User talk:Gereonmc

Your recent edits
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got it thanx --Gereonmc (talk) 16:31, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

March 2009
Welcome, and thank you for experimenting with Wikipedia. Your test on the page Districts of Germany worked, and it has been automatically reverted. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. If you would like to experiment further, please use the sandbox. If you believe there has been a mistake and would like to report a false positive, please report it here. Thank you. SoxBot III (talk | owner) 18:10, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Hang on...
Hi Gereonmc - could I just ask you to hang on for a minute with your changes to German administrative subdivision nomenclature? It's a pretty large change to the system used here in the past. It won't harm to put your case forward at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Germany, and seeing if other people agree first. I think there were good reasons for the previous naming, and so getting a consensus for change first is a good idea. There's no big rush - if there's agreement to change it, you'll find there'll be people to help you implement the changes. Best, Knepflerle (talk) 13:54, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

If you wish.....

I worked for the German County Association in Brussels and also dealt with this nomenclature. So the offical name for Landkreis/Kreis in the german local communities associations is county. District is not appropriate as it is only referring to an administrative level. But the counties and counts boroughs are democratic self governmental units with the right of self-goverment stated in the german constitution. District is more likely to be the Regierungsbezirk which is only administrative and belongs to the administration of the Bundesland. It ist crucial for understanding the german federalism to distinguish between the different levels of democracy and federalism. In Germany there are three levels. The federal level, the level of the regions/Bundesländer and the local level. The allocation of duties and responibilities is done by the constitution. The Regierungsbezirk is a regional level of administration. The Landkreis is in first place a local level of self-government above the municipalities. Only on the second place the Counties execute administrative tasks for the Länder or the Federal state. --Gereonmc (talk) 14:09, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your detailed reply. As I said, if you leave a note at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Germany, then most people interested in these articles will get to see what you write, and there'll be enough people (and automated editing tools) to ensure that any changes are applied uniformly over the articles to keep them consistent.  Writing what you did above will be a really good first step, and I am sure people will consider your plan carefully.  All the best, Knepflerle (talk) 14:20, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The terminology has been extensively discussed several years back and was actually based on EU translation guides. Please refrain from major changes without gaining consensus. I will dig out the relevant links shortly. Agathoclea (talk) 15:46, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The link has already been provided to you I see. I am starting to delete all the cut-and paste moves you have done recently as they constitute a copyright violation. This is not to say that if there is a consensus to move the article in question to those title it can't be done by actually moving them. Agathoclea (talk) 15:52, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The main problem is that even the EU does not use a consistent terminoligy. Exspecially they use district for Landkreis and Regierungsbezirk without any differentiation. This is not good because of the reasons mentioned above. By the way if you search the EU-translation database for Landkreis you will find county. For kreisfreie Stadt also County Borough. But the terminoligy is not consistent.--Gereonmc (talk) 16:57, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I can see where you are getting at. I favored county myself when we had the discussion about 2 or 3 years ago. Nevertheless it was agreed to follow the translation guide mainly to get a consistent use of terms within our articles. For transpency reasons I will keep the remainder of this discussions to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Germany. Agathoclea (talk) 17:50, 26 March 2009 (UTC)