Talk:Litchfield Hills

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Regarding Update Template for CoGC

@Zfish118:: Regarding your update notice about the 2013 Regional Councils of Government in Connecticut, it's important that you understand that the Litchfield Hills and Northwest Hills are just as much (if not more so) colloquial terms for parts of Litchfield County as they might be interpreted as regional government councils. The map does not require updating as it is customary among many in Connecticut to refer to the Northwest Hills as a section of Litchfield County which is simply "further northwest" of the Litchfield Hills. Where the line is drawn is subjective, and the terms can even be used interchangeably sometimes, but wherever one does draw the line is by no means necessarily dependent on any regional council designations. You're erroneously looking at this through the lens of a relatively obscure 2013 CoGC designation, but the fact of the matter is that the "Northwest Hills" and "Litchfield Hills" existed as vernacular designations long before any regional councils existed, and they will both endure as such regardless of what was decided in 2013 and regardless of what sort of regional councils are assembled in the future. Nothing has been "merged" except for abstract governing councils.

Given that, your use of the update template here is not warranted and, even if not intended, will give readers the false impression that the 2013 CoGC designations in some way would dramatically invalidate the current contents of the article. That is not the case, at all, which is why the update notice here isn't properly placed. Update templates aren't intended for tacking notices to the top of every article to simply advise editors to add more content about this or that; no article is ever truly "complete", but that doesn't mean they all ought to have "Update" notices tacked to the top. "Update" notices should be restricted to instances where new developments on the given topic would call for significant alterations to the article text in order for it to be current and reasonably accurate. In every other case, no template is necessary as a template could hypothetically be tacked to just about any article saying "More could be written about this. Please write more." We don't do that though, because it's implied in the Wikipedia project, where every article is a work in progress.

I have gone ahead and removed the bit about 'official designation' from the lead, since that was never backed up by any citations anyhow and even went so far as to confuse regions like the Upper Naugatuck Valley or Litchfield Hills as being little more than creations of government council. —Jgcoleman (talk) 15:21, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

This article was for many years linked to as the article for the regional planning organizations, as well as the region in general. There are dozens of these articles that have clumsy "definition" sections that reference organizations that no longer exist. Reading the two "officially designated" regions, but seeing no relevant update information about the consolidated COG, I assumed the template was warranted. The map caption also references by name the two regional planning organizations that no longer exist. While the inaccuracies on this particular page found during your review were relatively minor, many other "region" articles had far more outdated information, including statistics and require careful attention to update. I appreciate that you reviewed the content before removing the template. –Zfish118^⋉talk 19:43, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Problematic Equivalency with Regional Governing Body

@AirportExpert: I have to disagree with taking this article in the direction of styling it as a Northwest Hills Council of Governments (NHCOG) page, including a 'government agency' infobox titled as the governing council which puts a governing body logo as the primary graphic. Connecticut's "Northwest Hills" existed as a geographical and vernacular region of Connecticut long before the NHCOG. Any governmental considerations between the towns in that region is of peripheral importance, at most. It's not that NHCOG is irrelevant; it does bear mentioning in a 'Government' section of the article. But prominently styling the article as to give the impression that the Northwest Hills amounts primarily to a loose conglomerate of town governments is putting the cart way, way before the horse here. Being a Connecticuter myself, I'm quite familiar with the Northwest Hills, so I protest in this case because I can only imagine how inaccurate it would be for someone entirely new to the term to navigate to this article and get the lead-off impression at first glance that "Northwest Hills" is mostly just a loose governing body. My proposal is that, if there is going to be an infobox at all, it should be a settlement infobox styled as a 'Region'. I'm taking cues in this case from the Appalachia article, which I think is the more fitting/accurate direction to go for Northwest Hills, being that it's always been more of a geographical/cultural region rather than a governmental one in any sort of lasting or defining way. My plan is to go ahead with that change unless you want to discuss further first. Jgcoleman (talk) 16:27, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Agree. The Northwest Hills are a geographical identity that are not governed by the NHCOG. The NHCOG is not a governing body but a coordinating organization. I don't believe that info box should remain as it gives the wrong impression about the organization and the geographical region. I vote go ahead and remove for all the reasons that you cite. If anything, perhaps @AirportExpert could create an article on the NHCOG and place the infobox there? Dbroer (talk) 17:05, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

@Jgcoleman Thank you for starting a discussion on this matter. I understand your concerns with the infobox, and how it can potentially lead to confusion between the geographical and vernacular region, and the regional planning agency that is the Northwest Hills COG. I am currently trying to figure out how to best organize the Wikipedia pages for each historic region of Connecticut and their respective COG, with the goal of avoiding redundancies. It is important that this distinction is made soon, since it was recently announced that starting in 2024, each Council of Government region will become county-equivalents for reporting by the US Census (reference: https://portal.ct.gov/Office-of-the-Governor/News/Press-Releases/2022/06-2022/Governor-Lamont-Announces-Census-Bureau-Approves-Proposal-for-Planning-Regions). This will ultimately define how the population of Connecticut is organized in the eyes of the federal government, and will impact census reporting and the allocation of federal funds by region. The current state of Wikipedia articles for each Connecticut region is not well-organized to reflect this significant change, and many pages appear redundant and overlapping. My goal is to avoid redundancies that will confuse readers (such as having a separate "Litchfield Hills" and "Litchfield Hills COG/census" page), while not detracting from the historic definitions of each region. If the ultimate decision is to create a separate page for Litchfield Hills and Litchfield Hills COG, then we should make sure to make the distinction clear with a disambiguation notice at the top of both pages. Thanks again for your feedback on this.--AirportExpert (talk) 20:53, 12 September 2022 (UTC)AirportExpert

I like your suggested approach in having separate region and regional census pages. In my opinion, I think the census reporting areas should be treated like metropolitan statistical areas and have separate articles because they cover different topics. Regardless of reporting, the council of government agencies are not governing body. They help coordinate priorities of the members and having the infobox on the regional article gives a false impression, particularly when the regions and council of governments have overlap. For example, portions the would be considered part of the Northwest Hills may be part of another planning region such as Bethlehem.Dbroer (talk) 13:54, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

@Dbroer I'm trying to think of the best way to approach this. What do you think each page should be titled? Or do you think the best option is to find a way to consolidate all the information (geographic region, CDP and COG) all on this one page? In the meantime, I think it's alright to go ahead and replace the existing infobox with a CDP infobox. Let me know your thoughts.--AirportExpert (talk) 17:09, 15 September 2022 (UTC)AirportExpert