Wikipedia talk:WikiProject French communes/Archive 2

Naming convention
Have members of this project reached an agreement on the naming convention for articles? I noticed (looking in Category:Communes of Puy-de-Dôme) that 4 out of 23 are named Commune_name, Puy-de-Dôme, which probably is a nice and sustainable format, but not widely used. I just started Saint-Étienne-sur-Usson and would have named it Saint-Étienne-sur-Usson, Puy-de-Dôme if I'd found a directive to do so on this WikiProject. Anyone know what's agreed here? &mdash; Донама 15:12, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * General Wikipedia policy is not to disambiguate unless needed. I think it's much more elegant to do it that way than to force a rather unnatural naming scheme on articles. Would "Lyon" or "Lyon, Rhône" seem more natural? Sure, I imagine that lots of communes will have to be disambugated (especially the Saint-someone's), but it should be manageable. Stevage 19:48, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Ok, cool. I wondered because, for Australian cities and towns (except 4 or 5 of the largest cities) the policy is that the article is at Town name, State name because so many of the Anglophone, German and Irish names are duplicated in USA and the UK. &mdash; Донама 00:05, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I don't like that policy either. "Byron Bay" is a much better name for an article than "Byron Bay, New South Wales" - I have *never* heard it referred to as that. The "Town, State" nomenclature is totally artificial, and I suspect as much for "Commune, Département". More authentic would be "Lyon (69)" or something. Stevage 08:17, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I have no idea what Lyon (69) means :) Hopefully Lyon is a big enough city to take the Lyon title, which is the same for large Aussie cities too. At first the Aussie naming convention annoyed me too but now I'm use to it and don't really mind. The thing is that for Australia so many of the names originate from some place in the UK or elsewhere in Europe, we're inclined to feel the need to disambiguate in the title. And we do use the full name like this in normal speech when we need to distinguish a town or city name internationally. France is different though so I fully agree that this naming convention should be avoided where possible. &mdash; Донама 02:11, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Personally I think I'd rather see brackets or something: Valence (Rhône-Ales), which is recognisable as a Wikipedia convention for disambiguation, rather than a totally artificial but pseudo-official naming like "Grenoble, Isère". As such, we would disambiguate at the highest level possible: If there was a Montreal in France, we would just have Montréal (France), rather than Montréal, Loir-et-Cher or something. The point being, the reader who finds himself on that page simply wants to know whether he's in Canada or France - he doesn't care (yet) about the name of the department. Stevage 22:33, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I think that having "Lyon (69)" (69 being the departements number) would be a good idea since it doesn't express the liklyhood of people thinking that cities are classified after the river they are on (LOTS of departements are named after rivers) and it also distinct, easy to remember, and is a system only used in france so wouldn't reflact the problems with australia. The only problem is that people might confuse it with municipal arrondisements but those normally go as "Lyon IX" for "Lyon 9th arrondisement" right?Chris5897 17:59, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

All of the other language wikipedias I've been to for a commune I just started editing (and moved) had the format Commune (Department). I moved the Commune I'm editing before discovering this WikiProject. I'll leave it the way I changed it too (as this doesn't break any links), and maintains cross-pedia consistency. --Formerly the IP-Address 24.22.227.53 (talk) 00:42, 24 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Since I prefer consistency within English wikipedia over consistency with other wikipedias, I'll ask for the article Pierres (Eure-et-Loir) to be moved back to its old name. Markussep Talk 13:46, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Categorisation
I notice that communes are currently located in "Communes of D", and those categories tend to belong to the categories "Cities, towns and villages in France" and "D" (and possibly a "Towns in R") where D is the department and R is the region. See Category:Communes of Morbihan for an example.

I'd like to suggest that we formalise this structure, and also add these categories to Category:French Communes by Département, moving all the "Communes of D" type articles to that article, and leaving only "Towns in R" in the "Cities, towns and villages in France".

We should also attempt to define some distinction between a town and a commune. I believe that "commune" is really only useful as an administrative structure, and that we should be using "town" and "city" wherever possible, to make it accessible to non-French people.

Comments please. Stevage 10:21, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Can you please clarify... You mean to remove Category:Communes of DépartementX from all articles about towns and cities and add, where necessary, a Category:Towns in RegionR to these articles? &mdash; Donama 13:38, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Stevage: I do not really see the point of your suggestion, or maybe I do not understand exactly what you mean. For instance in "moving all the "Communes of D" type articles to that article": which article are you refering to? Maybe you can have a look at the categorisation of communes in the Commons and tell us what you think about it. Thanks. olivier 18:17, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I was certainly vague.

Suggestion 1:

Category:Cities, towns and villages in France (suggest renaming to "of France")
 * Category:Communes of France by département
 * Category:Communes of Rhône
 * Oullins

Suggestion 2 (unrelated to above):

Category:Cities, towns and villages in France (suggest renaming to "of France")
 * Category:Préfectures of regions of France (naming open to discussion)
 * Lyon

Suggestion 3 (compatible with above):

Category:Cities, towns and villages in France
 * Category:Préfectures of départements of France (naming open to discussion)
 * Lyon
 * Grenoble

Suggestion 4 (replacing 2 and 3, and integrating 1)

Category:Cities, towns and villages in France
 * Category:Préfectures of départements of France
 * Grenoble
 * Category:Préfectures of regions of France
 * Lyon
 * Category:Communes of France by département
 * Category:Communes of Rhône
 * Oullins
 * Lyon

The disadvantage with 4 is that the category page for departmental prefectures would not show regional prefectures directly - you'd have to go into the subpage. It's more of a limitation of the way categories work in the MediaWiki software.

One last refinement, suggestion 5:

Category:Cities, towns and villages in France
 * Category:Préfectures of départements of France
 * Category:Préfectures of départements of Rhône-Alpes
 * Grenoble
 * Lyon?
 * Category:Préfectures of regions of France
 * Lyon
 * Category:Communes of France by département
 * Category:Communes of Rhône
 * Oullins
 * Lyon

Préfectures
Ok, I have created a and added it to all the relevant préfecture articles.

How would people feel about doing something similar for préfectures of départements for each region? In other words, creating navigational boxes as follows:
 * ... Stevage 08:58, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
 * ... Stevage 08:58, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
 * ... Stevage 08:58, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I have now created the first of these as follows:

It's implemented in the respective articles. Comments welcome! Stevage 13:40, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

And now, based on a common parent : Stevage 08:13, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Project directory
Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 17:04, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject France
A proposal has been made for the above WikiProject at WikiProject_Council/Proposals. STTW (talk)  20:50, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Categorisation by arrondissement?
I notice that categorisation of communes is at départment level, and no lower, but some of these categories are becoming rather large (see Calvados, for example). What would people think about categorising by arrondissement? Alai 06:30, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 21:32, 29 December 2006 (UTC)