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Lisco or Cisco?

The Census Bureau seems to think that the name of this place is Cisco [1], but the official Nebraska highway maps list it as Lisco [2], as do other maps such as the DeLorme atlas (ISBN 0899333281). The USPS ZIP code lookup [3] returns a ZIP code for Lisco, but not Cisco. Is "Cisco" just a Census Bureau typo? —Bkell (talk) 21:45, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a simple typo; the official map lists it as Cisco as well. On the other hand, this USGS website lists it as Lisco, and no variant spellings are listed. It's normal procedure to keep CDP articles at their titles, although there's precedent for doing otherwise. What do you think? Nyttend (talk) 00:29, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, by "typo" I meant "systematic Census Bureau typo", as if whoever first entered it into the Census Bureau system got it wrong and then it spread throughout the whole agency. —Bkell (talk) 00:34, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If the town's name is indeed "Cisco", someone should get around to mentioning it to the locals. – Swid (talk · edits) 00:38, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Interestingly, on the official Census Bureau map you linked to, Nyttend, the community itself is called Cisco, but the portion of Garden County it's in is called Lisco. —Bkell (talk) 00:45, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It seems a slightly odd typo, since the letters are on the other side of the keyboard; but ah well. I need to get working on something else. Could you do all the moving of articles? Please note that the county template and the county article both link to Cisco now. Also: since the Census Bureau is so definitive, and the information is for a CDP named Cisco, you really should leave that title in the intro—perhaps something like (Cisco is a census-designated place (CDP)...United State. The United States Census Bureau is the only entity that calls the community Cisco; all other sources refer to it as Lisco, and the surrouding CCD is named Lisco by the Census Bureau)? Nyttend (talk) 00:48, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps someone's hurried handwriting made the L in Lisco look like a C. —Bkell (talk) 00:57, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Something like that I guess. And the confusion will go on for years, so a mention of this apparent error needs to be in the article lead. Andrewa (talk) 09:12, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Moved back to Lisco, Nebraska, and all references to it have been changed to "Lisco". —Bkell (talk) 01:15, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The U.S. Census Bureau has an excellent feedback and query site, and we should have an answer within a cople of days to this query. Unfortunately it seems that only I can access that page for now at least! But when they answer it, we should have a publicly available URL for it. I propose that we then list this reply as an external link, which I think should be regarded as a reliable and verifiable source.

Meanwhile, the lead should reflect the article title. Phrasing it to suit everybody is proving tricky. Andrewa (talk) 03:12, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, well, well... The Census Bureau have been very helpful, and they are still looking into the matter, but in their first non-automated response to my query they state that in the 1990 United States Census data this same CDP is called Lisco. And I'm guessing, also in any previous ones in which it existed as a CDP, although they haven't actually said this.

So there now seems little doubt that calling it Cisco in the 2000 United States Census data was a simple error. Hopefully, it will only ever appear in that data and in the (many) documents that use it either directly or indirectly.

Do we wait for further information, or can we rewrite the lead on this basis? The CDP is called Lisco, the same as the community it represents, and it always was. The mispelling in the census data is an important fact that belongs in the article, but it's not an alternative name for the CDP. That was a mistake. Andrewa (talk) 02:35, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, obviously some people still think that there's a CDP named Cisco, despite growing evidence to the contrary. The problem is, the article as it stands is now both inaccurate and seriously misleading. Andrewa (talk) 03:41, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

From my talk page

I'm quite confused: how can you possibly say that I'm wrong in saying that there's a CDP named Cisco? Whether or not the Census Bureau erred (which I believe it did), it really is named that—see this and this map. Although we've proven that the CDP should be named Lisco, I can't see how/why you say that I'm wrong: your own edit acknowledges that there's a CDP named Cisco. As for the line referenced by the GR1—that source goes by Census Bureau data for Census-listed places; as the Census Bureau lists Cisco but not Lisco, there are no data for a place called Lisco in that database. Of course, we could also go with another source, such as the U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Lisco populated place listing from the GNIS. Nyttend (talk) 04:02, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's an interesting distinction. I think there are at least two questions here:

  • Is this article primarily about the community, or about the CDP?
  • What is the CDP called, as:
    • It was called Lisco in 1990.
    • It was only called Cisco in 2000 by mistake.

I admit that my previous edit was in error. I didn't then know about the 1990 census.

It seems to me that:

  • The article is primarily about the community, not the census, even though it's almost all data from the census.
  • The CDP is called Lisco. That's what it was called in 1990, and that's what it will be called in 2010.

We could I suppose write a lead something like:

Cisco, Nebraska was a CDP in the 2000 United States Census, created by a transcription error and used in place of Lisco, Nebraska for that census only.

But really, isn't the more natural reading that the name Cisco was always a mistake, will always be a mistake, and that the CDP was always really called Lisco? Andrewa (talk) 04:21, 8 October 2008 (UTC) We could I suppose write[reply]

No, because the CDP is currently named "Cisco"—even if that be a typo, that's the current reading. The current lead—giving primacy to the correct name, although noting the current name of the CDP—is better, as it leaves no confusion either about the correct name or about the data for the 2000 census. If we used the proposed lead instead, it would make it sound as if the place were no longer in existence, aside from OR concerns, as we have no direct evidence that it was a transcription error: it's quite strong circumstantial evidence (thus the article is named Lisco), but no direct evidence. Nyttend (talk) 04:29, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Disagree that the CDP is currently named "Cisco". It's labelled that in a great deal of documentation, but that's the whole point: This is a mistake. We should document this mistake rather than repeating it.
The lead I quoted wasn't a serious proposal, or even a straw man, and I agree that we have no evidence that it was in fact a transcription error.
It will be interesting to see what more the Census Bureau have to say. If, on the one hand, they say that the name Cisco will continue to be used in 2010, then I'd stand corrected: This would indeed show that the current name is Cisco. If, on the other hand, they were to correct the spelling in the 2000 data, then I think we'd need to say that the CDP never was called Cisco, because this wouldn't be a renaming, it would be the correction of an error.
And there are a variety of other possible responses. Andrewa (talk) 11:49, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
"The lead I quoted wasn't a serious proposal, or even a straw man" Would you be willing to avoid joking? As it is, do we have any sources to say that the Census Bureau actually calls the CDP Lisco currently? Given that the Factfinder shows it as Cisco, that the map I already provided calls it Cisco, and that this and this really detailed maps all show it as Cisco, while "Lisco" gives you an error message at the Factfinder, it seems highly presumptuous—not to mention OR—to say that the Census actually names the CDP "Lisco". For the sake of "what do they call it", I don't care that it's a mistake: if I call you "Andrew" most times that I talked to you, only to call you "Alexander" when I talk with you a few times on a certain day, it's highly mistaken to say that I called you "Andrew" on that one day. Nyttend (talk) 12:31, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't joking, I was trying to point out the difficulty of writing a satisfactory lead to such an article. The sources you quote are just different publications of the Census 2000 data. Nobody is suggesting that it used any name other than Cisco.
As for WP:OR, I think that's a rather long bow. If we had evidence that the latitude and longitude of a CDP as published on the census data were wrong, surely we wouldn't repeat that error in our article, regardless of how many census-derived documents repeated the error. So, what makes this particular error special, that we would want to reproduce it in our article? Andrewa (talk) 12:46, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

AHA

See http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/rd_2ktiger/err_rd2k.html

which reads in part:

Errata Note 28: Garden County, Nebraska - Census Designated Place

Lisco census designated place (CDP) is erroneously shown on Record Type C, Entity Type P with the name "Cisco" (FIPS code 09112). The FIPS code for Lisco would be 28315.

In other words, this CDP was never called Cisco. It's an error in the published data, repeated in many other places. Andrewa (talk) 12:57, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If the Census Bureau says that the place should be named the other thing, that's as good as renaming it; thanks for finding this! Nyttend (talk) 13:07, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No, one important point to be learned from this whole discussion is that the Census Bureau make no such claims to being the absolute arbiters of place names. They made a mistake, and they showed no reluctance to correct it. On the other hand, if you had your way, Wikipedia would have continued to repeat this erroneous information in our article until it was corrected by the Census Bureau, without regard to other information we had which clearly showed it to be in error.
As I said above, for us to correct this mistake was not WP:OR, any more than correcting a mistake in the latitude and longitude would have been OR if we'd found that they put the CDP on the Equator in mid-Atlantic. In both this scenario and in the actual case of the name of Lisco CDP, our article should have reported the correct information, and also the error on the Census data, and cited the sources of all of this information. And again, I'd like to think we'd have reported it to the Bureau, and again I think the Census Bureau would have corrected it promptly.
But there's no reason for us to wait for this correction. The Census Bureau is not God.
This discussion is relevant to other ongoing discussions. The issues at Talk:Pine Hills, California#Requested move for example are far more involved. Andrewa (talk) 19:39, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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