Wikipedia talk:WikiProject French départements/Archive 1

Tarquin, Olivier, do the French departments have a flag or coat of arms? If so, I´d be nice to include these in the table, like is done with the countries at WikiProject Countries.

Some other suggestions:


 * Put the department number in the table (maybe in the header, 06 - Alpes-Maritimes or Alpes-Maritimes (06))
 * Maybe it's better use English names. Department, prefecture are all perfectly good English words, while département, préfecture and especially sous-préfecture will not be familiar with most readers (though linking it already helps).

Jeronimo

Good point for the flags. In fact, French departments seem to have one, although it is very rarely displayed (being French, I do not even remember having seen the one of my own department). These flags seem to be based on the ones of the ancient provinces where the departments are located.

More often seen in France, though, is the logo of the Conseil General (the governing body of the departement).

I found a list there: http://www.cyber-flag.net, although there might be copyright issue.

Bottom line: flags would be graphically nice, also of very little relevance. Maybe they could be included as Jeronimo suggests, in the table, together with the logos. Or maybe the logos alone would be better.

Regarding the department number. I agree that it would be better to include it in the table. I am still wondering how to explain what this number is about if it is in the table.

I guess that the question about using local vs. English name is a very classic one on Wikipedia. Is there any guideline about this?

- Olivier


 * If the logos alone are frequently seen, that may be sufficient, flags could be added only if wanted.
 * If you want to include the number in the table, you may want to link it to an explanatory article about the numbers of departments in France.
 * The general rule in Wikipedia for local vs. English is to use the generally accepted English term if there is one. However, I'm not a native English speaker, and I don't know if department and prefecture are acceptable English language terms. Jeronimo


 * using "departement" with or without the e-acute is a nice natural disambiguation from many other uses of "department" (there's a redirect, so linking either with or with is fine). Most English-speakers shouldn't have a problem with it. I've seen "departement" commonly used in English when dealing with French geography -- maybe italicizing would be good. -- Tarquin 06:28 Sep 5, 2002 (PDT)

Disambiguation (river/department)
Any thoughts on how to do this? Eg:


 * Cher (departement)
 * Cher (France)

I would tend to favor:


 * Cher (French departement)

since "departement" alone is not very explicit for most readers.


 * I prefer Cher (departement) - when people already have to use pipes, keeping them short is a good thing. That it's not very explicit does not matter much - information should go into the article's text, not into its title. The title is only important when someone needs to create a link to the page. Andre Engels

Fine. - Olivier

OK, let us use:


 * Cher (river) and
 * Cher (departement)

Olivier

In the case of just the department and the river, the following disambiguation has been suggested:


 * Use "Name" for the dept
 * "Name River" for the river.

But perhaps it is better to be consequent and name all the department entries "Name (departement)" - no matter if the name needs disambiguation? -Css


 * I think that following common Wikipedia disambiguation rules would be better. That is, use a natural disambiguator if available. The "Name River" forms an excellent natural disambiguator. While it may be inconsequent on the French department level, it is consistent on the Wikipedia level (compare f.e. Colorado and Colorado River). Jeronimo

Spelling issue:

Some departement names, made out of several words have hyphens between the words, some do not. I am not sure that this issue has been taken into account, and for several departements, several spellings exist. The best would be to find an official list, showing the proper spelling. For the moment, the best solution I can see is to refer to the websites of the "Conseil General" of the departements (their governing body). They seem to have harmonized their URLs. For instance, the URL of the Puy-de-Dome Conseil General is: http://www.cg63.fr (note that 63 is the departement number). - User:Olivier

French people use hyphens in many cases where others would not, e.g. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Louis-Philippe (king), Jésus-Christ, Notre-Dame (church), Saint-Denis (do.), etc. - In case of doubt, it is safest to include the hyphen. S.

Correct. Nevertheless, it looks like there is a current trend for dropping them. - User:Olivier

Hum, I don't really agree with you Olivier. We use hyphen in département names. and special caracters to. For example, we refer to Puy-de-Dôme for 63, not Puy de Dome. I don't think simply checking the names given in url links is the good choice. For some navigators tolerate pretty badly accent and hyphen. I should know, I can't edit any french wiki article with Netscape ! Hence, we often remove them in url. However, this is not *proper* french and is not the way we write them in any other circomstances.user:anthere.

btw, we have a linguist on the french wiki. I shall ask him.

- OK, OK, I mispelled "Dome" instead of "Dôme". But that's only because of my QWERTY keyboard, which makes it difficult to put accents. In the example I gave above, my point was not about the special caracters (I am French from France, educated in France, so I have a fair understanding of this sensitive topic), but about hyphens. If you look at the departements which have an article attached to them in the English Wikipedia, they all have their proper accents.

When I was talking about URLs, I was not talking about how Puy-de-Dôme is spelled in the URL, but how it is spelled on the website of the Conseil General (in this case: http://www.cg63.fr). I mentioned the URLs because it is easy to check all the websites of the Conseils Generaux, since they have URLs in the format: www.cgxx.fr, where xx stands for the departement number.

Now, regarding the topic of the hyphens in the departement names:
 * on http://www.cg63.fr/, they are talking about the Puy-de-Dôme (hyphens)
 * on http://www.cg65.fr/, it is Hautes-Pyrénées (hyphen)
 * on http://www.cg04.fr/, they are talking about Alpes de Hautes Provence (no hyphen, although Alpes-de-Hautes-Provence can also be found in the History section of their website)
 * on http://www.cg22.fr/, Côte d'Armor (no hyphen)
 * and so on

So my point was: since official institutions like the governing bodies of some departements write the departement name without hyphen, that might prove that *usage*, if not *rule* for spelling these names is evolving (again, not applicable to all multiple word departement names).

So my question was, and still is: do we follow the official usage or the old rule? Anyway, thanks for discussing this, I know that this is a somewhat sensitive topic - User:Olivier

- from Curry Dans les noms propres, les traits d'union restent obligatoires (de ce point de vue-là, les noms des départements sur wikipedia ne sont pas conformes à la norme: il faudrait rajouter les traits d'union, si tu peux renommer les articles) Dans les noms communs, il y a une tendance à enlever le trait d'union et à coller les deux parties (protolangue au lieu de proto-langue; paléochrétien au lieu de paléo-chrétien, etc.), mais ce n'est pas systématique.
 * Curry

Anthere: upgrade to Mozilla! ;-) Maybe when fr:wikipedia switches to the new software the pages can be renamed. Both Larousse and Quid use hyphens in department and commune names. The hyphen in "Jean-Jacques" is not an option -- "Jean-Jacques" is a single, double-barrelled name, distinct from "Jean Jacques" -- two names. -- Tarquin

I suggest to add Main Cities to the template as they are not necessarily the préfecture and sous-préféctures.

Should we write département or departement ? Ericd 04:26 Sep 8, 2002 (UTC) - Why having the WikiProject tags in articles is bad and why they should be at the top of talk pages (if at all);
 * 1) When potential readers see it, they may feel obligated to visit and agree to the WikiProject in order to contribute.
 * 2) Talk is a page for comments about how to improve the article. The article namespace is not a good place for this.
 * 3) Whenever we make articles we should try to make it as useful to readers as possible. Ugly tags detract from the article and are not intended for mere readers anyway; WikiProject tags are for contributors who want to majorly add to a set of articles. These people will visit talk anyway.
 * 4) These tags are self-conscience and considerations on how Wikipedia articles will look in print form are important (these tags will have to be removed before a print version is made, so it is best to limit their use).
 * 5) WikiProjects are for a set of users to agree on a set of guidelines. Nobody else is bound by those guidelines. However the tag implies that those guidelines should be followed in order to contribute. This is very unwiki.
 * 6) The major WikiProjects (Countries, Elements and Sports) do not have these type of tags in articles (the talk pages od converted element articles mention who did the conversion and that the conversion was based on WikiProject Elements).
 * 7) Probably more reasons.

PS I simply watch each of the articles I convert. I then reformat contributions made to the converted articles in order to make sure they don't stray too far from the WikiProject guidelines. That way I don't intimidate potential contributors, and can keep some consistency. --mav

Hi. I propose to change the table guidelines to that currently used on fr.wikipedia.org. It looks a whole lot sexier, and nearly all départements on fr: have these tables. I did the same for the french régions, and there are some tricks to make the whole thing go pretty fast, which I'll do if no-one objects: Any comments? --snoyes 23:36, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * 1) Copy the wiki source text for the tables from all the departements on fr:
 * 2) Paste them all into a text editor
 * 3) Run a 'search and replace' function on all the necessary strings to translate those to english.
 * 4) Paste the resulting wikitext to each departement on en:


 * That sounds like a good idea to me. The only request I would have is that you show the resulting template first. You can amend drastically the one in the English wikiproject, and we can share some thoughts about it. After that, of course, your idea can be implemented. Thanks! olivier 07:43, Jan 6, 2004 (UTC)


 * the nes tables look great -- Tarquin 18:06, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * I like this template, of course. I have changed the link in your table from arrondissement to French arrondissements. If you go through the process of reworking all the departements articles, we could also take this opportunity to include something at the bottom of the page, like in the French Wikipedia. I have made a suggestion in WikiProject French départements, which is slighly different from the one found in the French departements articles. Also, while we are at it, are we happy with the subsections? olivier 11:21, Jan 8, 2004 (UTC)


 * Considering the "Arrondissements" row now links to French arrondissements, it is probably useless to link the numer to eg. Arrondissements of Ain, since they are already listed at French arrondissements. Or is there something useful that could be said at Arrondissements of Ain that won't be said at French arrondissements? --snoyes 16:02, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * I'd be happy to add the bottom links as you suggested on WikiProject French départements. Also, I added a row into the table for the number of the département, with "Number" linking to département. --snoyes 16:09, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * It looks like there is no need for the Arrondissements of Ain article at this stage. Maybe the link could redirect to French arrondissements, just in case we want to develop the individual arrodissements articles in the future. olivier 08:30, Jan 9, 2004 (UTC)


 * I have made some changes to the table. See density and population ranking. olivier 09:32, Jan 9, 2004 (UTC)


 * Oh, also comma instead of space for the thousands. olivier 09:33, Jan 9, 2004 (UTC)


 * Since we are at it, I removed the ":" from the table. olivier 09:36, Jan 9, 2004 (UTC)

msg:département
I removed the standard départements-list from Charente and placed it on Template:Departments of France. The later can be included in the articles with. This reduces redundancy and facilitates updating the layout of the list. -- User:Docu
 * Special:Whatlinkshere/MediaWiki:Département shows the articles where it's used (or linked). -- User:Docu

Missing image
The image at the top of the Loire-Atlantique info box is missing, does anyone have a copy to re-upload? Thryduulf 12:46, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

World History site
The www.worldhistory.com site entries for the departements appear to be copies of Wikipedia's. A legitimate mirror site? (It would be useful to have a list of such to avoid repeated questions on the same sites.)

Jackiespeel 18:24, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Départements of France
Hello all- I made a proposal regarding the above page that may be of interest to you: Requested_moves. -Eric (talk) 18:35, 13 October 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)

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 21:33, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject France
Suggestions/remarks are requested how best we can integrate WikiProject French départements into WikiProject France. Kindly answer on the WikiProject France talk page. STTW (talk)  19:36, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Anglicisation of French terms
See the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject France —The preceding unsigned comment was added by OwenBlacker (talk • contribs) 10:35, 19 January 2007 (UTC).

Flag templates used only on Departments of France
The WikiProject Flag Template team is in the middle of a major re-implementation of the set of flag templates. There are a set of 28 templates that are single-use, only appearing in the Departments of France article. We are proposing that they be subst'ed on that article to reduce clutter in the template namespace. Please discuss at Talk:Departments of France. Andrwsc 16:26, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposed merger
For purposes of centralized discussion, please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject France. Thank you. John Carter 13:54, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

List of political and geographic subdivisions by total area
Hi, I'd appreciates some help in adding the French départements to this list. Cheers! bd2412 T 21:37, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Discussion to organise this project as a taskforce of WikiProject France
Please see the discussion to voice your opinion. I believe this would be a good idea: the change would allow the projects to be logically cohesive and it would promote more centralized discussion among francophones/editors interested in French/France articles.