Talk:List of lakes of Norway

Fjord
Think we don't have to be too apologetic that English chose to use a more narrow definition of fjord than the original Norwegian usage. Williamborg 00:40, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I quite agree! TheGrappler 17:50, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Eidsvatnet
Can someone figure out how to add Eldrevatnet, Elsvatnet, Eidsvatnet, Eidevatnet, Endestadvatnet and Eidfjordvatnet to this article so that we can remove their orphan-tags? Kingturtle (talk) 20:26, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * And Famnvatnet, Fellvatnet, Fiskeløysvatnet (Saltdal), Fiskelausvatnet (Grane), Finnvollvatnet, Finnknevatnet, Flakavatnet, Fjærvatnet, Flatningen, Fjerdvatnet, Flensjøen, Fleinsendin, Finsevatnet and Feforvatnet. Kingturtle (talk) 15:05, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
 * And Bajit Spielgajávri, Bjørnstadvatnet, Biggejávri and Bajášjávri. Kingturtle (talk) 17:55, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * All of these have been added to the "other lakes" section. Rigadoun (talk) 22:26, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Template created. Articles de-orphaned. Problem solvered. LordVetinari (talk) 13:39, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Organise
There seems to be the potential for two articles here:
 * List of lakes in Norway - Lists of comparatives and superlatives;
 * Lakes in Norway - a geographical description of the topic.

Anyone have any thoughts? LordVetinari (talk) 12:42, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the navbox will suffice? Gives us all the lakes, by county, without having to write a full article. Sadads (talk) 13:44, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I thought the same. Of course, a list of comparatives (largest, deepest etc.) is still interesting but perhaps they could be cut back to the top 20. Additionally, may I suggest the emphasis of the article shift from lists to lakes. We have the potential here to write about lakes in Norway in terms of their geography, history, uses, role in Norwegian culture, among other areas. All that's needed is a page move to Lakes in Norway. LordVetinari (talk) 14:28, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

OK. These are the options I propose:
 * A. Two articles:
 * List of lakes in Norway - A full listing of lakes similar in structure to List of lakes in Japan
 * Lakes in Norway - an article describing geography, history, uses etc
 * B. One article:
 * List of lakes in Norway - a list prefaced with a geo-historical description
 * C. One article:
 * Lakes in Norway - an article as described above but also with a couple short lists of the largest lakes
 * D. One article:
 * Water bodies of Norway - an article, a subsidiary to Geography of Norway, and similar in purpose to Water bodies of Azerbaijan in that it includes rivers

My preference is for C or D because I think Wikipedia can offer more than lists. Also, a geographical description of lakes in Norway doesn't appear to exist yet (have a look at Geography of Norway). LordVetinari (talk) 00:24, 24 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I've been meaning to do something about this for years but haven't got round to it. There surely should be a list article, hosted at this location. A big issue is the cut-off criteria for inclusion - there are some very small lakes we currently have articles on, but which ones those are seems to be a little random. The question is, how much "commentary" belongs here? C and D are not serious options because the current list must not be deleted. It's effectively an "annotated category", see WP:CLT. There's probably enough commentary that could be written, to produce a text-like article as well as a list-like one. But things like the economics of the water system would be closely tied in to rivers as well as lakes. So how about the following option?
 * E Three articles:
 * Water bodies of Norway - textual article covering geography, economics, etc of the lake and river systems
 * List of lakes in Norway - a (hopefully improved) version of this list, minus any general commentary that belongs in the water bodies article
 * List of rivers in Norway - another list-like subsidiary of the water bodies article, with more comprehensive coverage of Norway's rivers
 * How does that sound? TheGrappler (talk) 23:21, 4 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I have to agree that E sounds like the best option. And you're right about inclusion criteria being a big issue. I think the only thing keeping many of the lakes articles from orphan status is their shared navbar. May I suggest, then, that every lake be included in List of lakes in Norway but only those over a certain size or having some other significance are linked to as separate articles. There seem to be so many that have no significance other than their existence but they still have separate articles. All the info currently on those pages (location, size, elevation etc.) may be included in table format on the "List of..." page. LordVetinari (talk) 13:19, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

A lot of the article are basically just referenced to maps and a database at the moment, I'm not sure that really makes them notable! But so long as something is a "proper lake" and not just a pond, there's no reason for it not to get its own article. Articles can contain more than a bare list entry, including geocoded coordinates, photographs, a map, textual information e.g. from tourist or environmental sources, description of any settlements on its shores etc. And sometimes this extra information can be more easily found for a small lake than a larger one (often depending on whether it's on the tourist trail or in an environmentally sensitive area, for instance). How we integrate that with this list is a different problem. (I'm particularly thinking of the "Other lakes" section of this old version.)

I think stripping the main list down to 20 items was a little too radical - Norway is a country with a lot of lakes, and this page isn't "List of the 20 biggest lakes in Norway"! But at some point there has to be a cut-off. The top 100 or even 200 lakes seems fine by me (so long as we are sure they are in rank order), even though it makes it a rather large list. I think it would be a sensible solution to have separate lists for the Norwegian counties, analagous to how we have e.g. List of lakes in Kentucky done by state. This page can be kept for the larger lakes we're more sure of the rankings of. The county lists can cover any lake we happen to have a meaningful article for and need not have strict size rankings etc.

A more pressing problem: has anyone managed to open the NVE database that this article is currently sourced to? I can verify bits and bobs using the very fun NVE atlas but I believe the original author downloaded the NVE's database itself, and I don't know from what link (this would have been years ago and the NVE website has changed, which doesn't help!)

Is it possible we should remove the "deepest lakes" table? It's clear some large lakes don't have depth information available ("Ikke målt" = "Not measured") but I'm not sure if they'd have been serious contenders for the "deepest lakes" list. TheGrappler (talk) 03:59, 6 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the quick reply (here and at my talk). I agree the navbox is a little on the tremendous size. It was my first and I was trying to keep within the "List of..." practice of sorting by county. However, the Churches in London navbox you exampled at my talk page is clearly a better way of doing this.
 * I agree there should be separate lists for each county but do you mean separate pages (e.g. List of lakes in Vestfold, List of lakes in Sogn og Fjordane etc.) or one page (List of lakes in Norway) but subheaded into counties where the current article is subheaded into area, depth and volume? I suggest starting with the latter, eliminate the smallest lakes that aren't otherwise notable, and only split the page if it's still too big.
 * I had the same trouble with NVE but let it slide because the content didn't appear controversial or contentious. If we're going to clean these articles up, though, then we may as well fix that too. I've started a list of possible new sources below.
 * Agree to remove deepest lakes. Doesn't appear notable except in a handful of cases and, then, it can be mentioned in those lakes' articles.
 * BTW, I just looked at List of lakes in Kentucky and I have to say it's very easy on the eye. I'm thinking we should avoid tables, maybe? For casual reading, a basic list such as at Kentucky is more readable than a database.
 * LordVetinari (talk) 06:42, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

See here for a work in progress. LordVetinari (talk) 07:34, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Alternatively, we could just translate from the Norwegian wikipedias. (Although that google translator thing can be a bit odd: instead of "Largest volume lakes in Norway", try "Most spacious lakes in Norway". Technically correct, I suppose.) LordVetinari (talk) 11:34, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Update
Article has been split. Obviously, there's more that can be added but, for the time being, it serves its purpose. LordVetinari (talk) 10:22, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Possible new sources
Due to the current innaccessibility of the NVE source (see above), some possible alternatives are listed here:
 * http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/md.html?id=668 Ministry of the Environment
 * http://www.dirnat.no/content/500041350/The-Norwegian-Nature-Index-2010
 * http://www.environment.no/Topics/Water-pollution
 * http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/oed.html?id=750 Ministry of Petroleum and Energy (in charge of NVE)
 * http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/oed.html?id=750 Ministry of Petroleum and Energy (in charge of NVE)

Future direction of article
I think it'll be handy if I outline what my intentions were when I split this article into List of lakes in Norway and Lakes in Norway. I've noted already noted at Talk:Lakes in Norway what the purpose of that article was meant to be.

This article, though, is obviously intended purely as a list. Of course, in time, the current lists can become sortable tables with information about surface area, depth, elevation, location etc. I didn't do this for two reasons. First of all, I figured the most pressing matter was to tidy the article, making it visually presentable. Secondly, I had (and have) absolutely no idea of how the table or tables should be structured. My main problem was that, to allow a single table of all lakes in Norway (for the purposes of showing the 10 or 50 largest, deepest etc throughout all of Norway) and still show where each lake is located (e.g. which county), we'd have to sacrifice being able to sort by location, which is one of the columns that should be sortable. If anyone can come up with a decent list that shows as much necessary information as best as possible, then go for it and good luck. LordVetinari (talk) 10:09, 28 May 2011 (UTC)