Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portuguese geography

Discussion from 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)

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


 * 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)

Joining the project
I'm joining the project. The first things I have done are: template:Parishes of Barcelos and I'm trying to start making articles for parishes from various municipalities, starting with the one who has more: Barcelos. Let's work :) --Serte 23:07, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Stub split
Hi all - there's a proposal at WikiProject Stub sorting to split into smaller sections. When a country's geo-stubs are split, they are usually split by official subnational division. According to the articles on the subject, Portugal is split two ways, into 18 districts and 7 regions. The current proposal is to split the category into seven subcategories, one for each region (The Azores are already split out, so that would be six more subcats). If there is some reason why districts would be preferable, please let us know at WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Proposals/2007/June ASAP.

One note: for maintenance and ease of use, WP:WSS tries to keep category splits to cases where a subcategory would have 60 or more stubs. Since there are currently about 700 Portuguese geography stubs, if the split was by district, only a few districts would be split out immediately, since most would not reach that threshold (the average stubs per district is about 40). With the regions, though, it is quite likely that most, if not all, of them would pass the 60 mark quite easily. Grutness...wha?  23:16, 30 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Split it by districts, I say. Regions are still being studied, the ones used now are provisional and are quite uncommon in daily conversation. Joao  pais  02:58, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Aims
I think we need a complete revision on this page, to reassess the aims, tasks and elaboration of existing geography-based content. I note that one of the "aims" of this group is "To attract Portuense editors to the English WP and work together on articles and copy-editing". Promoting one group of people (from Oporto) in this case sets a bad precedent, since it invites bias. One thing that I have noticed in the articles on Portuguese geography, is the bias nature of the discussion and some edits that favors one region, or city over another. Although this is obviously a dichotomy that exists in reality between the north and south (Oporto and Lisbon), it should not be supported here. Since it would create biased point-of-view articles that are in no way encyclopedic. Further, it seems that geography-based content elaboration has stagnated on all pages associated with Portugal and its territories. I have been slowly updating the article pages in the Azores namespaces, elaborating details, citations, adding imagery and updating content. Occasionally, I have updated or revised content in the Madeira and continental Portugal articles, but most reflect sudden interest in the location (such as Alcácer do Sal, Águeda Municipality or Sines, Portugal). There are just too many stub-class articles in the Portuguese namespaces that could be elaborated.

Regardless, maybe we should assess other "geography-based" projects in order to get a better definition on the aims of the group, and begin turning it from potentially inactive, to active. Just some motivational words. Ruben JC (Zeorymer) (talk) 09:28, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Geoboxes
The most important thing about an infobox is to show the reader where a place is on an island or in a country. Geobox generally does not allow for pin maps. Therefore I recommend you use Template:Infobox settlement which is specially designed to be used for this.♦ Dr. Blofeld  10:50, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree with the above. Geoboxes for settlements are not commonly used by others for the fact that they are messy, complicated, and overall not the best. I find it detremental that the wikiproject is alienating portugal from the rest of the world on wiki by not using the settlement template. I put forward a motion, if I am allowed to, to make that the standard. Wiki seeks for constistency, we must aid it in such. Thank you, Cristiano Tomás (talk) 07:54, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
 * The use of Geobox in the context of Portuguese "settlements" is an issue of extent rather localization. Portuguese settlements, as you know, can not be delimited in terms of the North American context: a city/town (North American definitions) can not be used to imply the politico-administrative divisions of Portugal, primarily since cities are extra-territorial, while the Portuguese hierarchy is based on defined regional area boundaries and legal definitions. For example, although Lisbon the "city" extends across several parishes (both within and without the municipality of Lisbon), the governmental entity (the Câmara Municipal of Lisbon) is only responsible for management of those areas within the predefined borders. The use of Geobox, rather then Infobox settlement, is more practical since it is a regional extent rather then a point data element. I'll refer you to the example of Obidos, Portugal and Óbidos Municipality, two different subjects (one using the Geobox for extent, and the other Infobox for localization). The Portuguese namespace has several of these type of articles: NUTS II, NUTSIII Subregions, Districts, Municipalities, Civil Parishes and THEN settlements, of an extra-territorial nature (cities, towns, etc.). The creation of two levels of articles, one for municipalities (area) and other for cities/towns (point) was established by early by editors who saught to differentiate the legal entities from the contextual reference: just like in Sintra Municipality versus Sintra, Portugal or Braga Municipality versus Braga, Portugal. ruben jc ZEORYMER  (talk) 11:08, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Lisbon Debate
Since I can remember, this page (and all pages on Portuguese cities and administrative units) has always stood out (and not in a good way) from the rest of the reputable cities of the world in its use of the geobox instead of the infobox. Apart from my own personal distaste for the disorganization and cluttered feel of the geobox, I find it unnecessary to break consistency of the infobox with Lisbon. I understand the structures of cities in Portugal are one of relative uniqueness when compared to a regular city, but it is not so revolutionary that it would warrant a special box. Let us finally decide on the matter, as a community, using democracy and logic, above all. Shall we use the infobox or the geobox. Thank you,Cristiano Tomás (talk) 22:01, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Community Comments
I would like to first apologize for the confusion during the lead-up to this debate. In reference to User:Cristiano Tomás' comments on Geobox versus Infobox, I offer the above presentation of both, to argue my points. Apart from the aesthetic differences (using the Vector-based formating), I offer that this format is neither disorganized nor cluttered, easily providing a structured example of all components identified in the Infobox. The Geobox begins with toponomic information, follows into geographic statistics (divisions, point reference, dimensions), histo-political information, administrative codes, before social information. The Infobox, in comparison, starts at divisions, then history, then government, then physical dimensions, then social, followed by administrative codes before jumping back to social. I find that the Infobox "jumps" around far more then the Geobox. Meanwhile, the Geobox design encapsulates the important geographic and socio-political references, allows enough customization to add new groupings, automates the calculation of dimensions (area, distances, etc), and integrates directly with Wikimedia Commons, within a more compact structure then Infobox format (lateral page size). It has been discussed in the past (can't find the reference) that the Geobox positioning of the map might not be the best, but even that does not dissuade me from preferring, what I feel is, a content-rich layout of the Geobox. Its just MADE for this type of data summary. I note that there many details that can not be duplicated within the Infobox: in fact, I will concede to Infobox (against my dislike), if it is possible to duplicate the detail already based in the Geobox format. ruben jc ZEORYMER  (talk) 22:54, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Naming convention discussing RE:Municipalities

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Moved. The move is for this one article, but I suggest that if someone has the patience to list all the 'Municipality' articles in Portugal created by socks of Tobias Conradi, they could make a list somewhere and then make a request at WP:RM/TR for a mass move. EdJohnston (talk) 20:36, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Anadia Municipality, Portugal → Anadia, Portugal – The clarification "Municipality" is unnecessary. Relisted. BDD (talk) 16:33, 8 April 2013 (UTC) Vivaelcelta {talk &middot; &#32; contributions} 02:26, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Widen discussion to whole category: this article is a part of the Category:Municipalities of Portugal, containing 251 articles, of which approx. 191 are in the form "Foo Municipality" or "Foo Municipality, Portugal". It looks as if this suggestion - which FAIK may well be a very good one, but I don't know the background - might need wider consideration across the whole class of articles, rather than picking them off individually.Jsmith1000 (talk) 19:04, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I will move the other articles when I have time. --Vivaelcelta {talk &middot; &#32; contributions} 02:05, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
 * This subject is specified in the WP:WikiProject Portuguese geography page. I agree completely, the city-municipality dichotomy has got to be eliminated and both series of articles merged. The problem that exists is that, in many cases, there is a article about city X, and an almost similar article about municipality X. I refer you to Sintra Municipality and Sintra, Portugal. Most, if not all the municipality articles, under the Category:Municipalities of Portugal were actually created by a known and discredited sock-puppeteer (User:Tobias Conradi), without consensus, ages ago (or in this case 2009). Content was then ported to the "Municipality" article and a distinction established that the "true name" functioned as a "city" article, while the "Municipality" article took on all the other municipal-wide functions. The reality is that treating those articles differently perpetuated a misconception that Portugal consists of cites, towns and villages with their own mayors or reaves, when in reality it is structured on extra-territorial regions of municipalities and parishes with their own executives and assemblies. The notion of political power of "cities" does not exist, since this power is invested in the municipalities and parishes. Geographically, cities, towns and villages can extend over the territorial jurisdiction of multiple municipalities and parishes (those entities responsible for governing their constituents). As a direct contributor to these types of articles, the best form of resolving all the Portuguese administrative division articles, is integrating the "municipality"-titled articles and merging them under their proper/simple namespaces. I support these types of name changes. Also, I suggest, even as there are few people working on content-development on the political geography of Portugal, this discussion should be duplicated at WP:WikiProject Portuguese geography.
 * — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zeorymer (talk • contribs) 09:31, 27 March 2013‎ (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

On administratively united parishes
I decided to take it upon myself, being a resident of the parish of Algoz to update the pertinent article... and I'm somewhat stumped on account of the recent gerrymandering that has Algoz and Tunes share the same president and other administrative organs. At least from the Câmara Municipal de Silves site[1] one can tell that basic services are kept on both former parish offices. Yet on the Portuguese wiki one is seeing a veritable flood of "União de Freguesia" articles.[2] What shall then one do? Dracontes (talk) 22:46, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Personally, I think we should wait until the IGP (Institute Geographic Português) produces the new CAOP (Carta Administrativo Oficial de Portugal) before starting to create "merged" articles. Although, administratively, there are "unions", it seems almost impractical to have long-winded titles for each civil parish. The CAOP is a good measure of how parishes will permanently exist. Also, these merged titles almost seem like a placeholder for debate on future names. Regardless, the green paper is going to create an upheaval in the Wikipedia articles. I am not at all content at the prospect of beginning a series of merger debates now, to have another process begin immediately after, when civil parishes are annexed, extinguished or renamed during this process.ruben jc ZEORYMER  (talk) 23:25, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Fair enough then. I do agree that regarding the merger debates, perhaps the best solution is to wait for the official word from the pertinent entities. Perhaps the placeholders if they ever become needed should just be notes on the current parish pages that warrant it (i.e., more than a stub) noting the union and that for economy of effort merger will only be effected when an official name is published. In any case I'll ignore the administrative peculiarities for now. Dracontes (talk) 00:18, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Administrative divisions of Portugal
I think the Administrative divisions of Portugal article needs a complete overhaul. As far as I know, it does not reflect the current situation. If I'm correct, there are the following administrative subdivisions now:
 * autonomous regions (Madeira, Azores)
 * municipalities
 * parishes (major reorganization in 2013, see link)
 * intermunicipal communities and metropolitan areas (see link)

The intermunicipal communities and metropolitan areas apparently cover the same territories as the statistical NUTS-III subdivisions, for some with the same name (e.g. Cávado), some with a different name but the same municipalities (e.g. Região de Aveiro = Baixo Vouga). The article mentions more metropolitan areas than the two in the law text (Lisbon and Porto), see also. Probably the other metropolitan areas (e.g. Aveiro, Viseu) have existed (briefly?), but I can't find when they were abolished.

Apparently, districts are not units of local administration anymore, but they used to be. I couldn't find when they were abolished. I'm a bit confused about the regions: there's the NUTS-II statistical regions (e.g. Centro Region, Portugal, no administrative region) and a proposed regional administration level, rejected in the Portuguese regionalisation referendum, 1998.

Is this correct, and does anyone have some additional references?

BTW, the new administrative map of Portugal is now available: link, and also an updated table of areas of municipalities and parishes: link. Markussep Talk 12:51, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Municipality and city articles
As a result of the controversial moves by Tobias Conradi and his sockpuppets, we now have many articles at "X Municipality" and several more or less duplicate articles. I made a list of them, see below. I suppose, given the outcome of the move discussion above, moving articles to a "Municipality"-less title is not controversial, so I would like to list them for a mass move, if you agree. Merging the city and municipality articles requires some effort, so I hope we can do that together. Markussep Talk 13:57, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I have no problem with a mass elimination of the "municipality" qualifier.ruben jc ZEORYMER  (talk) 14:02, 8 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I've completed the easy mergers, now I'm requesting technical moves for the articles that only need to be moved. Markussep Talk 20:41, 10 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Nice! That is something I've been wanting to do for a long time but never got to it. So I'll be glad to help. Most of them will need a history merge, right? - Nabla (talk) 19:53, 11 August 2014 (UTC)


 * That would be great, thanks! I updated the list below. Most of the move targets only have very trivial history (I listed them as ), but you'll probably know what to do. Markussep Talk 07:17, 12 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I just did the remaining move (Sabrosa). I also rescued the todo list from the page history, in order to keep a clear (as possible) record of what was done and why. Anyone knowing of any merge in need of a history merge, please say so and I'll do it (eventually, I'm not here every day), I'll sample a few, but I will not go through them all - Nabla (talk) 19:29, 15 August 2014 (UTC)


 * move Alcácer do Sal Municipality to Alcácer do Sal
 * move Almada Municipality to Almada
 * move Alpiarça Municipality to Alpiarça
 * move Amares Municipality to Amares
 * move Arcos de Valdevez Municipality to Arcos de Valdevez
 * move Arganil Municipality to Arganil
 * move Barreiro Municipality to Barreiro, Portugal
 * move Bombarral Municipality to Bombarral
 * move Borba Municipality, Portugal to Borba, Portugal
 * move Chaves Municipality, Portugal to Chaves, Portugal
 * merge Coimbra Municipality into Coimbra (both large articles)
 * move Góis Municipality to Góis
 * move Loulé Municipality to Loulé
 * move Manteigas Municipality to Manteigas
 * move Mogadouro Municipality to Mogadouro
 * move Moita Municipality to Moita
 * move Monchique Municipality to Monchique
 * move Montalegre Municipality to Montalegre
 * move Mora Municipality, Portugal to Mora, Portugal
 * move Mourão Municipality to Mourão
 * move Oeiras Municipality, Portugal to Oeiras, Portugal
 * move Oliveira de Frades Municipality to Oliveira de Frades
 * move Penela Municipality to Penela
 * move Ponte da Barca Municipality to Ponte da Barca
 * move Ponte de Sor Municipality to Ponte de Sor
 * merge Portimão Municipality into Portimão (both large articles)
 * move Porto de Mós Municipality to Porto de Mós
 * move Reguengos de Monsaraz Municipality to Reguengos de Monsaraz
 * move Sabrosa Municipality to Sabrosa, and Sabrosa to Sabrosa (disambiguation)
 * move Sabugal Municipality to Sabugal
 * move Salvaterra de Magos Municipality to Salvaterra de Magos
 * move Seia Municipality to Seia
 * move Seixal Municipality to Seixal
 * move Sernancelhe Municipality to Sernancelhe
 * move Sines Municipality to Sines
 * merge Sintra Municipality into Sintra (both large articles)
 * move Tavira Municipality to Tavira
 * move Trancoso Municipality, Portugal to Trancoso, Portugal
 * move Trofa Municipality to Trofa
 * move Viana do Alentejo Municipality to Viana do Alentejo
 * move Viana do Castelo Municipality to Viana do Castelo
 * move Vila Verde Municipality to Vila Verde
 * move Vila Viçosa Municipality to Vila Viçosa
 * move Vizela Municipality to Vizela