- Okay, before this gets out of control we need to address something. We have pages and categories for places in which the names are not consistent country-by-county and even within countries. I am going to gather previous discussions, combine them, and address more issues.
Place/category names problems
In regards to place names for articles and categories. Please ignore whether or not the actual articles or categories exist.
Regarding articles, we have the basic continents:
- North America (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- South America (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Australia (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Europe (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Asia (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Africa (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Antarctica (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
We also have country articles and categories:
- United States (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Australia (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- England (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- New Zealand (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
We also have several divisions of country articles and categories:
- New York (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Pennsylvania (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Georgia (U.S. states) (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- New South Wales (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- North Yorkshire (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Västmanland (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Gotland (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Gelderland (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Baden-Württemberg (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
and the thousand of others...
The problem is inconsistancy:
- Chautauqua County, New York - specifies county and state (does not specify the country the United States.)
- Meddo - specifies hamlet (does not specify the muncipality of Winterswijk, the province of Gelderland, and the country of the Netherlands.)
These are just two of the many examples I could give. Also, a too simplified of a name would not account for the many duplication of places names. Examples:
- Georgia is a country as well as a U.S. state
- Winterswijk is a town within the muncipality of Winterswijk.
Solution
Use country name in place name
We'll use our examples from before:
Instead of using these:
- New York (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Pennsylvania (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Georgia (U.S. states) (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- New South Wales (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- North Yorkshire (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Västmanland (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Gotland (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Gelderland (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Baden-Württemberg (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
We should use these:
- New York, United States (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Pennsylvania, United States (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Georgia, United States (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- New South Wales, Australia (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- North Yorkshire, England (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Västmanland, Sweden (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Gotland, Sweden (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Gelderland, Netherlands (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Baden-Württemberg, Germany (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
Then we can go on to use:
- Chautauqua County, New York, United States (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Bacon County, Georgia, United States (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Hambleton, North Yorkshire, England (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Västmanland County, Västmanland, Sweden (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Visby, Gotland, Sweden (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Winterswijk, Gelderland, Netherlands (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
- Heidenheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany (Born in..., Died in..., Married in..., etc.)
There. That solves the inconsitancy problem and the duplicate place names problem. Too long of a name? No problem. We have redirects. We can make disambiguations.
Info page parameters
New York, Pennsylvania, Georgia, New South Wales, and Baden-Württemberg are states, North Yorkshire is a county, Gotland and Gelderland are provinces. Thus, all countries are subdivided differently. There are countries, states, provinces, districts, muncipalities, counties, towns, cities, villages, hamlets, townships, etc.
I once proposed this and I think it needs to be the standard.
So, the problem we currently have is we only use town, county, and state, in which not all countries are divided.
|Birth town = |Birth county = |Birth state =
Thus, the better info page parameters are:
|Birth country subdiv3 = |Birth country subdiv2 = |Birth country subdiv1 = |Birth country =
That way it can apply to all places generally. If the place actually uses "County" or something like that in it's place, it will be put there like such:
|Birth country subdiv3 = Ellery |Birth country subdiv2 = Chautauqua County |Birth country subdiv1 = New York |Birth country = United States
Which gets us down to the township. And perhaps a more detailed division:
|Birth country subdiv4 = Byrnsdale |Birth country subdiv3 = Jay |Birth country subdiv2 = Elk County |Birth country subdiv1 = Pennsylvania |Birth country = United States
Which subcategorizes at the township level. Of course, townships may infact have so little of a population, that dividing them up may be unnecessary.
Forums/location templates/info boxes
If all the above are applied, I can make one forum template, one location template, and one infobox template in which we can apply to any location and any subdivision.
Conclusion
If all my proposals are followed, we would be better organized, consistant, and less confused.
What I meant earlier by out of control is that we need to address this at 4,300 info pages and not 100,000 info pages as well as an enormous amount of place pages. -AMK152(talk • contribs) 16:54, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
Standardisation necessary and possible
I'm all for standardizing what can be standardized. However, countries are structured in very different ways. What is logical in one place, is awkward in another, and impossible in a third place. I would think we want to standardise per country, and then aggregate from country to continent. Rtol 17:59, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
- That's why I used subdiv. Every country that is subdivided can use those categories. If a country is not subdivided, just use the country (like Vatican City). -AMK152(talk • contribs) 19:35, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
Many thanks to AMK for putting all of that together. The idea sounds fine in principle. However, I'm at least partly inclined to favour Rtol's response here. Or to say "Why stop at the country level and not go on to include continent name?" (because not everybody knows where Oman is). Maybe AMK can produce a table of country subdivisions (doubtless copying most of the data from Wikipedia, e.g. Wikipedia:Category:First-level administrative country subdivisions, and maybe doing only twenty countries initially)) showing how they name their first-level subdivisions, second-level subdivisions, and so on, with footnotes showing what overlaps they might have (e.g. the city of Chicago is in parts of two counties and New York City encompasses five). Then (or first) AMK could make his proposed "one forum template, one location template, and one infobox template ... which we can apply to any location and any subdivision" and show us examples of what those "one size fits all" templates actually look like and do. And category templates along the lines of {{Born in UK}} and {{Ctycat-LA}}. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 06:31, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
- Studying this a bit more, we have language problems already and now we are introducing further problems of understanding. I know that Zwaag is village, but how do I know it is subdiv4 and not subdiv5 or subdiv3? This would only work if the info boxes show aliases rather than the logical structure. Rtol 09:11, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
- is this usable? Naams- en datumconventies
- is this usable? Naams- en datumconventies
Name and Date Conventions |color=rgb(216, 191, 216) |content=
- Datum: dag, maand, jaar. bijv.: 19 mrt 1874.
- Plaats (voor Nederland): dorp, gemeente, provincie, Netherlands
- Plaats (algemeen): town/city, county/district, state/province, country.
Fred Bergman 09:43, 7 April 2009 (UTC)