I'm sure it wouldn't be a big problem. All of this should be decided after we decide what to do above though. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 22:11, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Even the iconic sign says "Las Vegas, Nevada". Moving the city article to "Las Vegas" alone is not required by any policy or guideline, and doing so would contradict the naming convention.   Will Beback  talk  22:35, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, and that iconic sign designates the (larger) resort area, not the city! Besides, the naming convention suggests articles about cities on the AP list, like Las Vegas, be at the city name only. And, since this is a very rare if not unique case in which the primary topic for a city name, and the primary topic for even Cityname, Statename, is not the city, but the larger city and resort area, WP:IAR applies for the good reason of adhering to WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:51, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

According to whom does it not designate the place named on the sign? Just because it's on the outskirts of the city doesn't mean it doesn't refer to the city.   Will Beback  talk  22:56, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Assuming it also refers to the Strip, then by that logic it refers to the place. Unless of course they're only welcoming people to the city proper. Obviously it is in reference to the place. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 23:02, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Las Vegas, Nevada is the mailing address of the place, not just the city proper. The name used to refer specifically to the city proper is City of Las Vegas. See [3]. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:01, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.