Talk:New Jersey

5th smallest state

Should be 4th smallest state 2A0D:6FC7:41F:9CDA:4371:768:E182:7CA4 (talk) 12:28, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

@2A0D:6FC7:41F:9CDA:4371:768:E182:7CA4 Source?? -Lemonaka 03:32, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

You'll need to give a source for this info. There are those who say that it's 4th-smallest by land area, but it's 5th-smallest by total area, which is what is generally used. Lindsey40186 (talk) 04:01, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request

In the History section, please remove the sentence “ Around 180 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period, New Jersey bordered North Africa.” This is not mentioned in the source provided. Also please add the subheading of “Prehistoric era”. 2600:100C:A216:3864:78B2:C9B5:2A6A:71BA (talk) 22:06, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

 Done ABG (Talk/Report any mistakes here) 02:31, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

12th or 11th most populous?

The article currently claims that NJ is the 12th most populous state, although it recently said 11th. This is strange, given this claim links to the article showing states by population, which puts NJ at 11th. What's with the discrepancy? FiveInParticular (talk) 22:22, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Citation missing in first paragraph

There should be a citation for the fact stated in the first paragraph of the article that New Jersey is the only state for which every county is deemed urban by the US Census Bureau. Is it certain that this fact is true? 73.153.196.210 (talk) 07:39, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

The citation for this is in the second paragraph of New_Jersey#Population. Per MOS:LEADCITE, Because the lead usually repeats information that is in the body, editors should balance the desire to avoid redundant citations in the lead with the desire to aid readers in locating sources for challengeable material. Kire1975 (talk) 07:56, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

The archived citation that is linked for the fact that "New Jersey is the only state for which every count is deemed urban" is a page from 1999 that shows all the metropolitan areas and components within the US. I have two concerns:

1. Is it true that if a county belongs to a metropolitan area that it is deemed urban? I believe that the Census Bureau has a separate designation for whether an area is deemed "urban," and these areas do not necessarily follow county lines. For example, here are the areas of Delaware that are designated as either an urban cluster or an urbanized area:

https://dhss.delaware.gov/dhss/dph/hp/files/ruralurban.pdf

Similarly, here is an interactive map that shows the urban areas in New Jersey:

https://njogis-newjersey.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/NJDOT::urbanized-areas/explore

Both of these maps show some amount of urban area in every county of both states.

2. If we do indeed just want to use the fact that all of New Jersey's counties belong to some Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), then I notice in the archived citation from 1999 that all five counties in Rhode Island belong to the Providence-Fall River-Warwick, RI-MA Metropolitan Statistical Area. New Jersey is not the only state for which each county belongs to an MSA. 2600:6C50:427F:E093:B5C9:DD74:43BC:B478 (talk) 18:57, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Grammatical error

Culture > Cuisine: New Jersey's third-largest industry is food and agriculture just behind pharmaceuticals and tourism. RagingBoson (talk) 14:35, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks for pointing it out. oknazevad (talk) 19:06, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

"Most dense"

@Alansohn: New Jersey happening to have the highest ratio of residents to land area is perhaps interesting trivia, but it isn't worthy of being the first sentence of the article. Being the first sentence implies that this is something especially significant -- almost defining -- about the state, but this isn't true. It isn't relevant to how people in the state live at all. It simply has to do with the fact that New Jersey has fewer almost-empty rural areas than New York.

And no, population-weighted density isn't something I just came up with. It's existed for decades as it has long been recognized that area-weighted density is a flawed metric. Elli (talk | contribs) 19:59, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

• Elli, I really don't care that you don't like the metric. The sources for population density are from the United States Census Burau, which doesn't care about your original research on the matter. How can anyone who can make such an edit allowed to be an editor, let alone an admin? God help us all. Alansohn (talk) 20:04, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Alansohn I did not add any original research to the article. I removed a sentence from the lead as an editorial choice, because while it's true that New Jersey has the highest area-weighted density of any state, that doesn't mean it is the most relevant fact to tell our readers. A much more useful first sentence is the one we have now, discussing the state's location/region, both things that are actually relevant (and consistent with our articles on other states). Elli (talk | contribs) 20:08, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  • Elli, the undisputed fact that the state is "the most densely populated" in the country using a measure rather objectively calculated by the United States Census Bureau was added to the article in this edit, almost 20 years ago, and appears to have been the consensus of all editors over that period of time. If you truly believe your theories rejecting population density as an objective measure, why not get any kind of real consensus for the removal of this defining characteristic from the article? Maybe there are other supporters of the inane concept that density is just a state of mind which makes New York more densely populated than New Jersey? Alansohn (talk) 20:44, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

    @Alansohn just because something has been in an article for a while doesn't mean one cannot BOLDly change it. I did not expect this removal to be controversial. Others are welcome to participate in this discussion to build a clearer consensus, of course. Elli (talk | contribs) 20:46, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

    • Elli, it's been in the article for nearly 20 years and and a total of 10,000 edits since the change was made in 2005. The consensus for the nearly two decades that it has been present has been to keep the first sentence as stating that "New Jersey is the most densely populated U.S. state. " and this consensus has been breathtakingly stable. This encyclopedia would be a worthless pile of crap if every passing editor who wants to spit in the face of stable consensus were to wreak their havoc in articles, making "editorial choice" after "editorial choice".
      You are correct; you've been BOLD. Per WP:BRD, the status quo ante should be restored and a genuine effort should be made on your part to reach consensus that this 20-year-long consensus should change. Please let me know how you plan to proceed and how you want to split up the task of reverting the BOLD change and reaching out to the community to support your logic that "simple area-weighted density is not a relevant metric", that it's possible to "add a bunch of land with no people which would change the metric while not changing how anyone actually lives" and that the "most dense state by perception of its average resident is NY, not NJ" a claim that is whipped entirely out of thin air. I'm sure that this logic will convince the masses to change the consensus in your favor. Alansohn (talk) 02:30, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

      @Alansohn Silence is not a particularly strong form of consensus. The current state of this appears to be 2 opposed to this being the lead sentence (me and Jessintime) to 1 in favor (you).

      Do other reliable sources commonly refer to New Jersey's simple area-weighted density as one of its most important characteristics? Let's take a look. Britannica's lead sentences: New Jersey, constituent state of the United States of America. One of the original 13 states, it is bounded by New York to the north and northeast, the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, and Delaware and Pennsylvania to the west. have no mention of density. "Most dense" isn't even mentioned once in the article, the closest we get is in the second paragraph: New Jersey is one of the smallest states in area, but it is highly urbanized and has one of the country’s highest population densities.. I'd be fine with a similar type of inclusion here.

      And again, population-weighted density is not just a metric I came up with. I already demonstrated that to you. Yes, area-weighted density is a metric that exists, but it is only an interesting trivia fact, not something worthy of the first sentence in this article. That New Jersey has the nation's highest area-weighted density is insufficient justification for that being the first sentence. California, with a much more clear-cut claim to "largest population" than New Jersey has to "highest density", doesn't start with "California is the most populous state", because even though that is clearly true, it's not the most relevant information to present! Elli (talk | contribs) 03:55, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

      • Elli, I admire your persistence in disregarding consensus. The article's first sentence has stood for nearly 20 years, for almost 10,000 edits and for millions upon millions of views every year, reinforcing support for that decades-long consensus. You are absolutely correct that the article for California doesn't mention that state's status as the nation's most populous in the first sentence; the article waits all the way until.... wait for it ... the third sentence in the first paragraph of the lead to make the mention while Britannica waits until the sixth sentence. Maybe, per California, the mention should be elsewhere in the lead, perhaps a sentence or two later, yet your "solution" to address the imagined problem was to remove it completely from the lead.

        As you continue to provide further evidence to support the status quo ante, I hope that you will follow WP:BRD and work towards gaining consensus for your position that the state's status as the nation's most densely populated cannot be mentioned anywhere in the lead. Do you still stand behind your position that it shouldn't appear anywhere in the lead? Alansohn (talk) 04:14, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

        @Alansohn I'd be fine with something along the lines of "New Jersey has the highest population density" anywhere past the second sentence as a compromise, though I'd prefer we note that it's "area-weighted population density" to avoid misleading readers into thinking that the average person's experience in New Jersey is of more local density than in any other state, something demonstrably not true. Elli (talk | contribs) 04:20, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

        Elli, as much as I admire your willingness to reconsider removal of the content from the lead in its entirety, I genuinely don't understand what the confusion is about population density defined as "a measurement of population per unit land area" and what it is about that definition that causes confusion. Nor do I understand how we could possibly be "misleading readers into thinking that the average person's experience in New Jersey is of more local density than in any other state" nor do I get how this is "demonstrably not true". What is this based on? Is there any consensus showing that that other editors agree with you about this idea?

        While sources widely describe the state as the most densely populated, I have never seen the claim that perceived local density in New Jersey is different from its actual density nor have I seen that this is an idea that has any broad acceptance or is worth considering. We need to avoid WP:FALSEBALANCE in giving credence to such fringe beliefs. Alansohn (talk) 04:53, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

        @Alansohn did you actually read the source I linked you about population-weighted density? Look, I don't want to fight you about this any longer. Just add your version to the third sentence, I won't stop you, but just keep in mind that it's a somewhat misleading trivia fact. The concept of population-weighted density is certainly not "fringe", and it's obviously more in line with how people experience density in their day-to-day lives (this is explicitly what the metric is designed for). Elli (talk | contribs) 05:10, 17 January 2025 (UTC)