Talk:List of cities in Alaska

List of cities in Alaska is a featured list, which means it has been identified as one of the best lists produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve it, please do so.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
July 16, 2018	Featured list candidate	Promoted

Alaska High‑importance

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Cities

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Lists

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Question

I just removed this from the Alaska main page. Should this be merged here? Should it get its own page? I don't know what the source is.Calliopejen1 17:37, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Most populous cities

City	2010 projection	Gains since 2000	Percent growth
Anchorage	289,803	+ 29,520	11%
Fairbanks	33,524	+ 2,200	6%
Juneau	31,263	+ 552	2%
Wasilla	11,473	+ 6,004	110%
Palmer	9,307	+ 4,773	102%
Sitka	9,137	+ 302	4%
Kenai	7,986	+ 1,044	13%
Bethel	7,053	+ 1,582	23%
Ketchikan	6,898	-1,024	-13%
Homer	6,772	+ 2,836	58%

Wow, your projections were way off for some cities (Wasilla, Palmer, Kenai, Bethel, Ketchikan, and Homer). I suppose this was due to mostly because of the wildly inaccurate U.S. Census Bureau's estimates.

Most populous cities

City	2010 Population	Gains Since 2000	Percent Growth
Anchorage	291,826	+ 31,543	12%
Fairbanks	31,535	+ 1,311	4%
Juneau	31,275	+ 564	2%
Wasilla	7,831	+ 2,362	43%
Palmer	5,937	+ 1,404	31%
Sitka	8,881	+ 46	1%
Kenai	7,100	+ 158	2%
Bethel	6,080	+ 609	11%
Ketchikan	8,050	+ 128	2%
Homer	5,003	+ 1,057	27%

Phizzy

16:50, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Renaming

I noticed that there is a List of cities and census-designated places in Alaska page which is a fork since it includes all the information in this page. I propose a slight reorganization to these two pages.

1. Rename this page, List of cities in Alaska by population to List of cities in Alaska to match other state pages.
2. Rename List of cities and census-designated places in Alaska to List of census-designated places in Alaska, and remove the cities. The page is primarily census-designated places anyway, and the lead only talks about census-designated places. It would not be a difficult change.

The fork is eliminated, and the pages remain largely intact with minimal effort. What do you think? Mattximus (talk) 15:25, 10 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Formatting

Hi User:Mz7, I noticed there was a few reverts with the way the images are sorted so I thought I'd bring it up here to discuss. You mention white space, but I do not have such problem. I wonder if it is a problem with your screen? As a test can you see how the images appear on these pages:

You will notice they all are featured lists, and every single one of them has images on the right with no problem. There are many more, I believe all featured lists of cities do not feature galleries. I find it odd that Alaska would be the only one with a gallery. But the problem might be your screen? For the record they all work fine with mine. Thanks for your input. Mattximus (talk) 22:03, 2 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I changed the bullets in the above list to hashes so I could respond quickly by number below as to whether they render correctly or incorrectly. By "incorrectly", it's just what I and Mz7 described earlier: the images scroll, accompanied by whitespace, then the table picks up after the images end. I'm on an actual computer and not my phone this time, which is a public-access computer with Chrome, Firefox and IE installed. Quickly, my results: 1) correctly (all browsers); 2) correctly for upper-tier municipalities, incorrectly for local municipalities (all browsers); 3) incorrectly in Chrome and Firefox, correctly in IE; 4) incorrectly for urban municipalities; correctly for rural municipalities (all browsers); 5) correctly (all browsers). I looked at the code of at least one of them and couldn't find any distinguishing characteristics which may point to the culprit. MOS:ACCESS doesn't appear to address whatever the problem may be, but I would think it would fall under that. There's also the aspect of wise usage of horizontal space, which Mz7 mentioned and I also hinted at. If you have the opportunity to put more information in the table, you either constrict that or cause the table to become longer due to the accompanying constriction in space. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 01:00, 3 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That's very odd, because they are all the same formatting, so it should at least be consistent. I've ran 9 (!) such municipal lists personally through the featured list process and they seem to show up well on all the computers of all the reviewers. Phone I can understand, but I think the problem might be that you may be using a very unusual resolution on that computer? That's the only thing I can think of... Mattximus (talk) 02:29, 3 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've got it. It has to do with two things: 1) the size of your computer screen and 2) the size of the table. Looking at this old revision, if I use a computer with a larger monitor, the browser renders the images properly, to the right of the table. However, if I use my 13" laptop (at standard resolution), the images appear above the table, leaving a large amount of whitespace to the left of them. This appears to be because the table has a fixed width. On my laptop, the images appear above the table simply because they don't have enough space to display the right of the table. If I increase the size of my browser window past the size that can visibly fit on my screen, I am able to make the window big enough so that the images have enough space to move to the right of the table. In the case of List of cities and towns in California, the table width is small enough that the images have enough space to fit to the right on my laptop screen. However, if I decrease the width of my browser window, I can cause the images to not have enough space and produce that whitespace again, even on the California list. Hopefully this explanation makes sense. Because it appears to be an issue that only affects certain users, I have reverted my conversion to a gallery for now to match the precedent you cited. Mz7 (talk) 04:36, 3 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well, with the addition of the dates, the formatting is now messed up for everyone. I still want to avoid the galleries (not really featured list material), but not sure how to proceed... Mattximus (talk) 23:43, 3 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm. It appears that I won't have time to finish that today, but it's a matter of copying over existing sourced information found in the infoboxes of the individual articles. Back to the formatting issue: right now, I'm using a computer with a monitor with an aspect ratio with horizontal far exceeding vertical, simliar to a 16:9 television aspect ratio. The table in this list still renders messy, with the whitespace and all. Everything else found on the above list rendered just fine. The computer I used yesterday had a squareish monitor. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 23:49, 3 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for Featured List

I have successfully nominated List of cities and towns in Alabama and took a similar approach for this one. Would anyone be opposed to my nomination of this list? Mattximus (talk) 22:25, 16 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Your stance thus far, affirmed by your recent edits, demonstrates a lack of willingness to recognize one simple fact: Wikipedia already has a multitude of venues for regurgitating years-old census data and doesn't need any more. The last Alaska-related FL, List of National Natural Landmarks in Alaska, showed me just how low the bar really is for FLs. In that case, it was deemed unimportant that taking sorely outdated information backed by particular (peculiar?) sources and prettying it up still means that we're foisting sorely outdated information upon readers. In fact, the nominator knew full well of these issues and just stonewalled until "the issues went away". Getting your way by stonewalling until you've exhausted everyone else's patience != collaboration, yet that's been going on with FLs for years, with editors showing more concern for that star on the top of the page (or perhaps more to the point, the star on their user page) than for factual accuracy, contextual relevance or completeness of coverage. There is a parallel here. Attempting to portray the name "Clarence Rhode National Wildlife Refuge" as being relevant to a modern context, when in fact it's a name which fell out of use in 1980, is disingenuous and misleading. Similarly in this case, reading this news story some weeks back caused me to realize that the census data presented in Cold Bay, Alaska is a lot of hollow, empty bullshit which doesn't reflect reality. There's the root of the problem. We're sending the message that "an example of Wikipedia's best work" can be achieved by taking hollow, empty information, puffing it up with a few templates and photos, and assuming that readers will accept anything we offer them. There's the further arrogance of assuming that readers don't need certain bits of information in this list, because you just might have to put some effort into that particular information rather than expecting to copy and paste everything over from a PD site. I could easily write thousands more words about the hypocrisy of how taking the easy way out amounts to "an example of Wikipedia's best work", but as criticism of Wikipedia is abundant, I doubt I would be breaking any ground. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 02:19, 17 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that rant that was mostly irrelevant to my question. In that massive diatribe, the only specific comment related to this list was that you believe census data presented in Cold Bay, Alaska is incorrect? Or are you opposed to the idea of using official census counts in general? I would like to ensure the census data is accurate. Otherwise your references to other lists are completely inappropriate. I had no part in any of those, nor do I care. Your response is rambling, so perhaps it would help to enumerate your concerns for ease of reading next time? Mattximus (talk) 02:25, 17 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If you need me to walk you through this in any greater detail, let me know, but I need to leave soon to pursue paying work and may not have unlimited amounts of time to indulge you. The term "an example of Wikipedia's best work" is often bandied about in regards to several classes of content, FLs being one of them. Statements such as "We're here to build an encyclopedia for readers" are common on various bully boards. Taking those two in concert, your actions give cause for concern as to whether this is being done for the benefit of the readers or for your own vanity. I haven't checked your user page to see if this is the case with you (that's where assuming good faith comes in), but I do know that I've read far too many subpar GAs and FLs over the years which were churned out like sausage by editors who fill their user pages with self-congratulatory "accolades" referencing these turd-polishing exercises. If either that aspect of Wikipedia or the continued insistence on the part of various editors to keep propping up 15-year-old census data as still chiefly relevant doesn't bring to mind "The Emperor's New Clothes", then you're just not a thinking, feeling human being. The few FLs falling under WP:ALASKA are dominated by individual editors imposing their vision and being deliberately deaf to any input on improvement. Not at all coincidentally, these lists have suffered for years from cherry-picked information backed by cherry-picked sources, and concerns about usefulness to readers are stonewalled and swept under the rug (such as I continue to witness here). As the project has suffered for so many years, I don't see how pushing things further in that direction is going to help it any. Finally, once again remindful of AGF, I've tried not to question your objective here, but really, what is your objective here? If you score 50 FLs but the lists contain all the exact same information, then you've reduced each state to being akin to a setting for a film, rather than the reason for the list's very existence. As I kept getting cock-blocked on trying to post this over edit conflicts related to incremental edits, I managed to catch your question about census data. Yes, I would contend that at mid-decade, census data could very well be considered outdated and irrelevant to anything but historical reference. I'm pretty sure that's why the 2005 estimates were added to the list some years back RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 03:52, 17 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You know, perhaps I am ranting. Let me make this very simple, as I recently expressed these same concerns about the lists of radio stations by state. Are we presenting information which is useful to readers, or are we presenting only particular sets of information which conform to particular sources? Does the latter benefit readers who could very well just go to those websites instead and get the information there? RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 05:33, 17 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to be interested in building a good encyclopedia, but you proceeded to insult me and level personal attacks throughout your large rant. If wikipedia is dying, it's because of rudeness from people like you pushing volunteers away. I never once said anything personal to you, but received how many insults in return? I am done engaging with such vulgar rudeness. Good luck building the whole thing by yourself. Mattximus (talk) 15:47, 17 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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Prudhoe Bay?

Why is this place not listed? It's a big red dot on Google Earth with an airport - is it a ghost town? Steve8394 (talk) 01:14, 16 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Steve8394: List of cities in Alaska#Incorporated cities is only for incorporated cities. Prudhoe Bay is in List of census-designated places in Alaska. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:50, 16 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Complete list of cities (and towns etc?) for Alaska?

Is this the complete list of ALL municipalities (towns/cities, etc.) for Alaska? I am working on a adding the birth and death year information to each and every person where it is available on "Notable people" lists across all 50 states and U.S. territories. I am not intimately familiar with how Alaska is set up? Please {ping} me when someone gets a chance so I know the answer for this on Alaska and if there is ANOTHER list that I should be working to complete this states "Notable people" birth/death dates I will. Thanks! Th78blue (They/Them/Their • talk) 23:48, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes Th78blue this is a complete list of all municipalities according to the US census, but there are unincorporated locations, some of which can be found here: List of census-designated places in Alaska. I don't know if that list is complete, but this one is. 01:47, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

How many cities are in Alaska

How many cities are in Alaska 2601:401:8280:11F0:FDE3:880D:A538:E10D (talk) 09:21, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It says in the third sentence. Mattximus (talk) 15:48, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Inaccuracy of area and population density values

Each of the square mile area values are rounded to the nearest hundredth, and this is converted automatically to give square kilometers and population density using templates here. However, the census bureau gives area values to the nearest thousandth. This causes some inaccurate numbers on this page, due to the loss of precision from converting from a rounded value. I updated the areas to 2020 values, but I did not create this problem. Kk.urban (talk) 22:16, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]