Portal talk:Portugal/geography

PORTAL:PORTUGAL - GEOGRAPHY TALK

Disambiguation pages

 * We need to clean many Portuguese disambigs, for instance the Azores and Madeira are passed in EN wikipedia as Portuguese dependencies or worse independente states! this is umbelievable! An example: Santana. There are many articles like this one in EN. I don't know if that was ignorance or someone's motivation. --Pedro 22:50, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Structure of articles about Portuguese locations

 * What do you think of the method used in the Portuguese Wikipedia: We have Grândola and Grândola (freguesia). It is difficult because we have districts with the same name as their main municipality and city, municipalities that have the same name of their main parish and city or town, and have parishes with the name of their main city, town or village. What I'm saying is that, for instance, Sacavém is not part of the Municipality of Loures. But if you see, the article about the municipality of Loures focuses on the city of Loures and not in the other city of the municipality, Sacavém, or the 6 towns: Bobadela, Bucelas, Moscavide, Santa Iria de Azóia, Santo António dos Cavaleiros and São João da Talha. Another example is Castelo Branco: we have Castelo Branco (district), Castelo Branco (municipality) and Castelo Branco (city) that also corresponds to the parish of Castelo Branco. Eventually there are parishes that do not correspond to the location (city, town, village, place), for instance: before 1997 Alfornelos was a place (village?) inside the parish of Brandoa. Can someone comment on this confusion? Gameiro 04:16, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

My proposal - Afonso Silva

 * DISTRICT LEVEL: Right now, every district has its own article in the form, "Capital (district)", that's a good policy I think. Most of them contain only a list of the municipalities, the template and a paragraph about its location and area. That could start being expanded, it's only 18 articles.
 * MUNICIPALITY LEVEL: Now that every district has its own page with a list and a template with the municipalities that compose it, I think we should start creating the articles of each of the 308 municipalities, I've made about 80 articles, if you take a look at the List of municipalities of Portugal, you'll see what municipalities are missing. And don't forget, the articles should have the infobox Template:Infobox Municipality pt in its present structure or with improvements, but I think the present is a good structure, discuss any possible changes in its talk page.
 * PARISH LEVEL:After creating the articles of every municipality, we should then start creating the articles about the parishes, that's more than 4000 articles! A few parishes already have their own article, but that's about 1% or something like that. We should create an infobox with the structure of that used in the municipalities. In the cases where a city or a town is just one parish, the parish article should make a reference to that and should also be included in the Category:Cities in Portugal or Category:Towns in Portugal. In the biggest cities (and some other exceptions), where the city is composed by more than one parish, an article should be created about it with links to the parishes, etc. The municipality articles are already included in the city or town categories, when we create the article on its parishes, we should then move the category to the new article, right now I think that's a good provisional solution. The articles should have the name of the parish and in the cases where a municipality has the same name of a parish, the parish article should be "parish name (parish)".
 * This is my proposal, please make yours, or propose changes to mine. Regards. Afonso Silva 13:10, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

You are all forgetting the Metropolitan areas of Porto and Lisbon that are much more important than districts and are functional divisions of the country; these have assemblies, a president and are expected to have similar autonomy like Madeira and Azores. In fact, these are the two most important divisions of the country, and are now being expanded in their power. The current government wants to stop the creation of the urban communities and focus on autonomy for Gr. Porto, Gr. Lisbon and at municipal level and it wants also to change the parish geography in the country, by dividing rural and urban parishes, extinction and creation of parishes by their importance in population/urban terms.---Pedro 14:06, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
 * We must firstly focus on the municipalities, cities, towns and historical villages. Civil Parishes are divisions of municipalities; a parish can be a neighbourhood (or a group of it), a town, a village, a group of villages or a city. Do not make a direct relation between a Parish and a Village/Town.

I agree with Afonso Silva proposal. We should also set a few guidelines in order to minimize confusion and redundancy of information. I leave my proposal for some of the guidelines:

If there is no opposition I will adapt the Template:Infobox_Municipality_pt for this use. João Correia 15:30, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
 * When there is a parish with the same name as the municipality, the parish page should include only relevant info on the parish itself i.e. Coat of Arms, President name and Political party;
 * In the case of a City that belongs to a particular municipality but its not the head of the municipality (eg. Agualva-Cacém), a infobox similar to that of municipality should be used.


 * To Pedro:
 * 1st - A parish is in the majority of the situations, a village, a town or a city. That's the rule, and its obvious why it is like that, because every village, town or small city had a church and, therefore, it was a religious parish (paróquia), from which the present civil parishes originate. Of course there are exceptions, specially in the biggest cities, where parishes are, like you said, neighbourhoods, but also in the cities that experienced a steady growth and because of that their neighbour parishes became urban parishes, although, and this is my point, they are still parishes and so, they need an article. That's just what I said.
 * 2nd - I don't see any incompatibility between having a "district, municipality, parish" system, (municipalities and parishes are the core of the local administration since 1976) and a system which includes the present associations of municipalities, if we create a field in the infobox to say to what community or metropolitan area a municipality belongs it will not leave its district, we'll just have more info, and that's good.
 * 3rd - At last, wikipedia is not a crystal ball, and so, I don't know what is the government going to do with the powers of the rural and urban parishes, nor with the powers of the metropolian assemblies. Right now, this last have limited powers, and the municipality is still the most important subdivision of the territory, that's why I focus my attention in them. If any changes are made, I'll be glad to make the necessary changes. Afonso Silva 18:45, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * To Joao:
 * I agree with your ideia, that's nice, I just think the template should be different, for example: [Template:Infobox_parish_pt]], changes would be easier and there are field like the municipal holiday that only make more sense in the municipality box only. And where it says "district" it should say "municipality", I am right? Regards. Afonso Silva 18:45, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * The Lisbon and Porto metropolitan areas are WELL established TODAY! They just have growing powers. For instance, Porto Metro is mostly property of Greater Porto, the assembly is in functions, and it was elected by the municipal assemblies. It even has a president, elected by the presidents of the municipalities, etc. Shortly it will even have two new TV channels (Invicta TV and Porto Canal). It is the real mid organization between the state and the municipalities in these two areas! I didnt talked about the others that are being established, that the government halted and there's confusion over their future. I've no doubt that the municipalities are after the state the most important division. (that's not the issue). When you see in TV the Mayor of Porto talking about the Airport and the TGV he is talking as the president of Greater Porto, there is no airport in Porto municipality! The airport is between Matosinhos, Maia and Vila do Conde. The former president of greater Porto was Valentim Loureiro (Mayor of Gondomar), he is still the president of Porto Metro. Plus, the islands have no districts, i'll change "district" to "District/region" and one can put in there just the district, autonomous region or Gr.Porto/Gr.Lisbon, see what I did to Póvoa de Varzim... by the way, flags are missing. -Pedro 19:31, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok, that's fine, I never said we could not make articles about metropolitan areas, if they exist, wikipedia should have an article on them and municipalities that are included in any metropolitan area should have that reference. Santa Maria da Feira and Póvoa de Varzim are both part of Greater Porto and belong to different districts. That should have a mention. A lot of structures exist at a district level, the members of the parliament are elected proportionally to each district population, etc. "District/Region" is good, another field should be created to say if a municipality belongs to any muncipality association or metropolitan area, because they are different things, that's my solution. About flags, I think they are just the coat of arms over a square with a specific colour, that would make the box have the double of the width and it is not so important, the flags don't have any special information beyond the coat of arms. Afonso Silva 19:43, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I propose we move the talk bout the structure of articles about Portuguese locations to the GEOGRAPHY TALK. What do you think? Afonso Silva 19:47, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, it's a flag... and flags caan be quite different. Obviously they follow a pattern (as far as I know there are three different patterns) plus the different colours. Although I think it is cute to have just the coat of arms, but most articles in wikipedia, have both things. About the talk, be my guest. --Pedro 21:12, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

City Template
I’ve finished the infobox for the cities that aren’t head of municipality Template:Infobox_city_pt, please take a look and give your feedback. João Correia 19:19, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

It seems nice! I think it can also be used in towns and villages, but anyway, it is a good job. Thanks| When I finish working on the List of municipalities of Portugal, I'll start applying it to the articles. Regards! Afonso Silva 19:57, 7 March 2006 (UTC)